Archive for the ‘links’ Category
July 11, 2008
- Mapstraction - map abstraction API for Javascript - Hackszine.com
Mapstraction is an abstracted Javascript mapping API that can make use of Google Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth, Yahoo Maps and Mapquest. Instead of deciding on a particular mapping provider, you can build your web application with Mapstraction and easily switch to a different service by changing a single line of code.
- Browse Del.icio.us Bookmarks Visually With FavThumbs - TechCrunch
FavThumbs offers a visually-pleasing web application to view screen shots of your bookmarks using the del.icio.us API.
Not so interested in the app itself, but in the fact that clear, published, open API’s make it so easy to add value around a great service.
- When Distraction is Good - O’Reilly Radar - Insight, analysis, and research about emerging technologies
Distraction is getting a bad name. This past month, I’ve been heads down on a few projects and noticing something I’d not been very conscious of before now. When I get “stuck” or when I reach a natural break point on a piece of work, the menu of potential distractions includes everything from email and telephone calls to getting food, socializing and more.I did an informal audit. Sometimes I would check email. Other times, I would pace, get a glass of iced-tea, or walk outside for a few minutes. When I did the latter — any activity that was quiet, reflective and receptive, I would feel refreshed. I was open to receiving an insight and to being in the moment. When I returned to the project that had momentarily stumped me, I would enjoy new energy. I started calling this receptive distraction. Receptive distraction is any sort of distraction that creates mental space.
When I went to email, however, I would “spin out.” That is, I would completely lose track of what I had been working on and get immersed in all sorts of other issues. I started calling this deceptive distraction. I thought I could take a short break and crank out a few emails, but it took longer to do the emails than I thought, and longer to get back into my project afterward.
- Scaling on EC2 - WebMynd Blog
Interesting post about how WebMynd is scaling quickly using EC2, Solr, and nginx.
(tags: ec2 scalability architecture solr)
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July 9, 2008
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July 5, 2008
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July 3, 2008
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June 27, 2008
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June 15, 2008
- BMW’s fascinating GINA Light Visionary Model design study - Signal vs. Noise
BMW presents GINA, a new take on car design, materials, and flexibility. The GINA replaces the traditional metal/plastic skin with a textile fabric skin that’s pulled taut around a frame of metal and carbon fiber wires. Even the shape of the car can change. Fascinating and creative design study.
The video is absolutely nuts.
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June 9, 2008
- Organizes desk-bound cords - Cool Tools
For sheer bang-for-the-buck, these cord management cards are tough to beat. They’re cheap polyethylene sheets you either stick or screw to the edge of your desk and then snap the cables coming from your computer and peripherals into the recesses.
- Finding the natural size for your company - Signal vs. Noise
Popular perception holds that companies must always be growing or they’re dying. There’s either up or down, win or lose, success or failure. I think that’s a harmful dichotomy that leads to the death of perfectly viable companies in their quest for constant growth.
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June 5, 2008
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May 31, 2008
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May 23, 2008
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May 18, 2008
- Drop.io: Simple Private Exchange
Drop.io enables you to create simple private exchange points called “drops.” The service has no email signup and no “accounts.” Each drop is private, and only as accessible as you choose to deliberately make it.
(tags: fileshare)
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May 9, 2008
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April 25, 2008
- Presdo, The Magical Online Scheduler - TechCrunch
I want you to stop what you are doing right now and go try Presdo. It is a deceptively simple online scheduling assistant that is a prime example of what a modern Web app should be. It only shows you what you need to see at the moment that you need to see it. And it understands what you want to do based on normal (and not-so-normal) English that you type in.
Beautiful simplicity.
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April 21, 2008
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April 17, 2008
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April 14, 2008
- Urgency is poisonous - Signal vs. Noise
So far our four-day work week experiment is working. We haven’t found ourselves collectively wishing we had an extra work day a week. We haven’t found ourselves gasping for extra hours. Instead I feel like we’ve been more focused and working better together.
- Draft Syndication Data Standard Approved - FBS Blog
Last week at the RETS trimester meeting, a draft of a syndication data format was approved by the general session. A brief history…
- Storage Space, The Final Frontier - Amazon Web Services Blog
In the same way that your running EC2 instances, your Elastic IP addresses, your S3 buckets and your SQS queues can be thought of as items contained within the scope of your AWS account, our forthcoming persistent storage feature will give you the ability to create reliable, persistent storage volumes for use with EC2. Once created, these volumes will be part of your account and will have a lifetime independent of any particular EC2 instance.
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April 7, 2008
- How EC2 changes the game in batch grid computing - RightScale Blog
Enter Amazon EC2. If user A enqueues a job needing 500 nodes for 10 hours and user B a job needing 800 nodes for 5 hours what do you do? Very simple: you check the balance in their account and then start 500 instances for user A and 800 instances for user B. Done. No priorities, no scheduling, just pure compute fun!
One of us (Ed) observed: the resource that is “allocated” in the finite computer center is the use of hardware, but the resource that is “managed” in a Cloud is cost. It is a new mind set that 1 computer for 100 hours has the same cost as 100 computers for 1 hour. Of course there are details such as start up costs for large numbers of nodes and ensuring that each billed instance hour is fully used. But those details are a small leap when compared to the issue of understanding that 1=100.
- Source: Google To Launch BigTable As Web Service - TechCrunch
Google may be releasing BigTable, its internal database system, as a web service to compete with Amazon SimpleDB, according to a source with knowledge of the launch. There are also rumors that press is being pre-briefed on the product, although we haven’t been contacted by Google.
BigTable is a highly scalable database system used internally by Google to support over 60 of its products and projects. A source says Google has plans to announce next week that it will make BigTable available to outside developers as a service. Amazon provides a similar service through SimpleDB, a cloud database solution announced in December.
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March 28, 2008
- New EC2 Features: Static IP Addresses, Availability Zones, and User Selectable Kernels - Amazon Web Services Blog
We just added three important new features to Amazon EC2: Elastic IP Addresses, Availability Zones, and User Selectable Kernels.
- Department of Remarkably Good Ideas, nuclear weapons edition - blog.pmarca.com
This just in:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has formally ordered the Air Force, Navy and Defense Logistics Agency to conduct an inventory of all U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon-related materials to make sure all items are accounted for…
The order comes in the wake of the discovery last week that four nuclear warhead fuses were accidentally shipped to Taiwan in 2006…
The inventory review, which will involve thousands of items, is due to Gates in 60 days. Pentagon officials said the request was ordered, in part, because this latest incident comes after the August 2007 accidental flight of six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on a B-52 bomber across the country.
The CNN headline is to the point and priceless:
Pentagon Ordered To Locate All U.S. Nukes
I’ve been trying to think of an idea that would be even better than this one.
And I have failed.
This is, officially, the best good idea of all time.
Sleep well!
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March 16, 2008
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January 25, 2008
- [On Writing] Biz dev emails and first impressions - Signal vs. Noise
Yesterday I got an email from a biz dev guy at a company that syncs data between different applications from different companies.This was the first line of the email:
I work for an enterprise level integration company that is looking to attack the long tail of the market for point to point integration solutions.
Delete.
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