Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
- Data Visualization
From Smashing Magazine: "The main goal of data visualization is its ability to visualize data" – well no kidding! Nonetheless: great article and fantastic data visualization I had forgotten about.
- One for you… One for me!
"[...] there’s a huge gulf between a head of state shaking your hand and a minister making a bank transfer."
Really? No! Who would have thought? Certainly not the one laptop per child folks!
After two-and-a-half years of relentless organizing, product development, and evangelizing, the so-called $100 laptop is ready to go into production in October. At a time like this, you’d think that übertechnology visionary Nicholas Negroponte and his team at the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization would be stockpiling champagne for a blowout celebration. Far from it.
While the notebook computer for schoolchildren in underdeveloped nations is just about ready for prime time, the goal of distributing tens of millions of the cute green-and-white machines still seems a far-off dream. The reasons: The computers, now called XO Laptops, will cost about $188 each to produce initially, nearly twice the original estimate; and, so far, not a single government has written a check.
- Creative Commons
Larry Lessig on the Texas suit against Virgin and Creative Commons
I doubt that any court would find the photographer in this case had violated any right of privacy merely by posting a photograph like this on Flickr. Nor would any court, in my view, find a noncommercial use of a photograph like this violative of any right of privacy. And finally, as the world is just now, while many might resist the idea of Virgin using a photograph of theirs for free (and thus not select a license that explicitly authorizes "commercial use"), most in the net community would be perfectly fine with noncommercial use of a photograph by others within the net community.
… but in this case Larry, Virgin was freeloading! Read Larry’s post for further Creative Commons clarifications.
- Scroogled
What if Google controlled your life. A great fiction piece by Cory Doctorow
- Free the WSJ and the $ will come!
Kara Swisher advocates for a free WSJ. I predict it will happen very very soon. This year? Rupert Murdoch won’t let me down. WSJ will be free before the end of 2007 and that’s that.
[...] while a paid model might have been right in the past, having a larger, powerful and global owner changes the stakes considerably and allows the tremendous site to make bolder moves than ever before. Kara Swisher
- Amazon Architecture. Amazon’s Frugality
Amazon Architecture over at High Scalability. Of note a few items for team building and team dynamics as well as product management:
- If you have a new business idea or problem you want to solve you form a team. Limit the team to 8-10 people because communication hard. They are called two pizza teams. The number of people you can feed off two pizzas.
- Teams are small. They are assigned authority and empowered to solve a problem as a service in anyway they see fit.
- Work From the Customer Backwards to Verify a New Service is Worth Doing
- Force developers to focus on value delivered to the customer instead of building technology first and then figuring how to use it.
- Start with a press release of what features the user will see and work backwards to check that you are building something valuable (This is brilliant!).
- Create a frugal culture.
- Involve everyone in making dog food.
- Look for three things in interviews: enthusiasm, creativity, competence. The single biggest predictor of success at Amazon.com was enthusiasm.
- Hire a Bob. Someone who knows their stuff, has incredible debugging skills and system knowledge, and most importantly, has the stones to tackle the worst high pressure problems imaginable by just leaping in.
If you have time, a word on scalabilty from Werner Vogels is a great read too.
[...] scalability cannot be an after-thought. It requires applications and platforms to be designed with scaling in mind, such that adding resources actually results in improving the performance or that if redundancy is introduced the system performance is not adversely affected.
- Fair use fairy tale
A very silly report
on "fair use" gets caustic treatment over at Nick Carr’s blog Rough Type. No wonder.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association, a lobbying group for tech companies, has just issued a report called "Fair Use in the U.S. Economy." It purports to show that "the fair use economy" is larger than the "copyright economy." In 2006, the report declares, the fair use economy "accounted for $4.5 trillion in revenues and $2.2 billion in value added, roughly 16.2 percent of U.S. GDP. It employed more than 17 million people and supported a payroll of $1.2 trillion. It generated $194 billion in exports and rapid productivity growth."
…Even by the woeful standards of the bespoke research industry, this study is a crock.
but it brought a smile to my face. You should read it too!
- Richard Stallman at U of T
Via Greg Wilson:
World-renowned activist and free software developer Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of the free software movement, will speak on “Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer Networks” in Matthews Auditorium, Room 137, Kaneff Center, University of Toronto, Mississauga, 3359 Mississauga Rd. N., on Thursday, July 5th at 5 pm.Details here. Some folks from Idee will be in attendance. Say hello!
- Fixing Hyperbio
I am fixing all my feeds problems. Oh my God! What the hell is going on! Best way to spend time at the LA lounge on the way back to TO on a red eye flight. I am still hoping to get an upgrade on this flight so that I can sleep before getting to the office upon landing. LA is just so so so big!
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