Blitzweekend project: getting real with GoalR

Saturday, March 1st, 2008

Ever since I attended 37 signals "Getting Real" workshop I've want to put some of their design principles to the test. My company is Syntenic, a boutique consulting and services shop primarily focused on web operations, performance optimization via application delivery controllers (load balancing and server offload) and 24x7 high ...

The Web as operating system

Friday, October 19th, 2007

Alistair, who has been writing recently at GigaOM, puts together the most lucid synthesis I have seen on the topic of the "Web OS." Big Internet companies are making themselves the OS of the web 2.0 world. In addition to the fundamentals — operating a web application, storing data, handling logins ...

The web as a pidgin internet language

Sunday, January 28th, 2007

or "How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet" A disproportionate amount of brilliant stuff was written by Douglas Adams, who in 1999 had this to say about the internet: the biggest problem is that we are still the first generation of users, and for all that we may have ...

Visualization of social networks among “Web 2.0” startups

Tuesday, November 14th, 2006

The folks at Groupscope give us some fascinating looks into, among other things, the relationships behind some successful so-called "Web 2.0" startup ventures: From the Linksviewer blog. I wonder how severe the survivorship bias is. It would be more interesting to see all ventures that these individuals were involved with (perhaps the ...

Welcome to the jungle: finding quality in the internet content ecosystem and why editors are so important

Thursday, November 9th, 2006

I agree vehemently with Alistair that folks who spent time decrying the lack of general quality in the blogosphere or on Flickr or the internet in general are missing the point. Average quality doesn't matter. Who cares if my free stock photo site has mostly crap on it, the question ...

Web 2.0 nomenclature – a flash in the pan or real gold nuggets?

Tuesday, November 7th, 2006

Austin at Billions with Zero Knowledge is blogging at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 conference. This got me thinking again about all this of web nomenclature hoopla which seems to have spread like the Code Red worm (see below) with monikers such as "office 2.0," "enterprise 2.0," "identity 2.0," etc.... Anytime ...

Gone phishing: new browsers, new privacy decisions

Sunday, October 29th, 2006

One phish, two phish, red phishing-shield, green phishing-shield Microsoft and Mozilla have released their new browsers Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 which include anti-phishing features that warn end users about web sites which suspected or known to pose as trusted parties for the purpose of stealing sensitive information such as ...

Another cool visualization

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

Concerned about your air quality? Crime rates? Thinking of moving perhaps? Neighboroo provides a cool heatmap style mashup of geographic data and Google maps, designed to let you research the key characteristics of neighbourhoods which matter to you. I would like to see something similar for Canada. Via the fabulous Infosthetics.

Roll your own web application startup – an entreprenneur’s Code

Wednesday, October 25th, 2006

Choose a problem which frustrates you on a daily basis that you think you can solve. You shouldn't have to look far. Passion is key, make sure you can get worked up about it. Hone your powers of concentration. They are your brain's "killer app." Learn to communicate succinctly. Design efficiently and effectively. Embrace ...

Getting real about security

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

Adam (crypto nerd extraordinaire, former evil-genius at Zero Knowledge) from the Emergent Chaos "jazz combo" throws us a reference and ties it in with an amusing story about misguided security concepts. The Emporer's New Computer Affixing a Mac logo to my PC was, after all, motivated by a combination of personal amusement ...