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The King is Dead, Long Live the King
June 11 2009
I've been resisting the temptation to write about Android. But after reading some of the blogs about Android netbooks, I can't keep quiet. Aside from being a Really Cool Idea, I don't have a lot to say about netbooks themselves. I've got an Android phone (thanks, Google), and I like… read moreMay 27 2009
Just one very quick note: When Apple released the iPhone, I said that they had changed the game. Not because they had created the coolest, prettiest phone in history, but because had a phone with a real browser that suppported real HTML with real JavaScript. You can write cool apps… read moreWolfram Alpha a Google Killer? Not... Supposed... To... Be
May 20 2009
I'm getting tired of reading about whether Alpha is a Google-killer. I've seen Stephen Wolfram's presentations a couple of times; he's quite careful to say that it isn't. There's a fundamental difference that many people out there are just missing. Google is a search engine. Alpha looks like a search… read moreMay 10 2009
If this is too esoteric, skip it. I couldn't figure out anywhere else to put it. This morning, Tim Bray tweeted about a post on prime numbers and Benford's law. To cut the esoterica short, one of the big problems in prime numbers is that people don't know how they're… read moreApril 08 2009
One of the defining characteristics of the Rails movement has been its willingness to throw out the rules by which software developers and consultants have typically worked. Those rules typically produce big, overblown projects laden with features that no one ever uses--but which sounded good during the project specification phase.… read moreOctober 30 2008
Yesterday, Andrew Sheppard pointed me at a desktop 3D printer for under $5000. That brought back some memories... In the early 80s, I worked for Imagen, the company that made the first laser printer that sold for under $20,000, the first laser printer that sold for under $10,000, and the… read moreMay 05 2008
The New York Times quotes Laura Martin of Soleil Securities, as saying "This is management putting its employees and its job security ahead of current Yahoo shareholders' interest." The sense of horror here--that management could actually put the interests of employees ahead of the interests of investors--is interesting, to say… read moreApril 10 2008
It's been good to watch the use of OpenID spread. It's great to see that ma.gnolia.com has dropped "traditional login" in favor of OpenID. And I was encouraged to read about Yahoo's support of OpenID. Granted, it took me a while to get around to trying it. But when I… read moreDomain-Specific Social Applications
February 20 2008
I haven't heard a whole lot about domain-specific social applications; most of the ones we're familiar with attempt to serve a very broad audience. Most of the talk at SG FOO was about the world's Facebooks, Flickrs, and LInkedIns--who of... read moreAnother Invitation: Community Patent Review
January 25 2007
Andy Oram has been talking to some people who are interested in hiring Ruby developers for work on a patent reform project. Perhaps we should have a separate forum for job and project postings. read moreTranslations: Invitation to a Project
January 23 2007
I just received this message from Brian McConnell. Brian is an O’Reilly author and blogger, and generally a smart guy. I didn’t know he was working in Rails–I’ve always thought of him as a Pythonista. Anyway, if you’re interested in this project, let him know. > I am writing to… read moreTranslations: Invitation to a Project
January 23 2007
I just received this message from Brian McConnell. Brian is an O’Reilly author and blogger, and generally a smart guy. I didn’t know he was working in Rails–I’ve always thought of him as a Pythonista. Anyway, if you’re interested in this project, let him know. Description follows… > I am writing… read moreNovember 13 2006
It’s finally happened! Sun has released Java under an open source license. Not only that, they did it in the best possible way: using GPL version 2, not some bizarre concoction of their own. Congratulations to Jonathan Schwartz, James Gosling, and everyone else involved with this decision. What’s surprising, of course,… read moreOctober 01 2006
Steve Yegge has a provocative blog about Agile methodologies. It’s vintage Steve: fun to read, cutting, opinionated; and, in many ways, largely right, I think. A couple of quick reactions: The one component of “agile programming” that’s very much part of Google’s culture is unit testing, and that’s always seemed… read moreRidiculously Easy Distributed Computing
September 06 2006
I was going to write some more about DSLs, but I realized I had something more important to say. And nowhere near as verbose. Lucas Carlson (author of the Ruby Cookbook) has been doing some great stuff. Check out starfish. It’s a simple, easy-to-use, implementation of Google’s MapReduce for Ruby. It’s… read moreRecent Posts | All Posts
