May 2012
3 posts
7 tags
I am not a fan of Facebook
I’m not a fan of Facebook. Not at all. Clearly that places me in the minority of people in the Western world. But following their recent IPO, I have been collecting links on articles about the Facebook IPO, and it seems that although I am in the minority, there would appear to be more and more commentators who share my view.
I think that Facebook is overvalued (ever after its first week...
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Warning: if you're deploying to the App Store and... →
3 tags
Rant: This article in the SMH irritates the hell... →
I read this article today in the Sydney Morning Herald. I don’t normally respond to newspaper articles, but this one really pissed me off.
How is this not price fixing? And how come these stories never get to the underlying reason why retail prices here are so high? It’s at least partly because we have some of the highest retail rents in the world, sustained by a retail property...
April 2012
3 posts
1 tag
Pinboard is absolutely fantastic! That is all. →
3 tags
The digitisation of manufacturing will transform... →
2 tags
Startups, this is how design works →
March 2012
4 posts
2 tags
Mobile payments is alive with possibilities
It’s simply amazing to me how much is going on in mobile payments at the moment. Here’s a sample of some of the stories that I have seen just this week:
The billion-dollar fight for control of mobile money
Check-In Needs To Work, But How Can We Fix It?
Mobile Payments: How to successfully innovate and scale
Is 2012 the Inflection Point for Mobile Payments?
Keen On… Why $50 Billion...
2 tags
Here's a really great collection of tools to... →
3 tags
Are jobs obsolete?
A while back I wrote a short piece titled “I’m almost certain that I’ll never be “employed” again”. Today I found this article by Douglas Rushkoff writing for CNN in September 2011 “Are jobs obsolete?” in which he says:
Jobs, as such, are a relatively new concept. People may have always worked, but until the advent of the corporation in the early Renaissance, most people...
4 tags
Bootstrap is a Pattern Language
One of the most important advances in the way we build software systems is the development of patterns. By giving patterns simple and concise names, it allows programmers and designers to communicate about the necessary components of a system in a very efficient manner. Instead of needing to explain what a reactor is and how it works, we can simply say “this problem needs a reactor”,...
February 2012
5 posts
4 tags
Computing 10,000x more efficiently →
When I read stories like this, it gives me great optimism about what technology can provide in the years to come. And I don’t just mean faster versions of Angry Birds.
6 tags
Need a quick way to test your responsive web... →
4 tags
I'm almost certain that I'll never be "employed"...
The following pair of links came through my Twitter timeline today almost simultaneously, and they make me believe that I will never be “employed” again:
In Praise of Cheap Labor - Bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all. Paul Krugman, New York Times
Labor Efficiency: The Next Great Internet Disruption. Nick Cronin, TechCrunch
They also reinforce ideas that I first...
4 tags
Paper Prototyping
I have been using paper prototyping for a while now to help with the design of some of the web and smartphone apps that we have been building for Geodica.
There is something quite liberating about moving away from a computer and just using a simple pen and a piece of paper, and even though I am not particularly talented as an artist, it is still possible to produce meaningful and descriptive...
January 2012
15 posts
6 tags
What technology stack would you use if you were...
As anyone who works inside a large, modern retail bank will attest, many technology systems are out-dated, poorly architected, littered with unfortunate and opportunistic compromises and generally sclerotic in a way that has a material effect on the activities of the businesses they allegedly support. The level of technical debt has crippled technology operations in the much same way that...
2 tags
3 tags
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Lion, RVM and 1.8.7 - 1.8/timeout.rb:60
joshondevelopment:
I’ve just started a new project.. well an old project that uses ruby 1.8.7 and rails 2.3.5.
If you get this error:
1.8/timeout.rb:60: [BUG] Segmentation fault
Its a problem with lion and ruby. Uninstall any version of 1.8.7 you have with
rvm remove 1.8.7
and then run
CC=/usr/bin/gcc-4.2 rvm install ruby-1.8.7 --force
This problem just cost me about 1.5 hours. The above...
“Our Milky Way galaxy contains a minimum of 100 billion planets, according to a...”
– NASA. (via dbreunig)
7 tags
8 tags
5 tags
Proximity versus location
Why do we need to know an exact location, when it is really proximity that matters?
It is not a big leap to suggest that the use of location information in modern web and smartphone apps is a Pretty Big Thing. It should also be obvious to anyone paying attention that users give up significant personally identifying information (PII) when they participate in these services. In general, the payoff...
2 tags
The Restart Page →
Just in case you need to waste 20 minutes watching old computer operating systems reboot.
3 tags
What the heck is Responsive Web Design?
I have heard this term bandied about at least two or three times in the last month. Each time I’ve asked myself the above question, and made a mental note to go and look it up. Well, lucky for me, @johnpolacek has gone to the trouble of explaining with a brilliant scrolldeck.js presentation which can you find here:
What the heck is Responsive Web Design?
I feel much beter informed now.
4 tags
On motivation
Over the last week or so, I’ve been sent a number of links on the topic of motivation. Two involve Dan Pink, and are well worth a viewing, the other is from Dan Ostlund from Fog Creek Software:
Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation, Dan Pink @ TEDGlobal
The Science of motivation, Dan Pink
Why do we pay sales commissions? Dan Ostlund, Fog Creek Software
The overwhelming theme...
5 tags
Do epic shit
I read what I thought was some very good advice the other day: instead of just incessantly reading what people are saying on the Internet, try to ignore it for a while and create something of your own. So whilst I think Twitter serves the purpose of providing access to the Web’s stream of consciousness - allowing me to contribute to it on occasion - perhaps Tumblr can serve a way of...