Entries Tagged 'Cool News, Links & Reviews' ↓

A Career Path in Pictures - Very clever. Several of these pictures hit close to home.

Tiger Woods: “The greatest thing about tomorrow is, I will be better than I am today. And that’s how I look at my life. I will be better as a golfer, I will be better as a person, I will be better as a father, I will be a better husband, I will be better as a friend. That’s the beauty of tomorrow. There is no such thing as a setback. The lessons I learn today I will apply tomorrow, and I will be better.”

And finally, a reply from a colleague when asked how he felt about the upcoming launch of a large application that his team has spent the last year building: “The only thing worse than having users is not having users.“

The Bootstrapper’s Bible Free in PDF
My favorite Seth Godin work. Solid, real advice about what being an entrepreneur is and what it isn’t. I thought I’d heard most of what there is to say about starting companies, but this 10 year old manuscript is filled with brilliance. Highly recommended reading for Micro-ISVs.

The Great Big Leaky Micro-ISV Sales Funnel
How 1,000,000 people turn into 500 customers.

Project Euler
Suggested by one of my clients (thanks, Noah!), Project Euler is “a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. Although mathematics will help you arrive at elegant and efficient methods, the use of a computer and programming skills will be required to solve most problems.”

Have you ever read Steve Pavlina’s story of graduating college in three semesters?
Unbelievable. I can only hope to one day be so cool.

Coding Horror: Are Features the Enemy?
Another insightful post from Jeff Atwood. If you’re not reading his blog you are missing out.

IT Conversations
Really cool IT Podcast. Am I the last person to find this?

I received an email about a job opening for a software developer in West Africa. I’ve never posted a job opening from a recruiter before, but it’s for a non-profit, and I have a soft spot for West Africa that you can read more about in my article Using Technology to Fight Poverty.

Here is a snippet of the job description:

“I am looking for a Software Developer/Trainer who is willing to make a two year commitment to a non-profit project in West Africa. The project’s goal is to train the local students on producing commercial software and helping them become entrepreneurs in starting up their own technology firm. This is an exciting opportunity to make a difference. They will be very well compensated in US dollars, housing will be provided, and relocation assistance will be given.

This position will start in January 2008. The company that is funding and leading this project is a multinational company with its headquarters in Europe. They are truly seeking dedicated, energetic, passionate people to fill this role. It is a great way for someone to give back to the world using their technical capabilities.”

Email if you are interested: rob -at- software by rob dot com.
Update: This position has been filled.

In my recent post on the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC), I mentioned they were selling the laptops to the general public for a limited time starting November 12th. I purchased mine the morning of the 12th, and am awaiting its arrival in mid to late December. You can still purchase one at the OLPC website.

This week someone sent me a link to an audio slide show on the BBC where Nigerian pupils and teachers explain how the $100 laptop project has helped education in Africa.

If you have doubts about the program’s viability you should watch this well-executed video from the founder of OLPC.

Finally, I received an email today welcoming me to the OLPC community. Here are some excerpts:

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Amazon.com: “Marvel Digital Comics!”
560 issues of the Amazing Spiderman for $40 on DVD? How am I not buying this right now?

Virgin Charter
Chartered flight is perhaps the last huge markets in the U.S. with no major player. Richard Branson is out to revolutionize it.

100 Resources to Attract, Retain and Use Rock Star Programmers - HR World
A good list of resources on hiring developers. Looks like I have around 10% of the links.

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Paul Graham published an essay called Stuff in July.

Reading it took me back to my trip to Africa in 2005, which I wrote about in an early essay titled Using Technology to Fight Poverty. Since that trip I’ve slowly jettisoned around 30% of my possessions. What Paul says is true; the clarity a simpler life brings is remarkable. Giving away, selling, or trashing stuff you haven’t used in a year will change your life.

If you want to blow your mind on the subject of “stuff,” check out the book Material World.

Paul also recently published Holding a Program in One’s Head, which single-handedly made two of my partially-finished essays completely irrelevant. An awesome commentary on what we do for a living. Definitely worth your time.

You’ve probably heard of the One Laptop Per Child project (a.k.a., the hundred dollar laptop). It’s a brilliant idea; provide children in developing nations with inexpensive laptops that can easily connect to the internet.

The laptop is the size of a textbook, lighter than a lunch box, durable, highly water resistant, uses 1/10th the power of a standard laptop, recharges by a hand-crank, can be read in direct sunlight, has no internal moving parts, and runs Linux. This thing is awesome.

You’re probably thinking the same thing I did when I first heard about it: “Where can I get one?”

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Why Amazon.com Could Be This Year’s Most Important Startup
“[Amazon.com’s new payment processing API] is everything that Paypal isn’t: well designed, API-centric, and built with developers in mind.”

The platform even accepts payments as small as $.01 (a.k.a. micropayments), which have yet to be “done right.”

It appears that Amazon is trying to become the next “platform” for developers. Add payment processing to their storage, queuing, search, mechanical turk, elastic compute cloud, and e-commerce services.

Amazon also has a $100,000 Start-up and Entrepreneur Challenge. Submit an idea (you don’t even have to build it), and they will choose the top 5 finalists. After that the Amazon community will vote on the best idea; prizes include $50,000 in cash, $50,000 in AWS usage credit, and an investment offer from Amazon. Not sure how excited I would be about those last two.

Hilarious.

I relocated from Los Angeles to Connecticut a few months ago, and a few of my geekier friends joked that I had to meet Joel Spolsky and Paul Graham before I came back to California.

Joel is in the midst of his 21-city FogBugz World Tour and one of his first stops was in New York City, where I saw him demo FogBugz 6.0 two weeks ago. In fact, in the picture at the top of Joel’s post about the session, you can barely see my head peeping out over the guy with the black shirt and white stripes on the left side. Those stinking paparazzi never leave me alone.

FogBugz 6.0
The demo went well; it wasn’t spectacular, but it was a good 40-minute overview of FogBugz’s main components: a wiki, forums, bug tracking, and scheduling. But it didn’t need a big flashy presentation - the application itself is seriously impressive.

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