Entries Tagged 'Cool News, Links & Reviews' ↓

Bob Walsh’s new book The Web Startup Success Guide comes out next week.

This book is for software developers who want to start successful web businesses and includes interviews with Joel Spolsky, Eric Sink, Guy Kawasaki, and David Allen. The book covers everything from viral marketing to pricing to alternatives to traditional business structures.

And smack dab in chapter 4 there’s a review of our very own Micropreneur Academy.

The release date is July 20, but you can pre-order your copy today.

I picked up Pamela Slim’s book Escape from Cubicle Nation a few weeks ago. It’s an in-depth look at the process of moving from a salaried position into entrepreneurship.

Several chapters rang true with my experience, namely the ones with great titles like:

• I have a fancy title, steady paycheck, & good benefits. Why am I so miserable?
• If it is so bad, then why am I so afraid to leave?

Pamela is a long-timer blogger and in this book she continues to do an excellent job of exploring the mental and logistical hurdles one faces as you leave corporate employment for the wide open spaces of entrepreneurship.

“Front-End Developer” Resume – Awesome.

11 Pound, Two-Headed Laptop Rears Its Head(s) – Lenovo has released a massive laptop with two built-in screens (a 10.6-inch screen that slides out of a 17-inch screen). As a dual monitor user at home I have a tough time working at full capacity in coffee shops, but at 11 pounds I’d need to hit the weight room before I could lug this thing around town.

2.38 Pound, 10.2-inch Laptop – Netbooks had quite a year in 2008. Some say they’re a fad; other say they’re an alternative class of notebook and they have staying power. Bottom line: they’re cheap, light, and come with up to 6+ hours of battery life. Aside from the small screen and 95% keyboard, most of what I do these days when I’m on the road could be done on a Netbook. Imagine, a laptop you could open on an airplane and not hit the seatback in front of you.

A Look Back at the Internet ’96 – A short walk through the Internet Archive. Check out the awesome background on Pepsi.com. Makes Fresno Web Design look like something out of 37Signals.

JournalSpace Crashes; Out of Business Due to Lack of Backups – Another sad story. If you haven’t setup no-touch backups for your personal system, check out Mozy.

8 Core CPUs on The Horizon – Even with 2.3 billion transistors and 8 cores, Intel says they “will be able to maintain the power envelope of its current Core 2 processors.”

The iPhone as Web Server – I’m racking my brain…trying to figure out a use for this.

The Secret to Landing Clients Nearly 100% of the Time – I almost didn’t post this link here I think it’s so good and wanted to keep it to myself. It’s written by an internet marketing consultant, but the message applies to web design, web development, and software development just the same. The point of the entire article is a quote about halfway down – if you do nothing else, read the section titled “How to Land Your Client, Every Time.”

MileMeter – Auto insurance by the mile. If you drive less than 12,000 miles per year it will probably lower your insurance expenses. It also encourages you to drive less.

The Stupidest Exercise Machine You’ll Ever See – Title says it all.

91 Surefire Ways to Become an Event Greater Developer – Careful, you could kill days trying to do everything suggested in this list.

ResearchedFacts.com – “Tired of losing arguments just because your facts happen to be incorrect? We can help! Simply make your dubious assertions anywhere on the web and link back to us. We’ll back up your claim as a ‘Researched Fact’.”

Has A Customer Ever Tattooed Your Company Name on Their Arm?

The Startup Success Podcast – After the demise of The Micro-ISV Show, Bob Walsh is back discussing issues affecting software startups. A good weekly listen.

Open Source, For-Profit Startups – “FairSoftware is the place to start and grow your online business. We help you team with others, track revenue and share it openly and fairly. Hire people in return for a share of your income stream instead of upfront cash. You save money and they have more incentive to collaborate.”

One Laptop Per Child Give One Get One 2008 – For $399 you get one XO laptop for yourself, and one is sent to a child in a developing nation. The keyboards are small, but they run Linux and have wireless NICs.

$19 Usability Testing -  This is awesome. For around $19 (you can add bonus money to get your tests completed faster), you get a 15-minute video of a real user going through your site or web app, and a written summary of their findings. I’ve used it on two projects and it has raised a slew of issues we had no idea people would have problems with. Definitely worth a look.

And finally, from Paul Graham’s essay Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy (emphasis added):

If we’ve learned one thing from funding so many startups, it’s that they succeed or fail based on the qualities of the founders. The economy has some effect, certainly, but as a predictor of success it’s a rounding error compared to the founders.

I’m one of the last hold-outs from the early days. You know, one of those crochety old developers who still buys Dell because they make the best computers at the lowest cost. Last night was the last straw in a series of events that have spelled the end of their reign for me.

I recently purchased a brand new Inspiron 1525 and ran into a number of problems after the order was placed that resulted in a 6-week delay in receiving it. I killed at least three or four hours with customer service, and several reps were actually quite rude on the phone. It was very interesting to have them give me attitidue and then to have no recourse (i.e., I asked to talk to their supervisor and they kept saying he was not available. I called back, waited on hold for another 20 minutes and talked to a supervisor who totally blew me off). That put me on the edge.

Then last night, I restarted my laptop and saw this:

Continue reading →

A good friend of mine is being featured on this week’s MSDN webast geekSpeak. If you are interested in hearing more about REST and WCF 3.5 from someone with a lot of experience, check out the live webcast tomorrow (September 3) at Noon Pacific Time (you can even call-in since the show is recorded live!). More info available here: MSDN Webcast: REST and Windows Communication Foundation 3.5 with Adnan Masood.

From the geekSpeak site:

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a “talk-radio” format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. This week, distributed systems guru Adnan Masood introduces the Representational State Transfer (REST) architectural style and its design principles, and discusses how they can be implemented using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) 3.5. Adnan offers guidance and takes questions on when to choose a RESTful design over SOAP-based services and how WCF fits into the spectrum of Microsoft technologies that include ADO.NET Data Services (Astoria) and ASP.NET MVC.

I’m dying to call in and ask how the adoption of WCF 3.5 relates to John McCain’s decision to select Sarah Palin as his VP.

From a production app:

// You would think this would be as easy as using chkSend.Checked.
// But no. Despite what Microsoft says about the page life cycle,
// the Checked property is not set at this point in the life cycle.
// Maybe it doesn’t ever get set at all because of the repeater.
// I don’t think anyone really knows.  It’s one of life’s great
// mysteries, like whether a falling tree makes noise if there’s
// no one around to hear it.  I think it does, but just like the
// Checked property ever being set, I can’t prove it.

In the past 3 months I’ve completely revamped my development machine. I purchased a new external monitor, laptop, external keyboard, and printer. I figured the hours I spent researching and purchasing might benefit someone else looking to upgrade.

The New Laptop (Dell Inspiron 1525) – Dual core 2.4GHz processor, 4GB Ram, 320GB HD, Vista 64-bit. This thing screams. I’ve gone back and forth over the years between Inspirons and Latitudes, and while Inspirons have more consumer-friendly aspects (such as audio controls on the keyboard and a memory card reader), the placement of ports leaves a lot to be desired (Latitudes have all ports in the rear, while Inspirons have them all over the place). This time around I chose an Inspiron for the screen quality and price. Total cost was around $1450 including a 3-year at-home warranty.

The New Display (DELL SP2208WFP) – 22″ widescreen. 1680 x 1050 native resolution. Awesome brightness. Built-in webcam. The only downside is it doesn’t swivel 90 degrees (helpful for viewing long documents). Nonetheless, a steal at the sale price of $299 (now $339). I ran three displays for a while (2 externals + my laptop screen), but after I upgraded to Vista 64-bit my USB2DVI video adapter stopped working (no 64-bit drivers) so I’m back to two displays. I’ll probably buy a DualHead2Go in the near future, although fitting another 22″ monitor on my desk is going to be challenging.

The New OS (Vista Ultimate 64-bit) – Oy vey…transferring to a new laptop normally takes about 8 hours. This time, due to the 64-bit OS, it took me closer to 20. In addition, I lost the ability to sync with my Treo, the ability to use my Treo as a broadband cellular modem, and my ethernet card doesn’t work (although wireless is fine). I read a lot of reports on how Vista 64 is ready for primtime, and my comment is: “mostly.” Many peripherals did not work right away and this added up to several hours of troubleshooting.

I like Vista quite a bit (it’s fast with 4GB of RAM), but I have mixed feelings about the 64-bit upgrade path. However, if you want to utilize more than 3GB of RAM it’s your only choice; 32-bit Vista will not support more than 3GB. Of course, most of us remember when hard drives weren’t even 3GB. Crazy.

The New Keyboard (BTC 6300C) – I have long been a fan of laptop keyboards. I love the responsiveness of the keys and I type much faster on a laptop kayboard (which is due to the types of keys used, called “scissor keys”). I use an external keyboard since my laptop is elevated for optimal screen-viewing ergonomics (see picture below). After using a clunky $10 Dell keyboard for the past year it suddenly occurred to me that someone out there might just make an external keyboard with scissor keys. Lo and behold, there are several. I settled on the BTC 6300C, and love it. About $33 with shipping.

The New Printer (Samsung Clx-3175fn) – I looked everywhere for a color laser with built-in networking and a feeder tray. This is the only one I found under $600, and it was a steal at $299 from Office Depot (normally $399). I’ve had it for 2 weeks and I’m loving it. A huge improvement over my 5 ppm HP Photosmart.

My Rig. Simple, productive, and…gray. Wait, is that iTunes on the external monitor? Back to work!

The view from my office (note downtown Boston in the distance)

A Tale of Selling a MicroISV – My guest post on “Mr. MicroISV” Bob Walsh’s blog, 47hats.

Create PDFs from Office 2007 – You probably know this already, but you can generate PDFs from Office 2007 using this free download from Microsoft. This is news to me since I just upgraded to Office 2007 this week. I also upgraded to Vista 64-bit, which doesn’t run the software I’ve typically used to create PDFs. Also note, this capability was originally built into Office 2007 but Adobe threatened to sue and Microsoft removed it. Lame move on Adobe’s part.

Where Do Babies Come From as Explained By A Software Engineer

Microsoft Opens a Boston R&D Facility – More evidence that Boston/Cambridge is a good place to be in software.

M.I.T. (notice my son and I at the bottom center)

Trading Places with Indian Outsourcers (video) – An interesting look at a programmer who loses his job to offshoring and travels to India to get his job back. From the TV show 30 Days.

MIT/Stanford Venture Lab Videos – A collection of videos (updated monthly) presented by the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab, including: The Rise of Crowdsourcing, Future of Content Consumption, Shaking the Money Tree of Multi-Platform Social Networks, and Green Tech for the Consumer Market.

Prettify Code Syntax Highlighter – “A JavaScript module and CSS file that allows syntax highlighting of source code snippets in an html page.” If you listen to the stackoverflow podcast you’ve already heard Jeff Atwood talk about this tool. It’s impressive, especially since it’s written in JS. Make up a fake programming language and it will infer the syntax and highlight it. Seems like the first sign of the impending launch of SkyNet.

We Hate Quickbooks – A smart viral marketing play by the developers of Less Accounting. From the site’s description: “This site shows the unfiltered timeline of Twitter users who ‘tweet’ the word ‘quickbooks.’ We’re showing the good with the bad, so decide for yourself!” (link via Matt Youell)