27 Oct 2009 - permalink
Om Malik interviews CEO of Symbian Lee Williams. Lee shares some unusually frank thoughts on Android, particularly in relation to how Google makes it’s money: Through knowing enough about the user to present valuable ads.
Google makes some amazing things online, but I think there’s a growing and valid fear, proportional to their size, that they just might know too much about us.
19 Oct 2009 - permalink
Daniel Tenner explains Google Wave
Wave is not a social tool. It’s not Twitter, it’s not GTalk, it’s not Facebook. It was never designed to appeal to the crowds of geeks who are currently trying it out.
14 Oct 2009 - permalink
10/GUI is a remarkable concept for a new interaction model and user interface system.
The mouse and the windowed desktop are perhaps the two greatest innovations in the history of human-computer interaction. But like all innovations, they are best seen as part of a continuum rather than a terminus.
While there are certainly problems for people like me with +30 windows open at any given time, the brilliance lies in how 10/GUI manages to embrace the potential of multitouch while keeping the best of the desktop metaphor. It is the best concept I’ve seen for implementing multitouch in the desktop computer.
13 Oct 2009 - permalink
Tim Berners-Lee on choosing a computer language
Nowadays we have to appreciate the reasons for picking not the most powerful solution but the least powerful. The reason for this is that the less powerful the language, the more you can do with the data stored in that language. If you write it in a simple declarative from, anyone can write a program to analyze it in many ways.
It’s the programmer’s version of choosing the simplest file format for storing data.
1 Oct 2009 - permalink
script.aculo.us author (and more) Thomas Fuchs has built a Mac-only ruby script that is pure genius for image-based font rendering for websites.
It all boils down to a Ruby script that runs on OS X only and uses OS X’s really awesome typography and subpixel antialiased font rendering. Why not tap into this to make those headline graphics? With Rubycocoa you can easily whip up a small app that draws some text, and save it into a PNG file.
I love the simple solution of building on Apple’s hard work in making text look good. Great stuff!
4 Sep 2009 - permalink
I am currently working on a Zend Framework based webapp that requires an unusual amount of flexibility from in the database structure that backs it. The standard way of defining the database model mapping to data structures in Zend is to extend the Zend_Db_Table_Abstract in your model classes. Because of the flexibility required (and because modification of the codebase is to be kept at a minimum), this is not a viable route.
Zend_Db_Table_Abstract can automatically figure out the structure of the underlying table for each model using the database adapter’s DESCRIPE TABLE command, which usually makes it very easy to create basic models. Zend Framework 1.9.0 allows for concrete instances of Zend_Db_Table itself and using this detection capability, it is then possible to create the basics of a table model without creating the model class as a file. With Zend_Db_Table_Definition, also new in 1.9, it is possible to define a set of models with relations without creating any model classes.
1 Sep 2009 - permalink
Wil Shipley on programming:
Life isn’t fair, and programming is even less fair. Programming is all about picking a certain class of users with a certain specific class of problems, and making their lives much MUCH better.
1 Sep 2009 - permalink
Paul Graham has compiled a great list of 13 advices for starting a company
The hard part is not answering questions but asking them: the hard part is seeing something new that users lack. The better you understand them the better the odds of doing that. That’s why so many successful startups make something the founders needed.
13 Aug 2009 - permalink
Interview with Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners:
We’ve had a lot of things not work, and that’s OK too. If it’s a good idea and it gets you excited, try it, and if it bursts into flames, that’s going to be exciting too. People always ask, “What is your greatest failure?” I always have the same answer – We’re working on it right now, it’s gonna be awesome!
11 Aug 2009 - permalink
Lukas Mathis points out the many small things that make a big difference. This snippet, quoted from David Pogue, is a perfect example of the attention to detail that Apple pursue:
Although you don’t see it with your eyes, the sizes of the keys on the iPhone keyboard are changing all the time. That is, the software enlarges the “landing area” of certain keys, based on probability.