+1.408.FRANKMASH (408.372-6562) [ This is my personal blog so all opinions expressed here are mine. I am a product, scalability, operations and monetization advisor and currently employed as Director of Business Operations & Technical Strategy for a top 50 website that delivers billions of page views per month. I was a keynote panelist for Scaling Up or Out keynote at MySQL Conference and speak regularly at conferences and user groups.
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James Briddle has published his 4100 tweets (posts on Twitter) in a 270 page book, "My Life in Tweets." The book covers his tweets from February 2007 to 2009. He has also provided the script he used to download all his tweets from Twitter.
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In case you are wondering what was his motivation?
“When Twitter is inevitably replaced by something else, I don’t want to lose all those incidentals, the casual asides, the remarks and responses. That’s all really. This seems like a nice way to do it, and I’ll probably do it again in a couple of years time.”
I think it's a very neat idea, even though I doubt I have the patience to read someone's 4100 tweets in a book. However, I think many people will follow this and soon we'll start seeing tweet stands which will just carry books and magazines containing tweets :)
Tired of using rock, paper, scissors, spock, lizard to make your decisions? Well Caterina Fake's (Flickr co-founder) new startup, Hunch, is coming soon to help you.
At the heart of Hunch are decision trees that allow a human user to go through a series of questions in order to make decisions. Caterina says:
“Look. Decision-making is difficult, and decisions have to be made constantly. What should I be for Halloween? Do I need a Porsche? Does my hipster facial hair make me look stupid? Is Phoenix a good place to retire? Whom should I vote for? What toe ring should I buy?
It's dark and lonely work. Coin-flipping, I Ching consultation, closing your eyes and jumping, postponing the inevitable, Rock-Paper-Scissors, and asking your sister are all time-honored means of coming to a decision -- and yet we think there's room for one more: Hunch.
Hunch is a decision-making site, customized for you. Which means Hunch gets to know you, then asks you 10 questions about a topic (usually fewer!), and provides a result -- a Hunch, if you will. It gives you results it wouldn't give other people. ”Caterina Fake
Read Write Web writes:
“While we know very little about the inner workings of Hunch, it apparently combines decision trees with a fair amount of end user personalization in the form of questions it asks people visiting the site. These questions allow Hunch to form affinities with other users who ask similar questions. On the back end, contributors will be able to create topic areas (called Super Questions) and add questions and results underneath those topics. How much control you will have or how the interface looks for this we aren't sure yet.”
Hunch seems like a brilliant idea but it would take quite some effort and time for it to go mainstream.
I came across Google Chart API today which lets you create charts online for free*.
Supported charts include:
1. Line charts 2. Bar charts 3. Pie charts Updated! 4. Venn diagrams 5. Scatter plots 6. Radar charts 7. Maps 8. Google-o-meters 9. QR codes
The sample charts look really cool.
Venn diagram
Pie chart
Radar chart
* If you plan to call Google chart API more than 250,000 times a day, you should let the chart developers know by emailing chart-api-notifications@google.com
Rich Miner, creator of Android, is moving to jump start Google's latest venture, Google Ventures, which will provide capital to startups.
Google has been working on this for quite some time. In 2007, Business Week reported that Google is going to take on a new role as a Venture Capitalist. WSJ reported last year in July about Google's new venture capital arm.
TechCrunch thinks Google Ventures is a bad idea and that "Starting a venture fund is not really the best use of Google’s capital." I disagree with TechCrunch mostly because I think it can be an effective way for Google to outsource innovation and give some of the big billions back to startups.
Community One East is happening this week and I for sure will be attending. The event is taking place at Marriott Marquis Hotel, New York, NY. I am especially looking forward to the announcements tomorrow which sound very interesting :). Unfortunately, I can't go into details about what Sun Microsystems is announcing.
The first day of Community One is a free event featuring. The second day of the event is focused on Deep Dives with two half-day sessions on MySQL and two full-day sessions on Java and Web development. I will be attending the session, "Using Java EE and SOA to Architect and Design Robust Enterprise Applications."
I recently started using IntelliJ IDEA. To get familiar with the interface, I decided to create a Hello World REST web service with Restlet. For those unfamiliar with Restlet, it is a lightweight REST framework that allows you to quickly and easily create web services using Java. A screencast is available on Restlet website to help you get started.
I needed to install Tomcat 6 today on my Macbook with Leopard. The installation was very easy. I simply downloaded the binary core, extracted the software and moved the files to my desired location. That's about it. It was pretty painless.
Today, Facebook is holding a press conference about features expected to come in two weeks.
Here’s the latest insight I have been able to get.
via Robert Scoble: Mark Zuckerberg just announced that businesses and brands will have full access to the social graph. (Still looking for details as to what the "full access to the social graph" means.)
Facebook’s new home page is implementing more and more FriendFeed functionality. It seems the focus on FB’s side is more on aggregation now.
They are moving to a real-time friend feed rather than a 10-15 minute delay
Zuckerberg mentioned their move is in Twitter’s direction (via Chris)
U Exchange is appearing on the hot trends list by Google Insights. Apparently it was mentioned on the Today Show. As the recession deepens, bartering websites are becoming more and more popular.
“Trade Anything, Pay Nothing. U-Exchange is the Largest Free Swap Site that specializes in every type of trade. No membership fees, barter currencies or commissions taken on trades. It's Free to contact, post and swap with other members.”
U-Exchange's compete graph shows the growth they are experiencing:
Since I have been busy developing our new startup on EC2, it would be great to catch up with Mårten Mickos and Dr. Werner Vogels whom I originally met at Structure 08.
Cloud Computing is probably the most abused buzz word, but if anyone rightly deserves to be in the cloud computing space, it's Amazon.
Speakers at the seminar include Dr. Werner Vogels (CTO Amazon), Mårten Mickos (ex-CEO of MySQL) and Michael Crandell (CEO RightScale). I am hoping to catch up with Mårten Mickos during the event. He is a great guy and probably the most favorite Open Source CEO.
I find it funny that the event site still shows Mårten's title as "SVP of Sun Microsystems’ Database Group," even though Marten resigned in February.
8:30am Registration and breakfast
9:00am Ahead in the Cloud — The Power of Infrastructure as a Service Dr. Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon.com Werner Vogels will reveal the efficiency principles behind Amazon’s drive to develop Infrastructure as a Service, and discuss why the current economic climate is rapidly changing the IT perspective on cloud computing.
10:00am Growing Your Business in the Cloud with Open Source Marten Mickos, SVP Database Group, Sun Microsystems Marten Mickos will discuss why fast-growing businesses are taking advantage of the combined benefits of open source and cloud computing to accelerate the delivery of new applications, reducing overall risk and scaling infrastructure consumption up and down to meet demand.
10:45am Coffee Break
11:00am Smart Enterprises Moving to the Cloud Michael Crandell, CEO, RightScale Michael Crandell will talk about how enterprises are experimenting with the cloud today. You’ll learn methods for deploying applications to the cloud, and be guided through Right Scale’s best practices for designing, configuring, deploying and managing the lifecycle of multi-server cloud deployments.
11:45am Cloud Computing and the 2008 Beijing Olympics Lotta Latsuo, COO, Starcut Ltd. Lotta Latsuo will discuss how Starcut Ltd., a professional services firm that specializes in digital media and marketing, adopted cloud technology to build the NBC Olympics Mobile website for NBC’s coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics from Beijing.
12:15pm Closing remarks
In case you're attending and spot me, please say hi!
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