Blog
Writing helps me think more clearly. This archive is longer posts; quick updates now live in notes.
Topics: AI, blogging, photography, programming, projects, Signboard
Nathan Kontny: "If my idea isn’t worth copying then it’s not a very good idea. If my product or business can’t handle a new competitor, then it’s not a very good product." If someone copies your idea for a product it should make you feel validated for having the idea in the first place. Build the best product…
Canonical is calling this Ubuntu for phones but even in their own presentation they mention it will run on tablet devices. Yesterday I said, on Twitter, that I was happy to see another entrant into this market. Android and iOS are not enough choices (though we've been dealing with Mac OS vs. Windows for years and years). Sadly,…
Dr. James Naismith published these original 13-rules of basketball in 1892. I especially like #5: 5. No shouldering, holding, pushing, tripping, or striking in any way the person of an opponent shall be allowed; the first infringement of this rule by any player shall count as a foul, the second shall disqualify him until the next goal is…
Don't get knocked off your feet by the sheer strength of my agreement with Fred Wilson on Single User Utility In a Social System: One of the most important lessons we took from delicious was the value of single user utility in social systems. It might seem odd that systems designed to leverage interactions between people can have…
You might want to consider subscribing to this YouTube channel.
Dalton Caldwell, co-founder of App.net, does some thinking about organizational complexity. He contrasts how a simple demonstration of Artificial Intelligence does not necessarily mean that model is scalable to do more complex tasks. The model needs to change with the growth. The same too with a company. The organization needs to change as it grows in order to…
Seems appropriate to link back to an episode of Random 60 discussing Flickr. Remember, this was three years ago. "The woman CEO" that I mention in the episode is not the current CEO Marisa Mayer but Carol Bartz. There have been five CEOs at Yahoo! since I recorded this episode!
Danny Nicolas has been keeping up with my Flickr commentary of late about how Flickr should create a more affordable, less feature-rich account type and he has a few things to add: I feel as if most people currently paying for Flickr Pro don’t take advantage of all the features offered. I might even go in the other…
I enjoyed this interview of Quentin Tarantino in the NY Times. Especially this bit on Page 5: I remember reading a review that Pauline Kael wrote about some director’s big epic, and she said: Now, look, it might seem unfair to judge a talented man more harshly when he tries to do something big than a less talented…
One niggle I had with the new Flickr app for iOS was the upload progress indicator was far too subtle (though an interesting take on what could be done to make it unobtrusive). They fixed that with this update. Now they need to take a queue from Instagram (and many other modern mobile apps) and start uploading the…
In my recent How Flickr can eat Instagram's table scraps. I'm Instagram's table scraps. And so are you. piece I postulated that Flickr needed to make some adjustments and, possibly, make a new account type that was a little less expensive to compete with the free Instagram. Well, Flickr has done something that I think could be the…
I've been using IFTTT a ton lately. I would pay for the service without blinking an eye (especially if it supported things like multiple accounts per channel). This big round of funding is well deserved.
Issie Lapowsky for Inc. on Dublin's booming tech scene: Now, despite the country's ongoing economic struggles, a slew of emerging growth start-ups are flocking to the city of pints and pubs. This year alone, tech darlings including Indeed.com, Hubspot, Zendesk, and, most recently, Dropbox, have opened or announced plans to open offices in Dublin. I really enjoyed visiting…
Well, not really. This post is really about how Don Melton doesn't remember how Safari got its name and how there are a lot of stories to tell you about later. So, to whoever suggested the name “Safari,” thank you. Though I'm a Chrome guy now (Safari is just far too slow) I too thank the person that…
Great list of tips and features for Flickr's new iOS application. Iparticularlylike number 3: 3. Apply a single filter to multiple photos at once. Did you fall in love with a particular filter? We’ve made it easy for you to apply it to multiple photos at once. You simply select the photos from your camera roll that you’d…
If you're a member of a fairly popular web service you're probably becoming more and more familiar with feature roll outs. A feature roll out is when a new feature is added to a service for a certain number of users at a time and, after some duration of time, every user on that service ends up with…
MG Siegler, who inexplicably still writes for AOL TechCrunch, writes about people "quitting" Instagram. The real world:Quit, verb, to leave (a place), usually permanently. The internet:Quit, verb, to threaten to leave as loudly as possible, usually over something stupid, then do nothing. I'll admit it. When I first saw the Instagram news I too wanted to look at…
Nilay Patel, of The Verge and a guy with a law degree on his wall, chimes in about Instagram's policy changes.
Fantastically written piece from my teenaged friend Abby Wagner: People want to secure material in something more reliable than a single website. I think she has a future in writing.
In short; Instagram is now going to share your information with its parent-company Facebook in order to serve more relevant ads. Instagram will share things like the places you visit, your interests (remember all those photos you've liked?), and even your photos in order to tailor advertising to you. You can look at this any number of ways….
The web has been ablaze yesterday and today about the new Instagram policies. Instagram has written a blog post to ensure everyone that there has been some confusion and they are going to do whatever they can to make everything more clear. Good. I hope everyone didn't go and delete their Instagram accounts without waiting until everything really…
Tom Warren, of The Verge, agrees with me about Flickr gaining from this recent Instagram policy change: With a nicely redesigned client and support for filters, Flickr is finally catching up to battle Instagram on the photo sharing front. And its dormant community of lapsed Pro users (who are required to pay a nominal fee each year) could…
Before I even get started; Flickr can not stop Instagram at this point. Flickr can not beat Instagram in terms of hockey-stick-growth. Even with Instagram's recent policy changes Instagram is on a trajectory to hit the nearest star and Flickr nor Bruce Willis can stop them now. But, to succeed they do not need to win – they…
Todd Troxell, ex-coworker and co-founder of Vid.io, asked an interesting question on Hacker News that got some great responses: Your most productive time. How do you do it? For me, I'm most productive early in the morning and mid-afternoon when I get back from lunch. I'm worthless just before lunch and anytime at night. That is, unless I…