12 Apr 11
From Wikipedia -
"Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring (28 January 1755 – 2 March 1830) was a German
physician
, anatomist
, anthropologist
, paleontologist
and inventor
. Sömmerring discovered the macula
in the retina
of the human eye
. His investigations on the brain
and the nervous system
, on the sensory organs
, on the embryo
and its malformations, on the structure of the lungs
, etc., made him one of the most important German anatomists ... In addition, Sömmerring was a very creative inventor, having designed a telescope for astronomical observations and an electrical telegraph in 1809. He worked on the refinement of wines, sunspots and many diverse other things. In 1811 he developed the first telegraphic system in Bavaria,
" He developed the first telegraphic system. The sentence is almost an afterthought in his bio. As if to say, "this guy was one of Germany's most brilliant physicians to ever live and oh-by-the-way he changed the way that human kind would think about communication for centuries to come." Until von Sommerring came along, the fastest way to send a long distance message was fire.
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26 Feb 11
I've been researching the pros and cons of HTML5 vs. application development for mobile and I came across this creative use of HTML5 to store images locally for faster page loads.
Sure faster page loads are always welcome, but I think the implications of this type of creative coding when considering offline usage is huge. If I can store images, strings, etc. locally on my smart phone, then I don't have to be connected to actually use the Internet. Score 1 for HTML5!
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18 Feb 11
Lazy programmers are great. I like them. The best ones are those that come to work at 10 and leave at 3 (or play video games at 3ish). The ones whose goal in life is to work less.
Why? Because they automate everything. They are the ones that do something twice only to swear up and down that they won't do the same thing a third time. They'd rather punch up a script that does the job for them and move on to a more interesting problem. But even more importantly, it does the job when they're not around. It's not just something that improves productivity. It's a footprint that others can read and understand.
It's like the factory system of old. Find easy, repeatable tasks, then find people who can easily repeat these very small chunks of tasks that, when added up are the entirety of product production. When each person is gone, they are easily replaceable and there is little interruption to the system. When these small chunks of tasks were automated, the factory produced more output.
The lesson is that automation is a good thing when it comes to technology. So show me the couch potato who wants to achieve something with the smallest amount of work, and I'll show you a valuable resource.
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27 Feb 10
I recently watched a presentation Scoble gave to grad students at Stanford in which he posed the question - would your rather have $100k now, or a penny that doubles everyday? The analogy was made in the context of social media and marketing. It's probably the most compelling argument I've heard for doing social media to date.
Seth Godin famously says, "good ideas spread". But who spreads them? You? No way, you don't have the time or a big enough bullhorn. But even if you did (say a $100k bull horn), who would you point it at? That crowd of people over there? OK, let's do that. But what percentage is actually going to listen to you? Honesty, they don't know you and a large percentage really can care less what you have to say.
Let your good idea spread exponentially instead of all at once. Trust that the people who share your idea will do so because they have a vested interest in contributing to the conversations of others. They want to contribute something new and valuable in hopes that others will do the same for them. Let your idea be that something.
But there's a key word in Seth's message. *Good* ideas spread. If your idea doesn't spread, it might not be because it just didn't reach the right people. Rather, it may be because it's not that good of an idea in the first place.
But it's just a penny. A friggin penny. What's the risk? Put it out there and see if it doubles, then doubles again, and double again. It's doubled to the point that it's now worth thousands and a level of organic momentum that you can't buy with a $200k bullhorn, let alone one half that size. If the idea is good enough, that $100k will, in the grand scheme of things, seem like a penny.
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4 Jan 10
From http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/59/pilot.html
~ Observation; orientation; decision; action. On the face of it, Boyd's loop is a simple reckoning of how human beings make tactical decisions. But it's also an elegant framework for creating competitive advantage. Operating "inside" an adversary's OODA loop -- that is, acting quickly to outthink and outmaneuver rivals -- will, Boyd wrote, "make us appear ambiguous, [and] thereby generate confusion and disorder." ~
Excellent article that applies nicely to the social space online.
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2 Oct 09
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/3999713.htmResearchers seem to think not - c'est très intéressant
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