March 2011
1 post
“Are we in a bubble? Yes, this is a bubble. All the frenzied startup activity and...”
– Scripting News: The limits of Twitter and Facebook, the bubble
December 2010
4 posts
Gowalla 3.0 Adds Foursquare, Facebook Places... →
Gowalla 3 is gorgeous! Even though I’m still on-the-fence in terms of my personal checking-in habits, Cameron Moll’s thoughts here are spot on:
Founder Josh Williams:
Gowalla is now the easiest and best way to keep up with your friends across services with a combined activity tab that merges the whereabouts of your Gowalla, Facebook and Foursquare friends. Additionally, Gowalla...
November 2010
12 posts
“A story of the perils of urban farming, this is also a story of the careful...”
– An unexpectedly lyrical passage from a fascinating read:Bees in Brooklyn Hives Mysteriously Turn Red - NYTimes.com
1 tag
Loving Coffee Without Being a Drip - NYTimes.com →
The inimitable Frank Bruni, food writer for the New York Times, on the wonders of a less artisanal way of brewing coffee:
let’s pause and imagine something just as magical.You stumble out of bed, struggling toward consciousness, in urgent need of caffeine. You drag yourself into the kitchen. And there, ready and waiting, are 10 cups of coffee, brewed automatically, just five minutes earlier, as a...
“Think about the best restaurant meal you’ve ever eaten. Who should you thank for...”
– Doug Muder, The Weekly Sift (via kevin)
Interesting post. In my previous life in the DC area, I used OpenTable quite frequently; since moving to Brooklyn, I don’t think I’ve used the service once. Most of the restaurants I frequent in New York either don’t use OpenTable, or...
Watchrobertas:
Roberta’s is a great place for a wedding.
If anyone is planning on getting married at Roberta’s, please invite me. Yes, it may be odd for you to have a complete stranger at your wedding, but I’m sure we’ll bond over the ridiculously awesome food and beverages that are served.
Also, I’ve never seen wedding footage that looks like it’s directed by Wes...
“The Valley is largely a bubble that doesn’t actually have returns yet. Exits...”
– From Sarah Lacy’s article, Will China’s 1999 Moment Bail-Out Some Valley VCs? There’s been a lot of “sky is falling” observations on early-stage startup investment, but Lacy’s inclusion of China within the discussion is certainly an interesting angle, one that I...
2 tags
Some Coffee Thoughts
A couple recent coffee posts which have been of particular interest:
First, James Hoffman writes an extremely timely article about improving on french press brewing methods. Hoffman, a former World Barista Champion who now devotes his time to London’s amazing Square Mile Coffee Roasters, writes a fantastic (if occasionally controversial) blog about the ins-and-outs of the coffee business....
“Great chefs know that no amount of seasoning or sauce can make up for the...”
– October 2010’s Greenwich Magazine highlights LeFarm’s Bill Taibe’s involvement with Harvest to Heat (via harvest-to-heat)
Since moving to New York and having access to the fantastic bounty of NYC’s Greenmarket’s, I’ve found that nothing beats simple recipes featuring fresh...
October 2010
15 posts
3 tags
Github's Defense Against Firesheep →
Readers of this blog have most likely already heard of Firesheep, the Firefox plugin that makes session sidejacking as easy as clicking a toolbar link. While I have yet to plant myself in a coffee shop and steal people’s Twitter and Facebook identities (not that I haven’t been tempted), I have been concerned about securing my own applications against attack. Transforming all web...
“liquidation overhangs still do exist and when you are offered a job in a startup...”
– Good advice for new startup employees from Free Wilson
2 tags
“Developers. Every time we use a variable name that does not make sense we do...”
– MadeByMonsieur — No, I won’t do it. It would not be professional.
Hardboiled CSS3 Media Queries | For A Beautiful... →
I’m really excited for Andy Clarke’s new Harboiled Web Design book. Here, he points out some helpful boilerplate for CSS3 media queries. If you’re new to media queries and responsive design, check out the seminal List Apart article.
5 tags
Sinatra View Engines - Effigy and Mustache
Earlier this year, I began working on a Ruby side-project, mainly as an excuse to learn Sinatra, MongoDB, and Heroku. I also wanted to try out a new view templating engine, as I find that ERB views aren’t exactly the most readable examples of code. (Properly using partials can help alleviate this problem, but I just don’t like to see Ruby mixed in with HTML tags). Many Sinatra...
September 2010
10 posts
1 tag
WatchHere’s Jason Schwartzman’s introduction to The New Yorker iPad App. The app’s very impressive - probably my favorite iPad version of a magazine yet. Obviously this medium still has a ways to go to really take advantage of the technological possibilities — and in particular, the lack of ability to copy text or share content continues to infuriate me — but the New Yorker’s...
3 tags
Facebook Shows Everything that's Wrong with the US...
Forbes today has it’s new list of the richest Americans out, and there’s a bit of a shocker within the tech world: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is now “worth more” than Steve Jobs!
This year, Zuckerberg, 26, added $4.9 billion to his fortune–vaulting to #35 on the Forbes 400 with an estimated fortune of $6.9 billion. Why the jump? Recent private equity investments in...
Forrst introduces new invite process
members may now view a list of people who’ve applied for an invite from the forrst.com homepage. From here, any existing Forrst member is able to use one of their invites to invite a new developer or designer into the community. The list shows the person’s name, Gravatar (if they have one [hint, hint prospective members: you should get a Gravatar!]), Twitter username, and URL they submitted, along...
“When a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him. He has a...”
– Don Draper monologue from Mad Men 408, The Summer Man
This episode, or this monologue, rivals the Carousel episode. (via aparticularpath)
So Much For Twitter
And I thought Tumblr’s searchability was bad.
I needed to look up the URL of a “doc-editing-in-the-cloud” web app that Kyle Bragger mentioned on twitter a few months ago. I tried searching Google, but the results were wildly unhelpful, no matter what I used for search terms. (Has anyone else been having more difficulty filtering Google noise lately?) So I decided to see if I...
Twenty-somethings: PAY ATTENTION
mikehudack:
correlationstonone:
evangotlib:
Don: That’s your job! I give you money, you give me ideas!
Peggy: And you never say thank you!
Don: That’s what the money is for! You are young. You will get your recognition. And honestly, it is absolutely ridiculous to be two years into your career and counting your ideas. Everything to you is an opportunity.
Really? So let your...
August 2010
24 posts
3 tags
Worthless iTV Conjecture
I figured I’d join in the wildly uninformed conjecture about Apple’s new iTV, specifically its user interface. Speculating about future Apple products is as fun (and inaccurate) as predicting plot outcomes on Lost, and since that show’s off the air, all I have left now is Apple keynotes. I hoped Rubicon might fill that gap, but that show’s turning out to be as boring as...
1 tag
Maniacal Rage: The Problem with Facebook's... →
That’s the problem with Facebook. They are slowly destroying independent web applications with boring versions that immediately win due to Facebook’s population (which at this point is the 3rd largest country on earth). There’s no demand for excellence. Just make sure the feature list keeps growing.
Hopefully, though, independent web apps can maintain their own user base (and quality) while...
Is the New Virb for Me? →
cameronmoll:
An excellent write-up by Virb design extraordinaire Ryan Sims. The new Virb, which launched Monday, focuses on building an elegantly simple website for $10/month.
I actually appreciate that they’ve launched with no theme previews or sites featured. While those are certainly important for convincing users to sign up, it shows the Virb team isn’t frightened by placeholders that...
“When people offer unpaid gigs by saying, it’s “good exposure,” I like to ask how...”
– Merlin Mann (via soupsoup)