Posts

DHH (of Ruby on Rails fame) at Startup School (dead link). He did a very similar presentation at FOWA Dublin when I was there this year, but this is a nicer, refined version with him side by side with his slides.

I loved his comment about there being “not enough people trying to make a nice Italian restaurant in the webspace.”

Obviously, nothing earth shattering in here, but it’s wise to keep it in mind in an environment where everyone is trying to hit one over the fence a la facebook, youtube and twitter.

I’ve had this theory of happiness (or at least what I think I need to be happy) for some time now. Long-suffering friends have had to listen to my ideas that are part-Frankl, part pseudo-science, part observation and part admission about the good and dark in my own soul. Ready ? It’s quite simple, really.

The keys to happiness are : Meaning, Belonging and Someone. No, I’m not going to expound on it here. You can buy me a beer if you want the full explanation.

Another great HBR article by P&Gs CEO on what the four essential tasks of the CEO are. Kind of interesting as I agree there are specific things which only the CEO is in a unique position to do, much the same way that corporate headquarters end up being uniquely positioned to do things the individual offices can’t.

1. Defining the Meaningful Outside
2. Deciding What Business You Are In
3. Balancing the Present and Future
4. Shaping Values and Standards

In a sense, I’d almost paraphrase them as dividing into

I’ve become a big fan of Cucumber in a very short amount of time. Mostly, because it’s enabled us to translate user requirements quickly into step by step instructions we can then code to. Especially with the turnover in staff at AI this means that business logic, reasoning and behaviour lives in the app and can be reviewed without a lot of overly hefty documentation and such. Write code to reflect behaviour, test, deploy. Voila, app done !

Wow. From flickr user clesanne . Need ocean now.

Interesting and article in Fast Company about making your own luck .

Wanna Get Lucky ? 4 Things You Should Do…

Maximize Chance Opportunities

Lucky people are skilled at creating, noticing, and acting upon chance opportunities. They do this in various ways, which include building and maintaining a strong network, adopting a relaxed attitude to life, and being open to new experiences.

Listen to Your Lucky Hunches

Lucky people make effective decisions by listening to their intuition and gut feelings. They also take steps to actively boost their intuitive abilities – for example, by meditating and clearing their mind of other thoughts.

Great intro and springboard article from the Register if you don’t know much about Sphinx on the smarter, scalable way to do full text search these days. All the cool kids are using it (and with good reason).

Sphinx and Rails goes together pretty much like chocolate and peanut butter these days and we’re using it on at least two production projects at AI, as well as it being a favourite of mine for personal use.

Great article on the anthroplogy inspired design and implementation of the Joel Spolsky ’s free social question and answer site Stack Overflow< which allows highly technical questions to be asked by its users and answered by its community.

Some great anthropological insights for all social software in the video but read the article as well. Love their nine building blocks of social engineering.

Kind of surprised this one I missed entirely on launch. Augmented reality (ie. virtual layers over views of the real world) application where what a virtual bear gets bumped around your surrounding environment for WWF China’s Biodiversity Protection Programme (dead link). A bit gimmicky, but a very interesting experiment (much like augmented reality games and near-future social network games scenarios).

Developed by Bartle Bogle Hegarty China and Qdero.

I love these kind of announcements . Makes me feel like there is so much left to discover in a world that makes you think there’s few unexplored places left.

Written sources from the era—including the Old Testament of the Bible, Greek Homeric epics, and texts from Egyptian pharaoh Ramses III—record the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age as a turbulent period of cultural collapse, famine, and violence.