Monday, April 22, 2013
Just to remind you folks who are against #CISPA , here is where you should be directing people:
https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=9048
Contact them. Bug the hell out of them. Because I can assure you the folks seeking to push this through are buying dinners (and more) to get their voices heard.
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Friday, April 19, 2013
Original Post from Eli Fennell:
Google’s Image Search: Good For You, Not SEO
I know many SEO people, and I respect their profession when they practice it honestly. I am not, however, opposed to Google making changes that don’t benefit them when those changes improve the user experience.
The new Image Search is definitely better for users. That they aren’t clicking through as much proves they never really wanted to (they just wanted to see how it looked and Google’s preview wasn’t always very good). Therefore it was a false economy.
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Tuesday, April 9, 2013
As many have already heard, Google announced today that it’s bringing +Google Fiber to Austin, TX. If the roll-out schedule is anything similar to Kansas City this means that it’ll be a while before a lot of people have it. even in Kansas City usage is still limited but growing. This will still be a meaningful development for the city, and it could wind up fostering even more tech entrepreneurship if what we see budding in Kansas City continues in Austin. While I wish Google decided to come to Dallas instead, just seeing another city getting Google Fiber is extremely exciting.
Despite my enjoyment of Google products, my excitement doesn’t hinge on it being Google bringing the super-fast broadband. Instead, Continue reading »
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Wednesday, March 20, 2013
There was a bit of wondering what was going on recently when a link was discovered in Google Drive identifying a product called Keep. Some speculation was made, but mostly there was just anticipation of whatever new thing Google was potentially releasing. Well, today it released. You can see the video introducing Google Keep below. Continue reading »
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Sunday, March 17, 2013
As per usual, +Marques Brownlee does a great job of explaining the Samsung Galaxy S4 release. Most importantly, Marques correctly points out that the release wasn’t put together to impress number-chasing specs folk. Samsung is really taking the approach that other tech companies took when developing brand recognition in the past– Dell, HP, and yes Apple. Like MKB, I don’t think this means Samsung is looking to ditch +Android, but instead that the operating system is going to be another technical element that makes up the whole of the Samsung experience.
And you know what? I’m actually impressed. Continue reading »
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Monday, March 11, 2013
I’m mostly just posting this so I can find it later. Every time I hear someone make excuses for ISPs and carriers enforcing data caps, the first thing that jumps in my mind is “the internet doesn’t work that way!” It’s nice to have a visual representation of how and why this is the case. Sorry, guys: heavy data users are not using up all the bandwidth for everyone else. That’s a sign of poor network management in the worst case, and if that were really a problem then ISPs wouldn’t be selling higher speed services. Since companies like +Verizon Wireless, +Comcast.com, +AT&T, and others aren’t asking people to use fewer of their services (quite the opposite), the reason for adding data caps is pretty obvious.
To take more of your money.
Don’t believe the data cap hype.
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Sunday, March 10, 2013
This reminds me… I need to set up my own AWS testing account to try a few things.
Also, sharing because I laughed at “persistence”. For reference, in these terms “persistence” may as well equal “stagnation”.
Original Post from David Federlein: This also applies to Eucalyptus, or any cloud build. Seriously, if you’re using your cloud as a vps host, you’re not actually doing anything but virtualized infrastructure and you’re missing the point.
Quote:
When competitors like Rackspace argue “persistence” as a competitive advantage, they’re missing the entire point of AWS. EC2 is the antithesis of buying a server, lovingly configuring it into a unique work of art, and then making sure it doesn’t break until it’s depreciated off the books. Instead, EC2 instances are intended to be treated as disposable building blocks that provide dynamic compute resources to a larger application. This application will span multiple EC2 instances (autoscaling groups) and likely use other AWS products such as DynamoDB, S3, etc. The pieces are then glued together using Simple Queue Service (SQS), Simple Notification Service (SNS), and CloudWatch. When a single EC2 instance is misbehaving, it ought to be automatically killed and replaced, not fixed. When an application needs more resources, it should know how to provision them itself rather than needing an engineer to be paged in the middle of the night.
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Wednesday, March 6, 2013
One of the early criticisms against the Chromebook Pixel is the lack of natively-installable apps. Granted, there are apps that can be installed that have access to native capabilities, but such apps are few and there absolutely need to be more created. Another of the criticisms against the Pixel is that someone can’t install software X or software Y (usually Photoshop or some similar expensive application). Well, while booting to Windows or OS X isn’t the proposition in the video, it isn’t out of the question since the OS could be booted via a USB drive. However, installing 3rd-party native apps live is capable as shown in the video.
There’s a catch, of course. Continue reading »
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Monday, March 4, 2013
Look at this! A win for the general-purpose-computing cause!
I’ll celebrate more when I see some follow-through.
Original Post from Adam Outler:
The White house has responded to the unlocking petition!
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Sunday, March 3, 2013
When I talk about code and programming, people tend to take for granted that I’m able to code without my even saying so. Don’t get me wrong: I can parse several different coding languages enough to get the basic idea of the logic taking place. This is because I have learned the fundamentals of programming logic, and those fundamentals don’t change much between languages. But when it comes to programming, I’ll freely admit that I’m a total hack who hasn’t had the practiced creativity developed enough to call myself a programmer.
It’s also why I don’t assume that anyone else I’m talking about programming with isn’t able to code. That goes for male or female, older or younger than myself, and regardless of how they dress or look.
Original Post from Pearl Chen:
First time for everything but I finally got asked the dreaded “So do you actually code?” question at a tech conference.
Next conference, I’m going to make a tshirt with a link to my Github repos. #WomenInTech
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