Robby Grossman

There is a widely held belief that you can tell how interesting a Twitter user is by the number of followers that he or she has. This is a flawed line of thinking.

There are two ways to look at follower counts as a tell of value:

1. Look for a high followers:following ratio (f/F). The rationale here is that others have subscribed to this person’s content without said person having to follow them back, so what this person is saying must be interesting.
2. Look for a high number of total followers (f). The thinking here is that if thousands or millions of people are reading what somebody says, you’ll want to read his or her tweets, too.

Both of these cases are premised on faulty logic.

The first case is particularly bad in that it punishes those users who engage more heavily with other Twitter users. @scobleizer follows some 17,000+ companies, developers and other tech-minded folks, and actually reads what they say. I know this because I’m one of them, and he has replied to me on several occasions. @pistachio follows all 45,000+ users who follow her so that they have the option to direct message her. If you subscribe to the (f/F) theory, you are effectively punishing people like @scobleizer and @pistachio for being in tune with their readers.

The second case is not much better. Let’s say I’m looking to find some amusing folks in the entertainment industry to follow. Twitter’s Suggested User List (SUL) points me to Denise Richards, who has 1.5M followers. I don’t know much about her, but the (f) theory tells me that since she has 1.5M followers, she is probably worth checking out. I click on her profile to find her most recent tweet (at the time of this writing):

girls and I have a beauty appt with Richard @seCoiffer today. time for us all to get a hair trim!

I glanced at a few of her other tweets; this was not an anomaly. This might be read-worthy stuff for 1.5 million people, but it doesn’t play to my interests.

I had the same problem in other categories, too. Let’s look at an area where one should expect a little more substance: politics. Among users with 25,000+ followers, the most interesting to me were Anderson Cooper (439,024 followers), Politico (32,286), Huffington Post (33,325) and Drudge Report (52,202). But in my opinion, none of them offer nearly as good reporting, analysis or commentary as Marc Ambinder (11,065), Spencer Ackerman (4,057) or Ezra Klein (12,072). And certainly none of them entertain me as much as Dave Weigel (5,543).

The lesson here is that there is no correlation between a user’s popularity and a user’s interest to me. Following is a personal decision, and relying on f or f/F will provide a crowdsourced answer rather than a personalized one.

Another problem with both of these statistics is that as Twitter gains more users, it also gains more spammers, automated accounts and follower farms. Mashable reports that as of last August, 24% of all tweets are generated by robots. On Sunday, TechCrunch showcased hard evidence that followers can be purchased for fractions of a penny. The same piece states:

another method we’ve heard about anecdotally uses cheap labor in China to create Twitter Follower farms (similar to the gold farms that grew around online games like World of Warcraft). Online laborers in China essentially create thousands of Twitter accounts which can then follow other accounts.

Other games are also played to garner followers. Look at this Google search for “twitter followers” or recall that @jason once offered $250,000 to be placed on Twitter’s Suggested User List (a quick way to get hundreds of thousands of followers). Follower counts are easy to manipulate and not indicative of tweet quality.

When making a “should I follow?” decision, I judge based on the user’s bio and prior tweets. I decide for myself whether or not I have a personal interest in what the person says. I would never defer this qualitative judgment to a statistic.

What I love most about working at a startup is how close I am to the people I’m serving. Almost every task I work on directly benefits our customers. And working at a web startup means I can deliver that benefit as soon as it’s built.

A lack of customer interaction yielded many frustrations at my previous job, where I was part of an enterprise SDK team. I was separated from my users. Requirements were set by product managers; testing was done by quality assurance; feedback came from division heads. User interaction was not part of our process. I did have coworkers who were very much involved with their users, but they were a limited breed. They tended to be designers, managers or developers of the bottom (user-facing) layer of the stack.

I say all of this without issuing criticism. Pairing up customers with developers can be exceedingly difficult in an enterprise setting. We’re not talking about a web app and a site visitor; we’re talking about a multi-layered technology stack and a user of a derivative work. For instance, if I’m working on a module inside an SDK that goes inside a search engine that is customized in a workbench and appears in a dashboard, when is a dashboard user one of my users? This example is not contrived to prove a point; I was the developer in this very instance. The difficulties get even tougher when it comes time to translate the dashboard requirements into SDK requirements. These were complicated problems that dealt with several layers of our technology stack, and product management was a necessary arbiter.

The question is: at what point in the customer interaction process should product management step back and let developers take over? The answer is: as soon as possible. As soon as a user’s problem can be mapped to a particular developer (or a module for which a particular developer is responsible), product management should get out of the way. At this time the developer should consult directly with the customer.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that it reduces confusion. When there is a chain between the customer and the developer, every link is a filter that obfuscates the customer’s needs. When I speak directly with a user, the odds of my understanding the user’s problem are very high. Those odds are dramatically reduced by each person placed between us.

The other benefit is motivation. I cut code because I enjoy solving problems that make people’s lives easier or more enjoyable. Seeing such a problem first hand inspires me to solve it. There is a strong correlation between motivation and productivity, and letting developers interact with customers is an easy and efficient way to boost both. The customer wins, the company wins, the developer wins.

A week ago I purchased an Amazon Kindle. These are my initial impressions. I am using the 6″ Kindle with the free 2.3 firmware update.

It’s easy to use.

Your father and your grandmother can use the Kindle. They may need your help creating an account and entering a credit card number the first time, or linking it to their Amazon account if they have one. After that it is as simple as browsing the store and selecting “Buy” when they find what they want to read. There are no passwords to remember. There are no credit card security codes to enter. You find the book you want — either by searching or by browsing — and then you select “Buy.”

The device is transparent.

I really like technology. Whether it’s my MacBook or my iPhone or my Harmony Remote, I enjoy twiddling with gadgets. But I don’t want my reading experience to feel technology-driven. Accordingly, this claim by Amazon caught my eye:

The most elegant feature of a physical book is that it disappears while you’re reading. Immersed in the author’s world and ideas, you don’t notice a book’s glue, the stitching, or ink. Our top design objective was to make Kindle disappear—just like a physical book—so you can get lost in your reading, not the technology.

This they pulled off very well. Reading on the Kindle is very natural. It does not feel techy, and it does not feel like a gadget. It will not feel quaint the next time you pick up a paperback.

PDFs render well.

I held off on the Kindle until it was able to display the PDF eBooks I’ve purchased over the years. It renders them very well. If things appear too small, you have the option of using landscape mode to zoom in on the pages. One caveat: if you have a PDF that makes use of color, it will display on the Kindle as grayscale and may be harder to read.

The dictionary is convenient.

Looking up a word on the Kindle is as simple as putting the cursor next to it. Do this and you’ll see the definition at the bottom of the screen. It is seamless and much less interruptive than having to break out a dictionary.

DRM is scary.

The Kindle uses Digital Rights Management, which prevents buyers from having full control over the electronic goods that they purchase. Examples of DRM include MacroVision, which prevented VHS tapes from being copied, and UOP, the protocol that can stop you from fast forwarding through previews on DVDs. DRM is at best inconvenient and at worst paralyzing.

It’s inconvenient when my girlfriend wants to read a book that I have purchased. I cannot transfer the book to her Kindle; the only option is to let her borrow my device.* This is not a good solution for either of us, and in this case a hard copy of a book is more convenient and more functional than a Kindle copy.

It’s paralyzing if the Kindle fails. If the Nook or any other device wins the ebook game single-handedly, you will lose every book you have purchased. Eventually your hardware will malfunction. You will not be able to replace it, and you will not be able to read your Kindle books on any other device. This is because Amazon’s DRM prevents you from viewing your Kindle books on unauthorized devices. I don’t think this is likely, but it is possible.

When I buy a paper book, I consider myself  the “owner” of that book. I can do whatever I want with it. This is not the case when I buy a Kindle book. The Kindle’s use of DRM means that when I purchase a Kindle book, I am merely a “user” of it. Amazon retains full control over it. With DRM, Amazon can prevent me from being able to read my books at any time and for any reason. The 1984 Fiasco exemplifies this. That would not have been possible without DRM.

Sometimes Kindle books cost more.

There are occasional examples where a mass market paperback is cheaper than a Kindle version. It is frustrating when I have to pay more for a medium whose cost of goods sold is effectively zero. In Amazon’s defense, this is the exception and not the rule. Still, I think Amazon should be sure they are never charging more for the electronic copy than they are for the paperback equivalent.

Additionally, if I purchase a hard copy of a book from Amazon, the Kindle edition should be either free or highly discounted. At minimum I should be able to purchase a cheaper bundle of both versions. The progressive publishers like O’Reilly already do this. Amazon does not.

Academia has not been penetrated.

As a student, the Kindle would be of much greater benefit to me if I could use it for my coursework. Sadly, none of the textbooks I need are available in Kindle versions.

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* A google search reveals that some clever folks have found a way around this. However, removing DRM without permission from the publisher is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and I’m assuming that most people won’t want to resort to that.

I’m a big fan of Amazon.com. It is far and away my online retailer of choice. I’ve been a Prime member since they launched the program in 2005. Books, computers, videogames, RAM, speakers, … you name it, I’ve probably bought it at Amazon.

But it’s time for some tough love. Amazon, your web site is in dire need of improvements. Here’s how you can make it better.

Don’t forget where I was when I turn on 1-click.

When I’m on an item page and want to make a quick purchase, the 1-click button only appears if I am signed in. Otherwise I am prompted to click “sign in to turn on 1-click.” When I click that link, I am brought to a separate page telling me that I have successfully signed in and enabled 1-click. But now I’m no longer looking at the item I want to buy. This redirection is unnecessary. Instead, send me back to the item page. The new big button that says “Buy with 1-click” is sufficient notice that I’ve turned it on.

Give me a real faceted search.

I want to drill down by several search criteria, and I want to do it quickly. Here’s a search I’d like to execute: show me all of your coffee makers made by Cuisinart or Mr. Coffee that are priced under $50 and available with Amazon Prime shipping. Right now this search takes four back and forths to execute, and I can only see one particular brand at a time.

Eliminate two thirds of your “departments.”

Departments on Amazon are highly ambiguous and this makes things difficult to find. If I want a USB wall charger, where should I look? “Electronics” seems like an appropriate department. But what if it’s typically used with a cell phone? Better check “Cell Phones & Service,” too. And is that where I’d find a MicroSD memory card? Or would that be with “Camera & Photo?” Because there is no consistency over where a product type is placed, I better check that “Everything Else” department, too. Thank God you have a separate department for “VHS.” I’m sure that pleased both of the people who bought VHS tapes this year. Other examples of high-level categories that can be merged: “Toys and Games” and “Videogames”; “Grocery” and “Gourmet Food”; “Shoes” and “Clothing”.

Show me lists I care about.

If I search for the book Assassination Vacation, an appropriate list to show me might be “Historical Books.” Instead, you’re showing me “Books I read in 2007″ by Lindsay L. Miller. I don’t care what Lindsay read in 2007. Sorry Lindsay, it’s nothing personal.

Stop shoving the Kindle down my throat.

I get it. You really want me to buy a Kindle. I know this because every time I look at a book, you put this at the top of the page:

Assassination Vacation and over 360,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle – Amazon’s new wireless reading device. Learn more

and this thing on the side:

This is particularly frustrating because I already own a Kindle! And I know you know that, because you sold it to me!

Kill the “Robby’s Amazon.com” link.

My Amazon.com should be at http://www.amazon.com. You’ve already portalized this page to show me the things I’ve looked at recently and the things you think I might like. Creating a second portal-like page just confuses me. Which one am I supposed to shop from?

Ask me if I have a Blu Ray player.

And when I tell you that I do, remember it.  Then when I search for movies, show me the Blu Ray editions before the DVD editions.

When I look at a product, tell me everything you know about the product…

…instead of making me click to get the information I need. For example, here is a Nikon lens I’m interested in. But if I want the “technical details”, I have to click and go to a separate page. You are wasting a lot of space showing me related items, sponsored links, user-made lists and user-made guides, instead of showing me information about the item I’m looking at.

Do not default my search to be within a particular department.

I often have a list of unrelated things to buy. For instance, after I’m done looking at the camera lens, I may want to search for a book. What do you think is going to happen when I click “Go” here?

It turns out your search is pretty good. When it doesn’t find any “War and Peace” items in “Electronics,” it will give me the top 3 results from other departments. So you’re almost off the hook. But you get the idea. This is not ideal. I will not get the full search results that I expect. It doesn’t make sense for you to coerce me into searching within one particular department, especially in light of complaint #3.

Simplify your navigation.

These things all go to the same place. Why are there three routes to get there from the home page? It’s cluttering and overwhelming. Pick one.

Update Sept 6, 2009: I’ve created a project at github to simplify this process. More details here.

Task: You want to use Time Machine wirelessly to backup your Mac to a drive on another Mac on your network.

Problem: If the target machine is in “sleep” mode, your backup will fail.

Solution: Send a “magic packet” to the target machine to wake it up if it’s sleeping.

Gotcha: New Macs support WOL via Airport. However if you’re using an older Mac, the target machine must be connected via ethernet (the machine you’re backing up can still be connected via wifi).

Let’s roll:

Prep the Target Machine

The target machine is the Mac that will hold your backups.

1. On the target machine, go to System Preferences and open the “Energy Saver” panel.
2. Configure sleep settings as desired
3. Be sure to check the “Wake for Ethernet network access” box at the bottom.
4. Close out of system preferences.
5. Open System Profiler from your Utilities directory in Applications.
6. Click “Network” in the left panel.
7. Click “Ethernet” in the top panel.
8. In the bottom panel, scroll down until you see “Ethernet:” with a line under it showing something like “MAC Address 00:15:d4:a3:cf:1b”. Write down this 12-digit MAC address.
9. Exit System Profiler

Configure the Host Machine

The host machine is the Mac that you will be backing up.

1. On the host machine, install MacPorts if you haven’t already.
2. Open up a Terminal from your Utilities directory in Applications.
3. Type: “sudo port install wakeonlan” and press return.
4. Enter your password when prompted, and wait while MacPorts installs the utility and its dependencies.
5. Open Automator in Applications.
6. Create a new “Application” workflow when prompted.
7. Double-click the “Run Shell Script” library item on the left. In the box that appears, erase “cat” and instead type:

   macaddress="00:00:00:00:00:00"
   while true
   do
   	results=`syslog -k Sender com.apple.backupd -k Time gt -10s -k Message Seq 'Starting standard backup'`
   	if [ -n "$results" ]
   	then
   		/opt/local/bin/wakeonlan "$macaddress"
   		while [ -n "$results" ]
   		do
   			sleep 10
   			results=`syslog -k Sender com.apple.backupd -k Time gt -10s -k Message Seq 'Starting standard backup'`
   		done
   	fi
   	sleep 10
   done

8. In the first line, replace the 00:00:00:00:00:00 with the MAC Address that you wrote down earlier. Be sure to keep the quotes.
9. Choose File > Save As…, and name it “WOL Daemon” in the Applications folder when prompted.
10. Exit Automator.
11. Go to System Preferences and open the “Accounts” panel.
12. Click “Login Items” at the top.
13. Click the + icon to add a new one.
14. Select the WOL Daemon that you just created, and check the box next to it marked “Hide”.
15. Restart your computer, and voilà, your target machine will now be woken up if it’s asleep while Time Machine runs.

There are a number of tutorials floating around that explain how to install MySQL 5 on Snow Leopard. They all recommend the x86_64 universal binary supplied by MySQL. If you’d like to install MySQL via MacPorts (MySQL5 is certified compatible!), here are the steps:

1. Install MySQL with developer libraries:
   

   sudo port install mysql5-devel

2. Create the required databases:
   

   sudo /opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin/mysql_install_db –user=mysql

   If you get permissions errors, run (warning: don’t do this in production!):
   

   sudo chmod -Rf 777 /opt/local/var/db/mysql5

   and repeat.

3. Set your mysql password:
   

   /opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin/mysqladmin -u mysql password ‘your-password-here’

Now, for the MySQL gem:

1. One-line install with MacPorts config path:
   

   sudo gem install mysql — –with-mysql-config=/opt/local/bin/mysql_config5

   or, if you want to use version 2.7 (instead of the latest 2.8.1):
   

   sudo gem install mysql –version 2.7 — –with-mysql-config=/opt/local/bin/mysql_config5

You’re ready to roll. To start your MySQL daemon, run:

sudo /opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin/mysqld_safe &

Every now and then I stumble across a Twitter post, Facebook note or blog entry in which somebody is upset about an unfollowing or defriending on their social network of choice. Yikes. Two quick points that I’m pretty sure all reasonable people can agree on:

1. If you get into an e-fight with somebody and you de-friend them to show your anger, you are being petty.
2. If you get defriended by somebody whom you haven’t spoken to in three years, it’s probably not personal.

But rather than blush over this melodramatic nonsense, I say let’s indulge it. Here is the Facebook app that I propose somebody make for people who engage in these sorts of trifles:

App Name: Passive Aggression

Pitch: The app monitors your friends list, and whenever somebody defriends you, you get a popup telling you that this person has ended your relationship with them. When you see the popup, you have the option to click “why?” Doing so will send the defriender a message asking why they did it and what if anything you can do to salvage the relationship.

Target Market: Insecure, melodramatic emo kids who view Facebook friends as status symbols or have some other ridiculous method of evaluating self worth.

The Business Model: Software by ransom. You may pay a small monthly fee in order for people not to be notified when you defriend them.

Today’s Boston Globe reports that a new law will go into effect on July 31, making life more difficult for scooterists. Here are the important quotes:

On July 31, a new state law will kick in that could require license plates for hundreds, if not thousands, of scooter owners whose bikes are smaller and sleeker than motorcycles, yet slightly faster than old-fashioned mopeds.

The new law creates a third category of motorized bike, one that includes scooters too fast to be mopeds but not fast enough to exceed the 40-mile-per-hour minimum of motorcycles… Owners must have them registered, insured, and annually inspected, like a typical car or motorcycle…

With mandatory license plates, such scooters will be kicked off Boston sidewalks, because city rules require any plated vehicle to be parked in the street. And that’s likely to spell parking nightmares for scores of Boston-area scooter owners, who will now have to battle with cars and trucks for precious on-street spaces and metered spots.

Scooter dealers, drivers, and parking officials alike from various cities said they were caught off guard by the new law, which was passed in January but only this week is being publicized.

Phil Eckelkamp of Somerville owns an old Austrian Puch scooter that gets 80 miles per gallon. He’s not sure what he’ll do if he can’t park on the sidewalk anymore.

“The fact of the matter is I won’t be able to lock it to anything, unless you want me to lock it to the bumper of the car in front of me,’’ he said. “My bike weighs 100 pounds. It can be lifted up and put into a trunk.’’

There are several things wrong with this picture:

1. Boston is probably the biggest parking nightmare in America, and the state wants to increase competition for spaces? Many scooterists will now be forced to park their vehicles on the street as opposed to on a clear section of sidewalk. How many altercations are we now going to see when a scooter takes up an entire parking spot that could be used to park a Ford Explorer?
2. What many people may not realize is that parking in a spot — when a rider is lucky enough to find one —  isn’t safe. Scooters are lightweight, and if not locked to a sign post or bike rack, they will be stolen and thrown into the backs of pickup trucks. This isn’t conjecturing; scooter theft is becoming a bigger and bigger issue around the country. The new law will  make things much easier for the thieves.
3. If you want to make scooterists use license plates for identification purposes, by all means do it. But to mandate the same insurance policies and yearly inspections that powerful motorcycles are required to have is senseless, especially if you can’t present any statistical backing to demonstrate such a need. This sounds like a quick way for state politicians — namely Deomcrats — to generate revenue, and it’s a very shortsighted one at that.
4. Making scooters more costly will diminish people’s incentive to use one of the most fuel-efficient forms of transportation available.
5. The fact that this law was passed in January but not made public until 10 days before it goes into effect is terrible. Dealers, too, were out of the loop, which means that people were buying vehicles without knowing what laws would soon govern them.

This is a giant step backwards for Massachusetts.

Friends & Family,

I hope you’re all enjoying happy holidays, and I wish you the best of luck in the coming new year.

Rather than leave this as a template holiday note, I thought I would take the moment to bring attention to an important cause that is, unfortunately, very ineffectively lobbied for. This is admittedly a bit long-winded; if you’d like the condensed version, just read the last three paragraphs.

As somebody with several gay friends, the issue of equal rights for homosexuals has struck me more forcefully than I suspect it strikes many straight people. It’s an issue I’ve been forced to confront time and again, if not directly in conversation then indirectly in passing thoughts. Not everybody has a gay friend (though I suspect there are many who do and don’t know it), and I fear that those who don’t wind up examining the issue through the mainstream media’s portrayal of it, rather than through first hand experience and interaction. I hope that this note can speak to everybody, but I’m especially reaching out to the latter category of people.
[...]

Of Montreal
Live at The Orpheum, Boston, MA
October 30, 2008

Kevin Barnes & Co. put on the most spectacular live performance I’ve ever seen (spectacular, quite literally, referring to the notion of “spectacle”). If costumes and makeup weren’t enough, they’d employed four professional dancers to help drive their musical theater piece of death and rebirth. The pictures probably tell the story than words will. And as I expected, the musical element of their performance was spot on all night.

Here are the pictures: [link]

An audio recording has also surfaced: [mp3, part 1] and [mp3, part 2]. FLAC, I’m told, will be coming soon!

If you’re an iTunes user who doesn’t let iTunes manage your music collection, you’ll find that iTunes isn’t very cooperative when it comes to moving your music around. For example, if you decide you want to move your music from your internal drive to an external drive, you’ll find that you have to re-import your music, costing you all of your playcounts, playlists and library statistics.

There’s a better, easier way.

Here’s what this how-to guide assumes:

1. You’re a Mac user.
2. You want to move your music from one location to another.
3. The directory structure in which your music resides will not change, but rather you will be moving all of it under some top-level folder.
4. You want to keep your iTunes library as it currently exists.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Quit iTunes
2. Make note of the top-level directory under which your music currently resides. For example, since I am moving my music from my user’s Music folder, my directory is “/Users/robby/Music”.
3. Move your music from your old location to your new location.
4. Make note of the new top-level directory under which you’ve put your music. For example, since I moved my music to an external hard drive called “Music”, my new directory is “/Volumes/Music”.
5. Open up Finder and navigate to your “iTunes” directory (by default, this is in your user’s “Music” directory).
6. You should see a file called “iTunes Music Library.xml”. Open it up with your favorite text editor.
7. Open said text editor’s find/replace dialog.
8. In the “Find” field, type “file://localhost/<old directory name here>”
9. In the “Replace field, type “file://localhost/<new directory name here>”
10. Select “Replace All”.
11. Save the file to disk.
12. Go back to the Finder box. Drag the file named “iTunes Library” to your desktop. If you see files named “iTunes Library Extras.itdb” and “iTunes Library Genius.itdb”, do the same with those files.
13. Open iTunes. (Don’t panic, your library should be empty).
14. Select File > Library > Import Playlist…
15. Select the iTunes Music Library.xml file that you edited and click Open.
16. iTunes will import your library with your new folder locations.
17. The import will create duplicates of the iTunes default playlists, so you may want to delete those copies.
18. If all goes well, you can delete the iTunes Library files from your desktop.

It was my junior year of high school. I was in the library when the first plane hit, about to run to Ms. Najman’s classroom for Chemistry or Advanced Physics (she taught both; I don’t know which class it was, my gut recalls the former). We spent the next fifty minutes on her computer trying to find out more, but were blocked by the first and only global internet malfunction of my lifetime. I don’t think we got through to a single news site.

Terrorism was only my gut response (remember, until now only one plane had hit). The act was inescapably intentional, I thought, but the idea of domestic terrorism to this extreme was so far removed from my day to day life, that such an event would put me in a surreality. But that’s what 9/11 turned out to be. Things were suddenly different. My perception of the world matured more on that day than it did in all of my sixteen years preceding it.
[...]

Every day I ride my bike to work (downtown Boston) from home (Somerville), and I’ve noticed a disturbing pattern: glass bottles smashed and left in bicycle lanes. It’s a bizarre phenomenon, but a consistent one. It’s now the third consecutive day that I’ve found new instances on my daily commute, and there was no shortage of them last week either. I wish that I could attribute it to careless and reckless behavior, but the pattern is too consistent to conclude thoughtlessness. It’s always completely shattered and it’s always in the dead center of the bike lane.

Glassbreakers, please stop. Please. Perhaps to you, it’s a prank. Perhaps a biker cut you off on your way home and this is your payback. Perhaps giving a biker a flat tire is your way of doling karmic justice.

Please stop.

The reality is that there is more at risk to us, and to you, than a flat tire. When I’m going 25 miles per hour over the Longfellow Bridge in a bike lane not much wider than myself, a sudden flat tire can be the difference between being struck by a car and not. It can also be the difference between a multi-car pile-up and not. When I see shattered glass just a few feet in front of me, I have two choices: one, take the flat and risk skidding into traffic, or two, veer directly into traffic and pray that the driver is able to swerve out of the way.

The worst of road experiences need to end with a honk, a yell, or if you must, an inappropriate hand gesture. You can show your anger without putting lives on the line.

Please, please stop.

Yesterday at OSCON, Andrew Hyde and Gaving Doughtie gave a presention on launching a startup in three hours. The presentation was based in large part on Startup Weekend, a company that helps startups get off the ground in 54 hours.

They gave a great macro-level description of the processes involved in starting a startup, as well as some micro-level advice on how to deal with specific problems that are likely to creep up. If you’re interested in or involved with a startup, I strongly encourage you to grab the slides from Andrew’s blog.

During the presentation, Andrew pitched an idea for a Wordpress plugin called SiteFan. We began working on it during the workshop portion of the session. The premise is this: trackbacks are a great way to see who’s linking to your posts, but what about people who are linking to your site? Wouldn’t it be cool to have a trackback-like system for general links, so you could see what people are saying about you (as opposed to seeing what people are saying about your posts)? I plan to finish the plugin and publish it. If anybody’s interested in working on it or taking ownership of it, or if you were in our group during the seminar and have any of the design notes, please drop me a line at robby at freerobby dot com.

It came as no surprise that I found myself in need of a new laptop. My Compaq Presario M2000, purchased in 2005, was becoming less sufficient by the day. What was adequate for web development three years ago is no longer usable for such light tasks as web browsing or document writing. I stalled and I stalled, but this past week I found myself blessed with a hard drive crash, and by syllogism, a new laptop.

The surprise was that I chose a MacBook.
[...]