Author: barce

  • Twitter: Thoughts That Are Hard to Fit Into 140 Characters

    What are the limits of expressing thoughts in Twitter?

    Here’s a powerful but inefficient (when run) thought that can be expressed on Twitter, a quick sort in Erlang in 126 characters.

    qsort([]) -> [];
    qsort([Pivot|T]) ->
    qsort([X || X <- T, X < Pivot]) ++ [Pivot] ++ qsort([X || X <- T, X >= Pivot]).

    A lot of Perl one-liners can fit into a tweet – powerful and useful ones.

    Haikus can be expressed in a tweet.

    The answer to the question, “What form of body language do most FBI interrogators consider to be the most telling?” can be answered in a tweet.

    A marriage proposal can be answered in a tweet.

    You can propose the concept of a hash tag in a tweet:

    hashtag proposal

    However, there are many thoughts that seem to be difficult to fit into a tweet:

    • The Pythagorean Theorem and one of its many proofs
    • Anselm’s Ontological Proof for God’s Existence
    • Merge Sort in Ruby
    • Merge Sort in PHP
    • Why you should or shouldn’t outsource
    • What qualities make a great tech hire
    • Well-thought out political proofs
    • How to subtly tell someone something in an indirect way with the only others knowing being those in the know
    • A legally-binding, work contract – It would be amazing if you could!
    • The mechanism for how DNA works

    Twitter encourages the laconic expression of thought which means plenty of affirmations, aphorisms, insults, congratulations, and reminders that can display any combination of sharp wit, pointed humor, and succinctness of expression. The mot juste becomes very important with the constraint of 140 characters.

  • URL Shorteners: tinyurl.com bit.ly and seductive.me

    There’s a pretty useful spreadsheet comparing different URL shorteners here:
    http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pApF4slh39ZkqUOoZQSo8bg .

    Tinyurl just really shortens your URL and doesn’t provide any other data. A great feature is the preview option that allows you to preview a link so you don’t get Rick-rolled.

    Bit.ly is my favorite service. The features I like are

    • its API,
    • its analytics, and
    • its Pro feature which allows you to make a branded URL shortener

    I wanted to figure out just how much effort it was to code a URL so I coded up my own MVC based on Rasmus’ article on making one in PHP, and added URL shortening code to it. You can get the URL shortener I wrote on Github.

    Here are a few things that I noticed once I put this code on Seductive.me:

    1. Somebody found a bad, infinite loop that I accidentally put into the code
    2. URL Shortener services that offer analytics have to sort out “bots” from real user clicks, and I’m not sure they are correct 100% of the time
    3. Using CRC32 as my hashing mechanism for shortening URLs will cause a link collision after 65,536 URLs shortened.
    4. Seductive.me is a lame url for a URL shortener which is why I got 3vi.be the next day.
  • Frequent Insights; Less Focus

    The problem with professionalism is that there’s only one way to get a job done right. For example, if you’re a DBA working from a relational background there’s no way that you could ever professionally suggest a NoSQL solution to a problem.

    The great thing about professionalism is that you can get paid for your detachment to reality and by following “The Process.” The process is something that’s hard to argue with, has authority, and won’t ruin your career. But the process can ruin a business.

    A good example of the process ruining a business is the current shakedown in advertising.

    There used to be a process where creative output was cheap and what was treasured was the global reach of a global agency.

    By following this process of client close, account executive direction and creative output through various channels, advertising turned a blind eye to the rise of the Internet.

    Global companies no longer need the global reach of an agency. Global companies need social media experts who can leverage nodes of attention in form of Google, Facebook and Twitter.

    Professionally, a creative steeped in radio or print cannot suggest that the solution is something Internet-based. By the same logic a social media expert, enjoying the zenith of the social media frenzy, cannot suggest professionally a non-social solution.

    How do we escape such professional straight jackets?

    The solution seems to be that being less focused leads to more insights:

    “People who seem to have frequent insights do not do so by focusing harder on the problem, instead they have learned to switch off their thinking – to access a quieter mind on demand. Having insights involves hearing subtle signals and allowing loose connections to be made by quieting the mind – letting the brain idle with minimal electrical activity.” — David Rock

  • Streamys Tech Fail

    Last night’s streamys from a tech perspective had 2 big pieces of fail which some might’ve overlooked because of the creativity of the presenters and comic skills of Paul Scheer.

    1. The free, event based iPhone app never updated with the latest winners.

    2. The video player that showed the nominees broke down half-way through. The work around was to tell jokes and then eventually bring up the nominees on stage.

    I really wish – and I’m not alone in this -that they kept the bar open for the whole show.

    These fails show where corners are cut which is understandable in a fledgling industry where creators of content are often the monied producers, too.

  • Ride a bicycle and save the planet!

    I so wish that folks would ride bicycles more.

    Liffy Hatchet aka Liffy Hatchet on a bicycle.
    photo by Lisa Valdez — model Liffy Hatchet

    Maybe if more hotties rode bicycles, then more regular folks would ride bicycles.

  • How To Boost iPhone App Ratings

    This is something I learned from Nirvino.com, the iPhone wine rating app.

    • have an event where you invite iPhone users
    • Make the entrance to the event downloading your app. In this case it was a winetasting
    • Have folks come in and enjoy the wine.
    • Before they leave ask them to rate the app at a set up terminal

    I thought I would be put off by it, but if you approach it in a smooth and non-pushy way, it’s a great way to get more ratings for your app. All of the ratings were positive.

  • WPTouch Makes WordPress iPhone Friendly

    If you’re on WordPress 2.7+ and have lots of iPhone hits to your blog then get WPTouch, the plug-in that turns your website into an iPhone friendly site.

    Trust me. It’s awesome!

    WPTouch Plug-in

  • How Secure Are iPhone Apps?

    I looked at the Linkedin, Flickr, and Facebook iPhone apps to see how secure they were.

    When you log-in your password is safe and protected with SSL:

    No. Time Source Destination Protocol Info
    1 0.000000 192.168.0.102 8.17.171.32 TCP 49891 > https [SYN] Seq=0 Win=65535 Len=0 MSS=1460 WS=2 TSV=840468191 TSER=0

    Frame 1 (78 bytes on wire, 78 bytes captured)
    Ethernet II, Src: AppleCom_94:9e:c2 (00:16:cb:94:9e:c2), Dst: D-Link_4a:41:9c (00:0f:3d:4a:41:9c)
    Internet Protocol, Src: 192.168.0.102 (192.168.0.102), Dst: 8.17.171.32 (8.17.171.32)
    Transmission Control Protocol, Src Port: 49891 (49891), Dst Port: https (443), Seq: 0, Len: 0

    However, let’s say that you view your list of contacts on the LinkedIn iPhone app:

    Exposed Email Redacted

    You’re basically giving away your contacts to the hacker at the cafe who is taking advantage of the fact that you’re using WiFi.

    Here’s the scoop on the iPhone Apps.

    Your data is not secure with these apps:

    Flickr: Password Secure, Data not
    Facebook: Password Secure, Data not
    Linkedin: Password Secure, Data not

    All your data is secure with these apps:

    Gmail: Password Secure, Data Secure
    Hushmail: Password Secure, Data Secure

    Hushmail even has an option to turn off security, but why would you? 🙂

  • Tweets You’ll Most Likely Read at SxSW 2010

    Here’s a list of tweets you’ll most likely read at SxSW 2010:

    • OMFG, landed! (Ya, you and 12,000 other people.)
    • OMFG, I’m @crowdedplace hanging out with my new BFFs @socialmediadouche1 and @socialmediadouche2.
    • I’m sick of folks tweeting who they’ll be hanging out with. I don’t care. Turning the twitter fire hose off.
    • OMFG, I’m just telling people who I’m hanging out with because my boss needs to know.
    • My hotel room is #69. Just bring yourself.
    • OMFG, That DM you sent?!!! That actually went public.
    • Big line in front of @crowdedplace.
    • No line @emptyplace.

    I think SxSW Interactive is an awesome event. It’s one of those few tech conferences where if you make a friend there they stay your IRL friend for quite a long time.

    Also it’s a great place for making complex deals in a really easy way. Think of the pieces that it takes to launch a major Internet app with mobile, web and video pieces. You can get those stake holders in one place at SxSW, and hammer out a huge deal with 2 days of face time.

  • Install Script For Rails on Debian

    The following works great on Rackspace’s Debian Virtual Servers and within 5 minutes you got a running rails instance.

    #!/bin/bash

    apt-get update -y
    apt-get upgrade -y
    apt-get install dlocate -y
    apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libreadline5-dev zlib1g-dev -y
    apt-get install sqlite3 -y
    cd /usr/local/src
    wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/stable-snapshot.tar.gz
    tar zxvf stable-snapshot.tar.gz
    cd ruby
    ./configure && make && make install
    ruby -v
    ruby -ropenssl -rzlib -rreadline -e “puts :Hello”
    cd /usr/local/src
    wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/60718/rubygems-1.3.5.tgz
    tar zxvf rubygems-1.3.5.tgz
    cd rubygems-1.3.5
    ruby setup.rb
    gem install rails
    apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client -y
    apt-get install libmysql-ruby libmysqlclient15-dev -y
    gem install mysql — –with-mysql-include=/usr/include –with-mysql-lib=/usr/lib
    gem install mongrel –include-dependencies
    apt-get install git -y