Category: Web

My Last Week

Yahoo This is a sad week. It’s my last week as an employee of Yahoo! (YHOO).

The last week of a job is always sad. They’re always full of goodbye lunches and farewell drinks. Especially if you’ve been at the company a long time.

There was a time when I used to look forward to my last week at a job. Before Yahoo!, I would generally leave my job after about a year. That was my limit. One year. After that, I’d grow bored and crave a bigger challenge.

Yahoo!, however, was able to keep me challenged for nearly six years. That’s quite a feat, let me tell you. That’s not for a lack of competing job offers either. I was able to take on vastly different roles and responsibilities each year, partly because the company offered lots of opportunities, and partly because the company supported my initiative to take advantage of those opportunities.

But now it’s time for me to move on. I’m off to do my own thing, to be an entrepreneur.

No, it’s not Yahoo!; even if I worked somewhere else, this would still be my last week. No company could keep me right now.

You know what it is? It’s the desire to start something from the ground up. To build something great, yet viable—or starve. To not have that cushion of a steady paycheck and take very real risks. To follow your dreams, your passions, and your own path.

So I’m going into this last week with mixed feelings. There’s the excitement, of course (“Oh man, I’m finally doing it!”). There’s also nervousness (“What if I fail? What if I lose it all?”). And there’s loads of sadness (“I’m really, really going to miss my friends here”). Sniff.

Goodbye, Yahoo!.

Books for Great Programmers

Code Complete Want to be a great programmer?

Here are a list of books that are must-reads for any great programmer, whether you work on the web, on mobile devices, for desktop software, or for NASA. They are language-independent and focus on the craft of programming, as drawn from real-world experience.

When I was a software engineering manager, I’d either have my team read these books, or cover chapters of them collaboratively during team meetings. The engineers who really read and applied these books were always noticeably better programmers.

Yea, it’s a short list. I don’t want my programmers to spend all of their time reading, right? Heh.

What other books do you think are must-reads for great programmers?

Marketing with Lolcats

Lolpizza Now for some Friday fun. I have a guilty secret.

I’ve been secretly coveting lolcat sites, like I Can Has Cheezburger?.

I didn’t follow them the first time around. When the second wave came, I caught it and started surfing it with glee.

(I blame LOLTrek for getting me into lolcats. Someone pointed me to that link and from there, I’ve been hooked onto lolcats ever since.)

I know, I know. But what can I say, I’m a fan of corny jokes. And lolcats are about as corny as you can get.

So when David Friedman of Ironic Sans suggested Lolcatvertisements, I thought to myself: HAHAHA!

The way I see it, companies have about a week or so left in the life of the lolcat meme to come up with some clever ads that use the lolcat format.

Take a pizza and burger joint, for example. They could start with a picture of a pizza delivery guy, with the caption “I’M IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD, DELIVERING YOUR PIZZA” or it could have a picture of a burger and fries with the caption “YES YOU CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER.”

I know, I know. The lolcat thing is fading again and lots of people can’t wait for it to die. But it still makes me chuckle. Hehe.

I Tag You, You Tag Me, We’re A Happy Family

MyBlogLog This is cool. Yahoo!’s (YHOO) MyBlogLog just launched a new feature: tagging.

If you’ve read all the press, you know by now how the idea fermented (Yahoo! Research Berkeley, Cameron Marlow, Tagsona – hmm someone’s already taken the domain name).

This is cool because tagging people is a whole lot of fun. As a taggee, you get to find out how friends and colleagues view you (apparently I have madskillz and am an all-around good guy! Cool!). As a tagger, you get to label your friends and colleagues by how you see them. Then there’s the whole organizational utility of tagging. Plus the inside jokes that suddenly get surfaced.

MyBlogLog’s open social network is also another benefit. You don’t have to create a profile in a walled garden like Facebook or MySpace (NWS); you can use any ole’ blog, created on any ole’ blogging tool, and use that as your profile or online identity, so to speak. (Not to say that Facebook or MySpace don’t have their benefits too.) MyBlogLog also differentiates a blog owner from a blog, thereby giving you an online identity that can be tagged.

Which makes me wonder… why don’t traditional social networks like Facebook and MySpace have profile tagging? Hmmm.

There are gotchas though. Surfacing inside jokes that may be misinterpreted by other people could be a gotcha. Unscrupulous people tagging nefariously without abandon could also be a gotcha. But the folks at MyBlogLog realize this and will no doubt have measures to “ungot” the gotchas.

So if you have a MyBlogLog account, tag me! Go on, do it! I’ll tag you back (ooo reciprocal tagging, there’s another interesting behavior).

Internet Killed The Video Star 2.0

I’ve been on an 80’s pop music kick lately. Frightening, I know. After listening to Video Killed The Radio Star by The Buggles, I had a bright idea. But before I get into that, delight your ears with:

Wow, quite a flash back, huh? Groovy.

So my bright idea. I thought: How about a rewrite of those lyrics to say “Internet Killed The Video Star”? Ooo, how geeky!

But wait. It’s been done already. By The Raconteurs. Rats.

What to do… what to do… Oh, I know – Internet Killed The Video Star 2.0! Everyone loves 2.0 stuff. It makes it sound so new. So:

Internet Killed The Video Star 2.0

I heard you on Last.fm back in two thousand two.
Sitting awake naked and surfing in on you.
Even Viacom couldn’t block your download through.

Oh-a oh

You are on TechCrunch for your mash-up technology.
Piped in from different sites by RSS feeds,
and now I understand the possibilities.

Oh-a oh
I’ve seen your website.
Oh-a oh
What did you wri-ite?
Internet killed the video star.
Internet killed the video star.

Websites came and broke your heart.
Oh-a-a-a oh

And now we meet in an analog TV show.
We hear the feedback and it seems so long ago.
And you remember how commercials used to go…

Oh-a-oh
You were the first one.
Oh-a-oh
You were the last one.
Internet killed the video star.
Internet killed the video star.

In my mind and on my screen,
Can iPod be an in-between?
Oh-a-a-a oh
Oh-a-a-a oh

Internet killed the video star.
Internet killed the video star.
In my mind and on my screen,
Can iPod be an in-between?
Websites came and broke your heart.
Put the blame on HyperCard.

You are a video star.
You are a video star.
Internet killed the video star. (x10 fade out)
(after 4x) You are a video star. (x5 fade out)

Oh-a oh (x6 fade out)

The Web Is One Big Party

A VC A few months ago, Fred Wilson of All Software Should Be Social. In it, he paraphrased something Clay Shirky said:

Clay Shirky once said that social nets are like parties. When they are small, they are really great, when they get big and crowded, they cease to be useful. Again I can’t find that post, or I’d link to it.

Clay’s right. But a huge social net that’s made up of millions of smaller social nets is likely to be even more useful than anything that we currently have.

This got me thinking, which, I know, is a dangerous thing.

Say the web is one big party. Like Clay says, a party with too many people is no fun. But this party is being held in an enormous warehouse with lots of nooks and crannies. So naturally, groups of people break off into their own niches.

Some people stay with their friends (MySpace, Facebook, Friendster.com, Second Life). Others stick with family (Famster), coworkers (LinkedIn), or even church group (MyChurch). People like to feel like they belong somewhere, and people with similar interests tend to cluster together. Thus you have cliques (Wikipedia, Flickr, Digg, Yelp, YouTube, Last.fm, Kaboodle, Dogster, Fanpop, Gather, FanNation, LibraryThing, Rupture, and on and on and on).

But people don’t stay within a particular group all the time though. They travel between several cliques, sometimes adopting different persona with each one. That’s okay though, because they still have their own identity; it’s just their outward behavior and language that changes (OpenID, PeopleAggregator).

Sometimes people want to share their life story and crave an audience (Twitter, Blogger, Xanga, LiveJournal). That can be difficult because this is one loud party; but you’re bound to find a few single people at the bar if you look hard enough.

Other times, people need a little alone-time and privacy, away from everyone at the party. This can be both easy and hard. It’s easy when you want to just leave the party (log off). It’s hard when you’ve been at the party for a while, had lots of conversations, then are trying to hide. If someone wants to find you, they will (Google, Technorati, Wink). At this party, everything you’ve said can last forever.

It’s also easy just to sit back and people-watch at this party (Google Reader, FeedBurner, My Yahoo!, Netvibes, Bloglines). There’s a lot to see and your eyes may glaze over after a few hours. But you’ll also see some really wacky and fun sights.

Then what happens when bullies start to get abusive? It’s tough to police this party; it’s so big that almost anything goes. Fortunately, some kind souls are trying to help (EFF, Creative Commons). Much luck to them. There are lots of predators at this party. I hope they don’t ruin it for the rest of us.

And there you have it. The web as one big party. It’s a fantastic one that’s growing everyday. This warehouse is infinite, save for our imaginations. So come in and have some fun. Just don’t drink too much; the hang-over is killer.

Want To Buy Some Web 2.0?

web2.0forsale.com and VentureBoard Now this is what I’d call a sign of trouble.

Have a Web 2.0 online business but can’t get your business model working? Maybe you can’t get any customers. Maybe your product really sucks. Maybe you quit your job to start this thing and are realizing you made a horrible, horrible mistake.

Never fear! Just sell your business online!

There are now two companies through which you can sell your online wares: VentureBoard and Web 2.0 For Sale. You can sell anything remotely Web 2.0ish, from domain names to mash-ups to your website. As I write this, Dodgy.com is on sale for $12,500.00 at Web 2.0 For Sale. Wow.

The hubbub started when Kiko.com, an DHTML calendar offering, sold themselves on eBay for $250,000. They weren’t the first to use eBay, but they generated the most press. Jux2, a metasearch engine, was the first – at least, according to TechCrunch.

I remember watching the Kiko.com auction on eBay. A friend told me about it and we mused: “Maybe we should build some kind of DHTML app and sell it on eBay too…”

Well, that idea could still work. And now we have more sales channels too!

What VentureBoard and Web 2.0 For Sale are doing is really smart. There’s certainly a demand for this kind of service right now. Why not capitalize on it?

For entrepreneurial web developers, this may start a new trend – quickly build a Web 2.0ish online app (be it a social network, mash-up, wiki, pick your favorite buzz word) and sell it. Even if you sell one for $5,000, that ain’t half bad. Do that once a month and you’re golden.

Only, who the heck is buying? These services don’t post any sales statistics. It’s easy to find this out on eBay, but not on VentureBoard and Web 2.0 For Sale. Hmmm.

The entrepreneur in me is saying: “Maybe we should build some kind of DHTML app and sell it on eBay, or VentureBoard, or Web 2.0 For Sale too…” If there’s a low-cost way in doing this, why not?

The trouble is in building a real business model. I’d just be building a site for the sake of selling it. Quite a post-Internet-bubble sentiment, eh? First, there was: Build a site and the venture capital will come. Now, there’s: Build a site and the sales will come. Nice.

The real business model here is in VentureBoard and Web 2.0 For Sale. At least, as long as there are actual buyers for these Web 2.0ish social networks/mash-ups/wikis/etc…

And hey, I have a few ideas. Anyone want to help me build a few DHTML apps? They probably suck as businesses, but maybe someone will buy them!