Samsung Solid State DrivesUp to 64GB, 2.5” and 1.8”… this is what should be in the iPod classic, not to mention the MacBook.
Less Is More: Tumblr Raises $750K
Tumblr, a blogging software startup that ascribes to the philosophy that less is more, has raised $750,000 in Series A funding, according to Private Equity Hub. The money came from Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures, with Spark general partner Bijan Sabet joining Tumblr’s board.
GigaOM — Not bad. Don’t use Tumblr myself.
The hidden costs of the multi-tasking software developer
Yesterday, a colleague complained that the timesheet system we use at my day job does not have an entry for context switching1. The geeks in the room knew immediately what she meant but everyone else was baffled.
Sean McGrath, ITworld.com — A few years ago I worked at a company where we called this ‘thrashing’ (Sean mentions this terminology in the article). We made an estimate of 4 hours cost to an unplanned task-switch, and counted that 4 hours as a separate work item. Once we got a handle on how often this happend it was funny how much better our estimates became.
Dabble DB is taking a significant step towards being not just a database tool, but an application development tool.
Dabble DB Blog — Good to hear.
The Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) is an application-level protocol for publishing and editing Web resources. The protocol is based on HTTP transfer of Atom-formatted representations. The Atom format is documented in the Atom Syndication Format.
Very good! The link is to a nice readable/printable HTML version of the spec.
Classy web-development dressed in a DSL
For those of you who don’t know, Sinatra the newest kid on the open-source web frameworks has been released late last week.
This super-sexy DSL runs at lighting speed. It sits on top of Mongrel and was written to be thread-safe, sleek and tiny. And an entire web-application can be written and contained in one file (or a small collection of files)! Think Facebook apps…
Guess what else? It’s super easy to use! Let’s create an app from scratch to demonstrate!
This is a tutorial.
IBM Trying To Get Patent On Patent Extortion?
Have fun with this one. As seen on Slashdot and sent in by a few different readers, it appears that IBM is trying to patent the process of using a large patent portfolio for patent extortion. Technically, the patent is for “A system and method for extracting value from a portfolio of assets.”
Techdirt — Sigh.
Meteor no longer prime suspect in great extinction
The greatest mass extinction in Earth’s history also may have been one of the slowest, according to a study that casts further doubt on the extinction-by-meteor theory. … Creeping environmental stress fueled by volcanic eruptions and global warming was the likely cause of the Great Dying 250 million years ago, said USC doctoral student Catherine Powers. … The decline began millions of years before the disappearance of 90 percent of Earth’s species at the end of the Permian era, Powers shows in her study. … More damaging to the meteor theory, the study finds that organisms in the deep ocean started dying first, followed by those on ocean shelves and reefs, and finally those living near shore.
ZFS Puts Net App Viability at Risk?
About a month ago, Network Appliance sued Sun to try to stop the competitive impact of ZFS on their business. … So later this week, we’re going to use our defensive portfolio to respond to Network Appliance, filing a comprehensive reciprocal suit. … In addition to seeking the removal of their products from the marketplace, we will be going after sizable monetary damages. … And remember, we indemnify our customers.
Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog
Fast image enlargement through seam insertion in OCaml
I have implemented the last major feature missing in my content-aware image resizer based on seam carving/insertion, image enlargement via seam insertion. It took a whole 50 lines of OCaml code which you can find below.
eigenclass — This is really very interesting.
This is a (relatively) Quick Reference for Python in a single long HTML page. Also exists in PDF.
Richard Gruet @ free.fr — Nice, 47 pages so not one of those two page things that are normal for ‘quick references’
OmniWeb 5.6The Omni Group — Glad to see this.
Mac OS X Web browser rundown 2007
Several years ago, when Mac OS X was still a very young operating system, it was hard to find a really good and stable web browser for the Mac. Pretty much the only viable option for the first release of Mac OS X in 2001 was Internet Explorer 5. … Today, in late 2007, things are different. Very different. Mac OS X users have a large number of excellent, standards compliant browsers to choose from.
456 Berea Street
Video: Zombies in Plain EnglishCommon Craft - Explanations In Plain English — Nicely done!
