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Gearing up to doing some testing with RestComm today. +Thomas Quintana will be testing the custom media...
Gearing up to doing some testing with RestComm today. +Thomas Quintana will be testing the custom media server build you created for me.
Top of My Todo List
In "", Paul Graham talks about the 5 priorities he has adopted in order to minimize regrets. These are:
Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.
The last one, "be happy", stuck out to me because it may seem like being happy is a RESULT of following the other 4 things (or other things in your life). I don't think that's how it works, and I'm glad it was included.
I think that, more often than not, being happy requires choosing to be happy. There are far too many unplanned moments in life where, even if you've followed the other four rules, you will not be happy unless you actively choose to make lemonade out of your lemons.
Its something I definitely need to work on.April 2012. A palliative care nurse called Bronnie Ware made a list of the biggest regrets of the dying. Her list seems plausible. I could see myself—can see myself—making at least 4 of these 5 mistak...
New Project: BuildANumber
I started working on a new backend for Better Voicemail, but it ended up turning into something a little bigger (although still part of the new BV backend). I'm calling it BuildANumber. It makes it easy for anyone to create their own phone system. More info at http://www.buildanumber.com
FitDesk Came In!
My FitDesk came in! It was very simple to put together and took about 10 minutes. It feels very well made and solid. My favorite thing about it is that its perfectly silent! There are a broad range of resistance levels and seat height levels. Both are very easy to adjust. It is extremely light and very simple to fold up.
I've attached a video of it in action. Enjoy!Github Private Repos
I really wish Github had some free way to have private repositories. I'd even settle for a way to have unlimited private repositories for a reasonable paid price. I have a paid Github account for my company which has repositories related to that in it. But, that doesn't work well for random stuff that you would like to be private since you are limited to a specific amount of repositories.
I signed up for a Bitbucket account today just so I could host a private repository. I'll probably host ALL my random private repos there from now on. Thats a big missed opportunity for Github, because I'm sure there are a lot of people like me that are doing the same thing.
Github should remove the repository cap on their paid plans and instead have a simple storage cap like Bitbucket does. You should be able to have as many repos as you want that can fit in your space allotment.FitDesk FTW! (hopefully)
I ordered a FitDesk today. I've been wanting to start using a treadmill desk ever since I started using a standing desk about 6 months ago. But the problem with treadmill desks is that they aren't portable and they are too loud to other people working in the same room.
The FitDesk is only 30 pounds and folds up so I can easily throw it in the trunk and take it where ever I want to. It also uses magnetic resistance so its very quiet.
I'm really looking forward to using this, so hopefully it lives up to all the positive reviews it has on Amazon! I'll write a better review after I've used it for a couple of weeks.The FitDesk's patent pending design provides comfortable placement of your elbows so you can pedal and steady your arms for typing, gaming, and beyond. Lightweight & comfortable foamcore const...
We Made the List!
+Better Voicemail was listed in AGBeat's 60 Brands to watch in 2012! This is extremely motivating and we will work very hard to do great things.
I hope to forge partnerships with other tech companies in the real estate market in the coming months as we continue to innovate in an area that hasn't seen innovation in a decade. We have a lot in the pipeline and a lot of work to do yet.
Here's to the new year and to bringing professional voicemail to the 21st century.60 Genius Brands to watch in 2012 - AGBeat
Kicking off 2012 2011 was the year of growth, perseverance and blowback in which hundreds of companies launched and saw huge rounds of funding despite a
More Great Press!
One of my projects, Better Voicemail, got some more great press today. We'll be moving out of beta soon and I'm looking forward to it! We have a lot in the pipeline but I think we already have a solid product that will benefit a lot of Realtors out there.
Better Voicemail could kill phone tree prompts, make voicemail Siri-licious - AGBeat
The Better Voicemail system Prior to their beta launch, we introduced our readers to Better Voicemail, an iPhone app that not only transcribes voicemail
The Unintended Effects of Driverless Cars
Reshared post from Koushik Dutta
Great post. I thought the author should have mentioned two things:
A) Most people would have a lot more time in general because they aren't having to drive.
B) The price of cars will most definitively increase to offset the volume of cars sold decreasing.
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Google has been working on driverless cars for a few years now. The obvious selling point is that the cars will be much safer without a human behind the wheel.
Currently, a car spends 96% of its time idle. Compare that with planes which spend almost their entire lifetime in operation/airborne. Idle planes aren't making money, and they need to recoup their hefty $120M price tag. There is an unforgiving economic incentive to make sure it is always in use.
The proliferation of driverless cars will have a similar effect. Cars will spend less time idle: why would a household buy 2 (or even 3) cars, when they only need 1? Ride to work, then send the car home to your spouse. Need to go grocery shopping, but your kid also needs a ride to a soccer game? No problem, a driverless car can handle that.
What will begin as households cutting back to a single car, will expand. Why would a family need an entire car to themselves? That's crazy! It may start as extended family in the same area sharing cars, then neighbors sharing cars, and then entire apartment/condo complexes in cities offering driverless cars bundled into their HOA/rent.[2]
The operating percent of a car will go from 4% to that 96%. But back to my leading statement: there are unintended consequences. Parked cars will be a relic from the past. What happens to car insurance prices if a driver is no longer part of the equation? And if cars are receiving 20 times more actual use, that would imply that there would be 20 times less cars sold.[1] This is the kind of disruptive change that can reshape the automotive industry. The recent GM/Chrysler bailout may have been for naught.[3]
[1] Of course, this isn't exactly the case, as the cars would need to be replaced more often due to nonstop usage, but the point stands.
[2] Hell, I'd share a car with my condo complex. I currently don't own a car, I walk or take taxis basically everywhere.
[3] Of course, car companies realize this. And I can guarantee you, they will lobby against driverless cars.Are 3.9 GB Updates the New Norm?
I had some free time tonight so I decided to play a little Battlefield 3. I go to BattleLog and it tells me I have to update the game first to play. So I start the update and notice that its a 3.9 GB download! Wow.
I can't imagine why the update needs to be that large. I think I'm having to download the whole game again just to update it. Thank goodness I'm not on a metered internet connection.
EDIT:
Dice says the reason that the download is because "it contains most of the content for Back to Karkand".
I guess the download isn't so bad after all.
Why I Love Hardware Virtualization
Earlier today I got an email from Amazon letting me know that one of my instances was experiencing "degraded performance" due to a hardware failure. They recommended that I stop and restart the instance so that it would be automatically migrated to new hardware.
So, I logged into AWS to check to see if the instance got removed from my Elastic Load Balancer like it should have. Turns out it WAS automatically removed. I simply force stopped the instance and brought it back online and the problem was solved.
Summary:
Hardware Failure was fixable with one click and resulted in ZERO downtown. Gotta love it.Maxing out Your Free Dropbox Account with Adwords
I'm currently attempting to max out my free Dropbox account by buying some AdWords that use my referral link. I'll update this if I get any results.
UPDATE:
Well I spent about $35 and got up to 11.5GB of space. I think I probably would have had better results without spending as much money, but I think some other people were trying to do the same thing at the time so we essentially got in a bidding war and drove the CPC up. I'll probably try again to get to 16GB in a couple of months.Don't Trust Django With Indexes
Don't Trust Django With Indexes
Note to self: Do not trust Django to set up your database indexes correctly! It really has no concept of what should be indexed and what shouldn't. The only thing it gets right is the table id (obviously) and any model fields you set as unique.
I've read things about this before, but sort of put defining my indexes on the back burner. You would think it would pick up CharFields with "choices" defined and things like that, but it doesn't.The Query of Despair
Oh man. I know I've encountered something like this before. So many developers have absolutely no experience writing decent SQL. Its getting even worse these days with the prevalence of ORMs in all the big frameworks. When they do have to actually write a query, they just throw syntax together until it works, even if it ends up looking like this and taking 18 hours to run:
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Query-of-Despair.aspxThe Query of Despair - The Daily WTF
The Query of Despair. 2011-10-24. by Alex Papadimoulis in CodeSOD (204 Comments). Jeroen's colleague had the misfortune of being assigned to debug an intermittent, unspecified error in the one of ...
The Mac App Store scares me.
People are saying "If you don't want to deal with sandboxing, just don't publish on the Mac App Store, publish via the internet just like we always have.". But, what happens when, in a few years, the average mac user is trained to think that the Mac App Store is the only place they can get new apps? That effectively removes the "publish on the internet" option if you want your software to actually be used. This app store trend is getting more scary by the day.
Apple pushes back sandboxing deadline as devs struggle with tradeoffs
Apple has given developers a few extra months to move their apps to use Lion's new sandboxing functionality. Beginning March 1: no sandbox, no Mac App Store. And although there are security upsides, t...
Weekend Project: Plusify
I've been wanting to redo my home page so it has a simple blog, but I didn't want to have yet another place to remember to post stuff to. I saw people like +Kevin Rose were using their Google+ profiles as their home pages. I liked the general idea of that, but still wanted my own domain.
I ended up hacking together a simple script that you can stick in a web directory that creates a blog/homepage that is powered by your public Google+ posts. I'm calling it Plusify. It's easily theme-able and has the added benefit of backing up your public Google+ posts to a SQLite database.
I noticed that +Daniel Treadwell created a Wordpress plugin and a service called Pluss.es to do something similar, but I didn't want a full Wordpress install just to run my dinky blog. Also, I wanted to continue to host my blog, so Pluss.es was out as well.
Disclaimer:
I normally do web stuff with Python these days, but I used PHP for this because more web hosts support it. I've only spent a few hours working on this, so don't hate if you don't like the code or product. Also, I'm no designer so you'll probably think the default theme is ugly.
Maybe +Jordan Gadapee or +Noah Hayes will be willing to contribute a better default theme if people start to use this.
There is still work to do on it and it probably has some bugs, but I think its a pretty good start for only a few hours work. I've open sourced the code, so you can fork it at: https://github.com/lylepratt/Plusify
If you're reading this at my website, then you've seen what this script does. Otherwise, you can see an example at:
http://lylepratt.comPlusify - Your blog powered by Google+
this is insanity
Today's adjustment to the government's HARP program to get anything with a pulse as close to the discount window as possible was not the only proposal to revive the moribund US housing market. Accordi...
Been waiting on this for a few months!
Sencha Touch 2 Developer Preview | Blog | Sencha
Sencha. Products. Ext JS 4; Ext GWT; Ext Designer; Ext Core; Sencha Touch; Sencha Animator; Sencha.io. Support. Sencha Care; Sencha Services. Training. On-site Courses; Open Enrollment. Company. Overv...
MOAR RAIN!
Texas rain: 'Like manna from heaven'
John Hall, a rancher in the drought-stricken Texas Panhandle, got an unexpected call from his 81-year-old mother on Thursday morning:
Awesome press for Better Voicemail!
Biz Profile: Voicemail Service Targets Realtors | AustinPost.org
Serving a niche market, Austin startup Better Voicemail hopes to compete with similar services by tailoring touch tone options...
I don't think the fact that Motorola Mobility makes all the cable set top boxes is getting enough...
I don't think the fact that Motorola Mobility makes all the cable set top boxes is getting enough attention.
Just tried Chome to Phone for the first time. Very convenient!
This is all really getting ridiculous...
Hacker News | Forestall the "Debt Crisis": Mint a 5 Trillion Dollar Coin
Need a job? Move to Texas.
Reshared post from Robert Scoble DEVELOPERS: Check out Fwix, they are geotagging the net and m...
Reshared post from Robert Scoble
Linking all the place ids together is solving a huge, huge problem. go fwix.
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DEVELOPERS: Check out Fwix, they are geotagging the net and making APIs you can use to make new kinds of location-based applications. Here's more from founder/CEO Darian Shirazi.Fwix is geotagging the entire Internet, here's more about this API
Darian Shirazi, founder/CEO of http://fwix.com/ is adding geotags to tons of things on the Internet. Here he explains how Fwix is doing that, and how developers can use its APIs to build new kinds of location-based applications.
Finally making the switch to nginX and I'm being blown away by its performance compared to Apache...
Finally making the switch to nginX and I'm being blown away by its performance compared to Apache. Why didn't I do this sooner?
