Great Hackers

August 11, 2010 by Ryan Garver Leave a Comment

Great Hackers.

This is an old article, but I finally got around to reading it from my Instapaper queue.  Very well reasoned descriptions about a number of topics.  The main goal of the article is to describe what companies can do to inspire both the hiring and continued working of great software developers.  I completely agree with what he has to say here and I hope I can create the kind of environment he describes for the developers on my team.

Create an environment that promotes inspiration and focus and discourages boredom and distraction.

Filed under agility, work life Tagged with , ,

HTML5 Brief: in one paragraph | Alex Kessinger

August 9, 2010 by Ryan Garver Leave a Comment

HTML5 Brief: in one paragraph | Alex Kessinger.

Amen.

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Google Wave: why we didn’t use it

August 7, 2010 by Ryan Garver Leave a Comment

Google Wave: why we didn’t use it.

I really am disappointed that Google Wave has failed.  I think the Ars article does a good job of summarizing why it didn’t really take off despite the best press you could ask for not to mention Google backing it.

I’m still hopeful that the underlaying protocol can still be salvaged in some alternate clients.  It really would be interesting to see it reanimated in a different form by someone else.  Even if it were just added as a new account type in Mail.app or iChat and literally only provided feature parity with that tool initially, that might be a more logical progression to introducing what should be a more powerful and flexible communication protocol.  This will also give users a better understood starting point and we can more gradually figure out what people what to be able to do and how they want to do it along the way.  The fully baked solution the Google’s implementation provided really didn’t enjoy much user feedback to influence its development until way too late in the process.

Filed under software, software design, user interface Tagged with , , ,

The Future of Startup Funding

August 7, 2010 by Ryan Garver Leave a Comment

The Future of Startup Funding.

Paul Graham makes some interesting points about the trends that are starting to emerge in the investing space.  I will be the first to admit that my experience with investors and investment rounds is pretty limited and largely theoretical; I’ve seen the process from afar.

Since joining ProFounder and getting a much broader view of the fundraising landscape I tend to agree with the points in the article.  Moreover, I’m excited that we are addressing a number of the points made specifically around speed and traction.  ProFounder puts the raise on a timeline with clear milestones along the way.  There also isn’t a notion of a “lead investor”.  The investors are recruited by the business owner explicitly which puts the most motivated person in control of the investor flow.

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Google CEO Schmidt: “People Aren’t Ready for the Technology Revolution”

August 5, 2010 by Ryan Garver Leave a Comment

Google CEO Schmidt: “People Aren’t Ready for the Technology Revolution”.

I saw this and an infographic from GigaOm that seemed to go well together

By The Numbers: Our Very Connected, Always-On World

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Hoptoad and Javascript, Sitting in a Tree, S-E-N-D-I-N-G – GIANT ROBOTS SMASHING INTO OTHER GIANT ROBOTS

August 5, 2010 by Ryan Garver Leave a Comment

Hoptoad and Javascript, Sitting in a Tree, S-E-N-D-I-N-G – GIANT ROBOTS SMASHING INTO OTHER GIANT ROBOTS.

I’m really excited about this new feature of HopToad.  I’ve played around with ExceptionHub but it was missing some important features like team management.  Leveraging HopToad to do this kind of JavaScript/browser level error tracking really cleanly combines two useful and similar tools for debugging a running system.

I should add that I echo the concerns of some of the commenters on the linked to blog post about security concerns.  It would be helpful if ThoughtBot followed this up with a post to address this concern in a bit more detail.

All in all though, this is nice

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