Archive for April, 2010
It could easily be just me, but I do not go to LinkedIn to get traditional news. In fact, that’s the last thing I would have ever associated with LinkedIn. That’s why I do not understand in the slightest why they would add so many link sharing features recently.
To get world news I usually turn to my favorite link aggregator: popurls.com. If I want to get the latest industry news, then I go to my Twitter account, where I’ve hand-picked developers and experts that I want to follow (with some friends thrown in there for good measure, of course!). If I want to get the latest news about what my friends, there’s clearly Facebook.
LinkedIn, on the other hand, is really about professional news in your network. If I want to keep in touch with a professional contact, or look up what someone is up to these days, that’s the first place I would go.
Just like you can’t out-Amazon Amazon or out-Walmart Walmart, you can’t out-Twitter Twitter. Facebook is having a similar problem, but at least they’re doing their own things as well.
LinkedIn should just realize who and what they are and what they are about and optimize everything they do around that. Who needs feature creep? No one.
April 27, 2010
Personally, whenever I start on a new project, I like to create the data model first. Basically, a data model can be the hardest thing to change later, so before any development work is done, this should be taken care of.
Of course, along the way, more changes and additions are going to happen to this data model, just like any area in software development. However, a data model is the most likely to remain consistent because when created properly, in mirrors and abstracts real-world objects, and the closer that model and abstraction are to the real-world object, the fewer changes need to be made.
For example, when working on an MVC platform, the first thing I like to do is create all of the models that I’m going to use (or at least have thought of using for this iteration of the project). Of course, which methods you’re going to need to add to those models are mostly undetermined, but having the models themselves ready to be used within the application immediately gives the developer a better understanding of the real-world objects he is going to be working with.
Data is the foundation of most applications and software, so working on the first, like in construction, only means you have to do less work later.
April 21, 2010
I recently got to play with an iPad. To start off, I do like Apple products. I’m not a crazy fanboy who think they are the end-all or be-all, but I personally prefer them. This could come from any number of things, including growing up on Macs.
That said, when the iPad was first announced, I thought it was a little silly. I wasn’t quite sure what the point was or how useful it could actually be. I did realize quickly that I’m not the demographic that they were even going for with it. It’s not about people who are looking for a full computer, whether those people are developers or not.
I also realize that it’s not about people who are looking to type up papers and write emails all day. The iPad is really about consuming content and information. Yes, it’s been said before, and people make that out to be a bad thing, like you’re a sheep ready to be controlled.
Sure, you can look at it that way. You’re being force-fed media from major corporations, blah blah blah. However, the strength of the iPad is the choice. This, like any other computer or device connected to the Internet lets people choose what they’re looking for and looking at.
A user can just as easily consume a video posted on Vimeo or any other HTML5 video-enabled site as they can buy a TV show from the iTunes store. The idea that someone is trapped is becoming more and more a scare tactic.
Consumption is not a bad thing when the consumer chooses what to consume, and very few people are actually content creators online. So making a product that caters to those consumers is really not a bad thing. In fact, it’s probably the most obvious thing, and it’s amazing someone hasn’t done it before.
April 6, 2010
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