Test like there is no tomorrow

Why have a series of meetings, when you can set up a test in minutes or seconds?

Why is it so scary to let go, and test your way forward?

i'm not young enough to know everything

- that's an Oscar Wilde quote taking the place of the title, having just heard it on Podcastle as I jumped off to get some thoughts in line here. Just realized the backlog and schedule was all out of content. But there are still a handfull of drafts to go - and then Pocket is filling up with good ideas and inspiration, so it looks like 2012 will be passed in terms of actual posts by the end of June.

Summer is a time of long afternoons stretching right into the night - half an hour to go for midnight, and still pretty light outside, a grey and rosy tint to the clouds. It is also a time for more reading of books on the Kindle in the sun, than skimming twitter and the web on an active screen like the ipad or laptop.

That might be why this quote is so suitable, from yet another Seth Godin post;

If you're upset that the hoi polloi are busy doing what you used to do, get better instead of getting angry.

Sure, you might feel entitled because you spent a lot of time (and perhaps a bit of effort) learning or getting access to things that were special - publishing a book, writing for a paper, designing visual or actual stuff - the list goes on. But now "everybody" can do it.

Doesn't mean they are going to be good at it.
Nor that they will be able to charge for it.

But it does mean that your nice little superior niche is busted wide open.
For some areas it means a lot more business - how many people make a living brewing coffee today?

For others it means a changing relation - being a wedding photographer amidst instagram and vine means you have to bring something more to the shoot, be it composition, scope or storytelling.

Just do it? Smarter, not harder.

taxi, taxi driver - drive me a story tonight

The result - a "moving" piece

Sometimes the simplest question begets the most amazing results. And this interactive represents one of those cases.

The background (as retold to / on Source) was simple enough, but represents a novel twist on the "and why should I care" conundrum;

My goal was to give the reader the experience of being down $120 and needing to earn that money back

How do you do that? Well, step by step is a nice starting point - and having a "running" meter beneth the map is a great way to connect the real world taxi with the visuals in the story

     var line = new Polyline();
        requestAnimationFrame(function() {
          var point = getNextPoint();
          line.addPoint(point);
        });

And here-in lies the beauty of the simple done good enough:

Speaking of judgment: this code is super duper non-optimized. It could be several orders of magnitude faster by throwing in some clever tricks and caches. But the fact is it works, and it works across platforms. That’s the most important requirement you face in a newsroom!

Everything could be made better, re-factored  generalized. But often times having that luxury would take time away from the functionality at hand. Just like a piece of journalism generally reads differently from a novel, and a studio produced movie looks better than a snap of a goal in a football match. Given the right time and resources everything can be polished, but often good is good enough. And something new every day is even better.

[src, via Source]

Kindle Reads? Good Fire?

The post on Open City, and thinking a bit more about openness, insights and sharing lead to this little wish list. Namely, how I'd love for Amazon and Goodreads to play together - for my reading, sharing, exploring and remembering pleasure.

Idea 1: wish shelf

Having the option of syncing each wishlist with a shelf, so one for non fic want to read, one for general genre fic, and one for darker tales.

Ideally books bought would move to another shelf, or into the "to read" mode.

Idea 2: my good

kindle.amazon works like a charm for looking up highlights, and for quickly updating the status of purchased books. It should be opened up or merged into Goodreads. Perhaps in an IFTTT kind of way, opening up the API for other stores as well.

Idea 3: wish buy

Not really related to Goodreads directly, but I find it really hard to understand why Amazon at all times neglects my purchasing behavior and signaling intent by using wish lists. 9 of the last 10 books bought have spent time on my wish list prior to the sale.

Then it would make sense to use that list as a basis for recommendations  It works that way for the regular cart.

But Kindle books don't play nice with the cart. Which is in a way another minor gripe, as I often buy 2-3 at once; why separate check out and receipt mail, not to mention separate debits of my card?

Idea 4: good app

Reading with the Kobo app can be a lot of fun, because it binds together the social, the metrics and the reading. It is no big deal, but having charts like Runkeeper for books and pages read, quotes shared and discussed would be nice. And pushing it into Goodreads with an open API would make even more sense, since readers are a small niche to begin with, the more the merrier.

What would you like to see? #kindleGood ?

- ...and the sun was away as this got underway, a small evening shower on Monday (still doing that schedule thang, and loving it) - but still warm enough by far to sit outside on the balcony letting the thoughts flow ...

The changed landscape of conferences and information - JavaZone 2012

Outdated as it is in terms of news value of the video, the main point I never wrote is still valid;

Not only are conference videos great for catching that one session in parallel that you didn't get to see, but they are are great tool to help build a brand.

First of all a brand for the conference, in this case JavaZone - showing potential speakers and participants how good and professional they are.

Secondly for the speakers themselves, enabling them to get more gigs, both in terms of speaking, freelance work or when considering greener pastures.

But lastly, as this example shows - it is a great way for a company like BEKK to show their total commitment to sharing knowledge, to openness, innovation and community. By putting up a huge number of links/clips they "prove" their position as one of the top both java and dev consultancies. For clients, for leads and for potential employees.

Her er videoene av BEKK-foredrag på årets JavaZone. RESTful security – Erlend Oftedal from JavaZone on Vimeo:

[src]  via BEKK Open

Push it out - pebble coming

Pebble started off with a rather humble kickstarter page - then it went truly viral and ended up with a "slight" over-signup:

$10,266,845
PLEDGED OF $100,000 GOAL

So much so in fact that they had to limit the number of backers for all the regular levels, meaning that in order to get a single watch you had to get in reasonably early. I almost missed it, thinking that there would surely be enough time before the deadline. But as I saw the numbers dropping of free slots it was a race against time. In the end I probably ended up with on of the five or so last slots on the table.

Now I'm looking forward to getting one, not sure if I will make my own tools or apps, but will surely skim the code - like they said in the video, the sub/pub style connections seem easy enough to set up and get (pun intended) running.

Already swapped from Motion GPS to Runkeeper for my bike trips, in anticipation of getting a proper "hud" feeling over the summer. Says a lot, happy enough with Motion and the data there, but playtime trumps pure utility.


On a side note there is a bike mount on its way from Deal Extreme so the phone will be getting a bit of an airing on its own prior to the pebble arrival



- ...and the sun shone for most of the day keeping it warm - but a steady wind up to 10 m/s gave a bit of wind chill...