I moved from WestHost.com to MediaTemple’s Grid Server last night. I’m still working out some of the wonkiness. I think most of the big issues (like every link being a broken link) are fixed.
If you notice something’s awry, let me know.
I’ve been splitting time between Twitter and Plurk lately and having discussions about online communities, incentives, and rewards.
One of Plurk’s signature features is “Karma,” a rewards system that awards or removes points based on how users interact with the Plurk community.
Plurking daily builds karma. Taking a few hours or a few days away can lower karma. Having plurk-arrhea lowers karma. Invite your friends and your karma goes up. Get de-friended, and your karma goes down. Get your friend request rejected and you lose some more.
Karma, then, is a system that rewards users who practice good community behaviors — being active, but not obnoxious — and penalizes those who don’t.
Cyndy Aleo-Carreira’s post on Silicon Valley’s wealth disparities is a reminder to all of us relatively privileged geeks that we are not necessarily our audience.
When people complain about a Web 2.0 app or service, the response is often “build it yourself.” The problem is that most of us in the world can’t afford to start up a company, because the jobs that pay the bills take up too much time. There’s a luxury in having enough money put away that you can start a company, and a luxury in being able to start one while you keep a day job that doesn’t take up too much time and energy on top of family.
I was reminded of this Christmas day when showing my cousin a camera phone photo that I captured and uploaded from a beach in Anguilla on my brand new iPod Touch. I wasn’t trying to show off as much as I was trying to share a beautiful photo.
Her comment — something about “rich people” and I ain’t rich — stung. But it reminded me just how well-off I actually am compared to most Americans in general, and most Black Americans in particular.
How does this translate to tech? Part of creating relevant tools is understanding the context in which they will be used and the ways in which people may bend them to suit their circumstances. Money is a big factor in most peoples’ circumstances. It’s the difference between the free phone and a quad-band GSM smartphone with a camera, and WiFi capabilities. It’s the difference between an entry-level Windows machine and anything Apple. It’s having the internet on your phone and not. In other words, it’s everything. And we need to be careful not to lose sight of this.
On the heels of Molly’s post Hooters: Not A Fair Place to Speak Geek, we have the how-not-to post from Tom Morris on women and geek dinners.
What with the smoking ban and the fact that Hooters (etc.) is not everywhere, you cannot rely on the venue alone to make sure women don’t turn up. The best way is to let them turn up and then act like a complete arse to make sure they don’t come back. This takes some work. The first way to do it is to make sure you make some offensive assumptions. They are there to accompany their boyfriend or husband. They are new and inexperienced.
Just brilliant. [Via Molly]
Meet Plurk, another Twitter-like microblogging service. It’s a fairly new addition to a space that also includes Pownce and Jaiku.
After using it for a few hours, I’m torn between loving Plurk’s take on the 140-character update and thinking there’s just too much interface. Plurk does some things beautifully — the Getting Started Guide — for example. And yet, when compared to the simpler Twitter interface, I can’t decide whether Plurk’s features are cool or superfluous.
Plurk takes the microblog post and contextualizes it by placing it on a scrolling timeline.
Within the timeline you can view your posts and your friends’ posts. Mousing over an entry reveals the post’s content. The timeline scrolls either with arrow buttons (visible on hover) or by dragging.
More…
With this book, PM and blogger Meri Williams takes readers through the process of project management. Chapter one gives an overview of the discipline and makes a case for its necessity. Chapters 2 - 5 cover a typical project life cycle: discovery, initiation, planning, change management, and closing a project.
It’s not just a book about managing projects, however. Williams puts an emphasis on management as we typically think about the word. Interpersonal skills and communication are consistent themes in each chapter. Williams reminds us in one chapter that not everyone is a techno-savvy e-mail or instant messaging junkie. In another, she points out that we should clear convey our definition of “complete.”
At just over 200 pages (including the index), The Principles of Project Management is by no means a definitive look at the practice. You won’t become a Certified Project Management Professional after reading it.
What Williams has achieved, however, is a fantastic step-by-step guide to making your next project run smoothly.
The big news out of Google this week this week’s Google’s I/O gathering is yesterday’s release of Google’s AJAX Libraries API. With this move, Google becomes a content delivery network (CDN) for several popular JavaScript libraries.
Why should you care? Speed. Using Google as a framework repository means:
Those are two key factors in your site’s performance.
Google has also committed itself to managing and hosting multiple versions of these libraries, including bug fixes.
We work with the key stake holders for these libraries to make sure that the latest stable versions of their work get into our system as they are released. Once we host a release of a given library, we are committed to hosting that release indefinitely.
The search giant has also made it easy to switch versions with its “smart versioning” system that lets you load either a major or a minor version of your preferred library. To date, it supports:
Google’s offer to host and serve these libraries is similar to what Yahoo offers users of its User Interface library. Google, however, is adding these third-party libraries to its API family.
Keep in mind that Ajax Libraries API was designed to smooth integration between these libraries and other Google APIs. Therefore you’ll need a Google Account and a Google API key. Whether or not you plan to use the search or maps APIs may determine whether you’ll want to use this one.
What do you think about Google’s move? Is this something you plan to take advantage of? Have your say in the comments.
