Posts filed under “Technology”
The truth about Free APIs (via Nat Torkington, O'Reilly Radar)
Nat Torkington has a great post about free APIs. Like, the elusive free lunch, there’s no such thing as a free API. Given Google’s decision to deprecate the Search API and the Alexa/Statsaholic situation, Nat’s post is timely and spot-on. For these reasons, there’s no such thing as a free API if you’re looking to [...]
Functional Specs Matter
As part of the feature definition process, I’ve been focused on writing quick functional specs with wireframes and data requirements to facilitate discussions with developers and our tester on what we’re trying to accomplish from a product perspective. This process is proving to be extremely valuable, even in a quasi-Agile, get something up quickly and [...]
Great Post on What's Next (via Brad Burnham, Union Square Ventures)
Brad Burnham has a great post (which I found via Fred Wilson’s blog) about what’s coming next in the inevitable progression of the computer industry. He argues that we’re in a world where we no longer care about hardware or software but rather we care about data (Think Facebook, Craigslist). After data, he suggests that [...]
Sysinternals – If you're running Windows, you should check them out
There’s a great post on Michael.net about Sysinternals – Michael has listed each one with a brief description about what they do. It saves you a couple of hundred clicks on Microsoft’s site. These are a collection of utilities (that were acquired by Microsoft) that let you really see what’s going on in your computer. [...]
Social Networks – Inference is better than asking
It’s far more powerful if a system or website can let a user register, fill out a profile and then tell them who they should consider connecting to. This way, the system generates immediate me-value for the user. As soon as the profile is filled out, there’s a payoff. LinkedIn does a great job with [...]
Content Links from Amazon
I just got a note from Amazon with the following information in it: Context Links are a quick and convenient way to add links to your website and monetize your content. Context Links automatically identify and link relevant phrases within your page content to Amazon products, unlocking new ad inventory and saving you the time [...]
Music Label for Videogames (via WSJ)
The WSJ has an interesting article this morning (username/pw required) about¬† EA forming a music label to sign artists for video game soundtracks. I don’t know much about this field, but this is fascinating. the green hornet film divx Although Artwerk is not focusing exclusively on music for videogames, the first signed artist is Junkie [...]
How Amazon Does A/B Testing (via the Winery Web Site Report et al.)
One of Brad’s posts led me to The Winery Website Report Blog which so far has been fantastic. The initial post was about “failing to address a point of pain” in talking about the ‘hiatus’ of the Winery Report. It led me to a post titled “What should you put on your home page?” In [...]
Got Blist?
Matt gave Dave and I a quick demo of Blist’s software last week and I have to say I came away very impressed with what they’ve been working on. They’ve clearly thought a lot about the user experience and it shows. They’ve innovated a lot on the UI front and I saw some things I [...]
Biometrics to the rescue
There’s a hilarious post by Eric Sink about setting secure passwords and fingerprint sensors that you have to read. It’s very reminiscent of the old “I’ll put this in a safe place” at which point of course, you promptly proceed to forget it. downloadable films megamind