Mobile Dad

Well not long after I posted the idea of social search engines and Sean’s Web 2.0 argument, Google launched their social search initiative in Labs today.  The idea is that along with your usual results from Google, you will now also get information about your search from your social circle.  Will Google succeed where so many has failed?  Time will tell.

Finally, something to get excited about for my PS3 and it was not Sony who did the work.

Remember when I told you I would be first in line if Netflix made a disc for PS3?  Well lied, I was probably not the first but none the less, I am eagerly waiting for my disc in the mail.  Thank you Netflix, the PS3 is your blu-ray slave, and soon it will be able to stream as well.  Playon has one less thing to push to my PS3.

Sean Parker, a partner at Founder’s Fund, presented at the Web 2.0 Summit that stirred a lot of conversation on the tech blogsphere.  How can one person stir up so much noise?

Sean’s presentation titled, The New Era of Network Services, theorize that the internet is methodically shifting away from information services that aggregates data toward network services that gather social relevance.  What made the above statement interesting is where he defined current web powerhouses like Google. Google is an information service that has served a valid purpose in the current web strategy but may not be a factor as the web evolves:

To be clear, he thinks Google will stay huge and relevant, but it’s dominance will go down because collecting data is less valuable than connecting people.

Is it bold to make the statement that Google will lose relevance? No, just a reality check that should make Google pay attention, something that Microsoft did not do 10 years ago.

continue reading…

Back in the day, I use to put 20 dollars aside every week.  It was my happy money.  My friends and I would forgo lunch and head out to Bestbuy on Tuesdays to pick up a just released DVD.  During that night, and almost every subsequent night thereafter, I would watch the just purchased DVD over and over till I have memorized most of the dialog and looped killer scenes for A/V demos.  I was proud of my DVD collection, that all changed with Netflix.  Even though I have moved on to Blu-ray, I have not purchased a movie in three years.  Why bother? continue reading…

The LSRC has definitely gotten better for me as I am now developing a stronger understanding of not just Rails but Ruby. I am still not a hardcore developer but I am thinking that will change this year. This year the focus was on how to make things move faster, here is what I learned:

• Ruby 1.9 feature set will include multilingualization!
• Code coverage, though important may not reflect the true status of how stable your code
• Complexity metric should be part of your suite of tests
• FLOG your code! A cool way to discover where complexity lies within your MVC
• Metric will help establish priorities with work but the use of metrics should be within the dev team and not from a manager hoping for full coverage!
• Social thing to help, explain your code! useful for others to get up to speed on your work and keeps you focus on why you code the way you did
• Use Heckle! It mutates your code and tries to make test fail, gotta try that!
• Ruby community is embracing cloud computing
• PoolParty is one tool to work in a cloud
• Keynote of Matz was great, you can see that though he is very pleased with the adaption of Ruby, there was a subtle worry in him about Rails. Rails has always been push as a quick web framework to create web apps without learning Ruby and the focus is RAILS over Ruby. It was obvious Matz would like the focus shift back to the elegance of Ruby to strengthen the quality of the developer rather than speed. He seems genuinely sincere and humble. A calmness about him is a stark contrast to the rebel attitude of the community.
• github adds the nice social branching to your code base that allows simple branching and joining of code. SVN can do this but not as elegant nor practical.
• PacketFu is crazy cool for security folks. Killer features, will most likely be part of Metasploit

Very cool conference. Now I am all energize to expand my Ruby knowledge! Need to go to more of these to stay motivated!!!