Blog Profile / Smarterware
| URL : | http://smarterware.org/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Technology | |
| Posts on Regator: | 237 | |
| Posts / Week: | 1.4 | |
| Archived Since: | February 26, 2010 | |
Blog Post Archive
See You on All About Android
It's the New Year and for me that means a new show: starting tomorrow, January 8th, I'm the newest co-host of All About Android alongside Jason Howell and Ron Richards. AAA is "your weekly source for the latest news, hardware, and apps for the Android faithful." I should admit upfront: I'm an Android unfaithful. I [...]
2012 Year in Review: Before and After Baby
Few events leave such a big mark on your personal timeline that they split your life story into two parts: before and after. This year, the birth of my daughter Etta did just that. A year ago I would have said that our long journey to pregnancy made me more than ready for parenthood. What [...]
How to Make a Baby
This article originally appeared in issue 2 of The Magazine. Choosing a sperm donor is a little bit like setting up an Xbox avatar. You begin by deciding on the ethnicity, hair color, and eye color of the fellow whose sperm you’d like to combine with your egg to make your baby. Then you enter [...]
Best Launch Ever: Etta Rebecca Bailey
My life just got its biggest upgrade yet. My daughter, Etta Rebecca Bailey, was born on September 18th. She is named after five of the most extraordinary women who have ever lived: her Aunt Loretta, Nonna Loretta, Grandma Becky, Great Grandma Marcella Etta, and of course, the wonderful Etta James. After a harrowing early delivery [...]
Todo.txt for Android Gets Archiving, Swipe to Complete
Just uploaded an extensive update to Todo.txt for Android to the Google Play Store! Todo.txt for Android now archives completed tasks, supports swipe-to-complete, has smarter Dropbox sync, and looks great on the Nexus 7. Now that the app can archive tasks to done.txt, it's officially feature-complete, version 1.0. You can use it completely independent of [...]
The ‘Busy’ Trap
Link: The ‘Busy’ TrapThe NY Times' Tim Kreider's defense of idleness: Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness [...]
From Amateur to Pro with PHP the Right Way
At ThinkUp, we've produced a lot of developer documentation on how to write great PHP code, the kind of code that's worthy of acceptance into the project. But if I were to suggest a general list of PHP best practices, I could not have done a better job than Josh Lockhart's PHP (The Right Way). [...]
How to Stop Being Paranoid About AppAnnie
On our third episode of In Beta, Kevin and I discussed webapps that require you to enter your username and password to accounts that can move your money around or purchase items—namely, Mint.com and AppAnnie. My concern, with AppAnnie in particular, was that while the app promises to only use your account to read app [...]
That Old “Design by Committee” Chestnut
It bugs me when technologists automatically blame subpar creative work on "design by committee." Individuals can make mediocre stuff just as easily as groups can make mediocre stuff. The effectiveness of a group doing creative work depends on whether or not there's a clear vision and strong leadership. Just because it's a group doesn't mean [...]
IFTTT Recipe for Todo.txt
Link: IFTTT Recipe for Todo.txtNick Barrett's handy If This Then That recipe adds an item to the todo.txt file in your Dropbox via GChat. Clever.
Bret Slatkin on Owning Your Content
Bret Slatkin, Googler and co-creator of PubSubHubbub, talks briefly about his vision of decentralized sharing, where users publish on their own web site and push that content to each other without relying solely on a centralized service like Twitter or Facebook. Looks like he's walking the talk, too. Slatkin appears to publish everything to his [...]
The Woman in the Facebook Frat House
Link: The Woman in the Facebook Frat HouseMore interesting than the fact that the photo was taken and posted on Facebook is that it didn't occur to anyone in the office that there was anything wrong with it, or that it revealed something unattractive about the culture of Facebook. As Mark wrote on his business [...]
Owning Your Own Words – Is It Important?
Link: Owning Your Own Words – Is It Important?Paul Ford: I don't presume my work is important, but it is important to me. There is so much latent value in our own personal databases of words, links, ideas, emails, likes, photos, IMs, tweets, posts, titles, subtitles—so many connections to be made and so much data [...]
New Podcast Coming Your Way: In Beta
Exciting news! I'm starting a new tech podcast with my pal Kevin Purdy next week. It's called In Beta, and the first episode airs live on Tuesday. Here's the official show description: In Beta is a talk show about the ever-changing state of web-based and open source software. We examine how "ship first, fix later" [...]
Please Do Learn How to Propose Better Solutions
In a post entitled Please Don't Learn How to Code, software developer Jeff Atwood argues that the "everyone should learn programming" meme has gotten out of control, and that most people don't need to learn how to code. I mostly disagree with Atwood's premise and land on Benjamin Stein's side of the argument. Coding teaches [...]
Inclusive Tech Companies Win the Talent War
Why aren't there more women in technology? Hmm, let's see if Twitter can help us find out.
How to Tell if Your Tech Salary is Fair
Link: How to Tell if Your Tech Salary is FairMost people have no idea what the market rate or prevailing wage is for their profession and career level, much less where they fall on the pay scale.I’m tired of fluffy unvetted career advice, so I’ve sourced and linked to ten ways you can determine what [...]
“Gangbang Interviews” and “Bikini Shots”: Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem
Link: “Gangbang Interviews” and “Bikini Shots”: Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem"Want to bro down and crush code?" No.
Minimizations Women Say
The Shit Girls Say meme blew up because all of us vaguely recognize the high school/college-age woman who says those things. The meme is also highly annoying because it implies "girls" are airheads. I prefer a more constructive commentary on female speaking patterns, which is why I loved a recent podcast interview with Tara Mohr, [...]
Kevin Kelly on What You Don’t Have To Do
As you educate yourself about your own talent and ambitions, you graduate from doing a task right to doing the right task. It takes some experience to realize that a lot of work is better left undone. It might be busywork that is performed out of habit, or it might be work that is heading [...]