twitter Twitter: Niche Advertising That Actually Works Advertising is all about getting information about a company/product/service in front of a demographically appropriate audience to tease them into spending money on said product/service. When everyone used to spend most of their time in front of a live broadcast television, television ads were used to convey
startup Startups and Benefits Gnip is approaching its one year anniversary, and we're in the process of evaluating potential new benefit options to offer employees. I surveyed a few local startups, as well as some early stage VCs, to get their take on how they handle things. The results surprised me. The
hardware Dell Inspiron Mini Server Issues Awhile ago my old Dell Inspiron 1000 laptop's hard-drive failed, so I decided to upgrade it to the Dell Inspiron Mini 9". I need a machine that can sit in a crawlspace under the house, with the lid closed, and run 24/7 as my weather station
career Anecdotes, Advice & Context Anecdotes and advice are everywhere; always flying off of plenty of lips. I have a few friends in various stages of starting companies, and they're soliciting my advice on various topics. I spoke in front of the Tech Stars for a Day [http://www.techstars.org/techstars-for-a-day/boulder/
handset The Mess of Carriers, Handsets, App Stores & Consumers. I remember the day my mother brought home her first cell phone. It was the true brick (pictured here), and looking back it was the result of the carriers of the day defining the handset as a product that would run on their network, and having someone build it for
aging Three things that have changed my health When I hit my 30's (I'm 35 now), my body started changing; again. The last time I morphed so significantly was puberty. I noticed my total invincibility and immortality being called into question after hard bike rides, or rock climbs. I thought "what!?!?," what
programming Streams I just got a question via email that threw me back to my days at Netscape/Mozilla implementing nsIStreamConverter [http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/netwerk/streamconv/public/nsIStreamConverter.idl] . The question is "how do I process streamed data?" There are many answers, but I thought I'
clouds Customer Support and Clouds You know your business is becoming a commodity when your competitor differentiation becomes "better customer support." If you get to this point, you better be a significant marketshare player in your space otherwise the end is near. Decent customer support is very expensive, and therefore very few firms,
testing Testing 1, 2, 3 Gnip received a request to go over how we "test." I hope the following is useful. While we don't practice TDD (Test Driven Development) outright, I'd consider us in that vein. We are test heavy, and many of our tests are written before the
work Öm My experience at Gnip has tested me in uncountable ways. From technical capabilities, leadership, and work-life balance, to trouble sleeping due to inability to turn my brain off at night as I churn on our challenges. What I've resolved as the most important thing for me to master
programming Gnip: What's worked well, and what hasn't. Gnip's almost a year old. That combined with a great week which included a stellar board meeting, technical clarity around specific areas, business/requirements clarity around specific areas, and an impending big release motivated this blog post. We have built an amazing back plane that's driving
stimulus Dear Federal Government: Invest in Schools When you're scrambling to figure out how to inject nearly a trillion dollars into an ailing economy, please consider some of the more obvious "trickle down" venues for spending (yes I'm fully aware of who coined "trickle down" and that it was
technology Estimating Code (Stories) I've worked in several "Agile" development teams over the years; from developer, to manager. Estimates are always one of the challenging things around software; both development's actual estimates (making them is very hard), as well as management's interpretation/understanding of them. Some
I can't believe I have to say this... I assume everyone around me has the same thoughts, background, and experiences as myself, buzzing around in their heads. I'm always amazed when I discover this isn't true. Note, the sarcasm . I just noticed something disturbing in a demographic I wouldn't have expected to
firefox HOW-TO: Force incompatible Firefox Add-ons to Install If you ride Firefox versions harder and faster than add-on developers upgrade their add-ons for compatibility, this post is for you. Firefox add-ons include their Firefox version compatibility within their .xpi install file. Often developers will put a "maxVersion" field in their add-on to mitigate potential compatibility issues
nutrition Food Portion Sizes If you've ever had a meal out-to-eat with me you've heard me complain about the portion size of food served at restaurants; it's disgusting! Please join me in a campaign to halve serving sizes at restaurants. We, as a society, need to end this
Holiday's and Communication A holiday party conversation with relatives last night kicked up the "why would someone use Twitter" and "why do the kids text message so much" questions again. There's nothing like getting four generations in a room to illustrate severe communication differences. The older generations
cafes Update: American cafes, service, and tipping Last year I posted about how cafés in the US lack table service [/american-cafes-service-and-tipping]. I'm pleased to report that my favorite joint in Boulder, Laughing Goat, has started offering table service in the evening. Finally someone in town stepping it up. Thanks LG!
seo SEO? A sad artifact of search engines having become the navigation paradigm for the web, is that gaming the system came into vogue. Carpetbaggers in the form of SEO "experts" started manipulating content to get better search engine rankings, and selling their wares to unsuspecting websites wanting "better
addons Browser Innovation Hark back to the early home computing days when the apps that came with a computer were built/owned by the operating system vendor. Now think about the product landscape and OS advancements that have taken place over the past 20 years. Those advancements and innovations were purely a function
_The_ bubble has burst. Do you think the "Internet bubble" pop was bad? Assuming so, you haven't seen anything yet. The recent investment banking collapse will change our lives for decades to come. I've been trying to coax out a blog post on this topic for a few
programming Anatomy of a shared memory node failure. After my previous post about teams [/teams-rookies-vets], I quickly received several requests to provide more details. Voici! Gnip's redundant; you can walk up to any of our cloud instances, vaporize it, and Gnip chugs along its merry way. We use shared memory (via TerraCotta) to replicate memory across
programming Teams, Rookies & Vets A week ago, almost to the minute, the following message was generated by an internal Gnip monitoring server, and sent to the person on-call. ** PROBLEM alert - production-head2/production-head2-gnip is CRITICAL ** It was the start to a very long, non-stop, few days at Gnip. Much of the rapport on your
Load me, tease me, please me. Someone kicked computer start/restart/boot times into the media again. Last time I saw this much mainstream media coverage on this topic was a decade or so ago; before I had turned into a Mac user. To cut to the chase, if you're tired of booting/restarting
conference From Defrag to Glue; simplicity I was on the last Defrag '08 [http://defragcon.com/2008/] panel yesterday and I had a blast! We were talking about "glue [http://www.foundrygroup.com/blog/archives/2008/03/theme-glue.php]" as a promotion of next year's Glue conference [http://gluecon.com/]. Geir
