I spotted the Tuesday Push idea and thought I’d have a look at PutPlace. I have been looking for a proper cloud-based backup service. Amazon S3 isn’t designed for backup and requires too much manual manipulation to make for a safe, regular and easy backup system.
So PutPlace sounded just right. I had heard the Mac version wasn’t ready but when I checked the help it said Vista, Mac etc. are all supported. Sadly this isn’t true, yet. I only found out though after signing up, verifying my account and going to the download page. I haven’t found anything on when the Mac client will be available. Soon as it is I’ll try it out. Till then, Windows only.
Joel reckons you have to be a programmer to run a software company because:
Watching nonprogrammers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn’t know how to surf trying to surf. Even if he has great advisers standing on the shore telling him what to do, he still falls off the board again and again.
I’m not sure that is such a great analogy. It almost brings up “nature vs. nurture” arguments. Loads of people have been taught by advisers how to surf reasonably well. Are all the great surfers naturals or did some get taught to be great?
Even so, is the business of a software company software or is it just business? Making deals, making profit, making contacts and alliances and selling, selling, selling. Generally the kind of stuff us programmers are pretty bad at.
Was Microsoft successful because Bill Gates wrote great code in the beginning or because he was just a shrewd businessman who saw something the business folk at IBM didn’t?
The best tech doesn’t always win, the best strategy though normally does win. Some technical understanding may form a better strategy but you need to have those strategic skills first to take advantage of the tech. From where I sit, the best CEOs have the best strategies, the best understanding of the market and the future. They don’t have to know about date format discrepancies between Excel and BASIC in 1900.
Silicon Valley is a bad neighborhood to live in when you have pissed off Michael Arrington.
It is ironic that an area that produces software that enables and champions egalitarianism is dominated by individuals, some constructive, others destructive.
The world is bigger than Michael Arrington and bigger than Sillicon Valley. For every TechCrunch fan there is a thousand people who have never heard of it. It isn’t that we should ignore them, bait them or inflame them. We should simply remind ourselves of their place in the world and our place in the world and make our own path. Individuals only get power through other individuals, they hold no magic we do not.
My Canon collection grew today with the addition of this lovely Canon HF100. It is an HD camcorder that records to SDHC memory cards. No tapes, no spinning hard-drives and no DVDs. Size wise it is close to a can of Coke in your hand and a bit lighter. The quality seems excellent though I’ve really only seen it piped out via component cable to my Sony HD television. I need to get a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable tomorrow to get the full HD experience.
The memory-card may be a great idea but AVCHD is a difficult format, especially on Mac. So far I’ve managed to half-play some clips and unreliably convert them to MPEG4 using VLC (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.) I’ve ordered Final Cut Express which supports AVCHD but that hasn’t arrived yet and since I don’t even have iMovie on my MacBook Pro I can’t use VoltaicHD. The video software that comes with the HF100 is Windows only, not very helpful.
So that brings my Canon collection to; Canon EOS 300v, Canon EOS 10D, Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L, Canon EF 50mm f/1.8, Canon EOS 20D, Canon IXUS 860 IS and this Canon HF 100.
Whenever I watch a movie set on Mars or read a fiction book about Mars I wonder what the sky and ground really looks like. Some movies depict vivid orange hues while others have jet black skies or endless dust storms. The photo above is real though and to my eyes is the best shot of a real Martian view I’ve seen.
Got a car in Ireland? Head on over to the emissions database and look-up your CO2 emissions. Then head on over to this motor-tax information page and you can figure out how much you would be paying for your car if you had bought it new after July 2008.
I have a ‘05 Ford Fiesta 1.25l Duratec which puts me at 147grams per kilometer which is band C at €290 a year. 3 grams less than a 2008 BMW 520d, a car which shows the improvements in engine technology over just 3 years.
It is also useful for figuring out what tax you would pay for any new car purchases (though if the environment is important to you then go for a second-hand car with low emissions. Buying a new car, no matter how efficient, puts you deep in carbon debt.)
Although she has pared down her footwear collection from 35 to 20 pairs, she says, “All my shoes count as one item.”
I’m not sure 35 pairs of shoes down to 20 is quite the aim of the 100 Thing Challenge. I’d say that convincing yourself you need 20 pairs of shoes is quite the opposite of the challenge.
With a newborn baby coming into my life I know that reduction will be the last thing I’ll be achieving.
