Archive for category entrepreneurs
Ruby on Rails causes Global Warming
Posted by admin in carbon, entrepreneurs on 31Oct08
I use a laptop. Which means, as I peck away at my keyboard in the waning hours of the evening, I can smell the slow charring of my wool pants (mixed with the redolent odor of singed leg hair) as the tiny fan embedded in my computer tries desperately to keep this multi-thousand-dollar device, from melting into a pile of slag.
As a self-taught engineer, I tend to notice the glaringly-obvious – perhaps more than many of my well-educated peers. And there’s one obvious lesson in this – if solid state electronics are getting HOT, they’re wasting using a fair amount of power.
In a nuclear reactor somewhere out there, an atom died for the pixels on my screen. Another few drops of precious oil, or a few tons more gasified coal, were spilt for those extra minutes of Microsoft Word (or perhaps “Grand Theft Auto 4″).
Moore’s Law has shown us how the steady change of computing SPEED (doubling), and COST (halving), has reliably powered our advancing Information Age. Yet nothing in Moore’s Law has halted the seemingly inexorable increase in ENERGY requirements, of these most devious of machines.
This is not a problem that we’ve address head on – in our subsidized energy economy, there has been no real motivation to do so. In fact, as our dependency on computing infrastructure has deepened, we’ve made it WORSE. Here’s how it works: Read the rest of this entry »
Social History – Now a Handy WordPress Plugin
Posted by admin in entrepreneurs on 22Sep08
Last week I stumbled across this blog post by Aza announcing his “SocialHistory.js” script, and it really inspired me to do better with the Social Bookmarks on this blog. So imagine my surprise when I realized that there was no WordPress plugin available yet!
I hadn’t written my first WordPress plugin, so I decided this would be a perfect opportunity. You can see it working below this post (and every other post on the site) – where you will find social bookmarking links for only those sites that we’ve seen in your browser history.
I’m still waiting for my submission to be accepted at WordPress.org, but if you simply cannot wait to get a copy for yourself, leave me a comment and I’ll send you the tarball.
Oh, and a big thank-you to the makers of Sociable – I borrowed liberally from their plugin for this one.
If any of you are interested in collaborating to make this a little less ugly, let me know!
Why I don’t Like Banks
Posted by admin in entrepreneurs on 03Sep08
I’ve never gotten along well with Banks of any kind, but especially with those larger, faceless National Institutions of organized robbery.
For a long time I suspected I was simply bothered, not by their aggressive profiteering (especially at the expense of the lower- and middle-class), but by their sheer duplicity – having weaseled their way into the pseudo-governmental “Federal Reserve” and eliminated a constitutionally-guaranteed inflation-free currency, they nonetheless extract levels of profit considered by most historical examples as usury – all justified by some false representation of themselves as a public service(!).
But I realized today that my distaste comes from something much more concrete, and direct.
They cheat.
Here’s a case in point: Read the rest of this entry »
Ubiquitous Unique Username Search on WhoisSocial.com
Posted by toddicus in entrepreneurs on 03Sep08
Yes…that’s right…who else could bring ubiquitous and unique together in an elegant, clean, sleek and sexy little technologically stunning package but the red hot and seriously smokin tinyapps team.
Looking for the same unique username across social networks and e-mails?
Of course you are… its what makes us human. And now you, too, can fulfill this most intimate desire at whoissocial.com.
Adding services by the milliweek. Let us know which one you want first!
Bootstrap challenge – build iphone apps, on the iphone
Posted by admin in entrepreneurs on 29Aug08
Ignore yptos, for the moment.
Look at this.
I built an iPhone app- on my iPhone. 100%
Shozu for photo upload.
ISSH for server connection. (vim from iPhone is clunky, FYI.)
Downloaded iui using wget.
You can do better?
Best bootstrap wins $25.
72 hours from now.
Appstore and stock ubuntu only (scouts honour.)
GO.
Apparently I Have a Website for Jumping on People
Posted by admin in entrepreneurs on 21Jul08
First major coverage of BountyUp.com by traditional media – my hometown “Times Colonist” finally ran a piece, titled “Online venture gaining steam“. While complementary (especially the wickedly-good photo), it ran a little short on accuracy – apparently I’ve got a “crowd-surfing” website.
However, after three turbulent years, McKenty’s website is starting to garner international attention. Created in 2005, Bountyup.com has received millions of donations to fund projects for Oak Bay science students, North Carolina choirs and Middle East social activists.
Trust me – if I had received “Millions of donations”, I wouldn’t still be freelancing for NASA. I believe the word I used was “dozens”. Ah well.
Oh, and I never got paid for being in the circus. My first paying job was shoveling horse manure, several years later.
Still, the coverage (plus the recent coverage of the Oak Bay High School Bounty) has been enough to get me excited about the project again – even after Microsoft launched their competitor. I’m toying with the idea of using 99designs.com for a face-lift, but what I really need is some improvements in usability. What are YOUR favorite contest sites?
All languages are created equal…
Posted by admin in entrepreneurs on 02Jul08
…but some are more equal than others.
Space-themed Content Pack for Flock
Posted by admin in entrepreneurs on 19May08
To commemorate the consulting work I’m doing for NASA right now, I whipped up a little space-themed content-pack for the Flock browser.
You can grab it here.
UPDATE: Screenshot below:
Gas Tracker
Posted by rschingler in entrepreneurs, tinyapps on 12May08
A lovely Mother’s Day weekend was spent in Victoria, BC to put some meat on the bones for the TinyApps team. In fact, TinyApps first start with a TinyHack, typically developed during #phptuesdays, however this weekend @joshuamckeny, @toddicus, @jessykate and @medido went straight to a TinyApp called Gas Tracker.
Gas Tracker is a Twitter hack which allows a follower to tweet basic gas usage information to gain a greater insight into ones driving habits.
For example, let’s assume that I am at the gas station to fill up my tank. It cost $47.43 for 14.23 gallons to fill your tank and my odo odometer reading is 74,345 miles. After I am following @gastracker I send it a direct message:
d gastracker $47.43 14.23g 74345
Over time, simple twitters to update your activity while at the pump will allow you to log in and visualize your driving behavior showing such graphs as rate of mileage accumulation and miles per gallon. We have some visions on how this will evolve with increased functionality, but in the spirit of TinyApps, we have to ship it to get some feedback.
Once you follow Gas Tracker on Twitter, you will receive a direct message welcoming you Gas Tracker and giving you instructions to go to the Gas Tracker Website. At the website, you will enter your Twitter name and Gas Tracker will direct tweet you a password. With this password, you’ll then be able log in and view your driving behavior. Do be patient, as the more data you input, the more meaningful the analysis will be.
Enjoy, and please do give us some feedback.
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