rebelutionary
Mike Cannon-Brookes on Java, J2EE, OSX, Open Source, Australia, Atlassian, Bug Tracking, JIRA and more...

Thursday, 4 July 2002

Alain de Botton: a journey and a book are perfect companions - a very thoughtful essay (via MetaFilter). Something for Walsh et al to ponder while they are travelling. 11:42:06 PM  comment []      RackSpace - Gotta Love Them - They Rule - I agree 100%. We use them and couldn't be happier.  Like most things in life, you get what you pay for. 12:15:27 PM  comment []      Business 101: Commitment - it was only a matter of time before someone grabbed Scott's marketing talent for themselves. Congratulations to evectors, I'm sure the new enterprise will do very well. Business is all about timing.  I'm sure there is a large market for taking international technology companies to the US. There are a huge number of talented companies with great technology outside the US, but breaking into the market there is not as simple as just putting up a website. Knowing the lay of the land, and having someone with their feet on the ground (to terribly mix two metaphors) has immense value.  I will be watching their new venture with definite interest! 12:12:56 PM  comment []      Craig Silverstein (Director of Technology at Google) answers lots of great questions in an interview on Slashdot. Yet more proof why Google is one of my favourite companies - they just get the Internet and its users. Here's a user question which best sums up what amazes me about Google: Not only does Google have the best search engine technology, but you consistently do the "right" thing. Clean, quick homepage, text only well-identified ads, interesting research projects, etc... This is the way many search engines start, but they all went the way of the "dark" side instead of adopting the "right" solution. In my jobs, it's been very difficult to execute and justify good engineering (or just common sense) under pressure from the people who control the money. Any advice for driving through well-thought-out decisions instead of adopting the "management fad of the month"?   And a part of the answer serves as a great summary as well: And both Larry and Sergey Brin firmly believe that if we concentrate on users, everything else -- including money -- will follow. 10:41:57 AM  comment []      What do other people want of their companies? Ask Ugo, Remus and Pat. 10:31:08 AM  comment []      Java to become dominant language next year Two recent studies are showing that Java will become the dominant language in corporations next year. 10:29:01 AM  comment []      The iRock is a damn cool idea. So simple, yet it solves so many problems. It's even wireless! [via Dave] 9:21:18 AM  comment []      Captain Midnight: I found this well written, intriguing story about a guy overriding HBO's satellite feed for 4 and a half minutes in 1985 (linked from Falun Gong Hacks Chinese Satellite). 12:24:43 AM  comment []      I want my company to be... somewhere people can innovate. somewhere that big and small ideas count somewhere Open Source isn't just a bunch of free tools to make use of somewhere that doesn't just make software - rather someone obsessed with making damn fucking good software somewhere developers don't feel they are wasting their time keeping up with the bleeding edge somewhere extensive knowledge of Ruby, Perl, Cocoa, Linux, HTML, CSS, Crypto, Jini, Jabber, Technology X... doesn't seem useless somewhere developers look at each other's work and think "I'm glad that exists" somewhere that developers talk to clients, clients talk back and both gain from the experience somewhere everyone makes money, and has fun doing it somewhere that all the staff enjoy each other's company enough to go out for a few beers on a Friday night somewhere developers do more than taking stuff out of a database and show it on a screen, then take stuff from a form and put it in a database somewhere developers aren't forced to be managers, do sales or answer the phone somewhere developers don't feel that in ten years time they'll be the next generation of COBOL programmers somewhere where quality counts for something somewhere that people are proud to work somewhere people would still come to work if they never had to work another day in their lives What do you want from your workplace? (adapted from Charles Miller's The Desktop Fishbowl and here are the ones I'm not sure about for different reasons) somewhere 90% of the company isn't old and married somewhere that owning a copy of Stevens Unix Network Programming Volume 1 doesn't make you feel like an weirdo 12:13:17 AM  comment []