Articles by Category
2013
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: APIs In a Post-API World – Uri Sarid, Mulesoft
APIs In a Post-API World – Uri Sarid, Mulesoft Mashups in 2005 – mostly about Google Maps, not much else was available Now we have a huge number of APIs available > 13,...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Towards an API Commons – Steven Wilmott, 3Scale and Kin Lane, Presidential Innovation Fellow
Towards an API Commons – Steven Wilmott, 3Scale and Kin Lane, Presidential Innovation Fellow The number of APIs are exploding Need client code to help interact with the APIs Cod...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Sustainable Software Engineering Culture (Without The Ninjas) – Mike Gehard, Pivotal Labs
Sustainable Software Engineering Culture (Without The Ninjas) – Mike Gehard, Pivotal Labs Everyone wants predictability in an unpredictable world Sustainability over time is cri...
#DefragCon 2013: Programming with Personal Clouds: A Post-Web Architecture — Phil Windley, Kynetx
Programming with Personal Clouds: A Post-Web Architecture – Phil Windley, Kynetx Personal cloud made up of a constellation of persistent computational objects – picos Pico...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: The Sands of Time: How Cloud is Changing the Role of the CIO — Rod Smith, IBM
The Sands of Time: How Cloud is Changing the Role of the CIO – Rod Smith, IBM LoBs want apps “built and deployed in less than 6 days” Looking for business value firs...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Industrial Entropy and the Future of Work – Chris DeVore, Founders Co-op
Industrial Entropy and the Future of Work – Chris DeVore, Founders Co-op Ronald Coase – “The Nature of the Firm” paper – why companies exist Firms gather...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Great, Software Ate My World. Now what? – Oren Teich, Heroku
Great, Software Ate My World. Now what? – Oren Teich, Heroku The way that we are engaging and interacting is changing “Software is eating the world” Replace ‘E...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Developer Marketing: F#%k Leads; Generate Relationships – Tim Falls, SendGrid
Developer Marketing: F#%k Leads; Generate Relationships – Tim Falls, SendGrid Marketing has gotten really hard Relationships > Leads Handshakes > Clicks Two types of marke...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Unpacking Data’s Baggage: Lessons from Airport Security – Stephen Messer, Collective[i]
Unpacking Data’s Baggage: Lessons from Airport Security – Stephen Messer, Collective[i] BigData will disappoint if you fixate on its size. What matters is getting fast, re...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Software is Eating the Datacenter – Anjan Srinivas, Nutanix
Software is Eating the Datacenter – Anjan Srinivas, Nutanix Emerging trends 1. Taiwan – x86 servers going the laptop way, mass produced 2. Consolidation 2.0 – progra...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Security before convenience, and other lies – David Meyer, OneLogin
Security before convenience, and other lies – David Meyer, OneLogin Security theater #1: Security images they are ineffective, intuitions are not reliable, people don’t be...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: The Identity Manifesto: Seven Points On The Future of Identity – R Ray Wang
The Identity Manifesto: Seven Points On The Future of Identity – R Ray Wang, Constellation Research Change Ahead 1) Macro economic forces – we can’t change this 2) D...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes and Slides Hub Page
In case you have never attended, Defrag Conference is a forward-looking conference that discusses what is coming in the next 18-24 months. This is the main page for that contain...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Start Small & Go Big: Getting the Most From Google Compute Engine – Joe Beda, Google
Start Small & Go Big: Getting the Most From Google Compute Engine – Joe Beda, Google (@jbeda) Google Compute Engine is VMs, storage, and network It exposes GoogleR...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Processing Big Data In Real-time with a Distributed SQL System – Ankur Goyal, MemSQL
Processing Big Data In Real-time with a Distributed SQL System – Ankur Goyal, MemSQL “SQL scales, but the technology behind it may not” When you write SQL agai...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: 20 API Business Models – John Musser, Programmable Web
20 API Business Models – John Musser, Programmable Web (@johnmusser) The question they get asked the most: “How do you make money with APIs?” Why to have APIs ...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Automotive Connectivity: More Than Just a Phone With Wheels – Nick Pudar, General Motors
Keynote: Automotive Connectivity: More Than Just a Phone With Wheels – Nick Pudar, General Motors GM has two APIs: remote APIs for accessing OnStar and in-vehicle APIs for...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Confessions of a Tech CEO Who Still Loves to Code Everyday – Lew Cirne, New Relic
Keynote: Confessions of a Tech CEO Who Still Loves to Code Everyday – Lew Cirne, New Relic New Relic was a “Do Over”, now has 50k customers, 250 employees, 3 o...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: The New Kingmakers – Stephen O’Grady, Redmonk (@sogrady)
Keynote: The New Kingmakers – Stephen O’Grady, Redmonk (@sogrady) In the past, software was just an enabler The Share user group and IBM built a community to sell more har...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Fear and Loathing and Scalable Kindness on the Internet – Tim Bray, Google
Keynote: Fear and Loathing and Scalable Kindness on the Internet – Tim Bray, Google You go to signup for a new website: “No! Not another password!” There are m...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Designing a Beautiful REST+JSON API – Les Hazlewood, CTO of Stormpath
Designing a Beautiful REST+JSON API – Les Hazlewood, CTO of Stormpath (@lhazlewood) REST is really hard (for providers) Guidelines and conventions can make it easy Resourc...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Does Your API Have Swagger? – Sumit Sharma, Mulesoft
Does Your API Have Swagger? – Sumit Sharma, Mulesoft Too often we slap on an API and let the consumers suffer Inside-Out API development – over designed, too many ab...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Machine Learning APIs (You Probably Didn’t Know About) – Chris Ismael, Mashape
Machine Learning APIs (You Probably Didn’t Know About) – Chris Ismael, Mashape Many machine learning libraries have complexity hidden behind an API Natural language proces...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: An Architectural Look at Designing e-commerce APIs – Saranyan Vigraham, BigCommerce
An Architectural Look at Designing e-commerce APIs – Saranyan Vigraham, BigCommerce (@saranyan) Bad Design Rigid – too hard to change, too many parts get affected by...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Single Page Architectures: The API and Appification for the Web Steven Willmott, 3Scale
Single Page Architectures: The API and Appification for the Web Steven Willmott, 3Scale (@njyx and @3scale) Plenty of toolkits available to build SPAs Upsides – more respo...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: The Free Lunch Is Over, Again – Andy Gross, Chief Architect at Basho
The Free Lunch Is Over, Again – Andy Gross, Chief Architect at Basho (@argv0) The Free Lunch Is Over, 2005 Paper by Herb Sutter – “A fundamental turn towards c...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Ushering in the Bronze Age of Distributed Application Tooling – John Sheehan, Runscope
Keynote: Ushering in the Bronze Age of Distributed Application Tooling – John Sheehan, Runscope Services are the new process Service dependencies are still code dependenci...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes and Slides Hub Page
This is the main page for that contains links to all GlueCon 2013 keynote and session notes, along with links to slide decks (for sessions that I wasn’t able to attend). D...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Cloud Native Applications: What Changed – Adrian Cockcroft, Cloud Architect at Netflix
Keynote: Cloud Native Applications: What Changed – Adrian Cockcroft, Cloud Architect at Netflix (@adrianco and @NetflixOSS) We are engineers and strive for perfection, fix...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: 3 Things You Need to Turn Your Enterprise Into a Platform – Laura Merling, AT&T
Keynote: 3 Things You Need to Turn Your Enterprise Into a Platform – Laura Merling, AT&T (@magicmerl) The Journey AT&T’s journey: IT as a Platform (current) ...
2014
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: APIs.json and API Discovery on the Web – Steven Willmott and Kin Lane
APIs.json and API Discovery on the Web – Steven Willmott and Kin Lane APIs.json is the equivalent of a robots.txt or sitemap.xml files for web APIs The goal is to provide additi...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Managing Containers at Scale on Google Compute Engines – Joe Beda, Google
Managing Containers at Scale on Google Compute Engines – Joe Beda, Google Everything at Google runs in a container (KVM-based) Google starts over 2 billion containers per week (...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: VPC Migration: Flying Blind on a Rocket Cycle – Matthew Boeckman, Craftsy
VPC Migration: Flying Blind on a Rocket Cycle – Matthew Boeckman, Craftsy “VPC is mature network topology for AWS” Network ACL’s allow for true edge blocking I...
#GlueCon 2014 Keynote: Taming the RESTed NARWHL: Striking the Balance Between Usability and Zealotry in REST – Rob Zazueta, Mashery (an Intel Company)
Keynote: Taming the RESTed NARWHL: Striking the Balance Between Usability and Zealotry in REST – Rob Zazueta, Mashery (an Intel Company) For those charged with writing books abo...
#GlueCon 2014 Keynote: Automation and DevOps: How to Create a Lights-Out Software Defined Data Center – Joshua McKenty, Piston Cloud Computing
Keynote: Automation and DevOps: How to Create a Lights-Out Software Defined Data Center – Joshua McKenty, Piston Cloud Computing Thinking about SDKs makes us think about consumi...
#GlueCon 2014 Keynote: The Case for Application Driven Cloud Computing – Adam Davis, Chief Architect, Cloud Computing, Citi
Keynote: The Case for Application Driven Cloud Computing – Adam Davis, Chief Architect, Cloud Computing, Citi When Adam started out in the industry, dev and ops had no separatio...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Enhancing Your Cloud Applications with Artificial Intelligence – Elliot Turner, AlchemyAPI
(Notes by @tomkane) Enhancing Your Cloud Applications with Artificial Intelligence – Elliot Turner, AlchemyAPI One big advantage is offloading specialized, intensive compu...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Salter: Using Go to provision Saltstack clusters on AWS – Dave Smith, Orchestrate
(Notes by @tomkane) Salter: Using Go to provision Saltstack clusters on AWS – Dave Smith, Orchestrate Using fanout.io for PubSub. Love Salt. SaltCloud didn’t exist yet, so...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: DevOps vs. the Enterprise: What We Can Learn from Mainframe Developers – Mike Baukes, ScriptRock
(Notes by @tomkane) DevOps vs. the Enterprise: What We Can Learn from Mainframe Developers – Mike Baukes, ScriptRock “Going big & screwing up on DevOps implement...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: What Makes a Great Developer Company? – Ethan Kurzweil, Bessemer Venture Partners
Keynote: What Makes a Great Developer Company? – Ethan Kurzweil, Bessemer Venture Partners Why the time is now for the developer-driven business Developers traditionally have be...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: How, Why and When to R&D — Adam DuVander, SendGrid Labs
Keynote: How, Why and When to R&D — Adam DuVander, SendGrid Labs Hackathons as performed by a hardware manufacturer: “Bring your ideas.. some wood, we’ll provide...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: API First: Designing your Product from the Platform Out – Kirsten Hunter, 3Scale
API First: Designing your Product from the Platform Out – Kirsten Hunter, 3Scale APIs are often an afterthought for developers You will always have another client Taking an API ...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Love your Logs with Elasticsearch ELK – Jordan Sissel, Elasticsearch
Love your Logs with Elasticsearch ELK – Jordan Sissel, Elasticsearch Been in operations for 10 years, recently switched to programming but always been one What is a log? Time + ...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Keynote: API SDKs will ruin your life – John Sheehan, Runscope
Keynote: API SDKs will ruin your life – John Sheehan, Runscope Started a company to solve issues around building .Net API clients and SDKs Spent a lot of time at Twilio thinking...
#GlueCon 2014: Keynote: The Parallel Universes of DevOps and Cloud Developers – Donnie Berkholz, RedMonk
Keynote: The Parallel Universes of DevOps and Cloud Developers – Donnie Berkholz, RedMonk Background as a drug discovery scientist Most attendees of DevOps conferences are ops, ...
#GlueCon 2014: Keynote: Containers all the way down – Solomon Hykes, Docker
Keynote: Containers all the way down: a blueprint for upgrading the Internet – Solomon Hykes, Docker The applications we are building due to the new requirements don’...
#GlueCon 2014: APIStrat UnWorkshop Notes – Internet of Things
APIStrat UnWorkshop – Internet of Things Why HTTP Won’t Work for IoT – Tim Kellogg @kellogh Embedded + Internet = IoT Constrained environments – memory, embedd...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes and Slides Hub Page
This is the main page for that contains links to all GlueCon 2014 keynote and session notes, along with links to slide decks (for sessions that I wasn’t able to attend). Preconf...
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#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Unpacking Data’s Baggage: Lessons from Airport Security – Stephen Messer, Collective[i]
Unpacking Data’s Baggage: Lessons from Airport Security – Stephen Messer, Collective[i] BigData will disappoint if you fixate on its size. What matters is getting fast, re...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Security before convenience, and other lies – David Meyer, OneLogin
Security before convenience, and other lies – David Meyer, OneLogin Security theater #1: Security images they are ineffective, intuitions are not reliable, people don’t be...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: The Identity Manifesto: Seven Points On The Future of Identity – R Ray Wang
The Identity Manifesto: Seven Points On The Future of Identity – R Ray Wang, Constellation Research Change Ahead 1) Macro economic forces – we can’t change this 2) D...
Javascript for Startups: The Basics
Javascript is a technology that, until recently, has been reserved for simple browser tricks and catching mouse or browser events. It recently has been adopted, through the use ...
API
The Pillars of an API Platform
API pillars serve as the guiding principles that define the foundation and direction of an API platform.
Shifting to an API Platform Mindset
Successful API platforms start with business architecture.
Lessons After a Decade of API Strategy
After a decade of helping companies build an API platform, here is what I learned.
The Importance of API Governance
API governance is the backbone of a successful API platform. By enforcing clear standards, leveraging automation, and aligning with enterprise-wide policies, governance ensures ...
Driving API Team Collaboration with Blackbird
Using Ambassador's Blackbird to improve API team collaboration
From ADDR Design to Development with Blackbird
Using Ambassador's Blackbird to accelerate the API development process
Accelerating API Design with ADDR and Blackbird
Using Ambassador's Blackbird to accelerate the API design process
A Look at API Program and Governance Trends for 2024
A look at the API program challenges and opportunities in 2024
Integrating API Generation Software into the API Delivery Lifecycle: A Strategic Approach
API generation software is rethinking how you design APIs
Unlocking Opportunities with API Generation Software
API generation software presents new opportunities for enterprises
Accelerating Digital Transformation with API Generation Software
Reduce the time it takes to design your API
5 Ways Your API C4E Can Engage and Enable Teams
Explore ways your API C4E can support delivery teams
Selecting an API Governance Model
How to select an effective governance model for your API program
Scaling Your API Program with Federated API Coaching
Leverage an API coaching program to scale your API program
Introducing the ADDR API First Design Process
Improve efficiency and reduce cost using ADDR. a scalable API first design process
Creating an Effective API Program
It can be challenging to establish a healthy API program within your organization. But what happens when your teams start to produce a large number of APIs and microservices? Th...
What Skills Do Your APIs Offer?
Much has been written about API design techniques – from choosing the right HTTP verb to guidance on response code usage and hypermedia dos and don’ts. We get caught...
Resolving the Frontend/Backend API Design Conflict
As part of my API design consulting engagements, I’m often called in to resolve the conflict between the API design that the frontend developers would prefer to have and t...
Lessons From Training 1400+ People in Web API Design
For the last 2 years, Keith Casey and I have been conducted API training workshops with over 1400 participants across nearly a dozen roles. While we are still available for trai...
Building Your API Documentation Strategy For SUCCESS
So far, we have put together a foundation for our API documentation: 1. We must first move beyond API reference documentation and look for other ways to communicate the value an...
10 Questions Your API Documentation Must Answer
Effective communication is the most important factor for API success. APIs do not have a user interface, so your documentation is the primary communication method for developers...
Improving Your API Conversations with Hypermedia, ETags, and Real-Time APIs
There is considerable source material on great API design. We can read discussions on how to use HTTP properly, from selecting the proper HTTP verb to which response code(s) are...
Moving Beyond API Reference Documentation
“Great API documentation is essential” many people exclaim. So, you fire up your favorite API definition editor and start writing docs. You learn what YAML is and ho...
How To Successfully Deploy Your Web or Mobile API to Heroku
I have deployed a wide variety of APIs, from internal to APIs for public or partner consumption. Many of them have been deployed to Heroku. There are a variety of advantages, in...
How to Build a Great API Marketing Plan
I was recently approached by an API vendor at an API conference. While the encounter wasn’t horrific, I did find a few things related to their API marketing and sales proc...
How Cloud APIs Transformed The Way We Build Software and Data Centers
I was recently asked why more companies are not taking more advantage of Cloud APIs from their cloud service providers to power their software product and IT initiatives. These ...
5 Tips For Wrapping Your Database With a REST API
Just about every mobile and web application is backed by at least one database. These applications often require a web-based API to expose the database(s) for storing, querying,...
The Accidental API
How your web or mobile API might be putting your business at risk Do you have a web or mobile API? You might, whether you realize it or not. Web APIs are often used to connect a...
When Should Companies Implement a Web API Training Program?
I was recently asked what the key indicators might be that an organization should look to implement a modern web API training program. It is a great question, so I wanted to sha...
How To Design a Great API Training Program
There is no shortage of web API-related training programs. Some focus on the technical details, while others explore the various aspects of great API design. However, most train...
Should API training be restricted to developers only?
APIs are not just a technology solution that require training for developers, they drive many aspects of the business strategy. In fact, companies are using APIs to extend their...
Announcing the “Fundamentals of Designing a Great API” Workshop
I am pleased to announce that LaunchAny and Casey Software have teamed up to provide a new, onsite API workshop called the “Fundamentals of Designing a Great API.” T...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: APIs.json and API Discovery on the Web – Steven Willmott and Kin Lane
APIs.json and API Discovery on the Web – Steven Willmott and Kin Lane APIs.json is the equivalent of a robots.txt or sitemap.xml files for web APIs The goal is to provide additi...
#GlueCon 2014 Keynote: Taming the RESTed NARWHL: Striking the Balance Between Usability and Zealotry in REST – Rob Zazueta, Mashery (an Intel Company)
Keynote: Taming the RESTed NARWHL: Striking the Balance Between Usability and Zealotry in REST – Rob Zazueta, Mashery (an Intel Company) For those charged with writing books abo...
#GlueCon 2014 Keynote: Automation and DevOps: How to Create a Lights-Out Software Defined Data Center – Joshua McKenty, Piston Cloud Computing
Keynote: Automation and DevOps: How to Create a Lights-Out Software Defined Data Center – Joshua McKenty, Piston Cloud Computing Thinking about SDKs makes us think about consumi...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Enhancing Your Cloud Applications with Artificial Intelligence – Elliot Turner, AlchemyAPI
(Notes by @tomkane) Enhancing Your Cloud Applications with Artificial Intelligence – Elliot Turner, AlchemyAPI One big advantage is offloading specialized, intensive compu...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: What Makes a Great Developer Company? – Ethan Kurzweil, Bessemer Venture Partners
Keynote: What Makes a Great Developer Company? – Ethan Kurzweil, Bessemer Venture Partners Why the time is now for the developer-driven business Developers traditionally have be...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: How, Why and When to R&D — Adam DuVander, SendGrid Labs
Keynote: How, Why and When to R&D — Adam DuVander, SendGrid Labs Hackathons as performed by a hardware manufacturer: “Bring your ideas.. some wood, we’ll provide...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: API First: Designing your Product from the Platform Out – Kirsten Hunter, 3Scale
API First: Designing your Product from the Platform Out – Kirsten Hunter, 3Scale APIs are often an afterthought for developers You will always have another client Taking an API ...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Love your Logs with Elasticsearch ELK – Jordan Sissel, Elasticsearch
Love your Logs with Elasticsearch ELK – Jordan Sissel, Elasticsearch Been in operations for 10 years, recently switched to programming but always been one What is a log? Time + ...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Keynote: API SDKs will ruin your life – John Sheehan, Runscope
Keynote: API SDKs will ruin your life – John Sheehan, Runscope Started a company to solve issues around building .Net API clients and SDKs Spent a lot of time at Twilio thinking...
#GlueCon 2014: Keynote: The Parallel Universes of DevOps and Cloud Developers – Donnie Berkholz, RedMonk
Keynote: The Parallel Universes of DevOps and Cloud Developers – Donnie Berkholz, RedMonk Background as a drug discovery scientist Most attendees of DevOps conferences are ops, ...
#GlueCon 2014: Keynote: Containers all the way down – Solomon Hykes, Docker
Keynote: Containers all the way down: a blueprint for upgrading the Internet – Solomon Hykes, Docker The applications we are building due to the new requirements don’...
#GlueCon 2014: APIStrat UnWorkshop Notes – Internet of Things
APIStrat UnWorkshop – Internet of Things Why HTTP Won’t Work for IoT – Tim Kellogg @kellogh Embedded + Internet = IoT Constrained environments – memory, embedd...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes and Slides Hub Page
This is the main page for that contains links to all GlueCon 2014 keynote and session notes, along with links to slide decks (for sessions that I wasn’t able to attend). Preconf...
Building Better APIs in Ruby (and Rails)
I recently presented a lightning talk at Austin on Rails titled “5 ways to build better APIs in Ruby”. Below is the slide deck, along with a coupon code to our book ...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: APIs In a Post-API World – Uri Sarid, Mulesoft
APIs In a Post-API World – Uri Sarid, Mulesoft Mashups in 2005 – mostly about Google Maps, not much else was available Now we have a huge number of APIs available > 13,...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Towards an API Commons – Steven Wilmott, 3Scale and Kin Lane, Presidential Innovation Fellow
Towards an API Commons – Steven Wilmott, 3Scale and Kin Lane, Presidential Innovation Fellow The number of APIs are exploding Need client code to help interact with the APIs Cod...
#DefragCon 2013: Programming with Personal Clouds: A Post-Web Architecture — Phil Windley, Kynetx
Programming with Personal Clouds: A Post-Web Architecture – Phil Windley, Kynetx Personal cloud made up of a constellation of persistent computational objects – picos Pico...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: The Sands of Time: How Cloud is Changing the Role of the CIO — Rod Smith, IBM
The Sands of Time: How Cloud is Changing the Role of the CIO – Rod Smith, IBM LoBs want apps “built and deployed in less than 6 days” Looking for business value firs...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Industrial Entropy and the Future of Work – Chris DeVore, Founders Co-op
Industrial Entropy and the Future of Work – Chris DeVore, Founders Co-op Ronald Coase – “The Nature of the Firm” paper – why companies exist Firms gather...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Great, Software Ate My World. Now what? – Oren Teich, Heroku
Great, Software Ate My World. Now what? – Oren Teich, Heroku The way that we are engaging and interacting is changing “Software is eating the world” Replace ‘E...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Developer Marketing: F#%k Leads; Generate Relationships – Tim Falls, SendGrid
Developer Marketing: F#%k Leads; Generate Relationships – Tim Falls, SendGrid Marketing has gotten really hard Relationships > Leads Handshakes > Clicks Two types of marke...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes and Slides Hub Page
In case you have never attended, Defrag Conference is a forward-looking conference that discusses what is coming in the next 18-24 months. This is the main page for that contain...
The recent API obsession (and why it matters)
Note: This article is now available in PDF format, includes more content, and is useful for offline reading and sharing. Click here to download a copy. There has been a good dea...
Architecture
Avoiding Monolithic Regret: Moving to Microservices
The last year has seen a considerable spike in the number of articles and discussions around microservices. Many think that a microservice-based architecture is the right answer...
37signals on Rails Optimizations
There is a great post at the 37signals blog about how they optimized Basecamp using New Relic. One thing I found most interesting: MySQL optimizations: We’ve been working with...
Microsoft Hailstorm for 2008
Anyone noticed the striking similarities the Windows Live APIs have to Hailstorm? George Moore, General Manager, Live Platform Services posted an interesting article outlining t...
Blog
MySQL Bulk Insert Performance With JRuby and JDBC
I often have need to perform a bulk import of CSV files into MySQL for different projects. Recently, I made the move to the JRuby platform for one of my projects and have benefi...
Technical Co-Founder Need Not Apply
Will Miceli recently posted an article, titled Technical Co-Founders Are Overrated, that outlines his journey from idea to finding a partner: I was working on my first entrepren...
Why I Selected JRuby For My Ruby Project
For those working on the Ruby platform, this is an interesting time. We have Ruby 1.9 YARV, Rubinius, and JRuby as the most popular Ruby Virtual Machines available right now. Ea...
Developer’s Guide to Building a High Performance Desktop Machine
Laptops can be useful for day-to-day development, but a more powerful machine is required when it comes to working with Very Large Databases (VLDBs) and Big Data. Having some ba...
FREE Cloud Computing For Startups eBook
We have released a new eBook through our sister website, LaunchAny.com, called Cloud Computing For Startups. The eBook is FREE and offers a simple and concise introduction to cl...
Interview with Heroku’s Adam Wiggins
InfoQ has a 16 min video interview with Adam Wiggins from Heroku. In the interview, Adam discusses Ruby 1.9, the Heroku dyno solution, new add-on support, and how they support b...
Cloud Storage Used For Backup More Than General Purpose Storage
A new survey by Forrester says that just 3% of companies use cloud storage. Here are the stats from the more than 1,200 IT decision makers interviewed: 43% said they’re not inte...
Scalable Background Job Processing With Ruby on Rails and Skynet
On a recent project, I needed to be able to run a large number of background jobs. Each job would likely last between 30 seconds and 5 minutes, depending on the amount of work i...
Geofencing with Ruby on Rails and MySQL
I recently launched a startup that required geofencing. For those not familiar with the term, geofencing is the finding of known locations within a specific area around a centra...
Slicehost Releases Running Slice Cloning and Increases Bandwidth
I’ve been using Slicehost for 2 years now, and as an anniversary present they have released 2 new features: Slice cloning from running slices – You can now create a ...
Product Audit: Customer Experience
Applications can get familiar and outdated. What worked for your first set of customers may not work for your current, less experienced ones. Or, perhaps your users are getting ...
Launching a Startup Requires Patience
I’ve had some recent discussions with some entrepreneurs about the cost and time it takes to launch a startup. These have been interesting discussions, as they have alread...
Architecting Your Startup
Seth Godin recently posted an article titled “Is architect a verb?”: Design carries a lot of baggage related to aesthetics. We say something is well-designed if it l...
37signals on Rails Optimizations
There is a great post at the 37signals blog about how they optimized Basecamp using New Relic. One thing I found most interesting: MySQL optimizations: We’ve been working with...
Raising Exceptions within Your Rails Application
Clemens Kofler has a great post about when to raise exceptions within your Rails application: Over the years I’ve come up with a little rule of thumb for exceptions: Libraries...
Ruby Microframework Footprints
I’ve been looking for a microframework for Ruby that is simple like Camping but supports RESTful resources like Rails. A tip from the Denver Rails UG pointed me to Sinatra...
Microsoft Hailstorm for 2008
Anyone noticed the striking similarities the Windows Live APIs have to Hailstorm? George Moore, General Manager, Live Platform Services posted an interesting article outlining t...
Subdomains and Rails
I was trying to setup the proper environment settings in Rails 2 to support cross-subdomain cookie sharing (so the user doesn’t have to login again if they manage multiple...
Make RESTful Authentication XHR-aware
I’ve been working on a project that uses a little XHR mixed into the app to update DIVs on a page. The problem with the RESTful Authentication plugin is that it will alway...
Cloud
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Managing Containers at Scale on Google Compute Engines – Joe Beda, Google
Managing Containers at Scale on Google Compute Engines – Joe Beda, Google Everything at Google runs in a container (KVM-based) Google starts over 2 billion containers per week (...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: VPC Migration: Flying Blind on a Rocket Cycle – Matthew Boeckman, Craftsy
VPC Migration: Flying Blind on a Rocket Cycle – Matthew Boeckman, Craftsy “VPC is mature network topology for AWS” Network ACL’s allow for true edge blocking I...
#GlueCon 2014 Keynote: The Case for Application Driven Cloud Computing – Adam Davis, Chief Architect, Cloud Computing, Citi
Keynote: The Case for Application Driven Cloud Computing – Adam Davis, Chief Architect, Cloud Computing, Citi When Adam started out in the industry, dev and ops had no separatio...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Salter: Using Go to provision Saltstack clusters on AWS – Dave Smith, Orchestrate
(Notes by @tomkane) Salter: Using Go to provision Saltstack clusters on AWS – Dave Smith, Orchestrate Using fanout.io for PubSub. Love Salt. SaltCloud didn’t exist yet, so...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: DevOps vs. the Enterprise: What We Can Learn from Mainframe Developers – Mike Baukes, ScriptRock
(Notes by @tomkane) DevOps vs. the Enterprise: What We Can Learn from Mainframe Developers – Mike Baukes, ScriptRock “Going big & screwing up on DevOps implement...
#GlueCon 2014: Keynote: The Parallel Universes of DevOps and Cloud Developers – Donnie Berkholz, RedMonk
Keynote: The Parallel Universes of DevOps and Cloud Developers – Donnie Berkholz, RedMonk Background as a drug discovery scientist Most attendees of DevOps conferences are ops, ...
#GlueCon 2014: Keynote: Containers all the way down – Solomon Hykes, Docker
Keynote: Containers all the way down: a blueprint for upgrading the Internet – Solomon Hykes, Docker The applications we are building due to the new requirements don’...
#DefragCon 2013: Programming with Personal Clouds: A Post-Web Architecture — Phil Windley, Kynetx
Programming with Personal Clouds: A Post-Web Architecture – Phil Windley, Kynetx Personal cloud made up of a constellation of persistent computational objects – picos Pico...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: The Sands of Time: How Cloud is Changing the Role of the CIO — Rod Smith, IBM
The Sands of Time: How Cloud is Changing the Role of the CIO – Rod Smith, IBM LoBs want apps “built and deployed in less than 6 days” Looking for business value firs...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Software is Eating the Datacenter – Anjan Srinivas, Nutanix
Software is Eating the Datacenter – Anjan Srinivas, Nutanix Emerging trends 1. Taiwan – x86 servers going the laptop way, mass produced 2. Consolidation 2.0 – progra...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes and Slides Hub Page
In case you have never attended, Defrag Conference is a forward-looking conference that discusses what is coming in the next 18-24 months. This is the main page for that contain...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Start Small & Go Big: Getting the Most From Google Compute Engine – Joe Beda, Google
Start Small & Go Big: Getting the Most From Google Compute Engine – Joe Beda, Google (@jbeda) Google Compute Engine is VMs, storage, and network It exposes GoogleR...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Processing Big Data In Real-time with a Distributed SQL System – Ankur Goyal, MemSQL
Processing Big Data In Real-time with a Distributed SQL System – Ankur Goyal, MemSQL “SQL scales, but the technology behind it may not” When you write SQL agai...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: 20 API Business Models – John Musser, Programmable Web
20 API Business Models – John Musser, Programmable Web (@johnmusser) The question they get asked the most: “How do you make money with APIs?” Why to have APIs ...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Automotive Connectivity: More Than Just a Phone With Wheels – Nick Pudar, General Motors
Keynote: Automotive Connectivity: More Than Just a Phone With Wheels – Nick Pudar, General Motors GM has two APIs: remote APIs for accessing OnStar and in-vehicle APIs for...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Confessions of a Tech CEO Who Still Loves to Code Everyday – Lew Cirne, New Relic
Keynote: Confessions of a Tech CEO Who Still Loves to Code Everyday – Lew Cirne, New Relic New Relic was a “Do Over”, now has 50k customers, 250 employees, 3 o...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: The New Kingmakers – Stephen O’Grady, Redmonk (@sogrady)
Keynote: The New Kingmakers – Stephen O’Grady, Redmonk (@sogrady) In the past, software was just an enabler The Share user group and IBM built a community to sell more har...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Fear and Loathing and Scalable Kindness on the Internet – Tim Bray, Google
Keynote: Fear and Loathing and Scalable Kindness on the Internet – Tim Bray, Google You go to signup for a new website: “No! Not another password!” There are m...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Designing a Beautiful REST+JSON API – Les Hazlewood, CTO of Stormpath
Designing a Beautiful REST+JSON API – Les Hazlewood, CTO of Stormpath (@lhazlewood) REST is really hard (for providers) Guidelines and conventions can make it easy Resourc...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Does Your API Have Swagger? – Sumit Sharma, Mulesoft
Does Your API Have Swagger? – Sumit Sharma, Mulesoft Too often we slap on an API and let the consumers suffer Inside-Out API development – over designed, too many ab...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Machine Learning APIs (You Probably Didn’t Know About) – Chris Ismael, Mashape
Machine Learning APIs (You Probably Didn’t Know About) – Chris Ismael, Mashape Many machine learning libraries have complexity hidden behind an API Natural language proces...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: An Architectural Look at Designing e-commerce APIs – Saranyan Vigraham, BigCommerce
An Architectural Look at Designing e-commerce APIs – Saranyan Vigraham, BigCommerce (@saranyan) Bad Design Rigid – too hard to change, too many parts get affected by...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Single Page Architectures: The API and Appification for the Web Steven Willmott, 3Scale
Single Page Architectures: The API and Appification for the Web Steven Willmott, 3Scale (@njyx and @3scale) Plenty of toolkits available to build SPAs Upsides – more respo...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: The Free Lunch Is Over, Again – Andy Gross, Chief Architect at Basho
The Free Lunch Is Over, Again – Andy Gross, Chief Architect at Basho (@argv0) The Free Lunch Is Over, 2005 Paper by Herb Sutter – “A fundamental turn towards c...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Ushering in the Bronze Age of Distributed Application Tooling – John Sheehan, Runscope
Keynote: Ushering in the Bronze Age of Distributed Application Tooling – John Sheehan, Runscope Services are the new process Service dependencies are still code dependenci...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes and Slides Hub Page
This is the main page for that contains links to all GlueCon 2013 keynote and session notes, along with links to slide decks (for sessions that I wasn’t able to attend). D...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Cloud Native Applications: What Changed – Adrian Cockcroft, Cloud Architect at Netflix
Keynote: Cloud Native Applications: What Changed – Adrian Cockcroft, Cloud Architect at Netflix (@adrianco and @NetflixOSS) We are engineers and strive for perfection, fix...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: 3 Things You Need to Turn Your Enterprise Into a Platform – Laura Merling, AT&T
Keynote: 3 Things You Need to Turn Your Enterprise Into a Platform – Laura Merling, AT&T (@magicmerl) The Journey AT&T’s journey: IT as a Platform (current) ...
Guidelines for Modeling and Optimizing NoSQL Databases
eBay Architect Jay Patel recently posted an article about data modeling using the Cassandra data store. In his article, he breaks down how they modeled their data using Cassandr...
Getting Started with Heroku
I recently gave a presentation to the Austin Ruby on Rails Developers Meetup about Heroku. Topics covered included: What is Heroku and why would I use it? How much does it cost ...
5 Things To Do Before the Next AWS Outage
I am a firm believer in cloud computing. In fact, I’m focusing my business on the fact that cloud will be a standard part of software and IT architecture in the coming yea...
AWS CloudFormation and What It Means for Startups
A few days ago, Amazon Web Services (AWS) released their latest offering, CloudFormation. CloudFormation allows for the templating of your application topology, from the number ...
FREE: Cloud Computing Basics
Wondering what all of the hype is around cloud computing? Cloud computing has been a popular topic lately, including the discussion of various cloud computing solutions such as ...
Cloud Storage Used For Backup More Than General Purpose Storage
A new survey by Forrester says that just 3% of companies use cloud storage. Here are the stats from the more than 1,200 IT decision makers interviewed: 43% said they’re not inte...
Slicehost Releases Running Slice Cloning and Increases Bandwidth
I’ve been using Slicehost for 2 years now, and as an anniversary present they have released 2 new features: Slice cloning from running slices – You can now create a ...
Computing
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Managing Containers at Scale on Google Compute Engines – Joe Beda, Google
Managing Containers at Scale on Google Compute Engines – Joe Beda, Google Everything at Google runs in a container (KVM-based) Google starts over 2 billion containers per week (...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: VPC Migration: Flying Blind on a Rocket Cycle – Matthew Boeckman, Craftsy
VPC Migration: Flying Blind on a Rocket Cycle – Matthew Boeckman, Craftsy “VPC is mature network topology for AWS” Network ACL’s allow for true edge blocking I...
#GlueCon 2014 Keynote: The Case for Application Driven Cloud Computing – Adam Davis, Chief Architect, Cloud Computing, Citi
Keynote: The Case for Application Driven Cloud Computing – Adam Davis, Chief Architect, Cloud Computing, Citi When Adam started out in the industry, dev and ops had no separatio...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Salter: Using Go to provision Saltstack clusters on AWS – Dave Smith, Orchestrate
(Notes by @tomkane) Salter: Using Go to provision Saltstack clusters on AWS – Dave Smith, Orchestrate Using fanout.io for PubSub. Love Salt. SaltCloud didn’t exist yet, so...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: DevOps vs. the Enterprise: What We Can Learn from Mainframe Developers – Mike Baukes, ScriptRock
(Notes by @tomkane) DevOps vs. the Enterprise: What We Can Learn from Mainframe Developers – Mike Baukes, ScriptRock “Going big & screwing up on DevOps implement...
#GlueCon 2014: Keynote: The Parallel Universes of DevOps and Cloud Developers – Donnie Berkholz, RedMonk
Keynote: The Parallel Universes of DevOps and Cloud Developers – Donnie Berkholz, RedMonk Background as a drug discovery scientist Most attendees of DevOps conferences are ops, ...
#GlueCon 2014: Keynote: Containers all the way down – Solomon Hykes, Docker
Keynote: Containers all the way down: a blueprint for upgrading the Internet – Solomon Hykes, Docker The applications we are building due to the new requirements don’...
#DefragCon 2013: Programming with Personal Clouds: A Post-Web Architecture — Phil Windley, Kynetx
Programming with Personal Clouds: A Post-Web Architecture – Phil Windley, Kynetx Personal cloud made up of a constellation of persistent computational objects – picos Pico...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: The Sands of Time: How Cloud is Changing the Role of the CIO — Rod Smith, IBM
The Sands of Time: How Cloud is Changing the Role of the CIO – Rod Smith, IBM LoBs want apps “built and deployed in less than 6 days” Looking for business value firs...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Software is Eating the Datacenter – Anjan Srinivas, Nutanix
Software is Eating the Datacenter – Anjan Srinivas, Nutanix Emerging trends 1. Taiwan – x86 servers going the laptop way, mass produced 2. Consolidation 2.0 – progra...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes and Slides Hub Page
In case you have never attended, Defrag Conference is a forward-looking conference that discusses what is coming in the next 18-24 months. This is the main page for that contain...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Start Small & Go Big: Getting the Most From Google Compute Engine – Joe Beda, Google
Start Small & Go Big: Getting the Most From Google Compute Engine – Joe Beda, Google (@jbeda) Google Compute Engine is VMs, storage, and network It exposes GoogleR...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Processing Big Data In Real-time with a Distributed SQL System – Ankur Goyal, MemSQL
Processing Big Data In Real-time with a Distributed SQL System – Ankur Goyal, MemSQL “SQL scales, but the technology behind it may not” When you write SQL agai...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: 20 API Business Models – John Musser, Programmable Web
20 API Business Models – John Musser, Programmable Web (@johnmusser) The question they get asked the most: “How do you make money with APIs?” Why to have APIs ...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Automotive Connectivity: More Than Just a Phone With Wheels – Nick Pudar, General Motors
Keynote: Automotive Connectivity: More Than Just a Phone With Wheels – Nick Pudar, General Motors GM has two APIs: remote APIs for accessing OnStar and in-vehicle APIs for...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Confessions of a Tech CEO Who Still Loves to Code Everyday – Lew Cirne, New Relic
Keynote: Confessions of a Tech CEO Who Still Loves to Code Everyday – Lew Cirne, New Relic New Relic was a “Do Over”, now has 50k customers, 250 employees, 3 o...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: The New Kingmakers – Stephen O’Grady, Redmonk (@sogrady)
Keynote: The New Kingmakers – Stephen O’Grady, Redmonk (@sogrady) In the past, software was just an enabler The Share user group and IBM built a community to sell more har...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Fear and Loathing and Scalable Kindness on the Internet – Tim Bray, Google
Keynote: Fear and Loathing and Scalable Kindness on the Internet – Tim Bray, Google You go to signup for a new website: “No! Not another password!” There are m...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Designing a Beautiful REST+JSON API – Les Hazlewood, CTO of Stormpath
Designing a Beautiful REST+JSON API – Les Hazlewood, CTO of Stormpath (@lhazlewood) REST is really hard (for providers) Guidelines and conventions can make it easy Resourc...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Does Your API Have Swagger? – Sumit Sharma, Mulesoft
Does Your API Have Swagger? – Sumit Sharma, Mulesoft Too often we slap on an API and let the consumers suffer Inside-Out API development – over designed, too many ab...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Machine Learning APIs (You Probably Didn’t Know About) – Chris Ismael, Mashape
Machine Learning APIs (You Probably Didn’t Know About) – Chris Ismael, Mashape Many machine learning libraries have complexity hidden behind an API Natural language proces...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: An Architectural Look at Designing e-commerce APIs – Saranyan Vigraham, BigCommerce
An Architectural Look at Designing e-commerce APIs – Saranyan Vigraham, BigCommerce (@saranyan) Bad Design Rigid – too hard to change, too many parts get affected by...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Single Page Architectures: The API and Appification for the Web Steven Willmott, 3Scale
Single Page Architectures: The API and Appification for the Web Steven Willmott, 3Scale (@njyx and @3scale) Plenty of toolkits available to build SPAs Upsides – more respo...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: The Free Lunch Is Over, Again – Andy Gross, Chief Architect at Basho
The Free Lunch Is Over, Again – Andy Gross, Chief Architect at Basho (@argv0) The Free Lunch Is Over, 2005 Paper by Herb Sutter – “A fundamental turn towards c...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Ushering in the Bronze Age of Distributed Application Tooling – John Sheehan, Runscope
Keynote: Ushering in the Bronze Age of Distributed Application Tooling – John Sheehan, Runscope Services are the new process Service dependencies are still code dependenci...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes and Slides Hub Page
This is the main page for that contains links to all GlueCon 2013 keynote and session notes, along with links to slide decks (for sessions that I wasn’t able to attend). D...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Cloud Native Applications: What Changed – Adrian Cockcroft, Cloud Architect at Netflix
Keynote: Cloud Native Applications: What Changed – Adrian Cockcroft, Cloud Architect at Netflix (@adrianco and @NetflixOSS) We are engineers and strive for perfection, fix...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: 3 Things You Need to Turn Your Enterprise Into a Platform – Laura Merling, AT&T
Keynote: 3 Things You Need to Turn Your Enterprise Into a Platform – Laura Merling, AT&T (@magicmerl) The Journey AT&T’s journey: IT as a Platform (current) ...
Guidelines for Modeling and Optimizing NoSQL Databases
eBay Architect Jay Patel recently posted an article about data modeling using the Cassandra data store. In his article, he breaks down how they modeled their data using Cassandr...
Getting Started with Heroku
I recently gave a presentation to the Austin Ruby on Rails Developers Meetup about Heroku. Topics covered included: What is Heroku and why would I use it? How much does it cost ...
5 Things To Do Before the Next AWS Outage
I am a firm believer in cloud computing. In fact, I’m focusing my business on the fact that cloud will be a standard part of software and IT architecture in the coming yea...
AWS CloudFormation and What It Means for Startups
A few days ago, Amazon Web Services (AWS) released their latest offering, CloudFormation. CloudFormation allows for the templating of your application topology, from the number ...
FREE: Cloud Computing Basics
Wondering what all of the hype is around cloud computing? Cloud computing has been a popular topic lately, including the discussion of various cloud computing solutions such as ...
Cloud Storage Used For Backup More Than General Purpose Storage
A new survey by Forrester says that just 3% of companies use cloud storage. Here are the stats from the more than 1,200 IT decision makers interviewed: 43% said they’re not inte...
Slicehost Releases Running Slice Cloning and Increases Bandwidth
I’ve been using Slicehost for 2 years now, and as an anniversary present they have released 2 new features: Slice cloning from running slices – You can now create a ...
Conferences
Welcome SXSW Godbit Attendees
Welcome to those of you visiting my blog who were at the Godbit Dinner Monday night during SXSW! Thanks for a great evening of fun and fellowship! If you are looking for my volu...
Lone Star Ruby Conference 2007 on Pownce
If you want to follow my notes from the Lone Star Ruby Conference 2007, you can subscribe to my Pownce page. For those at the conference, I’m seated against the wall stage...
Attending the Lone Star Ruby Conference 2007
I’ll be at the Lone Star Ruby Conference on Fri Sept 7th and Sat Sept 8th, so if you will be there, drop me a comment or note and let me know so that we can meet up. [tags...
Defrag
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: APIs In a Post-API World – Uri Sarid, Mulesoft
APIs In a Post-API World – Uri Sarid, Mulesoft Mashups in 2005 – mostly about Google Maps, not much else was available Now we have a huge number of APIs available > 13,...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Towards an API Commons – Steven Wilmott, 3Scale and Kin Lane, Presidential Innovation Fellow
Towards an API Commons – Steven Wilmott, 3Scale and Kin Lane, Presidential Innovation Fellow The number of APIs are exploding Need client code to help interact with the APIs Cod...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Sustainable Software Engineering Culture (Without The Ninjas) – Mike Gehard, Pivotal Labs
Sustainable Software Engineering Culture (Without The Ninjas) – Mike Gehard, Pivotal Labs Everyone wants predictability in an unpredictable world Sustainability over time is cri...
#DefragCon 2013: Programming with Personal Clouds: A Post-Web Architecture — Phil Windley, Kynetx
Programming with Personal Clouds: A Post-Web Architecture – Phil Windley, Kynetx Personal cloud made up of a constellation of persistent computational objects – picos Pico...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: The Sands of Time: How Cloud is Changing the Role of the CIO — Rod Smith, IBM
The Sands of Time: How Cloud is Changing the Role of the CIO – Rod Smith, IBM LoBs want apps “built and deployed in less than 6 days” Looking for business value firs...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Industrial Entropy and the Future of Work – Chris DeVore, Founders Co-op
Industrial Entropy and the Future of Work – Chris DeVore, Founders Co-op Ronald Coase – “The Nature of the Firm” paper – why companies exist Firms gather...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Great, Software Ate My World. Now what? – Oren Teich, Heroku
Great, Software Ate My World. Now what? – Oren Teich, Heroku The way that we are engaging and interacting is changing “Software is eating the world” Replace ‘E...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Developer Marketing: F#%k Leads; Generate Relationships – Tim Falls, SendGrid
Developer Marketing: F#%k Leads; Generate Relationships – Tim Falls, SendGrid Marketing has gotten really hard Relationships > Leads Handshakes > Clicks Two types of marke...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Unpacking Data’s Baggage: Lessons from Airport Security – Stephen Messer, Collective[i]
Unpacking Data’s Baggage: Lessons from Airport Security – Stephen Messer, Collective[i] BigData will disappoint if you fixate on its size. What matters is getting fast, re...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Software is Eating the Datacenter – Anjan Srinivas, Nutanix
Software is Eating the Datacenter – Anjan Srinivas, Nutanix Emerging trends 1. Taiwan – x86 servers going the laptop way, mass produced 2. Consolidation 2.0 – progra...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Security before convenience, and other lies – David Meyer, OneLogin
Security before convenience, and other lies – David Meyer, OneLogin Security theater #1: Security images they are ineffective, intuitions are not reliable, people don’t be...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: The Identity Manifesto: Seven Points On The Future of Identity – R Ray Wang
The Identity Manifesto: Seven Points On The Future of Identity – R Ray Wang, Constellation Research Change Ahead 1) Macro economic forces – we can’t change this 2) D...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes and Slides Hub Page
In case you have never attended, Defrag Conference is a forward-looking conference that discusses what is coming in the next 18-24 months. This is the main page for that contain...
Development
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Sustainable Software Engineering Culture (Without The Ninjas) – Mike Gehard, Pivotal Labs
Sustainable Software Engineering Culture (Without The Ninjas) – Mike Gehard, Pivotal Labs Everyone wants predictability in an unpredictable world Sustainability over time is cri...
Are You Building a Project or Product?
As a developer, I often see problems as projects. These projects have a problem statement, steps to resolve the issue, and target completion criteria. It seems like a simple app...
Technical Co-Founder Need Not Apply
Will Miceli recently posted an article, titled Technical Co-Founders Are Overrated, that outlines his journey from idea to finding a partner: I was working on my first entrepren...
Developer’s Guide to Building a High Performance Desktop Machine
Laptops can be useful for day-to-day development, but a more powerful machine is required when it comes to working with Very Large Databases (VLDBs) and Big Data. Having some ba...
How To Locate a Developer For Your Startup
In a recent question posted at the OnStartups forums, a founder asked how to find a developer for their Software as a Service (SaaS) idea. While I was able to provide some advic...
How To Select A Development Team For Your Startup
One of the big decisions for any new startup is the selection of a development team. Whether you need just one developer or you need a complete team, there are five important th...
What To Do When You Have a Bad Development Team
I recently heard two stories about bad development teams. They are both full of heartache and woe, but they both provide some valuable insight for the business owner about to em...
Product Audit: Customer Experience
Applications can get familiar and outdated. What worked for your first set of customers may not work for your current, less experienced ones. Or, perhaps your users are getting ...
Launching a Startup Requires Patience
I’ve had some recent discussions with some entrepreneurs about the cost and time it takes to launch a startup. These have been interesting discussions, as they have alread...
Architecting Your Startup
Seth Godin recently posted an article titled “Is architect a verb?”: Design carries a lot of baggage related to aesthetics. We say something is well-designed if it l...
Set Expectations: Charge Something
Seth Godin has a great post about the pricing model for renting digital movies: It’s important to charge something, because the act of paying fundamentally changes the dyn...
Dealing with Struggling Startups
Things not going the way you planned for your startup? I would advise you to read this great post on how a startup has struggled to gain traction, as it contains some great insi...
Web Hosting for Startups
One of the early questions any startup asks is “where should we host our new startup, and what plan should we get?” While there are a variety of answers, I want to g...
Javascript for Startups: The Basics
Javascript is a technology that, until recently, has been reserved for simple browser tricks and catching mouse or browser events. It recently has been adopted, through the use ...
How often do you visit competitor websites?
Oh, it seems innocent enough. A page view here, a page view there. Pretty soon you are hooked on competitor websites and can’t make a decision without first looking at the...
“Not descriptive enough” can be a bad sign
If you are struggling with trying to find a term for your website copy or functionality that covers a variety of user types or concepts, it is typically a sign of too much gener...
Startups on Rails
I met my good friend Ryan Heneise over lunch Monday, during which we were discussing what sort of FUD we get from startups regarding Ruby on Rails. Rather than go through the vo...
My Number One Development Priority: Helping Startups Focus
As an architect and developer, you may think that all of my time helping startups get from idea to revenue is spent writing and managing the code, but I find that it first shoul...
DevOps
How To Successfully Deploy Your Web or Mobile API to Heroku
I have deployed a wide variety of APIs, from internal to APIs for public or partner consumption. Many of them have been deployed to Heroku. There are a variety of advantages, in...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Salter: Using Go to provision Saltstack clusters on AWS – Dave Smith, Orchestrate
(Notes by @tomkane) Salter: Using Go to provision Saltstack clusters on AWS – Dave Smith, Orchestrate Using fanout.io for PubSub. Love Salt. SaltCloud didn’t exist yet, so...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: DevOps vs. the Enterprise: What We Can Learn from Mainframe Developers – Mike Baukes, ScriptRock
(Notes by @tomkane) DevOps vs. the Enterprise: What We Can Learn from Mainframe Developers – Mike Baukes, ScriptRock “Going big & screwing up on DevOps implement...
5 Common Mistakes When Automating Application Deployment
I have been automating the deployment of applications to physical and cloud-based servers for many years. Here are five mistakes that I commonly find when helping teams with the...
How To Work With Software Developers
I recently wrote a post about how to select a development team for your startup. Once you’ve selected a developer or development team, you need to understand how to work w...
Entrepreneurship
Startup Advice from Brett Hurt, Austin Ventures Partner and BazaarVoice Founder
Brett Hurt has been blogging for some time now. At a recent appearance at the Austin Regulars meetup, Brett answered questions from several audience members. Throughout the conv...
How often do you visit competitor websites?
Oh, it seems innocent enough. A page view here, a page view there. Pretty soon you are hooked on competitor websites and can’t make a decision without first looking at the...
Startups on Rails
I met my good friend Ryan Heneise over lunch Monday, during which we were discussing what sort of FUD we get from startups regarding Ruby on Rails. Rather than go through the vo...
My Number One Development Priority: Helping Startups Focus
As an architect and developer, you may think that all of my time helping startups get from idea to revenue is spent writing and managing the code, but I find that it first shoul...
Featured
FREE: Cloud Computing Basics
Wondering what all of the hype is around cloud computing? Cloud computing has been a popular topic lately, including the discussion of various cloud computing solutions such as ...
How to Deepen Your Network and Grow Your Startup
Chris Brogan has a great list of tips for expanding your business network over the coming year. In fact, many of his ideas are about what not to do, such as stop networking at c...
Better Web Designs To Increase Donations
The Carsonified blog has a great post that details the process they took when asking for a donations. The end result is not only pretty form, it makes an direct and positive imp...
Grow Big, Stay Small
I have worked with quite a few startups, each of varying sizes. The thing that I’ve noticed consistently with each startup: they moved and adapted to change faster when th...
How To Select A Development Team For Your Startup
One of the big decisions for any new startup is the selection of a development team. Whether you need just one developer or you need a complete team, there are five important th...
Bootstrap Whenever You Can
Many startups immediately focus on obtaining large-scale investors. The focus is so intense, that many make the investors more important than the customers. Not only does this l...
Launching Your Startup’s Business Model
Seth Godin has a great definition of business model: A business model is the architecture of a business or project. It has four elements: What compelling reason exists for peopl...
Recruiting Volunteers to Your Cause
Are you launching a cause that will require volunteers? Whether you are launching a new church, para-church ministry, non-profit, or a PTA/school project, you’ll want to c...
Twitter Can Launch Ideas Faster
Twitter has been in the media recently. Not just the expected online and print sources, but often in local news segments. Local news anchors now use Twitter to talk about...
GlueCon
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: APIs.json and API Discovery on the Web – Steven Willmott and Kin Lane
APIs.json and API Discovery on the Web – Steven Willmott and Kin Lane APIs.json is the equivalent of a robots.txt or sitemap.xml files for web APIs The goal is to provide additi...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Managing Containers at Scale on Google Compute Engines – Joe Beda, Google
Managing Containers at Scale on Google Compute Engines – Joe Beda, Google Everything at Google runs in a container (KVM-based) Google starts over 2 billion containers per week (...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: VPC Migration: Flying Blind on a Rocket Cycle – Matthew Boeckman, Craftsy
VPC Migration: Flying Blind on a Rocket Cycle – Matthew Boeckman, Craftsy “VPC is mature network topology for AWS” Network ACL’s allow for true edge blocking I...
#GlueCon 2014 Keynote: Taming the RESTed NARWHL: Striking the Balance Between Usability and Zealotry in REST – Rob Zazueta, Mashery (an Intel Company)
Keynote: Taming the RESTed NARWHL: Striking the Balance Between Usability and Zealotry in REST – Rob Zazueta, Mashery (an Intel Company) For those charged with writing books abo...
#GlueCon 2014 Keynote: Automation and DevOps: How to Create a Lights-Out Software Defined Data Center – Joshua McKenty, Piston Cloud Computing
Keynote: Automation and DevOps: How to Create a Lights-Out Software Defined Data Center – Joshua McKenty, Piston Cloud Computing Thinking about SDKs makes us think about consumi...
#GlueCon 2014 Keynote: The Case for Application Driven Cloud Computing – Adam Davis, Chief Architect, Cloud Computing, Citi
Keynote: The Case for Application Driven Cloud Computing – Adam Davis, Chief Architect, Cloud Computing, Citi When Adam started out in the industry, dev and ops had no separatio...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Enhancing Your Cloud Applications with Artificial Intelligence – Elliot Turner, AlchemyAPI
(Notes by @tomkane) Enhancing Your Cloud Applications with Artificial Intelligence – Elliot Turner, AlchemyAPI One big advantage is offloading specialized, intensive compu...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Salter: Using Go to provision Saltstack clusters on AWS – Dave Smith, Orchestrate
(Notes by @tomkane) Salter: Using Go to provision Saltstack clusters on AWS – Dave Smith, Orchestrate Using fanout.io for PubSub. Love Salt. SaltCloud didn’t exist yet, so...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: DevOps vs. the Enterprise: What We Can Learn from Mainframe Developers – Mike Baukes, ScriptRock
(Notes by @tomkane) DevOps vs. the Enterprise: What We Can Learn from Mainframe Developers – Mike Baukes, ScriptRock “Going big & screwing up on DevOps implement...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: What Makes a Great Developer Company? – Ethan Kurzweil, Bessemer Venture Partners
Keynote: What Makes a Great Developer Company? – Ethan Kurzweil, Bessemer Venture Partners Why the time is now for the developer-driven business Developers traditionally have be...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: How, Why and When to R&D — Adam DuVander, SendGrid Labs
Keynote: How, Why and When to R&D — Adam DuVander, SendGrid Labs Hackathons as performed by a hardware manufacturer: “Bring your ideas.. some wood, we’ll provide...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: API First: Designing your Product from the Platform Out – Kirsten Hunter, 3Scale
API First: Designing your Product from the Platform Out – Kirsten Hunter, 3Scale APIs are often an afterthought for developers You will always have another client Taking an API ...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Love your Logs with Elasticsearch ELK – Jordan Sissel, Elasticsearch
Love your Logs with Elasticsearch ELK – Jordan Sissel, Elasticsearch Been in operations for 10 years, recently switched to programming but always been one What is a log? Time + ...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes: Keynote: API SDKs will ruin your life – John Sheehan, Runscope
Keynote: API SDKs will ruin your life – John Sheehan, Runscope Started a company to solve issues around building .Net API clients and SDKs Spent a lot of time at Twilio thinking...
#GlueCon 2014: Keynote: The Parallel Universes of DevOps and Cloud Developers – Donnie Berkholz, RedMonk
Keynote: The Parallel Universes of DevOps and Cloud Developers – Donnie Berkholz, RedMonk Background as a drug discovery scientist Most attendees of DevOps conferences are ops, ...
#GlueCon 2014: Keynote: Containers all the way down – Solomon Hykes, Docker
Keynote: Containers all the way down: a blueprint for upgrading the Internet – Solomon Hykes, Docker The applications we are building due to the new requirements don’...
#GlueCon 2014: APIStrat UnWorkshop Notes – Internet of Things
APIStrat UnWorkshop – Internet of Things Why HTTP Won’t Work for IoT – Tim Kellogg @kellogh Embedded + Internet = IoT Constrained environments – memory, embedd...
#GlueCon 2014 Notes and Slides Hub Page
This is the main page for that contains links to all GlueCon 2014 keynote and session notes, along with links to slide decks (for sessions that I wasn’t able to attend). Preconf...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Start Small & Go Big: Getting the Most From Google Compute Engine – Joe Beda, Google
Start Small & Go Big: Getting the Most From Google Compute Engine – Joe Beda, Google (@jbeda) Google Compute Engine is VMs, storage, and network It exposes GoogleR...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Processing Big Data In Real-time with a Distributed SQL System – Ankur Goyal, MemSQL
Processing Big Data In Real-time with a Distributed SQL System – Ankur Goyal, MemSQL “SQL scales, but the technology behind it may not” When you write SQL agai...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: 20 API Business Models – John Musser, Programmable Web
20 API Business Models – John Musser, Programmable Web (@johnmusser) The question they get asked the most: “How do you make money with APIs?” Why to have APIs ...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Automotive Connectivity: More Than Just a Phone With Wheels – Nick Pudar, General Motors
Keynote: Automotive Connectivity: More Than Just a Phone With Wheels – Nick Pudar, General Motors GM has two APIs: remote APIs for accessing OnStar and in-vehicle APIs for...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Confessions of a Tech CEO Who Still Loves to Code Everyday – Lew Cirne, New Relic
Keynote: Confessions of a Tech CEO Who Still Loves to Code Everyday – Lew Cirne, New Relic New Relic was a “Do Over”, now has 50k customers, 250 employees, 3 o...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: The New Kingmakers – Stephen O’Grady, Redmonk (@sogrady)
Keynote: The New Kingmakers – Stephen O’Grady, Redmonk (@sogrady) In the past, software was just an enabler The Share user group and IBM built a community to sell more har...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Fear and Loathing and Scalable Kindness on the Internet – Tim Bray, Google
Keynote: Fear and Loathing and Scalable Kindness on the Internet – Tim Bray, Google You go to signup for a new website: “No! Not another password!” There are m...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Designing a Beautiful REST+JSON API – Les Hazlewood, CTO of Stormpath
Designing a Beautiful REST+JSON API – Les Hazlewood, CTO of Stormpath (@lhazlewood) REST is really hard (for providers) Guidelines and conventions can make it easy Resourc...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Does Your API Have Swagger? – Sumit Sharma, Mulesoft
Does Your API Have Swagger? – Sumit Sharma, Mulesoft Too often we slap on an API and let the consumers suffer Inside-Out API development – over designed, too many ab...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Machine Learning APIs (You Probably Didn’t Know About) – Chris Ismael, Mashape
Machine Learning APIs (You Probably Didn’t Know About) – Chris Ismael, Mashape Many machine learning libraries have complexity hidden behind an API Natural language proces...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: An Architectural Look at Designing e-commerce APIs – Saranyan Vigraham, BigCommerce
An Architectural Look at Designing e-commerce APIs – Saranyan Vigraham, BigCommerce (@saranyan) Bad Design Rigid – too hard to change, too many parts get affected by...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Single Page Architectures: The API and Appification for the Web Steven Willmott, 3Scale
Single Page Architectures: The API and Appification for the Web Steven Willmott, 3Scale (@njyx and @3scale) Plenty of toolkits available to build SPAs Upsides – more respo...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: The Free Lunch Is Over, Again – Andy Gross, Chief Architect at Basho
The Free Lunch Is Over, Again – Andy Gross, Chief Architect at Basho (@argv0) The Free Lunch Is Over, 2005 Paper by Herb Sutter – “A fundamental turn towards c...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Ushering in the Bronze Age of Distributed Application Tooling – John Sheehan, Runscope
Keynote: Ushering in the Bronze Age of Distributed Application Tooling – John Sheehan, Runscope Services are the new process Service dependencies are still code dependenci...
#GlueCon 2013 Notes and Slides Hub Page
This is the main page for that contains links to all GlueCon 2013 keynote and session notes, along with links to slide decks (for sessions that I wasn’t able to attend). D...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: Cloud Native Applications: What Changed – Adrian Cockcroft, Cloud Architect at Netflix
Keynote: Cloud Native Applications: What Changed – Adrian Cockcroft, Cloud Architect at Netflix (@adrianco and @NetflixOSS) We are engineers and strive for perfection, fix...
GlueCon 2013 Notes: 3 Things You Need to Turn Your Enterprise Into a Platform – Laura Merling, AT&T
Keynote: 3 Things You Need to Turn Your Enterprise Into a Platform – Laura Merling, AT&T (@magicmerl) The Journey AT&T’s journey: IT as a Platform (current) ...
Headline
Free Paper: Cloud Computing Basics
An Introduction to Cloud Computing and How it is Changing Business Cloud computing can be a confusing technology. It can be hard to determine if you should move to the cloud ful...
AWS CloudFormation and What It Means for Startups
A few days ago, Amazon Web Services (AWS) released their latest offering, CloudFormation. CloudFormation allows for the templating of your application topology, from the number ...
Inspirational Roundup
Everyone hits a difficult point in their startup. It may be that you are trying to bootstrap your idea in your spare time. Or perhaps you are battling a difficult issue and need...
Setting Your Idea Free
Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, and Chris Anderson have been talking quite a bit about “free” and what it means. Chris contends that anything that is strictly made of ...
Identity
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Unpacking Data’s Baggage: Lessons from Airport Security – Stephen Messer, Collective[i]
Unpacking Data’s Baggage: Lessons from Airport Security – Stephen Messer, Collective[i] BigData will disappoint if you fixate on its size. What matters is getting fast, re...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Security before convenience, and other lies – David Meyer, OneLogin
Security before convenience, and other lies – David Meyer, OneLogin Security theater #1: Security images they are ineffective, intuitions are not reliable, people don’t be...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: The Identity Manifesto: Seven Points On The Future of Identity – R Ray Wang
The Identity Manifesto: Seven Points On The Future of Identity – R Ray Wang, Constellation Research Change Ahead 1) Macro economic forces – we can’t change this 2) D...
Marketing
Product Audit: Customer Experience
Applications can get familiar and outdated. What worked for your first set of customers may not work for your current, less experienced ones. Or, perhaps your users are getting ...
Architecting Your Startup
Seth Godin recently posted an article titled “Is architect a verb?”: Design carries a lot of baggage related to aesthetics. We say something is well-designed if it l...
When Free Stops Working
Seth Godin has an interesting post today about how free stops getting attention: The interaction you seek as a marketer often disappears when something is free. The fascinating ...
Mobile
When To Go With a Mobile First Strategy
The mobile first strategy has been an emerging topic for the last several years. But is mobile first really the best strategy for your next product? Let’s examine the thre...
Recommendations For Mobile API Design
Building a high performance, reliable mobile backend is just as essential to the user experience as the design of the application itself. While building a full mobile backend st...
Non-Profit
Better Web Designs To Increase Donations
The Carsonified blog has a great post that details the process they took when asking for a donations. The end result is not only pretty form, it makes an direct and positive imp...
Recruiting Volunteers to Your Cause
Are you launching a cause that will require volunteers? Whether you are launching a new church, para-church ministry, non-profit, or a PTA/school project, you’ll want to c...
Product
Slack, Chatbots, and Voice: At the Intersection of Humans and APIs
Over the last year, we have seen growth in messaging platforms for business. These platforms have changed the way we communicate within and across teams. But why have these plat...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Sustainable Software Engineering Culture (Without The Ninjas) – Mike Gehard, Pivotal Labs
Sustainable Software Engineering Culture (Without The Ninjas) – Mike Gehard, Pivotal Labs Everyone wants predictability in an unpredictable world Sustainability over time is cri...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Industrial Entropy and the Future of Work – Chris DeVore, Founders Co-op
Industrial Entropy and the Future of Work – Chris DeVore, Founders Co-op Ronald Coase – “The Nature of the Firm” paper – why companies exist Firms gather...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Great, Software Ate My World. Now what? – Oren Teich, Heroku
Great, Software Ate My World. Now what? – Oren Teich, Heroku The way that we are engaging and interacting is changing “Software is eating the world” Replace ‘E...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Developer Marketing: F#%k Leads; Generate Relationships – Tim Falls, SendGrid
Developer Marketing: F#%k Leads; Generate Relationships – Tim Falls, SendGrid Marketing has gotten really hard Relationships > Leads Handshakes > Clicks Two types of marke...
Good Idea, Well Executed
Many founders hold their idea close to them. Others share their ideas. No matter what option they select, ideas must be executed. Why? Because you can only learn so much without...
Competition Always Exists – Why You?
Maybe you heard it from someone you know. Maybe you have thought it yourself. “My idea is so new and different. There is no competition at all for it!” It isn’...
How To Increase Your Idea’s Chance of Success
Jason Cohen has a great interview with Bob Walsh about his products that help startups increase their chances of success. I particularly like the first question in the interview...
Top Ways Social Media Can Launch Your Idea
Lewis Howes has a short video (5:48) on how to use social media to communicate with your audience and grow your idea. Here are his tips: Be yourself rather than acting like R...
Making Your Startup Stand Out In a Sea of Competition
My company, Blue Jazz Consulting, recently launched a new startup called aLawPractice.com. The goal is to reduce the headaches of managing an legal practice while making it simp...
Seth Godin says “Don’t Be a Cog”
Seth Godin recently wrote a guest post for Pamela Slim’s Escape From Cubicle Nation blog. In it, Seth had some great things to say about doing what you think is right inst...
Twitter Can Launch Ideas Faster
Twitter has been in the media recently. Not just the expected online and print sources, but often in local news segments. Local news anchors now use Twitter to talk about...
Ruby
Building Better APIs in Ruby (and Rails)
I recently presented a lightning talk at Austin on Rails titled “5 ways to build better APIs in Ruby”. Below is the slide deck, along with a coupon code to our book ...
MySQL Bulk Insert Performance With JRuby and JDBC
I often have need to perform a bulk import of CSV files into MySQL for different projects. Recently, I made the move to the JRuby platform for one of my projects and have benefi...
Why I Selected JRuby For My Ruby Project
For those working on the Ruby platform, this is an interesting time. We have Ruby 1.9 YARV, Rubinius, and JRuby as the most popular Ruby Virtual Machines available right now. Ea...
37signals on Rails Optimizations
There is a great post at the 37signals blog about how they optimized Basecamp using New Relic. One thing I found most interesting: MySQL optimizations: We’ve been working with...
Raising Exceptions within Your Rails Application
Clemens Kofler has a great post about when to raise exceptions within your Rails application: Over the years I’ve come up with a little rule of thumb for exceptions: Libraries...
Ruby Microframework Footprints
I’ve been looking for a microframework for Ruby that is simple like Camping but supports RESTful resources like Rails. A tip from the Denver Rails UG pointed me to Sinatra...
Subdomains and Rails
I was trying to setup the proper environment settings in Rails 2 to support cross-subdomain cookie sharing (so the user doesn’t have to login again if they manage multiple...
Make RESTful Authentication XHR-aware
I’ve been working on a project that uses a little XHR mixed into the app to update DIVs on a page. The problem with the RESTful Authentication plugin is that it will alway...
Label References and RESTful Authentication in Rails 2
I’m working on a new project that is using the RESTful Authentication generator with Rails 2. As I started to take advantage of the label references capability in Rails 2,...
Austin-American Statesman on Rails
I hear some founders say that one technology is the same as another when launching a startup. Scott Abel, chief executive of Austin-based software company Spiceworks Inc, says d...
Reddit for Ruby Hackers
A new Reddit page dedicated to Ruby is now available: http://reddit.com/r/ruby/. You can subscribe using RSS. Just keep in mind that it is early.
Lone Star Ruby Conference 2007 on Pownce
If you want to follow my notes from the Lone Star Ruby Conference 2007, you can subscribe to my Pownce page. For those at the conference, I’m seated against the wall stage...
Attending the Lone Star Ruby Conference 2007
I’ll be at the Lone Star Ruby Conference on Fri Sept 7th and Sat Sept 8th, so if you will be there, drop me a comment or note and let me know so that we can meet up. [tags...
Security
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Unpacking Data’s Baggage: Lessons from Airport Security – Stephen Messer, Collective[i]
Unpacking Data’s Baggage: Lessons from Airport Security – Stephen Messer, Collective[i] BigData will disappoint if you fixate on its size. What matters is getting fast, re...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Security before convenience, and other lies – David Meyer, OneLogin
Security before convenience, and other lies – David Meyer, OneLogin Security theater #1: Security images they are ineffective, intuitions are not reliable, people don’t be...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: The Identity Manifesto: Seven Points On The Future of Identity – R Ray Wang
The Identity Manifesto: Seven Points On The Future of Identity – R Ray Wang, Constellation Research Change Ahead 1) Macro economic forces – we can’t change this 2) D...
Startup
Technical Co-Founder Need Not Apply
Will Miceli recently posted an article, titled Technical Co-Founders Are Overrated, that outlines his journey from idea to finding a partner: I was working on my first entrepren...
Product Audit: Customer Experience
Applications can get familiar and outdated. What worked for your first set of customers may not work for your current, less experienced ones. Or, perhaps your users are getting ...
Launching a Startup Requires Patience
I’ve had some recent discussions with some entrepreneurs about the cost and time it takes to launch a startup. These have been interesting discussions, as they have alread...
Architecting Your Startup
Seth Godin recently posted an article titled “Is architect a verb?”: Design carries a lot of baggage related to aesthetics. We say something is well-designed if it l...
When Free Stops Working
Seth Godin has an interesting post today about how free stops getting attention: The interaction you seek as a marketer often disappears when something is free. The fascinating ...
Set Expectations: Charge Something
Seth Godin has a great post about the pricing model for renting digital movies: It’s important to charge something, because the act of paying fundamentally changes the dyn...
Dealing with Struggling Startups
Things not going the way you planned for your startup? I would advise you to read this great post on how a startup has struggled to gain traction, as it contains some great insi...
Web Hosting for Startups
One of the early questions any startup asks is “where should we host our new startup, and what plan should we get?” While there are a variety of answers, I want to g...
Javascript for Startups: The Basics
Javascript is a technology that, until recently, has been reserved for simple browser tricks and catching mouse or browser events. It recently has been adopted, through the use ...
How often do you visit competitor websites?
Oh, it seems innocent enough. A page view here, a page view there. Pretty soon you are hooked on competitor websites and can’t make a decision without first looking at the...
“Not descriptive enough” can be a bad sign
If you are struggling with trying to find a term for your website copy or functionality that covers a variety of user types or concepts, it is typically a sign of too much gener...
Startups on Rails
I met my good friend Ryan Heneise over lunch Monday, during which we were discussing what sort of FUD we get from startups regarding Ruby on Rails. Rather than go through the vo...
My Number One Development Priority: Helping Startups Focus
As an architect and developer, you may think that all of my time helping startups get from idea to revenue is spent writing and managing the code, but I find that it first shoul...
Startups
The Rise of the Interim CTO
Have you ever heard of an Interim CTO? While many have heard of interim executives for the CEO or CMO role, the Interim CTO role is quickly becoming a popular option for early s...
Startup Advice from Brett Hurt, Austin Ventures Partner and BazaarVoice Founder
Brett Hurt has been blogging for some time now. At a recent appearance at the Austin Regulars meetup, Brett answered questions from several audience members. Throughout the conv...
Are You Building a Project or Product?
As a developer, I often see problems as projects. These projects have a problem statement, steps to resolve the issue, and target completion criteria. It seems like a simple app...
Good Idea, Well Executed
Many founders hold their idea close to them. Others share their ideas. No matter what option they select, ideas must be executed. Why? Because you can only learn so much without...
How to Request Help For Your Startup
As a startup, you need all the help you can get. But requesting the right help can be the biggest challenge. You may not know the right person to ask, or how to ask. Here are a ...
Should Your SaaS Startup Be Free…Forever?
I had a quick conversation today with a new startup targeting businesses with a Service-as-a-Service product offering. Their startup solves a big need for my business. However, ...
Inspirational Roundup
Everyone hits a difficult point in their startup. It may be that you are trying to bootstrap your idea in your spare time. Or perhaps you are battling a difficult issue and need...
Dealing With The Valley of Death: Love Your Idea First
In a recent discussion with a friend and fellow entrepreneur, we discussed how startup founders need persistence. Persistence is usually the trait most associated with successfu...
FREE: Cloud Computing Basics
Wondering what all of the hype is around cloud computing? Cloud computing has been a popular topic lately, including the discussion of various cloud computing solutions such as ...
Start Strong, Finish Strong, Launch Strong
“Finish strong” is a common phrase and something that people try to use to encourage us. People often say that most of the effort of any startup goes into finishing ...
How to Deepen Your Network and Grow Your Startup
Chris Brogan has a great list of tips for expanding your business network over the coming year. In fact, many of his ideas are about what not to do, such as stop networking at c...
Better Web Designs To Increase Donations
The Carsonified blog has a great post that details the process they took when asking for a donations. The end result is not only pretty form, it makes an direct and positive imp...
Grow Big, Stay Small
I have worked with quite a few startups, each of varying sizes. The thing that I’ve noticed consistently with each startup: they moved and adapted to change faster when th...
Competition Always Exists – Why You?
Maybe you heard it from someone you know. Maybe you have thought it yourself. “My idea is so new and different. There is no competition at all for it!” It isn’...
What To Do When You Have a Bad Development Team
I recently heard two stories about bad development teams. They are both full of heartache and woe, but they both provide some valuable insight for the business owner about to em...
Feel Like a Fraud? You’re Not Alone!
Jason Cohen posted an article about his battle with feeling like a fraud. Jason has a product that allows software developers to perform code reviews of one another’s work...
Making Your Startup Stand Out In a Sea of Competition
My company, Blue Jazz Consulting, recently launched a new startup called aLawPractice.com. The goal is to reduce the headaches of managing an legal practice while making it simp...
Markup Factory Interview
Nathan at Godbit has an interview with Markup Factory, a hosted CMS, which supports valid user generated HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Markup Factory offers a rich feature set incl...
Eric Ries on Staying Focused
Eric Ries, author of the Lessons Learned blog and founder of IMVU, recently wrote a post about his 10 year anniversary as an entrepreneur: One thing really stands out to me toda...
Setting Your Idea Free
Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, and Chris Anderson have been talking quite a bit about “free” and what it means. Chris contends that anything that is strictly made of ...
Bootstrap Whenever You Can
Many startups immediately focus on obtaining large-scale investors. The focus is so intense, that many make the investors more important than the customers. Not only does this l...
You Get What You Give
When it comes to launching your idea, many business owners have to seek out assistance. Whether it is assistance with software development, marketing, or accounting, you will ev...
Turning Your (Part Time) Idea Into Reality
Thomas at The Messy Notebook posted an article on building something real in your spare time. This is a great list for those trying to launch any kind of idea, either full-time ...
Launching Your Startup’s Business Model
Seth Godin has a great definition of business model: A business model is the architecture of a business or project. It has four elements: What compelling reason exists for peopl...
Recruiting Volunteers to Your Cause
Are you launching a cause that will require volunteers? Whether you are launching a new church, para-church ministry, non-profit, or a PTA/school project, you’ll want to c...
Strategy
Slack, Chatbots, and Voice: At the Intersection of Humans and APIs
Over the last year, we have seen growth in messaging platforms for business. These platforms have changed the way we communicate within and across teams. But why have these plat...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Sustainable Software Engineering Culture (Without The Ninjas) – Mike Gehard, Pivotal Labs
Sustainable Software Engineering Culture (Without The Ninjas) – Mike Gehard, Pivotal Labs Everyone wants predictability in an unpredictable world Sustainability over time is cri...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Industrial Entropy and the Future of Work – Chris DeVore, Founders Co-op
Industrial Entropy and the Future of Work – Chris DeVore, Founders Co-op Ronald Coase – “The Nature of the Firm” paper – why companies exist Firms gather...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Great, Software Ate My World. Now what? – Oren Teich, Heroku
Great, Software Ate My World. Now what? – Oren Teich, Heroku The way that we are engaging and interacting is changing “Software is eating the world” Replace ‘E...
#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Developer Marketing: F#%k Leads; Generate Relationships – Tim Falls, SendGrid
Developer Marketing: F#%k Leads; Generate Relationships – Tim Falls, SendGrid Marketing has gotten really hard Relationships > Leads Handshakes > Clicks Two types of marke...
Good Idea, Well Executed
Many founders hold their idea close to them. Others share their ideas. No matter what option they select, ideas must be executed. Why? Because you can only learn so much without...
Competition Always Exists – Why You?
Maybe you heard it from someone you know. Maybe you have thought it yourself. “My idea is so new and different. There is no competition at all for it!” It isn’...
How To Increase Your Idea’s Chance of Success
Jason Cohen has a great interview with Bob Walsh about his products that help startups increase their chances of success. I particularly like the first question in the interview...
Top Ways Social Media Can Launch Your Idea
Lewis Howes has a short video (5:48) on how to use social media to communicate with your audience and grow your idea. Here are his tips: Be yourself rather than acting like R...
Making Your Startup Stand Out In a Sea of Competition
My company, Blue Jazz Consulting, recently launched a new startup called aLawPractice.com. The goal is to reduce the headaches of managing an legal practice while making it simp...
Seth Godin says “Don’t Be a Cog”
Seth Godin recently wrote a guest post for Pamela Slim’s Escape From Cubicle Nation blog. In it, Seth had some great things to say about doing what you think is right inst...
Twitter Can Launch Ideas Faster
Twitter has been in the media recently. Not just the expected online and print sources, but often in local news segments. Local news anchors now use Twitter to talk about...
Uncategorized
Developer’s Guide to Building a High Performance Desktop Machine
Laptops can be useful for day-to-day development, but a more powerful machine is required when it comes to working with Very Large Databases (VLDBs) and Big Data. Having some ba...
Featured Site: eBooks Just Published
Mark Gladding discovered there’s a lot of great eBooks being published all the time by independent authors. Unfortunately they’re not always that easy to find. Doing a search fo...
One Step At A Time
Seth Godin posted a great article called “Circling the big domino” where he makes an argument for working the events in order to get your brand known: Envision the e...
Raising Exceptions within Your Rails Application
Clemens Kofler has a great post about when to raise exceptions within your Rails application: Over the years I’ve come up with a little rule of thumb for exceptions: Libraries...