Closer than you think

I've recently finished reading Avogadro Corp by William Hertling and the sequel A.I. Apocalypse. These books deal with the idea how artificial intelligence might come about today or in the near future. The story's main premise is the eponymous Avogadro Corp, a hardly disguised Google. This company, whose name is conveniently related to a large number as well, offers a wide range of Internet services: Search, web-based office suite, web-based eMail (AvoMail ...) and its own smartphone OS (AvoOS). Sounds familiar? The story ... Read more

nagg – Simple A/B Testing For Links

nagg is an interesting take on URL shortening. It lets you enter up to 4 links each of which will be presented to the user clicking on the link at a previously set rate. For example, if entering four links with a rate of 25% each, each link will be shown every fourth time a user clicks on the shortenend link. This allows you for instance to do quick split testing of marketing sites or landing pages. Read more

Don’t Break the Chain

Having now managed to write at least one blog post per week for over a year, something I resolved to do in order to both reflect upon ideas, events or interesting products and technologies as well as hone my writing skills, I've recently read that the notion of getting things done by doing them regularly following a disciplined pattern is Jerry Seinfeld's Productivity Secret: He [Jerry Seinfeld] said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put ... Read more

The Future of Coding: Simple, Responsive, Instant Feedback

Last year Daniel Siegel outlined what he thinks will be the future of computing: While trying to teach everyone to code certainly is well-intentioned and to some extent beneficial the idea falls short of what most people require of computing environments. Most people don't need comprehensive and complex development environments. They need to accomplish specific tasks that lend themselves to being solved by code yet most people don't need to develop enterprise-grade web applications or mobile apps. What's actually needed are simpler tools ... Read more