JonathanToler.com » Technology

My Facebook Fatigue

Jonathan — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:38:06 +0000

One of the new buzzwords for 2011 in our office seems to be the term “Facebook Fatigue”. Supposedly people are tired of Facebook and are choosing to use Google+ and Twitter or abandoning social media as a whole. As a previously heavy Facebook user, I can understand the sentiment eventhough I am skeptical about its effect on Twitter and Google+.

Since half of the internet is porn and 40% is social networking, I figured I’d tip my hat off to the remainder and make a list. Below is my little list of what I call problem areas in Facebook.

Privacy Issues – Its good to know that it took for the Google+ launch for Facebook to really get serious about user Privacy. Sure they have let you setup your settings for the last few years but it was a cumbersome and confusing process (like doing alot of things on FB)
Annoying Games & Apps – There’s nothing wrong with playing Farmtown, Mafia Wars, etc but there needs to be some sort of filter around how many posts those apps can put on my wall. Is there anything more annoying than getting that notification on your wall that someone answered a question about you?
That chat / messaging experience - Ugh double scroll bars are bad…but Facebook has found a way to make the experience even worse. I realize that FB is trying to place the contacts I message the most in a convenient location…but if they are not logged in…give me an option to just show the old school chat screen.
Tablet Experience – I don’t care if you don’t consider tablets mobile, but is it that hard to create an Ipad and Android Tablet app?
Marketplace – Its great that I get weekly e-mails telling me when a friend of a friend has a couch for sale, but why is it so hard to actually navigate to the marketplace?
Places – So why can’t my foursquare check-ins count as Facebook check-ins too? The mobile experience is kinda weird…it seems that I would like to see where FB thinks I am before I hit the check-in button or see what my friends are doing in relation to Places. If i could set a delay to when a check-in would hit my wall, that would be nice too. I am always worried of someone breaking into my house when they find out I am on the other side of town.

The Joys of Mobilization

Jonathan — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:51:24 +0000

Since I am currently considered the Product Manager, I get to work on projects such as making an existing web application mobile friendly. While not as sexy as creating QR code applications, there are few nuances that are somewhat entertaining. One of those nuances that I find interesting is the concept of whether tablets are considered mobile devices. We all know that Zuckerburg and Facebook don’t consider the Ipad to be mobile but plenty of others, including my clients seem to. Needless to say the design needs for a 320 pixel wide area are much different than one for 760 pixels. Granted some of the dynamic HTML5 functionality really helps out in the implementation but overall it feels that a smartphone experience and a tablet experience should be different. It “feels” that the smartphone experience should be more simple, straight to the point, while the the tablet experience could be very close to a normal desktop / laptop experience.

See Link

Top 5 Agile Practicices

Jonathan — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:02:40 +0000

This is one of the better written guides for those who have walked into an Agile shop and need a little confidence. This is from a guy named Craig Jones who titles himself a “Software Agilist”. Needless to say, Craig writes a nice little guide to help you stay on track.

http://www.chiefsimplicityofficer.com/2011/02/top-5-agile-practices/

Daily stand-ups – This is the easiest practice to implement. It requires no tools, little training, and rarely gets push-back from anyone. The important thing to remember here is that these are for the benefit of the team members. Be vigilant that the stand-ups don’t degrade into old-fashioned status meetings, where the team members address the manager, rather than each other.
Product backlog – Beyond the importance of just having a prioritized backlog to begin with, it’s important that any given team works from a single backlog. It’s okay for multiple teams to pull from the same backlog, but not vice versa. That is, it’s not okay for a single team to have to deal with conflicting priorities from multiple sources.
A well-defined, shared vision — In general, Agile is all about fostering better communications, which starts with a clear, meaningful goal. Ask any team member, “Why are we here?” His or her answer should be immediate and clear (but not by rote).
Demos and feedback – This one is my nomination for the most important aspect of Agile. It’s certainly the most important aspect of running a sprint cycle. Whether you decide on using 2, 3 or 4 week sprints, and before getting good at playing planning poker, preparing burn-down charts, tracking velocity, and all the rest, be sure the team gets good at demonstrating their work and gathering feedback. This one act connects the team with the rest of the organization like nothing else.
Continuous integration — The four practices mentioned above apply to any type of project, but when it comes to software development projects, specifically, experts agree the number one best practice to rely on is continuous integration. Using a tool like Hudson or Cruise Control, the software is automatically built and tested, either on a nightly basis or even more frequently as code is committed.

3,000 Dollars

Jonathan — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:22:18 +0000

So a few weeks ago when there was a big hubub about the Groupon IPO, I thought I’d play around with this site, BizInformation.org that tries to “calculate” website valuations based on all sorts of factors like pageviews, references, and social media rank . Needless to say the results are pretty humorous. For instance this domain is supposedly worth a little over $3,000. If someone wanted this domain for that amount of money…they could have it.

Some of my previous employers were below:

Allconnect.com: $290,561 (Given the ROI, they may jump at an offer for $300K. hehe)
Autotrader.com: $22 Million (If this property were for sale, there would be an extra zero behind it.)
Kudzu.com: $2.99 Million (Probably the most spot on market valuation in this group if we were talking a full business acquisition)
Macys.com: $27 Million (Missing three zeros)

Others of note:

Facebook: $7.9 Billion
Twitter: $1.7 Billion
Myspace: $724 Million (Looks like Timberlake got a good deal)

Parenting via Google

Jonathan — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 14:19:36 +0000

Last week, my wife gave birth to my first child, a boy. So like most new parents, we were excited and terrified at the prospect of taking him home from the hospital. So as random events occur, we decide to break out the IPad and Youtube (amazing how we use the word as a verb) ‘how to swaddle a newborn’. Of course to our delight, there were hundreds of videos describing how to swaddle our baby. Of course fast forward a day or so and we googled whether it was harmful or helpful to keep a ceiling fan running in the room where the baby is sleeping. It wasn’t only comforting that there were alot of consistent answers to the question, but that there were probably at least 500 other people who had asked the same question on either Babycenter.com, Yahoo Answers, or some other site. In the end, while I may be hesitant to listen to unsolicited parenting advice from a stranger, I suspect there will be more Google searches as my son gets older.

Craigslist Ads

Jonathan — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 12:54:44 +0000

While I have never hunted for housing on craigslist, the experience is just the same for cars, furniture, or cell phones.

Birthday

Jonathan — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 13:51:32 +0000

There is something unique about my generation when it comes to birthdays. Who could imagine that I would enjoy the idea of being consistently woken up in the wee hours of your birthday? Of course the reason for this enjoyment are the Facebook notifications telling me of birthday wishes from friends in Europe.

Its . . . → Read More: Birthday

The Mini-Disc Player and our future

Jonathan — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 15:29:35 +0000

Ten years ago, my girlfriend in college who we’ll call “Ella” wanted to buy her sister a gradaution player. This sister was going to be attending a service academy so the concept of buying clothing, a fondue maker, or George Foreman grill was pretty much out of the question. Anyways somehow Ella realized that the old school CD Discman her sister had would probably not work. (Speaking of which, does anyone remember hooking thier Discman up to a cassette adapter so they could play CD’s in your car?) So we headed out to the local Circuit City (remember those?) or Best Buy to take a look at the options. So as we looked around, Ella and I had a strong debate over whether to buy the Mini Disc player (you could jog with it supposedly) or the MP3 player (which weighed literally 2 pounds). My argument for the MP3 player revolved around the idea that getting music onto a MiniDisc would be a pain in the ass. Ella’s argument revolved around the idea that the MP3 player was inconvenient because you would have to manually convert all of your CDs to MP3 format (as well as the fact that the MP3 player was a brick). Needless to say Ella chose the Mini Disc player.

Now fast forward ten years to the present day and I realize that we were both right in our debate. Before Itunes came along, moving files to an MP3 player was a tedious process where you’d have to rip a CD, sometimes manually name the tracks, and then move those tracks to the MP3 player via Windows Explorer. Of course in my favor, when was the last time you saw someone with a Mini-Disc player? I guess at some point, the thought of getting the same data / music time as a regular CD in a disc half its size was considered amazing back in the late 90s.

I do wonder if ten years from now if our personal music players will even contain any data within them. The combination of wireless data transfer and broadband internet access may allow for future Ipod’s to simply stream content from our own machines at home.

“Good Code” post from XKCD

Jonathan — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 06:22:43 +0000

My IT friends and coworkers can probably appreciate this.