links for 2010-04-16

links for 2010-04-15

  • "In September 2008, at the age of eighty-five, José Saramago was feeling restless. “Here’s a job for you”, said his wife. “Write a blog”. And so the 1998 Nobel laureate began to record his reflections on an almost daily basis, jubilantly freed from the constraints of fiction and awed by the “infinite page” of the internet."
    (tags: blogging)

links for 2010-04-13

  • Before its current problems, Toyota’s leadership style was based on a collaborative approach — one that rewarded employees for innovation, one that valued employee input and even allowed workers on the line to stop the line so a problem with a car could be fixed. The result was a better car — a more reliable one. And the result of that? More market share.

    By contrast, GM had a command and control leadership style. The production line was kept going at all cost so cars were produced with flaws and problems and that eroded market share. Company executives didn’t seem to notice the erosion was happening.

    Remind you of another industry?

  • Seoquake is a powerful tool for Mozilla Firefox, aimed at helping web masters who deal with search engine optimization and internet promotion of web sites. Seoquake allows user to obtain and investigate many important SEO parameters of the internet project under study on the fly.

Ruby in the Pub 2

Beer and Laptop

(picture by jdn)

What: Ruby in the Pub
When: Tuesday, April 27th, 7pm
Where: The Shooting Star, Spitalfields (streetview)
Why: So hacks can learn to hack!
*FREE*
No registration/sign-up necessary – just turn up!

Once a month, a bunch of keen, but slightly confounded journalists meet up with some knowledgeable and patient coders to learn the basics of Ruby and drink beer.

I have a very good feeling about this.

The first Ruby in the Pub (#ritp or #rubyinthepub) was born last month after me and James Ball discovered we were both trying to develop some programming skills.

The first meet-up was great – lovely people and some great teachers too! Now I’m hoping after my first lesson I might be able to help out a few newbies, whilst also learning some new stuff.

Rumour also has it that a certain head of the New York Times development team might pop in to help out too!

Just turn up with your laptop and, if you have one, an extension lead. Also, downloading Hackety Hack before you arrive is advised.

Come join us!

links for 2010-04-01

links for 2010-03-31