October 2006
10 posts
YouTube: From Concept to Hyper-growth
I just watched a talk by Jawed Karim (the less known co-founder of YouTube) at Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ACM Conference.
Interesting stuff from his talk:
They struggled really hard to find users in the beginning.
Marketing 101: Email your friends, try to get some chicks on the site. (both failed!)
After they raised money from the VC firm, they gave out an iPod nano every day...
Using Axel with Flashgot in Firefox on Linux
I was using Ubuntu this morning and realised that I have sort of become addicted to Flashget on Windows to download stuff really quick and cannot tolerate the slow speed of Firefox’s in-built Download Manager. Anyways I finally found the replacement for Flashget on Linux - Axel. If you’re on Ubuntu/Debian, just do #apt-get install axel. Axel can open multiple connections and download...
Ordinary and extra-ordinary
I heard a quote once that said, “Big companies take extraordinary people and make them do ordinary things. Startups take ordinary people and make them do extraordinary things.†I think the magic of Google comes from taking extraordinary people and letting them do extraordinary things.Niniane Wang, Googler
technorati tags:google, work, culture, startupBlogged with Flock
Powerset power set
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }
.flickr-yourcomment { }
.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }
.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }
Powerset power set, originally uploaded by Esthr.
Can they kick Google’s ass in search?
The API Graveyard
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }
.flickr-yourcomment { }
.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }
.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }
api-graveyard, originally uploaded by miss_rogue.
This is the ultimate test for your web2.0 buzzword awareness. You either totally get it (and still have a smile on your face) or you just don’t!
Henning Kagermann on the future of SAP and...
On SaaS model: We take advantage of the progress we see in hardware, like what blade servers are doing. What we do is — we share the program but we separate the data of the company because we want to help with security and protection. This is always an issue — companies don’t want to share [their data]. The cost of this approach is only slightly higher than in the...
The good thing about running a software/services...
A further difference is that China’s manufacturing strength means high-tech gear is available locally at low cost, whereas India must import it, explains Sacha Wunsch-Vincent of the OECD, who helped write the report. India has focused more on software and services, which can be delivered via networks without bureaucratic interference, unlike physical goods.
The technology industry |...
Meebo metrics - million minutes per day!
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }
.flickr-yourcomment { }
.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }
.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }
time spent daily in meebo, originally uploaded by meebo.
Random topics in CS
Type system: static typing vs dynamic typing, type safe vs type unsafe, strongly typed vs weakly typed
Scoping: static (or lexical) scoping vs dynamic scoping. Most languages use static or lexical scoping. LISP & Perl have both static and dynamic scoping.
Closures: full support for closures exists in LISP, JavaScript, Ruby. Anonymous classes in Java come closest to closures. Python’s...
September 2006
11 posts
Why JRuby is important to Sun
Every language has a complexity ceiling, and it’s determined by a whole slew of policy and design decisions within the language, not the libraries. The slew includes the type system (with its attendant hundreds of mini-policies), and the syntax, and it also includes the language’s consistency: the ratio of rules to exceptions. Java’s demonstrating quite clearly that at a certain...
India's NetFlix in the making
Seventymm, formed in August 2005, began its operations in Bangalore in March 2006. Seventymm founder and chief executive officer Raghav Kher, who is based in the United States, is excited about the opportunities in India. Kher who was on a vacation in India last year realised the huge potential in the online film rental service in India and launched his third entrepreneurial venture. “Six...