Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Reading time #6!


All right, 6th time around, some good reads and links.

- Was Better place a revolutionary startup, or a huge flop just waiting to happen? (Personally, I was sceptical from the beginning... But this is just me) This is the most amazing article documenting the huge car business that never happened. 

- Here's my friend Moshe Kaplan's view of our Mysql to Mongo migration process. Article was favoured by MongoLabs themselves. Respect.

- If any of you is into creating cool stuff with HTML5 canvas, you MUST check out obelisk.js. So cool.

- I've been talking a lot about node and mongodb - Feel like getting started? Here's one great step by step tutorial on writing your first node/mongodb web service.

- A nice little service to create and share youtube mixtapes - This one is on beta, but looks promising.

And, finally (And a little off topic), two shows to watch:
- If you've ever been near a startup, you MUST watch Silicon Valley. Made by Mike Judge (Yes, the one who created Beavis and Butthead).

- Being a teen in the beginning of the 90s wasn't easy. Surviving Jack shows how teens communicated BEFORE mobile tech and social network existed.

Previous reads:

#5

#4

#3

#2

#1

Friday, April 4, 2014

Clear off the table

[ taking some time off the ongoing mysql->mongo series ]

Been visualising data a lot lately.
Scatter charts, realtime indicators, good ol' line charts and, of course, tables.
It's really easy to fill the screen with loads of information, screaming colours and as many numbers floating around the screen. This makes orientation difficult for the user, especially non-technical users.

Some of our users simply need insights and recommendations, but need the graphs for credibility.

This is a great post from darkhorseanalytics explaining how a good table looks like. [hint - not your good ol' office 1998 excel highlight table]

http://darkhorseanalytics.com/blog/clear-off-the-table/