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

Reading time #5!

Here we go again - The fifth instalment in the 'good reads'!

- "The software is processed by more than just the computer. It's also processed by a human sitting in front of the screen". Take the time to watch this: A Great lecture from Google IO about cognitive science and design.

- Having a great product might not just be enough. Check out this article "So you think you can go viral?", In order to find out the challenges behind the assumptions about viral products.

- With Flickr been rebuilt to a whopping 1TB of free image storage, Tumblr bought, and Hulu on sight, Yahoo's new strategy is marking the comeback of the all-mighty mega portals, spending billions of dollars basically on user acquisition. Yahoo aims high. We'll see how that evolves...

And, finally, check out my new pet project: The startup nation feed, bringing you great stories from the startup nation!



Previous reads:
#4

#3

#2

#1

School yourself!

The tech world is all about tech fashion. Buzzwords come and go, new OSs, frameworks and stacks come and go, but sometimes, instead of learning the 'framework of the moment', you would want to learn some completely new fields and skills.

Luckily, this is really easy to do these days.

Udacity, founded by the head of Google X (Google's futuristic project lab), offers plenty of courses, all of them free. From web development to parallel computing, it's all there, neatly packed, with tests, certificates and all.

General Assembly offers video courses, some free and some paid, and focus more on design and entrepreneurship.

10gen, creators of MongoDB, have 3 great courses on database, from programming to scaling and maintenance (Of course by using mongo...)

There are plenty of other resources online - Just pick what you want to learn, and go there.

Spending 2 hours a week expanding your horizons and skills - It's worth it, even if just for the fun and challenge.

Reading time #4!

- The good people at gosquared.com got some nice tips for node.js:
https://engineering.gosquared.com/10-vital-aspects-of-building-a-node-js-application

- Stats from 2012 are here. Samsung sells a lot more phones than Apple. Twice.

- If you're a geek, this guy is hilarious.

- "2013 will be all about the ecosystems, not just the hardware": Here are some trends to watch for, curtesy of techradar.

And, finally, have a happy 2013!

Reading time #3

Once again, some nice reference stuff to read and enjoy.

First, a must read for every dev manager/ architect: I bet you over-engineered your startup - Try and read the comments as well - There's one I really like about backbone.js.

Here's something nice: An app for bullying reports. I think municipalities and local police departments should implement such apps, to see 'hot spots' of violence, and also make reporting a lot easier. A mobile phone does so many things, it's about time that it would help the community keep themselves safe.

My friend Moshe Kaplan from dSero with a nice article about SEO in Amazon AWS news.

Some new frameworks and tips:
- KineticJS makes 2d drawing easy, and is also pretty fast.
- A wonderful tutorial for creating clouds with css3. Opens your mind for lots and lots more ideas (Try use faces instead of clouds...)

Another useful UX related article: Overhauling a UI without upsetting the users (Thanks Itai:)).

And finally, a thought: The big tech companies have learned from the pharma industry: Since anyone can develop everything right now, and manufacturing is easy, intellectual property is the only way to make sure you have control over the market.
And unlike the pharma industry, you don't need to be a scientist, and spend years of FDA approval to get your product out there. Microsoft are buying patents from AOL, Apple is suing everyone, Samsung counter sues, and seems like the big techs' legal budget is going to be bigger than their R&D.

This is going to kill the small and medium businesses in the industry, unless legislation will somehow be able to protect them. Otherwise, we might as well give up our jobs, or relocate to China, where copyright rules are... More flexible :))