Letters Remain

Category: technology

  • On Being a Young CEO

    Inc. Magazine profiles 18 entrepreneurs/CEOs, all of whom are under 30. This generation, at nearly 80 million strong, is poised to be the largest, the most educated, and the most diverse in American history. That gives its members special insight into the largest, the most educated, and the most diverse market in history. They are…

  • Esoteric Programming Languages

    A few interesting esoteric programming languages: Shakespeare Chef Brainfuck Whitespace LOLCODE As you may be able to guess, LOLCODE is my favourite. Here’s ‘Hello World’: HAI CAN HAS STDIO? VISIBLE “HAI WORLD!” KTHXBYE

  • Web App User Flow Library

    In designing any application, creating efficient and easy user flows is crucial to user engagement. Of course, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. Product Planner provides user flows from successful web applications to help others learn from them.

  • The Elements of Style: Programming Edition

    Strunk and White’s Elements of Style is one of the most popular and influential writing guides available. By replacing a few key words, it can be used as a text on programming style and the craft of software. 2.12. Choose a suitable design and hold to it. A basic structural design underlies every kind of…

  • Impossible Ideas are Great Ideas

    After his presumption that both eBay and Wikipedia would never go mainstream was proven wrong, Joel Spolsky realised what he calls “a fundamental lesson about the nature of technological innovation”. For Inc. Magazine Joel describes his idea that the most important innovations are often those that appear to be fatally flawed. […] “seeming impossible” is…

  • UK Digital Rights Landscape

    Suw Charman-Anderson, founder and first Executive Director of the wonderful UK-based digital rights organisation, Open Rights Group, has produced an informative ‘mind map’ of the UK digital rights ‘landscape’. As this was created over three years ago, an up-to-date and completed version would be of great interest.

  • Committed to Past Constraints: QWERTY

    Something I’ve never thought of reading before: the history of the QWERTY keyboard: With the assistance of […] Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule, [Christopher Sholes] built an early writing machine for which a patent application was filed in October 1867. However, Sholes’ “Type Writer” had many defects, [including] the tendency of the typebars to…

  • 2001: A Google Search

    In celebration of their 10th birthday, Google have temporarily opened up their 2001 index for searching. Some interesting searches: 9/11, YouTube, iPod, Ubuntu, flickr. via Link Banana

  • Flickr Community Building

    Like David, I had seen many people linking to this article profiling Flickr’s Director of Community, Heather Champ, and was unsure why. Once I read it, however, I found it an engaging look at the intricacies of policing an online community. At first glance this parallel society has been made, quite literally, in the image…

  • Google Chrome? I’m Sticking with Firefox

    A month has passed since the release of Google’s Chrome browser. Disregarding the fact that an official Linux port is still not available, there are two further reason why I’m sticking with Firefox: You can enable Chrome’s best features in Firefox. On testing beta releases (of IE, Firefox and Chrome), there was no stand-out candidate.…