dailo10

He has one of the most difficult, stressful jobs scaling one of the most heavily trafficked sites in the world.

And I'm sure the bitching and moaning whenever there's downtime doesn't help.

I'm not sold on the reasoning "to build an audience for the show that follows". We are moving towards an age of "on demand" programming where viewers choose what they want to watch when they want to watch. This is a misguided attempt to hook the viewer onto the next show, at the expense of interrupting the current show.

This approach seems to benefit everyone, including the top students. If you look at the graphs, in Round 1 the Max went from 80% to 99% and in Round 2 the Max went from 75% to 99%. This occurred not in a remedial class, but in an independent, unscreened school.

Perhaps one side-effect of the overall improvement is that the teacher doesn't have to spend as much time with struggling students and can devote more time helping high end students unlock their potential.

From a VC fund perspective, this is a sound investment strategy -- take what works in the US and clone it in your market. It lowers risk significantly since the idea already has traction. At some point you'll have to innovate, but you can always copy until then.

This sounds like Reddit's approach of creating sub-reddit's for different topics (e.g. proggit). This works very well in terms of filtering content.

It doesn't solve the quality of discussion issue, but it does filter the audience which offers some improvement. The quality of discussion varies highly on Reddit -- popular posts are inundated with juvenile comments, while highly focused posts occasionally have decent discussion.

True, it's not a DSLR picture. But they're making it so much easier for amateurs to edit and share a photo they just took with their phone... versus having to transfer a photo to computer, edit it, upload it, and then share it.

That's impressive growth! They've carved out a niche for mobile photo sharing with their iPhone app. Now they're letting developers extend on the web via the API.

People usually talk about viral growth on Facebook, but Instagram has recreated it on the iPhone platform. And they haven't even released their Android version yet!

Postscript: Oracle bought Sun and proceeded to sue Google with the Java patents it had acquired.

Ironic given the "egregious" Kodak suit he writes about.

Not to mention the fact that in the book she ultimately rejects the harsh, forced approach.

I enjoy using Instagram. It's not just the filters, it's the photo sharing too. It's all put together extremely well and it's clearly growing virally.

To me, it feels like a more personal photo club. I end up sharing photos that I wouldn't normally post to Facebook.

Plus, the filters make me feel like a skilled photographer. ;)

I've also been part of a successful rewrite for an enterprise software project. Keys to success:

1. Cut features. Aggressively scoped the project to only core functionality and cut down a bloated feature set by about 50%. This allowed us to complete the rewrite much faster. Existing customers weren't forced to migrate, but often wanted to because we'd...

2. Deliver new features that weren't possible on the legacy code base. This included: - 100x Performance improvements (hours to seconds) - Versioning and audit tracking - Better, faster, sexier user interface

3. Leverage new technologies and frameworks. This is an obvious part of any re-write because it enables a team to move faster. Technology changes so quickly. Think of how a small team today can accomplish so much more than a large team stuck on a platform from 5+ years ago.

I'm not saying that a rewrite is always right, but I believe you can make a good case for it. In this case, I guess you could consider it a part of a business pivot.

Sometimes you just burn the boats...

men·da·cious/menˈdāSHəs/ Adjective: Not telling the truth; lying

"The line is due to open in 2012 and will halve the current travel time between the capital Beijing and Shanghai to five hours."

In the meantime, CA is spending billions to build a 54-mile high speed rail segment from Madera to Corcoran - aka the "train to nowhere".

Here's hoping they succeed. Portland would make a great tech center. It certainly has that counter culture attitude. And it's highly livable.

Now they just need the jobs and talent - that's the hard part.

How does Netflix DRM currently work anyways?

I like how they worked straight through the night. In fact, they work around the clock on many infrastructure projects, including roads. It shows that they want to get things done fast.

I wish they would do that in America more often. Wouldn't things get built faster and employ more people if they worked around the clock?

The merchant should NOT have run the promotion at a LOSS. The promotion should have been at least break even, if not slightly profitable.

I quit playing fantasy football a couple years ago and I haven't looked back.

I understand for some people, fantasy football gets them more into the football game. But for me, I actually prefer to watch without such distractions and perverse incentives.

Now when I watch football I can just enjoy the game itself. I root for a team to score and win at the end, not certain players to score a TD or kick a FG.

But you knew that was coming, right? It had to happen. It's a Greek drama in which their fates are sealed.

It's working for me now -- Chrome, OSX

Does anyone else have fond memories of the Oakenfold mixes?

http://thenine.ca/essential/2000/2000.02.13%20-%20Essential%...

http://thenine.ca/essential/2000/2000.05.21%20-%20Essential%...

If you want a dog that looks (and sometimes acts) like a fox, check out the Shiba Inu.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...

Wow. This makes me hate the U.S. telecom providers even more.

I know it's not a fair comparison considering how spread out the U.S. is, but still, I'm paying $80 for Internet and phone. Where's all my money going?

Voted up for referencing The Wire.

Finally! It's about time the government steps in. And I like their approach.

$5.25 Billion! Wow. Who uses Sybase??

I feel out of touch. The only enterprise DBs I run into these days are Oracle and MSSQL.

I get their channel over the air here in DC. You should check if it's available in your city. Their next major hurdle is to get on cable.

"Al Jazeera English has finally broken into the United States. A non-profit educational broadcaster has agreed to carry it in Washington and twenty other American cities."

You can also select messages that aren't on the screen. You click "Select: All" and then "Select all conversations that match this search".

This article is eerily reminiscent of a recent post by Bruce Eckel http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=287521