Kill a Whole Tree of Birds With Digsby
Posted on July 3, 2008, under Email, IM, Networking, Social Networks, Twitter.
I came across Digsby earlier today, and have been playing around with it all morning. Digsby is a IM client for all of your IM networks, much like Pidgin, Trillian, etc. However, Digsby also does your social networks like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. If that were not enough, it will also do your email: Live Mail, GMail, Yahoo, Pop, etc.
It packages all of your social connections into one easy to use desktop application, with a lot of features to allow for almost complete customization.
It’s defiantly worth a download, it might just replace all of your desktop clients at once.
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RTP Startup Weekend, One Week Away
Posted on July 3, 2008, under Events, Raleigh, Social Networks, Uncategorized.
We are closing in on the one week mark before RTP Startup Weekend. I am really pumped to be involved in this event, there are a lot of really talented people that will be there. Along with all of the talented people, CNBC will be there all weekend interviewing people. Helios will be providing free coffee for the weekend. And I know that people are still working hard to get more sponsors.
RTP Startup Weekend will be at Edge Office in Downtown Raleigh the weekend of July 11th - 13th. You can follow the event on Twitter, check out the web site, whatever you do get involved! This is going to be a really great event.
I will be snapping and uploading pictures to my Flickr account during the event, as well as blogging right here at Code and Coffee. That is of course while cramming some code.
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If Facebook Can Do It, Why Can’t Twitter?
Posted on June 30, 2008, under Development, Tools and Services.
I know right now, in writing the first sentence of this article that this is going to be a controversial post. I will get a lot of "who the hell are you" remarks. So in a preemptive response, let me just say I am not criticizing and I seriously wondering.
With that said, today Dan Farber from CNet sat down with Jonathan Heiliger who is Vice president of technical operations at Facebook. They talked about the technical challenges that Facebook runs into adding 250,000 users a day. It is a really good article, and gives you some insight into how Facebook operations work.
While reading the article I could not help myself in asking why is Twitter having so much trouble with uptime, when Facebook can do it with a lot more page views and users. One could argue it’s that Facebook has more money behind it, more employees, more resources. Some would play the PHP is better than Rails card, as Facebook is written primarily in PHP, and Twitter primarily in Rails. I truly do not know what it is, I wish I knew.
I have heard through third parties that the folks at Twitter contribute the down time to the back end engine written in C++, and that Ruby never goes down. Makes sense, I have seen that problem before in similar setups.
Twitter just got another huge chunk of cash, so hopefully that will help in stabilizing the service.
Anyone have any insight?
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New iPhone Blues
Posted on June 30, 2008, under Apple, Mobile, iPhone.
A couple of months ago I said I would purchase a new iPhone, and my intentions are still true. I must say I have become very overwhelmed lately with the lack of details and rumors that are emerging about the details on the new iPhone. It seems that AT&T is clamping down tighter on iPhone registrations and service contract plans. I am currently an AT&T customer, but am not eligible for a phone upgrade according to AT&T.
I do not understand why the new iPhone was released so long after the announcement of it, and the lack of details that have been released by official parties. I am definitely going to wait at least a month before I purchase my iPhone and wait while the details emerge and maybe some rules change. Last time we saw a huge price drop shortly after the release, and I am not prepared to be involved in something like that again.
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NC wants Gary Vaynerchuk
Posted on June 27, 2008, under Media, Podcasts, Raleigh.
If you are not familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk, or his Wine Library TV you should be… so go ahead and make yourself familiar I will wait…
So Gary if you are watching, please come join us. There are a bunch of passionate people here that I know will be willing to help make it happen. I am one of them
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Turn Your Distractions Off For At Least Two Hours a Day
Posted on June 24, 2008, under Tips.
Email, Cell Phones, RSS, Podcasts, Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr. There are too many things these days to distract you from actually getting work done at work. Some companies have shutdown access to some of the above mentioned service, and although I feel this is a drastic measure it does speak to the point that there are too many distractions during the day and companies are worrid.
I have found that during the work day I need to have "silent times" where I turn off all of the above distractions. I check my RSS feeds in the morning, after I break for lunch, and at the end of the day. I get so much email, that I need to turn that off three times a day, and train myself that I do not need to reply to emails the second they come in.
One of the benefits that I have from working out of my home is that I do not have in office distractions. When I did work in an office it was an unwritten rule that if someone had their headphones on, they were not to be disturbed. An extreme, but cool, measure would be to put lights above everyone’s cubicles so that they could turn them on and off when that person was available or not. Much like in the grocery store for open and closed checkout lanes.
Some developers are very easily distracted and need absolute concentration in order to cram some code. Self discipline is part of the key to being productive as well. Everyone should go silent at least twice a day to really try and get some non distracted work done.
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Is Local Media More Important?
Posted on June 23, 2008, under Media, Video.
I am new to the Raleigh, NC. area. One of the things that really drew me to this location were all of the smart and passionate people that are involved in media and technology in or around Raleigh, NC. The Twitter community is huge here, and in two short weeks has already helped me meet some great people.
This really has me looking at local media more and more. When I lived in Indiana, I was literally in the middle of nowhere. Local Media was not that prevalent. People run to services like Twitter, Plurk, Facebook to find what is going on around them, not half way across the United States.
Local Conversations, a great local blog by Wayne Sutton, recently sat down with David Millsaps from NewRaleigh.com and talked about new media, local media, and how it all has affected old media. It’s a great seven minute video, and while you are there bookmark the site; Wayne does some great work.
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Why Is There Still No GMail API?
Posted on June 23, 2008, under Email, Tools and Services.
So Google has made a huge dent in hosted email for businesses. They have now flexed there power in yet another market. Why, oh why is there not an API for GMail yet? Seriously! Mobile smart phones becoming more widespread, even Google has the Android coming out; how are we suppose to build applications against GMail? Google released an API for Outlook integration, but no official API.
There is so much potential in building applications around GMail. It’s long overdue.
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Old iPhone’s ARE Valuable
Posted on June 23, 2008, under Mobile.
Kottke has a write up about how valuable old iPhone’s have become lately with the new iPhone coming out. The new iPhone is not everything people cracked it up to be, especially the price.
What is turning out to be even more valuable on old iPhone’s is the data. Even with some methods of wiping an iPhone clean, you can recover or undelete that data which is valuable for identify thieves.
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Reddit Goes Completely Open Source
Posted on June 18, 2008, under Development, Open Source, Software, Tools and Services.
Reddit has announced that they are going completely open 
source. A huge step for a company like Reddit, especially since last year they were acquired by Condé Nast.
Speculation on how Digg will respond has ben circulating, but really I do not expect Digg to match this notion. Digg has some 25 employees, and is more of an established company then Reddit who in the past has only had five people working on the code.
You can download the Reddit code at code.reddit.com .
