If you haven’t seen already, ifttt is a nifty web service that lets you listen to actions that might happen on certains websites, and react to them with some other action.
We use the git flow model on FlightDeck, and while it works quite well for our structured releases, I do love the methodology shared by the Github team. I’d like to use Pull Requests a bit more, at the least. Having master always be stable sounds nice as well.
Henrik Eneroth shows his ideas of how the browser UI could look, now that we all have widescreens. It’s beautiful.
I personally love how the “Tab Groups” work, and think Firefox could at least follow suit with regards to remembering my groups, dangit! With Firefox, I only ever set up some groups if I know I will be leaving Firefox open for a week or so. Otherwise, whatever.
I wanted to weigh in on HP giving up on webOS. First, when HP bought Palm webOS, it’s plan to be able to make it’s very own, unique set of products (phones, tablets, and desktops) all running the same OS, it sounded really appealing. Not that I think it’s necessarily the wrong move, but it is too bad they are giving up.
On to webOS’ future. I definitely could see Facebook buying it and using it to make their own phone/tablets. MG Siegler says it all:
They clearly believe in HTML5 and are working towards that future, but at the same time, they need their own mobile OS solution. WebOS would give them the best of both worlds.
Besides saving some effort, since Facebook has been so gun-ho about HTML5, they could spend that effort in making a unique experience. What was unique about the TouchPad? It was not the iPad? Yea, several Android tablets already have that claim, and are much better than the TouchPad.
Facebook could make a tablet what was always logged in1. With so many websites using Facebook Connect, they could offer the convenient “already logged into the web” experience. You no longer need to remember usernames and passwords, because your tablet will notice Facebook Connect buttons and automatically log you in. You could automatically see comments or likes from your friends, on any page you visited. Perhaps it could be a notification widget in the top, showing you some friends recommend the thing you’re looking at.
It wouldn’t be for everyone, but it sure would be something different, and something worth marketing about.
I hope the platform isn’t doomed on the software side, but it looks like the TouchPad has similar specs to the iPad, but performs terribly. That sounds like software to me. ↩
I’m sure you’ve seen else where that Google has bought Motorola. While people are busy talking about the boring patent portfolio that Google gains, I’m more interested in this part by Larry Page:
Motorola’s total commitment to Android in mobile devices is one of many reasons that there is a natural fit between our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers everywhere.
Google’s Nexus devices are the “pure” Android experience, and are far better devices for it. With Google now directly controlling how the hardware should match the software, this could mean many more devices that don’t get the OEM skin-cruft, and far faster updates. Hopefully we’ll see less devices that make Android look bad.
Also an interesting note, is that Google will now be making money directly related the quality of their software and hardware combination. We’ll see how this affects features and the user experience, as opposed to currently, where Google only makes money indirectly through ads in mobile search.
Update: On the flip side, what if Google offered high quality Motorola phones for super cheap (free after a new contract), eating the cost at having more people having good Android’s in their hands? With good, fast devices, there would be more searchs, and more Maps usage. Both would be an increase to places Google could advertise. Just a thought.
Web Intents are a seriously cool and useful idea. Android already has Intents, and I love them. It let’s applications that know nothing about each other be able to interact. The Google Chrome team and Mozilla are both hard at work making this a reality.
Maybe you’ve heard the saying “good things come to those who wait.” That’s all well and good, but I’d like to take some time point out that good things also come to those who look for them. I changed jobs at the beginning of this year, and several people I know were curious as to how I managed it. It’s because I asked. I sought. For months.1
Most of my professional life has been like this. At my first job, I happened to work at In’N’Out. I thought I was going to be in the service industry for the rest of my life. It was my living, and every pay raise meant more of a living. It took me 4 months to get 3 promotions. The next promotion took longer only because the skill required was much tougher. There were some other employees around me that would complain and murmur. Most of them had been working there for much longer than I had, and yet I quickly passed them by. They had no idea why I had gotten promoted so quickly.
I asked for them.
In order to get promotions, you had to work on the next skill. You had to be good at it (which only really took hard work), and you had to have a manager write up a review. You needed 4 passing reviews to be eligible for the next promotion. So every day, at a less busy hour, I would ask my manager to put me on the next station, and I would ask for a review. They would often forget to pay attention enough to give me a review, but since I would ask so often, I rather quickly gained all my reviews for each level. The other employees? They just sat around, some working hard, some hardly working, thinking that the manager would one day put them on the next position. They thought they’d get their promotions eventually, by waiting.
Eventually, I started to wonder if I could put my programming knowledge to use in a professional way. I scoured Craigslist, and eventually found a nice listing that didn’t require me to have a degree, instead only requiring that I pass some programming challenges. I showed up and passed all the challenges. However, the CEO was busy, and didn’t pay much attention to my application status. So, I called the executive assistant of the office, and asked to remind the CEO of my application. Every day. Finally, one of those days, the assistant replied back that my persistence paid off: the CEO had considered my application, and was preparing an offer letter.
Fast forward a little, and I was at my previous company. I loved it there. The guys rock, and my job was almost always interesting. Only a few things about it killed me. It tried to be a SaaS company, and I had done a lot of work on that application. I love application development. However, since the revenue from the subscriptions revenue was growing too slowly, the company had to revert to servicing clients to pay the bills. That meant my job had largely changed from application development to brochure website CSS development. I personally find that less interesting, and the clients tend to be frustrating. At the same, while we had put a lot of work into the software platform, very few people were using it, and hardly any were appreciating it.
I spoke to someone during the summer of last year about wanting to be in a different place professionally. I had hopes and dreams about how we as a company (myself included) could focus on areas that would make us better, and have more fun at the same time. I was advised that I’m young, and I’ve got several years to go before I should expect to be at a good place. I’m in the years of having to slave away. That isn’t the first time I’ve heard such a notion.
As I left school, and headed into the working class, my father mentioned that right now I should expect to be a slave to my work, so that I could eventually be in place where I don’t have to. Friends, roommates, and colleagues have tried to pound this idea into me ever since, and I’ve just been too stubborn to believe it.
After a severe car accident, the combination of the higher bills, my boredom, and uncertainty of my job security got me looking for a different job. I researched companies that I would love to work at, sent out resumes, customized cover letters, and did plenty of phone interviews. After several months of looking, I started to wonder if I should just stay content with what I had, because it takes a lot of effort to continuously job search.
Thankfully, I kept looking and asking, and found a new rockin’ place to work at Mozilla. I started contracting in January 2011, and hired full-time in April. I work on Add-on Builder, so my desire of making an application that many people use is satisfied. I work with very awesome people, and for a company who wants its products to be the awesomest they can be.
I don’t say all of this to brag, or say “look at me”. I want to give an example of how it is possible to get what you want. People who get what they want, get it because they aren’t quiet about wanting it. Don’t be afraid to ask about what you need to do to get to the position you want. Ask your manager what you could improve on to get a promotion. Or ask that company you’ve been eyeing to hire you. You have to assume you are a good fit for the job, and then ask for it2.
I found myself nodding the entire time I read this essay from Michael Lopp. It’s filled with truth. An excellent point that I just have to share:
“Exploration is hard to justify because it’s hard to measure. When exploration is complete, you often have nothing to hold up to your project manager to explain or justify the expenditure of time. Here’s what you tell them, “My job isn’t just building product; I also build people.”
An unbiased look at programming for Android, after having programmed for iOS. He gave it a good go, and realized that it’s terribleness has been exaggerated.1
About Eclipse:
You’re going to just hate Eclipse. You’re going to hate it with the heat of a thousand suns. […] The upside is, after acclimating to Eclipse, you’ll enjoy some seriously amazing, productivity-boosting code completion, refactoring, and automatic fixing. It’ll basically write your code for you.
And Android’s View system:
The best part is that it’s zero-effort-easy to make layouts that automatically resize for portrait/landscape device orientations and varying screen sizes. This is in stark contrast to the absolutely primitive springs and struts system in Cocoa/iOS.
It’s a true shame about the animation issues, however.
By iOS developers who’ve tried for an hour to set up Eclipse, give up, and declare Android programming to be the devil. ↩
“In the case of the Kindle app, you might be able to argue that its Android version now offers a better, easier user experience than its iPhone version. That’s not the sort of thing Apple should want people to be hearing.
—Dan Frommer, “Here’s how Apple is forcing a worse user experience on its customers”
My name is Sean McArthur, I'm a web developer at Mozilla, and enjoy JavaScript, Python, Android, writing and Star Wars.
