Monthly Archive for September, 2010

Friday Linkdump

Published on 24 September 2010 in linkdump. 0 Comments

Doug Crockford of json fame is the same Doug Crockford who put Manic Mansion out on the NES all those years ago

fascinating article on how the corporate tech co’s missed out on paid search whilst tech firms in general fail to hold on to their engineering talent at their peril before concluding a twisting tale with an attack on the tangible value of Facebook’s ever-changing ‘platform’. On this last point, I’d offer up that if Facebook really does want to transition it’s users to a social search and thus mark Facebook at the heart of it, it needs to ensure a watertight vision for it’s ecosystem – something it’s abjectly failing to do at the minute with it’s myriad API breaks & deprecations

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Showtime In Londonderry

Published on 21 September 2010 in Belfast and opportunity. 0 Comments

A few thoughts on the creations unveiled at last week’s showcase show and tell conference in the Maiden City.

First up, the keynote from NYSE (who bought up NI startup Wombat Financial Software in Belfast). To be honest the corporate speak gave me flashbacks of what it’s like to work in that dreary environment. But 500 jobs isn’t to be sniffed at, and neither is their plans to create an API for 3rd party development to offer services based on their stock ticker platform. While it likely doesn’t go far enough – I’d like to see it made public so that independent programmer/traders like myself could start playing with it – it’s a step in that direction and is to be widely welcomed.

Not so welcome was the sole question for the guy, which wasn’t really a question at all – more a plea to help all the unemployed people around Derry (not to mention “6,000 on the dole in Inishowen”…) get jobs. That was the gist of it and it sounded desperately out of sync with a new outward-looking Northern Ireland unafraid to compete with the rest of the world on merit. Host for the day Mark Nagurski moulded it diplomatically into a question about why NYSE likes NI. Hooray.

Now the startups…

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Sleeping Rough in the Balkans

Published on 20 September 2010 in Backcountry. 0 Comments

In the days before the web backpacking was a step into the unknown.

Now it’s largely a step onto Google.

In order to recreate that sense of adventure we are forced to either go to new extremes or remix the old ways of overland travel with our new found ubiquity. This is an account of a two week excursion into South East Europe via the cheap ‘n easy Ryanair into Zadar, Croatia and following on with sleeping rough through several of the Former Yugoslav states, taking in the obligatory Norn Iron international in Montenegro before crashing out on a beach in Greece by way of Mytikas.

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