OtisNotes

Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
One of the most enjoyable stories I've read in some time. Captain Jack Aubrey was a fascinating character. You just wanted him to succeed - to capture the Spanish vessel, to gain the respect of his men, to gain the respect of the Admiral.

The book is set during the Napoleonic Wars, and it was interesting to see all the Kings ships were nothing but glorified pirates, capturing all vessels they could on the open seas.

The book also strongly reminded me of my sailing lessons from last summer - I still had to look a lot of words up, but I remembered ones like leeward and abeam. Makes me want to go sailing!

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I heard a piece the other day on NPR about Twitter. They were trying to understand and explain what Twitter was. They had clips from all kinds of Twitter users explaining it. I hear a lot of people saying they have no idea what Twitter is, and I'm frankly amazed that a service with such a convoluted purpose can be so popular.

I think Twitter needs to work on its purpose and branding so people can understand it better! Do people ask what Google is about? Facebook? No - a quick visit to the homepage of either site and you will get it.

Twitter is an information filter. Plain and simple. Google is an information filter too, but Twitter is a bit different in that you consume information from friends or interesting people that you follow. If you need information about what news people think are interesting - Twitter is a great place. Twitter really shines around specific news events - whether is a plane landing in the Hudson, or discussing a talk at a conference as it happens. If you want the pulse of what the people you follow think is interesting about an event, there is nothing like Twitter out there.

Many people who misunderstand Twitter say that they could care less about what their friends are doing at all random hours. And I agree! Tweets about random nonsense like "playing with my kitty" are useless, and Twitter should work on getting rid of those. Facebook is making progress there by changing the question they pose from "What are you doing right now?" to "What's on your mind?". That will totally change the answers, and I think for the better. Being able to group your friends and see updates from each group would be sweet too - anyone know why Twitter is stalling on that feature?

You can follow my terribly interesting updates here.



Here is the Daily Show piece Twitter.

I learned a lot about ebooks at the Tools of Change conference last week. There are ebook readers galore apparently - but the question remains if anyone will use one! Here are some options:

Adobe Digital Editions. A secure DRM ebook reader.


BookGlutton - a nifty epub reader all done in javascript


Stanza (by Lexcycle) - the most popular iphone ebook reader


Kindle 2 - not out yet, but I'm eager to try it. I have only seen a Kindle 1 in the wild once. You?

After a brief hiatus due to technical difficulties and some laziness on my part, my blog is back in action - yay! Check out the spiffy new group widget on the right :)

Facebook started it last summer with its platform, and things have continued building up. Now the NY Times has one!

Bookmark this one: http://patterntap.com/

From the Washington Post's article Bytes of Life:

"We all have the tendency to see our behaviors in a little bit of a halo," says Jayne Gackenbach, who researches the psychology of the Internet at Grant MacEwan College in Alberta, Canada. It's why dieters underestimate their food intake, why smokers say they go through fewer cigarettes than they do. "If people can get at some objective criteria, it would be wonderfully informative." That's the brilliance, she says, of new technology.

Information is good. And it can definitely help you streamline your life :)

Neverwhere: A Novel by Neil Gaiman

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Just finished this and have to say I really enjoyed it. I was kind of worried the plot wasn't going anywhere for much of it, but the writing was really good and drew me in.

For much of the book I thought the main character (Richard) was too weak of a character for me to like much, but I liked how he grew in confidence towards the end. I think anytime one undertake's an adventure or a journey like that you grow so much. You have to get out there and fail a few times to have the confidence to know how to succeed!

I also have to say I loved Mister Croup and Mister Vandemar. Their dialogue and interaction was hilarious. It really reminded me of Mister Wint and Mister Kidd from James Bond's Diamonds are Forever.


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A google alert on my former company Tickle lead me to an interesting article. Well, interesting if you can get by his dry formal business-school language!

"a fundamental shift in the value of consumer engagement. Several years ago, practically any type of consumer engagement was valuable. A large community of unique users either created a desired asset to a strategic buyer looking for Internet reach or, alternatively, provided enough impressions to get to profitability on an advertising-based business model. More traffic, more value. These days, that’s no longer the case. "

So it's all about creating engagement with value. Instead of millions of users engaging each day at a 10 cent cpm, you'd get more value with thousands that are paying $10 a month. Or somewhere in the middle. The only problem is - in this land of free - will people pay for content online?

Goodreads is now on Rails 2.1 - yay! A few strange things, but we love the eager loading optimizations, so it made it highly worth it!

This blog was very helpful doing the upgrade.

As we've been searching for new hires for Goodreads, I've had a few thoughts about engineers. In traditional big companies, engineers are the workers, getting things done, and being managed by managers. Their skill-sets were rare enough to make them often highly paid, but also so focused that the engineers were just building a small cog in a bigger product.

But I think the internet has changed, and frameworks like Ruby on Rails have made it so a good engineer can now make the whole product. A good engineer can now make a website front-to-back in a relatively short amount of time. What does this mean? It means having product managers to organize things isn't necessary in a small company. Especially if the engineer can think about product and user interface too. These last things are where most Engineers fail however. For a consumer focused website they are critical, and so any engineer who has learned these skills is head and shoulders above the rest.

Programmers no longer have to be a small cog in the machine - they can build the whole thing. And this means we hold all the keys. We are the gunslingers in the wild west that is the internet. I think more engineers are recognizing this, but I think it requires a mental shift in many engineers' thinking. It requires thinking more like an entrepreneur (I know, it's a dirty word) - thinking about the bigger picture and how you can make a difference. Paul Graham and his YCombinator fund are only giving money to technical founders - and I think this is why. It's also why its so hard to find those good engineers - they're all out doing their own exciting things. I'm still trying to figure out how to find those that aren't - and suggestions are welcome!

After much comparing, I finally decided to switch from Bloglines to Google Reader. I have used Bloglines for years, and loved it. The ajaxy feel, and a great interface made it a superior product in most respects as a blog reader.

So why am I switching? Because of a major UI flaw, that those smart people at Google have figured a way around. On Bloglines, which you click on a feed to read, particularly one like Techcrunch that has dozens of unread posts, it automatically marks them all as read. This means if I haven't read Techcrunch in days (or weeks), I have to commit to reading hundreds of posts, or I can't click on that feed. However on Google Reader, they use some smart Ajax to mark posts as read *as I scroll*. How cool is that? Now I can click on Techcrunch whenever I want, consume a few posts, and leave. My life just got so much better!

On my Blackberry, this problem gets even worse because if I follow a link off a post to read something, when I go back the feed is now empty, because they were all marked as read on the previous pageview. So I couldn't even follow links!

I've been hoping those Bloglines people would address this, but it appears not. I would bet Google Reader is gaining massive marketshare because of this issue. Maybe they'll see this post and fix it? Probably not, but you never know - I always peruse blogs that write about Goodreads.

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Great book. Quick read, and you learn about about psychology that you can apply to life or business.

A few notes:
- All about first impressions. First impressions can sway our opinion of something for years to come regardless of subsequent performance.
- Labels matter. If you label someone as a higher performer, top of class, leader, having command potential, etc - it will translate into them actually having it. My high school motto was Principes Non Homines (leaders not men) - now I know why they thought that would work.
- When we brand or label people they take on the characteristics of the diagnosis.
- People are easily swayed when other people they deal with are decent or nice or fair to them. You enjoy a restaurant 10 times more if the waiter is really nice, regardless of the food (the product). Same goes for any service or business relationship.
- Heightened adrenaline levels lead to higher levels of romantic interest
- We have "two engines" running in our brain that don't operate simultaneously. So we usually approach things from either an altruistic perspective or a self-interested one. Money (self-interest) is not always the best motivator - sometimes pride (in your country, your city, what you do) will inspire people much more.

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I'm all about human powered today. And I just saw a really cool article about a possible way we could all commute in the future.

Personally I'd love to be able to get my exercise on the way to work on a high-flying adrenaline rushing monorail. I'd arrive healthy, and awake and ready to go.

Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone by Martin Dugard

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
"Dr Livingstone, I presume!"

That phrase was buried in my mind somewhere. It was familiar, yet I knew not how nor who this Livingstone person was. This book explained it, and was very entertaining in the process. Highly recommended if you ever travel to East Africa.

A friend recently wrote an interesting piece about how the types of creative people that rise to be famous have changed over the years. Livingstone was an explorer in the mid-1800's, and was a Michael Jordan of England. He explored much of Africa, often being the only white man in the expedition. He abhorred slavery, which was then rampant, and fought against it. His quest was to find the source of the Nile river, which evidently was a big thing back then (today we just keep looking for 'dark matter' and other such stuff).

But the most interesting part of the book to me was that the reason we know that famous phrase, is that its an early example of newspaper sensationalism. The New York Observer paid a reporter (Stanley) to take ridiculously large and expensive expedition into the middle of Africa that lasted for years, just to be able to have the exclusive on the story. But it was worth it: millions of Americans were entertained for years by the articles on Stanley's quest. And England wasn't happy its superstar was found by an American either, a fact not lost on the Observer.

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