Tag Archives: open source

The four NYU students pledging to build Diaspora captured my imagination today, and I’m not the only one.

There is so much to discuss around this and it’s not even out of the lab yet. In a rare display of focus, I’ll devote my first post on the topic to one of the more obvious questions – Can they (or do they need to) get 400 million people to migrate away from Facebook? Continue reading…

Confessions of a control freak and an anecdote about AMF

If you haven’t read part 1, it’s there for the reading, and puts this post in context.

I figure the best place to start is where the title of this series comes from: I am a control freak; in life and so in code. This is not a very positive thing to say, but in terms of my personal skills development I feel it’s important. I don’t like things that just work; I have to know why.

There is a button on my washing machine that says “anti-crease“. This bugs the hell out of me: When would I not want this setting on? What’s the trade-off? If it creases my clothes less, then what is not doing? Is it cleaning them less?

Continue reading…