Book Review: Getting Real by 37signals
A few weeks ago, I found 37signals’ book “Getting Real” online. I had heard/watched DHH’s infamous “How to Make Money Online” presentation so the idea of a book written by the people at 37signals sounded interesting. The cool thing is that you can read the entire book online, for free. After reading about one third of it online I decided I need my own physical copy to keep on my bookshelf. Seriously it’s that good.
If you are in the technology business and you work on web applications (or even non-web applications), you need to give “Getting Real” a good solid read. It is filled with principles, that while might seem strange at first, are excellent rules to live by in this “Web 2.0″ world. The ideas of “underdoing your competition” and “release early and often” might seem strange in a business that has long believed in outdoing your competitors and waiting till the product is “perfect” (which can only be achieved with 10 managers, 50 developers, business analysts, and about 1,000 pages of useless documents) but in a place like the world wide web, mean little.
The main arguments presented in the book aim to keep things small, easily adaptable, simple, and even on occasion releasing crudely looking products (with the intent of cleaning up over time) are things that I have been discussing with a friend of mine for many years. The book is in some ways an anti-big business book, and isn’t to be considered a rule book, but it is a game changer. It’s ideas will cause some people to laugh, laud, and dismiss it entirely; for these people they will do so at their own peril. This book causes one to think about an internet business in a different way. It’s really not about the pumping up the stock option price so you can sell to Google, it’s about how to run a successful business on the internet so you don’t have to sell to some company with deep pockets. It’s about starting and running a business and how (as a small company) you have an advantage over your larger competitors.
Overall I throughly enjoyed reading this book. The essays are short (less than 2 pages in most cases), concise and get their point across quite well in their minimal space. If you’re looking at doing web applications either in an existing company, or you are considering starting your own, this book is a “can’t miss” read.
Learning the Ruby Programming Language
I’ve set out to learn a new programming language (for several reasons that will be disclosed at a later date), the language of choice was Ruby, so that eventually I could learn some Ruby on Rails for the purpose of getting back into web development. I have found a couple of nice ways to help with learning the Ruby programming language.
Ruby Koans
A couple weeks back while attending a geek dinner, someone at the table mentioned the Ruby Koans as an interesting way to learn the Ruby programming language. They were right. What are the Ruby Koans? They are a set of unit tests all set to fail and the object is to make each test past, one at a time. The goal is that, as you complete the code to make each test pass, you eventually learn the Ruby language. I’ve been doing them for the last week and a half with great results. I’m by no means an expert in Ruby but I am learning some interesting things about the language.
RubyQuiz.com
RubyQuiz.com is an archive website of the first 150-ish quizzes that took place on the Ruby Talk mailing list. While the quizzes still happen on the mailing list, this website only has the first 156 quizzes posted to the mailing list. The idea is that you are presented with a problem that you must solve using the Ruby language. Several solutions are provided for each quiz so you can compare your answers. It’s a great way to get your mind thinking in a Ruby way, once you’ve become familiar with the language (see the Koans above).
FourSquare Wises Up, Now Useable
Previously, I wrote about why I prefer Gowalla over FourSquare. If you’re not sure on what Gowalla or FourSquare are, they are location based social networking sites. The main gist is that as you go to stores, malls, movie theaters, school, and so on you “check in” at those locations. On Gowalla you can find, drop, and pickup items, while on FourSquare you get points for checking in.
The reason I prefer Gowalla to FourSquare was quite simple, you could check in from anywhere and you didn’t have to know the address because the Gowalla iPhone application relied on the GPS in the iPhone to mark the spot. FourSquare’s requirement that you input an address was both annoying and (to me) a major reason to stop using the service. Well as of about two weeks ago, FourSquare announced that they would all you to check in from anywhere and that the next iPhone application update would use the GPS component to check in with, entering a address was now optional.
Since this change, FourSquare’s iPhone application has seen more use from me. It’s still not on my first iPhone screen (Gowalla’s not going away anytime soon), but it’s on my second and I have found the overall experience of FourSquare to be much more enjoyable then before. Gowalla still has a better overall user experience in my opinion, its more consistent. Also, being from Texas, I have to give a little love to Texas companies and Gowalla is stationed here. So for the time being I’ll use both services. I still like FourSquare’s game better than Gowalla’s. The point system on FourSquare is nifty and the mayor concept adds just a little more competition amongst friends. The people at Gowalla have long proven that they are not just sitting around so it will be interesting to see how the combat FourSquare’s latest changes.
Beekin – All That’s Left Behind
Today marks an important day for both a close personal friend of mine and myself. The release of my friend’s band Beekin’s album entitled “All That’s Left Behind” is today. Why you can probably see the immediate importance for my friend, you might be asking “why is this important for you, Michael?” and the answer is fairly simple. With the release of this album I (officially) become a published songwriter.
I’ve known Erick, the lead singer for many (many) years, and one of the songs on this album is a hold over from a band we were in together years ago. That song, “Traditional Thorn” sums up a lot of harsh feelings we were feeling towards the Christian music industry when it was written and is the direct result of the band being told they couldn’t play certain songs because they were “too loud” (this was back when the idea of Christian rock was still foreign to most church goers). The lyrics to “Traditional Thron” have been modified a little since their conception but the overall message is still there and the song still rocks to this day. The other song, I helped birth is “Finally Fading” while I didn’t help with the lyrics too much, I did devise the title and initial chord progression for the song allowing Erick to work with some others to bring the song to full growth.
“All That’s Left Behind” is currently available from iTunes and Amazon Mp3 store. It is also available directly from the Beekin website. So please check out this CD, it’s honestly one of the best things they have done.
Nine Inch Nails Continues to Prove They “Get it”
Yesterday I randomly found out about a NIN fan project entitled “The Gift” from the fan group This One is On Us/Another Version of the Truth. What this is, is a a full length concert video created from over 450 gigabytes (GB) of video footage shot from HD cameras by the NIN crew that was released by NIN.com to see what their fans would produce. The end result is a full length concert video containing 32 songs, 5.1 surround sound, and released in a variety of formats (including a single layer Blu-Ray). All variations are available via BitTorrent downloading for free. Just to be clear, the video is professionally shot, the completed Blu-Ray/DVD/video files are fan made from that video.
To get an idea of what it looks like, you can view it on YouTube in HD (720 and 1080 resolutions) here. I recommend one of my favorite tunes, The Hand That Feeds, because a lot of people recognize this song (from Rock Band if nothing else).
This is extremely cool for a number of reasons. First and foremost is that the NIN crew gave the rough, uncut video away for free. All it cost you was the time to download it. This shows that Trent Reznor is still looking at changing the way bands and music fans think about music and band/fan interaction. Reznor trusts his fans to do good by his good will and they continually show that they will. It is also important to note that other fan-made videos and DVDs have been made from the video data supplied by NIN, this project is just a group effort by one set of fans. This is also cool because of the fact that it is so well done. You feel like you’re watching something professionally done by some people sitting around in a video studio cutting/editing video. The sound is fantastic and the overall experience of watching the video is great (assuming you like Nine Inch Nails). Finally, the fact that this video is available for free to anyone that wants to download it, just shows that if a band trusts their fans, they can do wonderful promotion for your band. Nine Inch Nails gave their community the video, and in return got a lovely concert video that many people will download, show to their friends and say “this was cut and edited together by fans, not the band” and that is going to speak volumes to those watching it.
I’m not the largest NIN fan, I’ve said that here several times. But what they’re doing with projects like this is important, its showing that you can do things on your own, without large record label backing you. Also it’s showing that the idea of free in music can lead to wonderful things. Both NIN and the people who put work into this “Gift” should be given a round of applause.
Warner Bros. is Run by Idiots
Engadget has an article about Netflix reaching a deal with Warner Brothers Pictures (people who bring us Harry Potter, Batman, and the Matrix films) where Netflix will delay shipping new release rentals out for 28 days. The idea here is that Warner Bros. hopes that this will encourage people to buy a DVD or Blu-Ray rather than just renting it. It’s a horrible idea, brought about by people who apparently don’t even understand their customers. For this reason, I claim that Warner Bros. Pictures is run by idiots.
First off, people don’t usually buy movies blindly. They want to see them. They’ll either see the movie in theaters or they will rent it. Only after seeing the movie will most people actually buy it, not before. So to delay new video releases with the idea that it will sell more product is a flawed idea from the get go. Delaying rental customers from getting new releases will only do two things. First it will anger your customers and they will stop buying from you (this goes for you too Netflix), and secondly it will cause people to pirate movies. A lot of people pirate movies so they can see the movie, and if they like it they usually buy it. I’m not going to argue that others pirate movies for the sake of doing so and in turn do not buy videos, that happens, but those people wouldn’t have bought it anyway.
Then you have people like me, those of us that plan on buying large box sets once a series has finished it’s movie run (Harry Potter anyone?). I haven’t bought a Harry Potter disc since I bought a Blu-Ray player. The reason? Warner Bros. will probably release a nice (read pricey) box set of all 8 movies (the last book will be turned into 2 movies) and I’d rather buy them all on Blu-Ray at once rather than go through the hassle of selling my DVDs for the first 4 movies right now. I’d rather have a nice box set with all the movies rather than having them scattered among my collection. The box set looks nicer on a shelf. So for me it isn’t so much about not buying the movie as it is about only buying it once. I hate double dipping. My wife and I are slowly replacing DVDs with Blu-Rays but only on movies we really like and only when we find the Blu-Ray for what we consider to be a good price.
So what will I do now that I can’t get Warner Bros. new releases from Netflix the week (or two) after release? I have no clue at this point. But for movies I haven’t seen yet, I can guarantee that I won’t be buying them. So Warner Bros. please get over yourselves, and pull back on this deal, I promise that long term it’s not going to help your video sales any and is really just going to anger your customers. Netflix, if you do even 1 more these kinds of deals, I will personally cancel my account and encourage others I know to do the same.
