Afterweb

Even in this job market companies should be creative to attract star programmers: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eng/1246353621.html Great job hunting for great talent!

As an act of unprecedented generosity (or desperation) Google decided to give gPhone to every attendee of Google IO conference. While I can certainly applaud Google for the move (as a direct benefactors, of casue) a few red lights start to flash on my technology-navigation dashboard: 1. Does gPhone lost so much ground to iPhone (in terms of applications) that desperate and costly measures are required? 2. If (1) is true, users will flock to iPhone and whatever Google trying to do to mitigate the situation will fail – iPhone will remain dominate cell phone technology(like Windows in consumer OS market) for a long while 3. If (2) is true, open source approach once again has to yield to commercial interests Regardless of the Google motivating factors, the decision to give gPhones to Google conference attendees is flawed for a bunch reasons: - Google IO attendees are Google fans already, they know about gPhone platform - Conference attendees either write gPhone apps already or do not have ...

Thanks to the right star alignment and generous invitation from my co-worker I was lucky to be in the audience of the OnLive service announcement. After 7 years of secretly developing (can not imagine how anything related to game development could be hidden from public eyes and ears for so long), absolutely mind-blowing OnLive gaming service was finally announced today to the crowd of game developers. It is hard to believe that high-end gaming experience will be available soon for most of the mortals who have simple PC, MAC, or TV with a small adapter. Technology is, basically, high end game servers hosted in the data centers with low-latency compression boards and light-weight clients. Client could be either small (1Mb) browser plug-In on PC/MAC or game adapter for TV that connects to home-grade DSL/fiber/cable modem. Why OnLive is great? (at least on the demo, need to test myself at home): unprecedented performance approaching realism access to high-end games + games deve...

I realized that there is a new wave of buzzwords coming on. Here is my very small dictionary: behavioral targeting – targeting ads based on user's patterns taking an action on app – interaction but not installing social app, like in new Facebook profile social advertising - accelerated distribution of news about user actions beyond organic content soc ads - ads that use social graph soc ads (alt)- advertising on social media integrating branding – using brand names/logos to advance applications social shopping - making buying descriptions based on friends opinions "buzzword compliance" - using all of the above in speech or writing

Is a way to extend external sites to provide: FB identity FB friends (relationship) Feed to FB   Demo app at http://www.somethingtoputhere.com/therunaround User experience: login: js login method requiresession(): detects state of usr-FB relationship, log-in into FB if needed. If user has not authorised app - present app auth dialog. If already has session - just go init JS, require session   access FB data: - FBML on external site - use JS FBML parser and replace in browser DOM with FB data - JS based API to get FB data, REST API on the server site. Sessions work accross any API - only small subset of FBML us supported at the moment   adding social content: - use access API   Connections: app developers can suggest connections (using e-mail hash) user get connect request on FB Move content from external sites to FB app can register feed template (3 types of stories) call JS "showfeeddialog" to request user to confirm data sharing on FB. privacy protection: app ca...

It was interesting to watch today how Google is solving scalability problems: Problem 1: Conference registration lines are too long. Google's solution: Let anyone in. No badges are required before 2 p.m. Problem 2: Too many people who want to attend the keynote speech by Vic Gundotra Google's solution: Still let anyone in. People can sit anywhere on the floor Lesson: relax rules if they stay on the way of scalability