smallsharptools

If you think GitHub is just about sharing code you are missing out.

And GitHub is all about fit and culture. What makes GitHub so valuable is more than just making a lot of code available. It allows me to interact with many developers, discuss reasoning behind changes and learn from mistakes and successes. Being able to interact helps prepare developers for working on a team anywhere. I know many developers work in isolation even at companies and GitHub allows them to get that team experience.

And my evidence is personal experience. I do not need a study to know that interacting more with people makes me a better team player. I know that I have benefitted greatly by cutting back on time reading articles and attending meetups and more time with GitHub activities.

These days an active GitHub profile gives a developer a distinct advantage. It helps them form relationships with other debs who can teach them so much, even by just reading their code and commit comments. I watch multiple projects just so I can read about the changes they made, what their thinking was and the changes to the code.

Even if you cannot post code does not men you cannot watch and clone projects so you can learn and stay aware of trends in the community. It keeps you sharp. And it better than any industry magazine out there.

Getting active on GitHub was important to me after interviewing last year at a couple of great places. I learned I was out of sync with the developers I wanted to work with. So I got more active on GitHub by sharing code I created which I thought was useful to others. And when I used other libraries I looked for ways I could improve on them and managed to get some Pull Requests accepted. There were lots of benefits. One great benefit is regularly reading code written by developers with more experience than you. And if you form relationships with these same developers and they start coaching through changes on their projects you can accelerate your learning. This work csn even lead to a job. Being active on GitHub is a distinct advantage for sure.

This is a rant. They must not have much worth sharing on GitHub.

These days if I interviewed 2 developers and one had a very nice resume full of recommendations and stories about successful projects and the other developer had an active GitHub account with their own active projects with many watching them as well as multiple accepted Pull Requests for other projects... I would easily lean toward the developer who has been actively writing code, sharing and interacting with other developers. It shows they have passion, drive, dedication and an eagerness to learn from others and contribute back to the community.

A fancy resume cannot replace all of that.

Until I see an email from Apple myself I will not see this info as credible.

Yes, I think his information about Mac hardware is very outdated. Sure years ago only MacOS would run on Apple hardware but after the move to Intel chips it has been wide open.

Actually when Apple dropped the 1.4mb floppy the Zip Drive was becoming popular which was before the USB thumb drive was popular. And now people rarely use thumb drives and instead use Dropbox, Box.net, Skydrive or Google Drive. Maybe it was partly due to aesthetics, but it was also looking at how the average file for many documents (photos, videos, etc) are generally bigger than 1.4mb. It was a good choice. I use to own the early iMacs. I worked on them quite a bit actually. They were great.

I have seen this argument applied to Dell, Microsoft, Apple and others over the years. It is really a straw man argument. Apple will not kill off old hardware just to boost new sales. Apple keeps their offerings fairly current in order to push the envelope. When Apple dropped the floppy drive they were not trying to screw over consumers, they were looking forward and realizing that documents would not fit on a 1.4mb storage medium for much longer and they were right.

It's a matter of leaning forward or leaning backward. Another strategy Apple will likely pursue is to continue to break into new markets. The TV from Apple is likely the next innovation and area of growth that will boost Apple's outlook and get stock values up again. And that may happen this year. And beyond the TV I think Apple will be exploring other areas. We know that smart cars are coming with iOS integration. That will generate a good deal of revenue for Apple. Products like Nest and Bluetooth LE devices will also become quite handy. Just look at the Nike Fuelband, Jawbone UP and Fitbit for examples of new opportunities for hardware which integrates with the iPhone and gives consumers new gadgets to buy which leverage Apple products. Also keep in mind products like Pebble which are smart watches which integrate with the iPhone and Apple may even create their own smart watch which would surely do well given how popular the idea is with Pebble.

Apple does not need to get people to buy new iPads more frequently. They can simply create more products we are willing to buy.

Wow, if BlackBerry really thinks a better browser will help them retain more customers they really don't get why people prefer iPhone and Android phones. And consulting with the HTML5 team at Facebook which just rushed to quickly rewrite their mobile apps to 100% native apps after failing to leverage an HTML5/Native hybrid approach they are just digging the hole that much more.

The reason the iPhone is so popular is because 1) people are excited about it 2) great native apps make people excited because they do useful or fun things quickly 3) the iPhone is part of a rich ecosystem with services for music and apps. The iPhone ecosystem includes cloud and desktop integration along with support from the top rated e-commerce site as well as local support with award winner retail stores. That great customer service matters a lot to mobile phone customers who often expect a lot from their phones. With BlackBerry you get a phone from a carrier which has a poorly trained sales staff which cannot help you and often does not care. If I have an issue with my iPhone I can go into a nearby Apple Store and have my issues resolved quickly, and if necessary, they give me replacement hardware. And BlackBerry is putting out a better web browser? Better than what? Better than the poor browser they had previously I suppose. Apple has had a great browser from the beginning. BlackBerry does not get it. And if they want to catch up they need to do more than tweak their system. There should be an entire ecosystem built around it, but it is already too late. Android is already eating up all the space which Apple has not and Windows Phone is scrounging for scraps. Very little will be left for BlackBerry. They never innovated after they reached their peak. That's how the mighty fall. I hope Apple keeps innovating. I think they are due to push it this coming year. More integration between the iPhone with other aspects of our lives from TV to our cars would be great and we've already seen rumors that is coming.

I just do not see this working out. What I'd rather use is something like Gravatar for my address book details. People could register their address book details with email addresses, Twitter and Facebook and others could request more details through an API which enforces a privacy policy. I'd manage a whitelist of my contacts who are allowed to access my current address book details with specific access for groups. Like co-workers/colleagues could get my work email, work phone # but not my home address and home #. Having to use yet another app is very unappealing. With an API many of the apps I am using already can use the API, just like Gravatar is used by many apps. This is the way I'd solve this problem.

You can also ask friends to put their contact details on Facebook and share specific details with a limited list. That's what I do. I also use iCloud to sync contacts on my iPhone automatically. I treat people who lose phone numbers even when it is so easy to sync these days as someone I really don't want around. Seriously, it's stupid not to sync this important information. I call that Modern Technology Darwinism. Only the tech savvy will survive the next 100 years. (I am only half joking.)

Android and iPhone also sync using Twitter and Facebook. If you are not syncing you are just lazy or stupid.

As for staying up to date, only old forms of communication don't change smoothly. If we are connected via Facebook or LinkedIn you can always reach me. If my phone # changes, which is not necessary with number porting now, I can still be reached by Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn to ask for my #. I see no need for this Knok service.

Apple did what they had to do and Samsung did not just try to solve a usability problem, they willfully copied Apple even when they knew there were patents on these features. The reason Microsoft is exempt is because they licensed rights to these patents and agreed to steer clear of the aesthetics of the iPhone which they did with Nokia's version of Windows Phone. And I think the Metro UI is creative and innovated while Android and what Samsung is actually devoid of creativity and innovation.

Given all the years that Samsung has been making phones they could have come up with these solutions but they didn't. If tap to zoom was so obvious why didn't they do it? Why was Apple the first to do it?

Apple has been screwed before. And mostly by Microsoft copying features and putting them into Windows while marginalizing Apple just enough to keep their market share small enough so they were not a threat, but big enough so they could survive and create new features which Microsoft could "borrow" time and again. Innovation is a process and Apple does a good job of doing it incrementally with each OS X update. The original OS X did not have gestures. They worked on the iPad and iPhone for 6 years before releasing it. They carefully worked out the gestures, which the Open Source community was experimenting with but was completely ignored by Microsoft. Now Apple's OS X relies on a solid trackpad with lots of gestures in Mountain Lion and Microsoft is jumping in with many similar features in Windows 8 to make it a tablet-friendly OS. Without the patent protects Apple would continue to be marginalized and since they are known as a strong innovator I think it is best for them to defend their work as much as possible.

Consider what The Oatmeal's review or Telsa's contributions and how Edison took advantage of him because Tesla did not protect his work with patents while Edison leveraged the system as much as possible for his personal benefit. Tesla felt his work should benefit the world. The result was that Edison won, for now.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

Apple's second act under Steve Jobs has been to fight to protect the hard work done by it's employees and continue pushing the envelope.

This is not the end of creativity and innovation for other companies. It is insulting and disgusting to suggest that. Copying Apple is not innovation. The likely result here will be more unique offerings from the Android OEMs who will be forced to blaze their own trail just as Microsoft has done with Windows Phone.

This is just stupid. Who copies text from one terminal to another. You are missing the entire point of the command-line and piping. This is clearly a novice who just wants easy access to X11 because he does not know how to use the command-line tools properly.

I manage remote FreeBSD servers with just Terminal. It is perfectly fine. And I never copy and paste text in terminal windows.

I think we really need an alternative to Twitter and it could be a service which simply runs alongside Twitter. There are many features which would make Twitter a better service. One area which is a little neglected is simply having a online identity for the purpose of logging into multiple resources on the web and from applications. This is done now with Twitter as well as Facebook but many are concerned about privacy due to the fact that social networks sustain themselves with advertising. Providing at least an identity service which carefully handles privacy would be a good start that would get more people on board.

Then there has to be a way to segment the noise. Discussions about some TV show or a ballgame can suddenly fill up your Twitter stream. It would help if these conversations could happen in a category or topic that would allow you to choose to participate or ignore. Twitter is not really set up to do this right now.

Twitter also does not aggregate trends very well. Being able to ping a service with your status such as your location and/or activity could be aggregated and done so anonymously if you choose. I'd use this sort of service to share what I am watching or listening to so that the trends can be captured. I would like to know what music is popular in my area or what movie everyone seems to being seeing. And I would also open it up to locations with the goal of making people aware of more of what is going on around them. I'd like to have people select a persona or demographic they identify with so they can better discover things which would be more of interest to them. And these interests can go well beyond music, movies and restaurants. Ideally it would include events in your community to foster a greater sense of community which Twitter is not capable of doing.

I hope this does emerge. It seems it is a matter of time but the success of Twitter, as it is now, is preventing something else from catching on.