Celebrating Life
Posted: October 11, 2011 Filed under: regular | Tags: Death, Encouragement, Steve Jobs 2 Comments »Everybody knows at this point that Steve Jobs has died. I can’t say he was an idol for me, but I can say he did lots of things I wish to have done.
More importantly, he showed he lived his life the way he wanted. Maybe he wasn’t entirely happy, but at least it seems he chose his path. And this is the way I want to live my life.
Here am I, making an agreement with myself, stating that I’ll do, at least, one thing I’m proud of everyday.
In the end what it counts is how proud you are about the way you lived your life.
Frankly Mr. Stallman
Posted: October 7, 2011 Filed under: regular | Tags: Richard Stallman, Steve Jobs, Utopia Leave a comment »Richard Stallman had a chance to stay quiet, but couldn’t:
Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.I know Mr. Stallman did a lot for the free software movement, but every time he opens his mouth to say things like this he’s digging his own grave. […] Nobody deserves to have to die – not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs’ malign influence on people’s computing.
Don’t even start with how bad is trying to justify paying for software is “malign” for the mankind. Of course, we don’t pay for clothes, food and other basic needs, right? It’s a pity most people that keep parroting your words never read any kind of business or economy books to know that some things you pray are utopia.
Come on Mr. Stallman, when you talk about how “malign” the people you just listed are, remember they’re doing something for the mankind, in one way or another. While you’re there vomiting those unnecessary comments they’re either including people to this digital era or trying to find the cure for the cancer.
And you, Mr. Stallman, is going to conferences without paying a dime and charging from people that for some reason care about you to take pictures with you.
Frankly.
How Steve Has United The World
Posted: October 7, 2011 Filed under: regular | Tags: Apple, Steve Jobs Leave a comment »Yesterday I tweeted:
@isutton: Jobs did what every leader in the world wanted: united all the people in the world, no matter their color or religion. #ThanksSteve
I really think he did it. Basically he changed the world into what we have today. I’m typing this text on a personal computer because Jobs pushed it forward, because he challenged the status quo. Look back and try to imagine a world where Jobs and Woz have given up when IBM didn’t want to buy their company?
If there’s such a reality, it’s certainly boring as hell.
As Apple’s “Think different” slogan stated:
[You can] disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.
You can spend the rest of the day arguing that the only thing Jobs wanted was to sell expensive gadgets to people. That’s an opinion and I respect it.
But remember: Jobs had his first hundred million dollars in his early twenties. He didn’t work for money. He wanted to change the world, make a difference. And he did. Certainly, a picture is worth thousand words. I’ve found other pictures as well, showing how people cared about Jobs. He’s changed their lives. In the way they perceive perceive technology. The way they perceive the world. One thousand songs in your pocket. The internet in your hands.
He wanted a better world, where doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, your ethnicity, your gender, anything. The same iPhone Barack uses is the iPhone I use. The same iPad some random company’s CEO uses is what I use. We’re the same. No boundaries, no differences.
He wanted to make the difference. And he did.
What Am I Doing?
Posted: October 3, 2011 Filed under: regular | Tags: Freedom, Life, ROWE Leave a comment »David Whatley, of Tiny Heroes fame, discussed about ROWE at 360iDev, and how it changed both his company and his employees lives. This made me think on how diminished the most important asset we have in life is by the corporate environment.
Thought about how many times someone asked me to do some activity that didn’t have any value at all. To do some project that nobody would even look when it’s been finished, even if it was set as “high priority” by someone.
I thought about the time I spent doing it and didn’t spend changing someone’s life for the better. And also about the time my wife had to be alone because someone decided something non-sense was priority.
With my baby boy on the way, I started to ask myself: Does he need to pay as well?
The answer to that question is pretty simple, but what is not that straightforward to answer is how do we embrace our freedom.
First, you have to choose either the blue or the red pill. This is the hardest part of embracing deciding how you want to live the rest of your lives, since what you’re really deciding to either keep yourself comfortable living the life you already know—with all the good and bad things you were hard-wired—or the uncertainty of driving your own future forward.
But don’t lie to yourselves: the uncertainty lives in both choices. You’ll never know what’ll happen to you tomorrow. You don’t know: if you’ll start to panic when you go to your office; regret your past choices when you haven’t participated in your children’s development; or how your spouse feels about having lunch alone after all those years.
The only certain thing you know is what you want. At least for now.
Apple and Its Online Presence
Posted: October 3, 2011 Filed under: regular | Tags: Apple Leave a comment »Today I was chatting with Drew McCormack about Apple’s expertise on web based services (or “cloud” to imitate what the cool guys), and I think I wasn’t clear about my point in this conversation (in chronological order):
- @drewmccormack: What is @siracusa on about this week? Claiming that the company with the World’s largest digital store has no experience in cloud/internet.
- @isutton: @drewmccormack They need something to sell. How can you say someone has or not experience on building something that was never built before?
- @drewmccormack: @isutton You can’t run the world’s biggest digital store with no XP in this stuff at all. They have lots, believe me.
- @isutton: @drewmccormack I know how these things work, and I’m sure they know their thing. But once you achieve that level, there’s no experience.
- @drewmccormack: @isutton They’ve got XP, because they are been doing it for 10 years. They aren’t starting right now.
- @isutton: @drewmccormack We both know systems designed for 10, 1K and 1MI can be and are totally different between them.
- @drewmccormack: @isutton But you seem to be denying Apple has ever built a system for more that 10 users. They have a massive online presence, and it works.
What I meant in this conversation—sorry if I made myself unclear—was to point there’s no way for companies to have expertise on systems that are yet to be built. Every step Apple takes to improve their online presence, specially with services like those coming along with iOS 5, don’t exist thus no-one can have experience on building it.
When I pointed that systems “systems designed for 10, 1K and 1MI can be and are totally different between them”, I meant that architecturally they can—and usually are—completely different. They have different features, technical requirements, infra-structure and so on.
The bottom line of my message is: expertise is made of repeatable actions. One can be expert on creating web sites using, let’s say, Ruby On Rails. It’s repeatable. Build infra-structure to scale Apple does, is all about experiment and count on its engineers craftsmanship.
First Time Attending 360iDev
Posted: October 3, 2011 Filed under: regular | Tags: 360iDev, Denver, iOS Leave a comment »360iDev 2011 was a great conference. The first iOS conference I attended, and certainly not the last one. The whole community caused me a pretty good impression. I’ve been involved with several different open source communities along the years. Some better than others. I always felt something was missing, but never figured out what it was.
Now I know.
Andria Jensen from Appsolute Genius said in her presentation:
Don’t be JUST a developer.
Of course this is a good advice, and I probably heard that several times during all these years. The gold question for me is: if you shouldn’t be just a developer, what else should you be?
And this is what I missed from all the other communities I’ve been part of.
Most communities praise you if they perceive you’re a good coder, how good is your .vimrc file, or how many projects you’ve contributed in github. Not this community.
This community wants you to be yourself. It wants you to be awesome and deliver awesome products. It wants you to feel awesome.
It’s not all about code quality. It’s not all about how pretty or fast your app is. It is all about how you feel with regards to what you’re doing.
Our Appsterdam’s mayor Mike Lee said (something along this lines) in the ending panel:
It’s like an artist that sands a piece. He sands, then removes the dust, look at it from a perspective, and repeat until he feels it is finished.
The true lesson: pay attention, and more importantly, respect what you feel. You don’t want to waste your (finite) time here with bullshit.
Why I Use Apple Products
Posted: September 15, 2011 Filed under: regular | Tags: Apple, Cherry Creek Apple Store, Denver Leave a comment »I arrived in Denver last Saturday for the amazing 360iDev conference together with my wife Marina. Since she wanted to do some shopping, we went to the Cherry Creek Shopping Center and we were lucky to find an Apple Store there. Well, actually we went there because of the Apple Store, but it doesn’t matter.
It was my first time at an Apple Store and I left it completely astonished.
Apple really eats its dog food: from the usage of iPod Touches with credit card readers instead of cashiers to Genius Bar appointments being handled using their awesome iPad application. Awesome.
What was even more awesome happened later: my wife’s iPhone and mine were replaced by new ones at the store because the Home button of both devices were malfunctioning.
No questions asked.
This is why I use Apple products: Apple wants to give you the best value for your money, the best user experience they can provide and the best customer service I’ve used ever.
Seth’s Blog: Back to (the wrong) school
Posted: September 5, 2011 Filed under: link Leave a comment »Seth’s Blog: Back to (the wrong) school
Seth’s Blog: Back to (the wrong) school: “If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, they will find someone cheaper than you to do it.”
Fighting for your art will always be harder than the other alternatives, but once you’ve given up, life isn’t worth living.
Rework and the city « Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird
Posted: August 29, 2011 Filed under: link | Tags: Entrepreneurship Leave a comment »Rework and the city « Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird
Thoughtful text by Adam Greenfield on how companies can be borderless and sparse around the globe.
(Via Fraser Speirs.)
Short-Term and Quick and Dirty
Posted: August 25, 2011 Filed under: regular | Tags: Business, Software Development Leave a comment »Recently Seth Godin wrote a pretty interesting post in his blog about short-term capitalism. I’ve never read about this concept before. At least, not as direct as a punch on my chin.
Seth wrote:
Short-term architecture means putting up a cheap building, a local eyesore, something that saves money now instead for building something for the long haul. The guys who put up the Pantheon in Rome weren’t doing short-term anything. Hard to say that about a big box store.
When I read the paragraph above, something started to bother me: most companies managers only look at short-term goals. Even if the nature of their businesses require infra-structure that won’t be dismissed in the long-term, they think it’s unnecessary until it is needed.
Let’s use as an example a company like, let’s say, Amazon. Amazon’s business depends on having its website up and running, around the clock. If something goes wrong with the website, they should—and will—put the website back in operation as soon as possible, and then, when the operations have been stabilized, they’ll check what happened and take care it won’t happen again.
This is fine: solve the problem—which is turn the money printer back on—and see what’s happened later.
Let’s continue using Amazon as an example. Assume there’s a feature someone from the business came up, which can add a lot of value and is quite complex, but feasible in the short-term. The development team manage to build it, and more value is created.
What now?
Since we have a pretty much successful return of investment, the business representative continuously come with ideas that adds value, and the development team keeps adding short-term solutions to support business’ requirements. Over and over.
The problem is: who will think about the long-term goals in this scenario?
There are a few things that shouldn’t fail, or fail as little as possible, to allow your business to grow. If you have an online business, your website shouldn’t fail. If you run a restaurant, your kitchen should be well maintained. If you’re a truck driver, your truck must be in order. Simple like that.
Core components of your business can be fixed to survive the short-term—a hot fix on in your website’s code, a patch in your truck’s tire. But they should be fixed ASAP.
Core components should be fixed because they are your business.
