Google’s Go Programming Language Grows Up: Now What?

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Joe Brockmeier

Does the world really need another C-ish programming language? Apparently Google thought so in 2009, when it channeled the Ramones and introduced Go. Now the Go team has reached a stable point they’re calling Go 1 and sending it out into the world for “creating reliable products, projects and publications.” Now, what’s the world going to do with it?

Stepping back a second, what is Go, and why did Google decide to introduce it? As the Go FAQ says, it’d been more than a decade since a “major systems language” had been introduced.

Read the rest on ReadWriteWeb »

Trello: Online Collaboration Software at Its Finest

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Joe Brockmeier

If you’ve seen one Web-based collaboration tool, you’ve seen ‘em all, right? That was my thinking, until I started seriously looking at Trello a few weeks ago. Trello takes the drudgery out of collaboration software. It gives users a Web-based workspace that’s as easy to use as a whiteboard and Post-It notes, but full-featured enough for distributed teams that need to work on complex projects.

Trello is developed by Fog Creek Software, a company best known for developer-oriented software like FogBugz, and for co-founder Joel Spolsky.

Read the rest on ReadWriteHack »

Cloud Storage Competition Heats Up With RiakCS

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Joe Brockmeier

Add Basho to the companies looking to take a chunk of the cloud storagespace. Today, the company announced RiakCS, a “multi-tenant, distributed, S3-compatible cloud storage platform” that runs on top of theRiak-distributed database. The question isn’t really whether Basho cancut into Amazon’s business, but how much.

According to J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth, Amazon Web Services overall is expected to be a $2.6 billion business by 2015. S3 is a pretty big chunk of that.

Read the rest on ReadWriteCloud »

Ubuntu: “We’re not Linux”

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Joe Brockmeier

I was getting set to download and test the latest Ubuntu release (right now in beta), and decided it might be wise to skim the release notes to see what’s new.

Under “new features,” I spied this: “Beta-1 includes the 3.2.0-17.27 Ubuntu kernel which is based on the v3.2.6 upstream stable kernel.” The Ubuntu kernel? Give me a break, guys.

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The power of introverts

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Joe Brockmeier

The world is made up of two kinds of people… that’s why we have A/B testing. Actually, that’s a steal from one of the buttons I saw at O’Reilly’s Strata Conference last week. But it’s (sort of) true when you’re talking about introverts and extroverts. Some people thrive on being around other people. Other folks… not so much.

Problem is, society is sort of gamed in favor of extroverts these days. Susan Cain, author of Quiet makes a passionate case why we need to give introverts their due, too. It’s about 20 minutes and well worth spending the time to watch.

Check it out over on the TED site. (I think maybe it’s time we had a TED St. Louis, hmmm?)

9 Phrases We Should Stop Seeing in Tech Journalism

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Joe Brockmeier

“This reporter” – Just use the first person. It might have worked for Edward R. Murrow, but with tech journalism – particularly blogs – it sounds like a ridiculous affectation. If you wouldn’t say it out loud when retelling a story, don’t write it. (And if you would say this out loud when telling a story, seek professional help.)
“The company told Acme Publication” – Bullshit. The publication is an abstract entity. Nobody “tells a publication” anything. People talk to reporters, and it’s OK to actually acknowledge that a human exchange took place rather than subsuming the reporter’s place in a story to a drone in the service of a publication. It’s 2012, embrace 1st person voice already.
“The company said in a statement” – OK, sometimes (but very rarely) there’s an excuse for using this. However, I don’t really care for quoting company statements. Few things scream “rehashed press release” more than just throwing in quotes from press releases/statements. Most publications I’ve written for have strict policies against using quotes from press releases. Either talk directly to the source and try to get more than is in the press release, or just don’t bother quoting them at all.
“Future plans” – This is just a pet peeve. All plans are future plans. Just say plans. (You also don’t need to indicate that something is your personal opinion. Just say “my opinion,” OK?)
“Smith believes that” – Really? Are you a psychic? I didn’t think so. It’s impossible for a reporter to know what a source thinks. Maybe the source really believes their company is going to have a great quarter despite losing 2/3rds of their engineering team and having no cash on hand to pay the rest of the engineering team and sales folks. Steve Ballmer may believe that the iPhone has “lost its cool.” More likely, they’re bullshitting you. It’s OK to quote a source saying they believe something, but asserting that they believe something is sloppy.
“Exclusive” – No one cares.
“Anything-killer” – I’ve probably done this myself, so mea culpa. But this is so over-used now, and so very often wrong. Mostly, though, it’s the binary nature of the argument that I find most objectionable. It’s possible for two successful products of similar types to co-exist.
“Is X the New Y?” – No, it’s not. Especially in reference to all the “is X the new Microsoft?” That implies that, you know, Microsoft has stopped being Microsoft, which isn’t at all in evidence. (I suspect even Microsoft would agree with me on that…)
Other cliches and over-used phrases – It’s not entirely fair to slam writers for using stock phrases when they’re writing several articles a day. Many tech editors and writers complain about headlines that are over-used are dealing with simple fatigue from reading far more headlines/articles than most people. But, some phrases really do need to be culled. For example, “controversy swirled.” This might have been a dramatic and interesting turn of phrase once, but it’s just tired now.

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