rob's next move http://robsnextmove.com Most recent posts at rob's next move posterous.com Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:51:00 -0800 burn the boats! http://robsnextmove.com/burn-the-boats http://robsnextmove.com/burn-the-boats

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/06/andreessen-media-burn-boats/

Excellent article on TechCrunch about new media and the difficulty that established players have in taking risks that threaten their existence. Comments from Andreessen.

I actually pay $0.75 to read the Times on my Kindle once-a-week or so. It's cheap, has no ads, and Amazon makes the process simple. But increasingly I'm finding that the only exclusive content worth reading from the NYT is the OpEd section. Their news articles are better than AP, but increasingly, I just don't care. If I want in-depth articles, I read The Economist.

Actually, with so much ink spilled about the sad state of newspapers, I'm surprised that The Economist gets so few mentions. Their print circulation is actually increasing. I think it's simple: there really is no substitute for the quality and exclusivity of the content. I've never once chosen not to read an article in The Economist because I had read a similar article from another source AP, Reuters, NYT, etc.

I'm glad Rupert Murdoch and company think that their content is so great that people will pay for it online. One thing I've learned from reading Seth Godin, though: never underestimate people's power to ignore you.

If the New York Times wants to live another hundred years, I think they have to accept this: the daily paper is dead. It died a while ago and nobody noticed.

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:48:00 -0800 "windows 7 was my idea!" http://robsnextmove.com/windows-7-was-my-idea http://robsnextmove.com/windows-7-was-my-idea

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Funny video about what would happen if Microsoft actually listened to its users...

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]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:10:05 -0800 siskel & ebert outtakes http://robsnextmove.com/siskel-and-ebert-outtakes http://robsnextmove.com/siskel-and-ebert-outtakes

This outtake reel is just awesome.

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:43:09 -0800 mongodb http://robsnextmove.com/mongodb-22 http://robsnextmove.com/mongodb-22

Excellent talk by the CEO of 10gen (and founder of DoubleClick), the developer of MongoDB.

http://www.leadit.us/hands-on-tech/MongoDB-High-Performance-SQL-Free-Database

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:00:15 -0800 http://5z8.info/michaelangelo-virus_r4z2i_nazi http://robsnextmove.com/http5z8infomichaelangelo-virusr4z2inazi http://robsnextmove.com/http5z8infomichaelangelo-virusr4z2inazi

This latest meme is pretty funny. This has to be one of the best tag lines ever:

Don't just shorten your URL, make it suspicious and frightening.

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:08:09 -0800 fully indexed http://robsnextmove.com/fully-indexed http://robsnextmove.com/fully-indexed

A great diagram from the Indexed blog.

http://thisisindexed.com/2010/02/whos-in-your-office

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:06:39 -0800 woods http://robsnextmove.com/woods-70 http://robsnextmove.com/woods-70

So the rumor is that Tiger Woods is going to announce something tomorrow.

Unless he's going to announce that he's going to start playing golf again, who cares?

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:10:46 -0800 private half-pipes? http://robsnextmove.com/private-half-pipes http://robsnextmove.com/private-half-pipes

I'm still having a hard time getting my head around what I see in this video.

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:42:44 -0800 legos solving rubik's cube http://robsnextmove.com/legos-solving-rubiks-cube http://robsnextmove.com/legos-solving-rubiks-cube

This is really impressive.

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:20:24 -0800 "engineers are retarded" http://robsnextmove.com/engineers-are-retarded-0 http://robsnextmove.com/engineers-are-retarded-0

This guy's rant is pretty amusing...

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:13:00 -0800 mavericks http://robsnextmove.com/mavericks-23 http://robsnextmove.com/mavericks-23

;

I hope nobody was hurt, of course, but this was amusing to see surf spectators taking a bath...

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Sun, 14 Feb 2010 12:44:11 -0800 isn't there a library somewhere that you should be dedicating? http://robsnextmove.com/isnt-there-a-library-somewhere-that-you-shoul http://robsnextmove.com/isnt-there-a-library-somewhere-that-you-shoul

Why won't Cheney go away? Your time is over. And Biden? Why does he engage this guy? Just ignore him.

All these numb-nuts should be focusing on one thing: ensuring that America leads a new charge to global prosperity. Make sure that we have a rising tide and that it really does lift all boats.

If they do that, a lot of things will fall into place.

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Sun, 14 Feb 2010 12:33:22 -0800 irony http://robsnextmove.com/irony-153 http://robsnextmove.com/irony-153

Why does no one seem to see the irony of the US getting dragged deeper into the mess-that-is-Afghanistan by our current president?

I hope that there is an actual democratic primary race coming up next year. I would love to see a serious democratic challenger to Obama.

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:40:47 -0800 software http://robsnextmove.com/software-732 http://robsnextmove.com/software-732

Philip Greenspun, who writes an enjoyable blog, had this to say in a review of the 2011 Toyota Sienna:

The car that I drove over to the dealer was a Nissan and has the feature that if the engine control computer sees both the brake and accelerator pressed at the same time, it rolls the throttle back to idle. Nissan shares this IF/THEN statement in its engine control logic with a lot of other car manufacturers, but Toyota is not among them. Toyota's programmers were too busy dealing with the hundreds of possible configurations of the car (see below) to put in this fundamental safety feature, which is why mechanically stuck accelerator pedals in Toyotas have resulted in accidents and deaths.

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:35:54 -0800 microsoft express http://robsnextmove.com/microsoft-express http://robsnextmove.com/microsoft-express

Microsoft's new developer-oriented site for their Express line of products is a visual delight.

Awesome.

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:00:22 -0800 attitudes http://robsnextmove.com/attitudes-19 http://robsnextmove.com/attitudes-19

I'm finding that an ever-increasing number of organizations--corporations, governments, unions, etc.--are choosing policies so distasteful to me that I would take a certain pleasure in their outright failure.

$50 for the privilege of possibly getting home a couple of hours early when a business meeting ends earlier than expected?

If something were to push American Airlines into Chapter 7 bankruptcy (which isn't going to happen, mind you), my reaction would be: "Serves them right. Good riddance!"

Compare this to Amazon, which has become amazingly good at taking money from me and making me smile while they do it.

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:41:06 -0800 is bush still president? http://robsnextmove.com/is-bush-still-president http://robsnextmove.com/is-bush-still-president

Time to donate to the ACLU again...

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:55:42 -0800 old school vinyl http://robsnextmove.com/old-school-vinyl http://robsnextmove.com/old-school-vinyl

Pretty cool video showing how vinyl records are made.

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:50:34 -0800 sadly, it's not april fools day http://robsnextmove.com/sadly-its-not-april-fools-day http://robsnextmove.com/sadly-its-not-april-fools-day

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:22:46 -0800 newfangled databases http://robsnextmove.com/newfangled-databases http://robsnextmove.com/newfangled-databases

There are quite a few free/open-source key-value and document-oriented databases available now.

CouchDB and MongoDB are two most interesting from my perspective. They have native JavaScript/JSON support and both allow simple map-reduce jobs written in JavaScript to be sent straight to the data store for processing. You get some map-reduce with your datastore, as compared to getting a datastore (HBase) wtih your MapReduce (Hadoop).

Both the Google and Amazon datastores are very easy to use, but Google's is only available from the AppEngine runtime environment. Amazon's SimpleDB is available outside of EC2, but the latency is much too high to be very useful.

Cassandra (which came from Facebook) looks solid from a design point-of-view, but its interfaces are quite low-level, creating a large barrier to adoption.

So the Web 2.0 applications of all of these products are pretty obvious. How will they be used in the enterprise?

]]> /images/profile/unknown75.gif http://posterous.com/people/faIgkLXZM rob schoening rob rob schoening