Posted by Ian Holsman
Tue, 08 Apr 2008 07:13:00 GMT
Google has just announced their alternative to Amazon’s s3 called ‘App Engine’.
I think that if this is successful it will provide a shift in some of the basic web development economics and practices, even more than Amazon’s s3 has.
why?
- Small hosting providers (ones that offer a shell account for $12/month) will be marginalized. why pay for something when you get it for free?
- M&A. It will create a 3rd platform to develop on. you currently have LAMP and Windows. The google app engine provides a 3rd. The major difference is you can’t buy it. If we acquire a company who runs on this platform we have 2 choices. continue paying google for the infrastructure, or redevelop it onto LAMP. of course this suits google as their integration costs are lessened. Google might provide a ‘open source’ version of their infrastructure.. but I doubt it.
- Language choice. currently it only runs one language, python. They say they might support others in the future, but if not there will be a lot of people learning python (to the detriment of PHP, perl, and ruby), as well as new tools and utilities written in it. It’s going to give python a huge boost in usage
- Database choice. Google’s App Engine will be using ‘bigtable’ which is not a RDBMS, and uses a hacked up version of SQL. This impacts companies like mysql. you don’t need to worry about replication here Krow ;-)
- Applications are integrated into Google’s authentication system by default. you don’t even have your own list of users.
As a python developer I love it. It even has django out of the box, but I would be a bit cautious to base my startup on a infrastructure which can only be provided by a single company.. when I get a invite I will be porting my applications over to it.. hopefully by then someone would have ported their blogging software to it so i won’t have to.
Posted in Business Related | Tags django, google, mysql, python | 2 comments
Posted by Ian Holsman
Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:22:00 GMT
Just got this email from Sony. Talk about being screwed over.
In January I purchased a new TV. Part of the deal was that you got a PS3 with it.
now.. they had run out of stock so I needed to wait a bit for delivery.. OK I thought I can do that. 3-4 weeks later the TV arrived.
now they tell me I won’t see the PS3 until May. 4-5 MONTHS after I bought it.
What a total waste of energy.
Last time I buy something from Sony.. thats for sure.
—
Dear Ian,
Thank you once again for participating in the Sony Bonus PLAYSTATION®3 promotion with the purchase of your BRAVIA LCD TV. We have received your claim and everything has been validated.
Now for your PLAYSTATION®3.
We understand you’ve been waiting an exceptionally long time, far longer than we initially anticipated. Please accept our apologies for this frustrating situation and please be assured we’re doing all we can to rectify it as quickly as possible.
As you’re no doubt aware, we had an overwhelming response to this promotion – so much so that our substantial PLAYSTATION®3 stocks in Australia were quickly exhausted and we had to order more from overseas. Unfortunately, that takes time but we’re happy to report that the wait is at last almost over.
We’ll be shipping your PLAYSTATION®3 to you from May 12.
Thank you for buying Sony and again, thank you for your continued patience. We’re sorry for the delay in delivering your bonus PLAYSTATION®3 but it will be with you very soon.
Kind regards,
The Sony Team
Posted in General | Tags bravia, ps3, sony | no comments
Posted by Ian Holsman
Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:57:00 GMT
I just submitted my final assignment "An analysis of WalMart’s leaked brand positioning" and i’m done.
Looking back over the last couple of years, I think doing the course was valuable, as it opened my eyes up to different things that I didn’t know I didn’t know. I wish I didn’t "waste" some of the electives. What made them a waste? shitty lecturers. One night one of these "brains" spent 2 hours teaching people how to use a calcualtor to do NPV calculations.
The other thing is I think the way they teach subjects should move a bit more with the times. Closed book exams? I mean.. who (besides ANZ bank) does not have full internet access nowadays? or not use IM?
I think the worst example of this came through with a economics exam question that was worth 20%.
Some thing along the lines of
‘describe the XYZ theorem’ or ‘explain the 2 major inputs into ABC law and where you would use it’
where XYZ was one of about 50 different theorems we learnt. what pissed me off is that I forget the name of the theorem, but could have explain it for 3-4 pages when I knew WTF they were on about.
anyway.. i’m happy that I did it.
now the bigger question:
Am I going to get a ROI on the $$$ I spent doing it and the time spent sitting in a classroom above what I would have got putting that in the stockmarket or as a deposit for a small apartment.
Posted in General | Tags mba | no comments
Posted by Ian Holsman
Sat, 29 Mar 2008 10:01:00 GMT
Last night I met up with a ex-AOL’er who showed me NY and I had a great time.
I can’t remember the last time I barhopped until 3am. (and naturally I woke up at 6am the next day.. thank goodness for this 14hour flight and lack of internet.. I’ll be able to sleep then)
I also came to the realization that I spent more time in the air then I did on the ground in Dulles this trip. (seeing how it takes me ~30 hours to get to dulles.. this isn’t the hardest thing to do either)
Sadly I didn’t actually get to go and sightsee in Japan, as I arrived just before the shops were all closing, and thanks to the 2-hour check-in requirement had to get to the airport when the shops were opening ;(.
At least this time I got to see a tiny bit of new york.
Coincedintally the first parts of the ‘AR’ project have started coming together and should start becoming visible on the AOL search pages shortly. congrats to Vineet, Oscar, Travis, and all the others in the search team for making this happen so quickly. I don’t want to talk too much about ‘AR’, but I think it might be a game changer, or at least it will power some really cool things inside of AOL. Time will tell (that and some great metrics of course).
and my heart goes out to the 120 people layed off at CNET. even though I stopped working there 2-3 years ago, it’s hard to hear how screwed up they have become.
no comments
Posted by Ian Holsman
Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:10:00 GMT
here’s a hint for anyone who works in a megacorp and wants to play with hadoop.
go to your OPS or accounting department and ask for a list of machines which have been fully depreciated and are not being used/process of getting recycled.
whoosh..instant hadoop cluster..
now before you think pentium II with 640M ram… 3 years ago we are talking 2.8ghz dual cores with 4/8 ram… which is plenty fast enough when you are getting them for nothing.
Tags hadoop | no comments
Posted by Ian Holsman
Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:27:00 GMT
So in my quest to find the most obscure route to dulles I am flying via Tokyo next week.
I have a 17 hour layover, and was wondering if anyone could recommend some things to do and see.
There is a temple in Narita which looks good.
also.. anyone know of cool japanese games for the PSIII which haven’t been released outside of japan? I’m hoping they will work on my local box.
Posted in General | Tags japan | no comments
Posted by Ian Holsman
Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:57:00 GMT
I call the US a LOT, and usually use a land line.
having a bad connection I switched to skype, and it was crystal clear.. much clearer than my land line.
you got to love progress
Posted in General | Tags skype | 4 comments
Posted by Ian Holsman
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:37:00 GMT
Email/recorded conversations has let me down twice in about 8 hours.
The first conversation was about what someone said in a email and now is on permanent record and thanks to that i’m in the shit.
The other one caused someone else to get so pissed off he decided to resign.
My thinking is permanence/non refutability/non plausiable denail of email/IM will be it’s downfall and is a hinderance to global communication not a help.
I don’t need anonymity. I need a way to talk/email people so that cant’ forward/CC/record+replay it. so I can be as frank and honest to people as if i were saying it to them face to face, and not 2nd guessing what would happen if this email was forwarded.
Posted in General | Tags sad | 1 comment
Posted by Ian Holsman
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 01:48:00 GMT
I’ll be in dublin next week.
if anyone wants to catch up for a beer.. please ping me
Posted in General | Tags dublin | 5 comments
Posted by Ian Holsman
Sun, 10 Feb 2008 16:14:00 GMT
So when I finished up working at the bank nearly a year ago, one of the discussions I had with my manager at the time was about the new position.
one of his remarks was that a manager you would (and should) lose your technical skills, and he was quite proud on how he has lost his (yes he was a PHB). I compared this to google’s management technical recruitment process (and AOL has also moved this way in my division) that you NEED to be technically advanced in your area in order to succeed.
now obviously the first thought was AOL and google rely on technical skills to succeed and as such they need their managers
to at understand what is going on, but to be honest so do banks. (different areas of technology, but skills none the less).
So my thought for the moment is: are we as an industry moving to where large corporates require management to be have technical knowledge, or are internet companies just exceptions to the rule?
Posted in General | Tags hr | 2 comments