Here are some threads that I’ve been reading or interested in from the last year or so. I typically find links tweet-worthy, not blog-worthy unless I have significant original thoughts to contribute. If you don’t think one link is valuable, the next one will likely be better. Many of these won’t be safe for work (although what does that really mean?) I’m not saying that I agree with them. Just think that they are interesting or resounded with me when I read them. This is more than you can probably consume in a day, so feel free to Control-D. I considered breaking it up, but whatever. Consider it your Google Reader for a week. Here goes.
A ton of resources on lean software engineering (I have not specifically investigated these sublinks, but seems like a recent, solid, quality page. I’m pretty sure every other article on this post I’ve read fully.)
Of course, my favorite article since college: How to Create Wealth
One of my favorite blogs with an interesting topic and high signal post here. Perhaps a bit verbose.
From the same blog, this article parallels some thoughts that I have had recently on children and creating products. Perhaps more about this another time or in person.
And one more for good measure: how to train yourself to spot opportunities
Of course, here’s a passionate article on a similar subject. I seriously think this article is epic.
Browser adoption politics article
Detailed analysis of sales of an indie BlackBerry app, over time.
For the statistics / math buffs, apparently you can algorithmically get a totally fair result from a biased coin.
Chris Baggott chronicling his efforts at making a low-effort product blog. Seems replicatable, although I’m not sure of the value produced.
I’ve been here, unfortunately.
How to make a difference in your field: Hamming’s You and Your Research
Some great reading by Seth Godin (probably second to Paul Graham as my favorite blogger). I am usually brimming with ideas after reading stuff like this: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/08/the-bandwidth-sync-correlation-thats-worth-thinking-about.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/organizing-customers.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/textbook-rant.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/02/grave-new-world.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/beauty-as-a-sig.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/in-the-mood.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/12/the-making-chas.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/do-you-know-eno.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/blah-blah-blah.html
I’m interested in this blog which combines biology and computer science to a degree. He is interested in open-source biology as well, which is a pretty interesting variation on a theme with many different things to consider. Here’s an interesting post.
One of the more interesting papers I have read. Basically describes the “winner’s curse” (entity that wins auction likely overpays for item) as it applies to winning software contracting bids (winning entity most likely underbids, in this case, causing ruin in the near future.)
I’d say the same things that make student software projects succeed or fail can probably be applied to software contracting.
Martin Fowler on more readable regular expressions
Exciting applications of Erlang
If you’re on the hunt for something to use your newest shiny tool on or have some interesting algorithmic ideas, you could do worse than messing with these data sets.
And I can finally sleep at night because I don’t need to know everything about cars.
The paradigm shift that most people in software have seen coming for awhile. http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/
If you need a kick in the ass or some passion: http://www.seoblackhat.com/2007/01/29/do-it-fucking-now/ http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/07/if-you-want-to-write-software.html Quite NSFW, but pretty interesting http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/do-it-now.htm http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1437-put-a-dent-in-the-universe http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/07/how-to-write-software-with-art.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbk980jV7Ao http://www.slash7.com/articles/2009/1/25/quick-note-about-shipping http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1626-the-most-powerful-word-is-no
My twitter statuses with links that are still useful: http://twitter.com/panozzaj/status/4134727472 http://twitter.com/panozzaj/status/4080359840 http://twitter.com/panozzaj/status/3458258161 http://twitter.com/panozzaj/status/3430020800 http://twitter.com/panozzaj/status/2344419495