December 2010
Dec. 1, 2010
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using MongoDB vs CouchDB vs Cassandra vs Redis?
I see Redis as a different category from the other three—kind of like you wouldn’t say “what are the advantages of MySQL v.s. Memcached”. Redis makes an excellent complement to pretty much any other persistent storage mechanism. I expanded on this here: http://simonwillison.net/2009/Oc...
[... 67 words]Dec. 2, 2010
I think the Web community has spoken, and it’s clear that what it wants is HTML5, JavaScript and JSON. XML isn’t going away but I see it being less and less a Web technology; it won’t be something that you send over the wire on the public Web, but just one of many technologies that are used on the server to manage and generate what you do send over the wire.
Dec. 3, 2010
Google Maps and Label Readability. Obsessively detailed analysis of exactly what makes Google Maps so readable when compared to Yahoo! and Bing.
Google and Microsoft Cheat on Slow-Start. Should You? Fascinating optimisation tricks by some of the big websites, which violate the RFC governing the TCP slow-start algorithm in order to perform better in the common case.
Dec. 5, 2010
What are the most recommended upcoming mobile tech conferences in North America?
Our site, Lanyrd.com, is relatively new but already has a pretty good list of mobile conferences in the USA. Try this page: http://lanyrd.com/topics/mobile/...
[... 43 words]Are there any well-known websites that use Facebook connect or Twitter OAuth as the only sign-in solution without its own sign-in password?
Our site http://lanyrd.com/ only accepts Twitter OAuth logins (at least for the moment).
[... 42 words]What are some ways I can get the word out about my startup/entrepreneur focused conference?
Add it to lanyrd.com and make sure you list all of the speakers. Then anyone who signs in to Lanyrd and is following at least one of your speakers on Twitter will be told about your event.
[... 59 words]How do you correctly send the oauth_verifier parameter using python-oauth2 and the Twitter API?
This seems relevant: http://groups.google.com/group/t...
[... 87 words]What are some scalable OAuth and OpenID server implementations?
Any OAuth library should scale horizontally—I can’t see how any one library would be a better choice than another.
[... 36 words]Dec. 7, 2010
Why do browsers allow cross-domain JavaScript to execute but not XMLHttpRequests?
It’s called the Same Origin Policy, and it’s principally about intranets. Imagine you have a URL http://intranet.corp/top-secret-...—and you then visit http://evil.example.com/ . If cross domain XHR was allowed the evil site could suck that secret document off your intranet without you realising.
[... 105 words]What are the underlying, unspoken values of TED?
Not unspoken, but the ten commandments they send out to their speakers are pretty interesting: http://www.ted.com/pages/360
[... 31 words]Dec. 10, 2010
Indexing JSON in Solr 3.1. The next release of Solr will support indexing documents provided as JSON—Solr currently requires incoming documents to be formatted as XML.
Tracking Every Release. How Etsy use Graphite to monitor their continuous deployment releases.
Spacelog: space exploration stories from the original transcripts. The product of the most recent /dev/fort outing—a beautiful, web-native interface for browsing the NASA transcripts from the Apollo 13 and Mercury 6 missions (more to come). Every key moment has a URL.
24 ways: Extreme Design. Hannah Donovan on the design process that has evolved from multiple /dev/fort expeditions.
Dec. 11, 2010
What are the best NoSQL databases for a web application?
It depends entirely on what you are building. You may well be better off with SQL.
[... 32 words]Dec. 13, 2010
How should you set up a staging server?
Start by reading this: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/12...
[... 20 words]Dec. 14, 2010
What are some of the best quotations on programming/programming languages?
“There are only two hard problems in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things”—Phil Karlton
[... 33 words]Dec. 15, 2010
Instapaper requiring email and passwords for new accounts. Instapaper are changing from their novel “enter a username or email address, only enter a password if you really want one” registration scheme to a more traditional email and password required model. Messing with registration forms is a risky business—in this case, the non-obvious support issues that resulted were a net negative.
Dec. 16, 2010
How long would it take an average programmer to do a Ruby on Rails Reddit clone prototype?
Just FYI, Reddit is an open source Python project: http://code.reddit.com/
[... 34 words]Simon Willison: Would you consider Django for a crowd ’funding; website?
I don’t understand the question.
[... 22 words]If I’m bootstrapping a company and expect to get funding within months, what structure of company do VC’s look for? C Corp, S Corp, LLC?
Apparently a Delaware C Corp makes everything a whole lot easier once VCs are involved.
[... 46 words]JustinTV+> Fenerbahçe Antalyaspor Maçını Canlı izle
I believe they use a lot of Twisted Python
[... 21 words]Dec. 18, 2010
What are the best alternatives to JavaScript when writing web applications?
CoffeeScript is rather nice—it compiles to non-obfuscated JavaScript.
[... 27 words]What is the best license for a web framework (ex: Cake, Rails, Django): GPL, BSD, MIT, other? Why?
Not the GPL. The share-alike viral clause will prevent anyone from creating closed source proprietary projects on top of the framework.
[... 45 words]Dec. 19, 2010
What are some popular movies that are no longer plausible due to the ubiquity of cell phones & the internet?
“No Signal”
[... 36 words]Dec. 21, 2010
What are good games to get someone who likes Settlers of Catan?
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/ is THE place to go for information on good board games. I’d suggest taking a look at Ticket to Ride.
Dec. 22, 2010
HotQueue. A super-simple Python work queue using Redis. The API is neat, and makes clever use of generators for blocking consumption of queue items.