Simon Willison’s Weblog

Subscribe
Atom feed for anil-dash

18 posts tagged “anil-dash”

2024

What does a board of directors do? Extremely useful guide to what life as a board member looks like for both for-profit and non-profit boards by Anil Dash, who has served on both.

Boards can range from a loosely connected group that assembled on occasion to indifferently rubber-stamp what an executive tells them, or they can be deeply and intrusively involved in an organization in a way that undermines leadership. Generally, they’re somewhere in between, acting as a resource that amplifies the capabilities and execution of the core team, and that mostly only helps out or steps in when asked to.

The section about the daily/monthly/quarterly/yearly responsibilities of board membership really helps explain the responsibilities of such a position in detail.

Don't miss the follow-up Q&A post.

# 12th December 2024, 10:15 pm / anil-dash, entrepreneurship, governance

“Link In Bio” is a slow knife (via) Anil Dash writing in 2019 about how Instagram’s “link in bio” thing (where users cannot post links to things in Instagram posts or comments, just a single link field in their bio) is harmful for linking on the web.

Today it’s even worse. TikTok has the same culture, and LinkedIn and Twitter both algorithmically de-boost anything with a URL in it, encouraging users to share screenshots (often unsourced) rather than linking to content and reducing their distribution.

It’s gross.

# 12th May 2024, 2:15 pm / anil-dash, linkedin, links, social-media, twitter, tiktok

“Wherever you get your podcasts” is a radical statement. Anil Dash points out that podcasts are one of the few cases where the dream really did work out:

“[...] what it represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology that’s supposed to be impossible: open, empowering tech that’s not owned by any one company, that can’t be controlled by any one company, and that allows people to have ownership over their work and their relationship with their audience.”

# 9th February 2024, 5:18 am / anil-dash, podcasts, rss, web-standards

2018

Somebody should write up how the early-2000s push for open standards and the Web Standards Project’s advocacy are a major factor in why Apple was able to create its enormously valuable comeback. Put another way, one of the killer moments of the first iPhone demo was Jobs saying it had the “real” web, not the “baby” web, by demonstrating the NYT homepage. That would’ve been IE-only & Windows-only if not for effective advocacy from the web standards community.

Anil Dash

# 7th May 2018, 1:28 pm / anil-dash, apple, web-standards, web-standards-project

2009

It's clear that, even those who are privileged by access and wealth and the ability to amplify their own voices have anticipated that we'll all be disenfranchised by the private companies that own and control our networks of communication. And yet, most of our effort and ambition in the technology industry are not going towards building for the open web.

Anil Dash

# 18th November 2009, 9:38 am / anil-dash, openweb

The Pushbutton Web: Realtime Becomes Real. Anil Dash is excited by the potential for PubSubHubBub and Webhooks to make near-real-time scalable event publishing accessible to regular web developers. So am I.

# 24th July 2009, 6:30 pm / anil-dash, pubsubhubbub, pushbutton, realtime, realtimeweb, webhooks

Exclusive: The Future of Facebook Usernames. I have to admit I was planning to just let Facebook get on with it, assuming that the OpenID provider part would show up of its own accord—but maybe I should write a thoughtful and persuasive essay about it after all.

# 11th June 2009, 9:46 am / anil-dash, facebook, funny, openid, urls

2008

Bill Gates has pulled off one of the greatest hacks in technology and business history, by turning Microsoft's success into a force for social responsibility. Imagine imposing a tax on every corporation in the developed world, collecting $100 per white-collar worker per year, and then directing one third of the proceeds to curing AIDS and malaria.

Anil Dash

# 26th June 2008, 5:17 pm / aids, anil-dash, bill-gates, hacks, malaria, microsoft, philanthropy

2007

But here's the thing: Regular people on the web love Snap previews. I know you don't believe it - I didn't want to believe it. But it's completely true. In the testing and feedback I've seen, it's some emotional pull about the fact that links "do something" now, instead of just being on the page.

Anil Dash

# 2nd November 2007, 6:49 am / anil-dash, annoyances, livejournal, snap, snappreviews, usability

Cats Can Has Grammar. Anil Dash gives lolcats the analysis they deserve.

# 24th April 2007, 2:02 am / anil-dash, lolcats

2006

Office 2007 is the Bravest Upgrade Ever. Anil Dash likes the ribbon. It’s definitely one heck of a risky move.

# 20th June 2006, 8:11 am / anil-dash

2004

Anil Dash: Microsoft *nix. What if Microsoft shipped “Linux for Windows”?

# 19th January 2004, 11:06 pm / anil-dash

2003

Blogmarks

This entry was going to be another list of links, together with a note about how much I really needed to set up a separate link blog. Then I realised that it would make more sense just to set one up so that’s exactly what I’ve done. I still need to implement the archive but it’s getting dark so I’m posting this and heading home.

[... 211 words]

The Google Browser

Anil Dash suggests Google should start sponsoring the Mozilla project, and use it as a basis for releasing their own browser. He makes a very good case:

[... 477 words]

Anil Dash on diamonds

Anil Dash: Diamonds are for never. A thoroughly entertaining and educating rant about the Diamond industry. Some day I hope to be this articulate.

2002

Syndication is not publication

Mark Pilgrim pretty much single handedly killed the discussion thread on syndicating weblog content with XHTML started a few days ago by Anil Dash. Stuart’s reply to Mark’s post is definitely worth a read though.

Syndicating blogs with XHTML

Anil Dash suggests using structured XHTML as a blog syndication format. Scott Andrew points out that this has semantic problems in that it would mean using the class attribute to add additional meaning to a document. I was going to say that this would be an ideal opportunity to mix different namespaces in one XML document (as described by Lachlan Cannon) but techno-weenie beat me to it.

Anil Dash does Amazon

Anil Dash provides a copy of Amazon’s home page in HTML 4.0 Transitional, and it validates. Solid proof that you can rewrite a complex ecommerce site in valid HTML, and another victory for the web standards movement.