11 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.
“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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Cats Can Has Grammar. Anil Dash gives lolcats the analysis they deserve.
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.
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