Some of the best news I’ve heard for Linux in some time, Dell has announced that they will be selling their Project Sputnik laptop for developers this fall (link to The Verge article).
This is pretty cool. It essentially marries a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu 12.04 and is primarily aimed at web or “cloud” developers. I’m interested to see how it does and if Dell will expand the product line to encompass more devices.
The inaugural episode of Bob Speaks, my little personal audio podcast that is really just me speaking about anything on my mind. Today I talk a little about what I have been working on: Objective-C and iOS Programming.
A thank you to http://www.podcastthemes.com/ for the music for this podcast.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:04 — 4.2MB)
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Sriram Krishnan has some unsolicited advice advice for Marissa Mayer.
I agree with much of what he wrote, but I think the main thing that Yahoo! needs (now I’ll just type Yahoo) is some excitement and some direction. Who really cares about Yahoo right now? When the most exciting thing that has happened for Yahoo is the hiring of another CEO, you know you are in trouble.
Flickr might be a good place to start, but I think #9 on the above list is my favorite:
Institute a policy that Yahoo will use off-the-shelf/popular open source tools and technologies whenever possible. When those don’t meet Yahoo’s needs, teams will fork them and contribute back changes. No more pet projects to reinvent what everyone else in the open source world has already built. Fire anyone who uses the words ‘Yahoo scale’ to debate this with you.
This is going to open up some engineering talent to work on products, which is where Yahoo needs to really work. It also opens up candidates to work for the company because there are many people with experience using those technologies.
Is it going to happen? Who knows. The board will need to buy into whatever Ms. Mayer is bringing to the table, so there will be push-back on almost every turn …
… but for Yahoo’s sake I hope that they do.
The exclamation mark isn’t there for emphasis.
As reported all over the internet yesterday, long-time Google employee and VP Marissa Mayer has moved over to Yahoo! as their CEO (hat-tip to The Verge).
I hold out hope that maybe she can turn that place around and provide a credible competitor to Google in many ways. She is, by far, the best candidate that Yahoo! has been able to grab and I eagerly wait to see what changes she might bring to the company.
The Incomparable #98 was all about Jonathan Coulton. If you have any interest at all in Coulton as an artist or even just as a good look at an independent artist, go ahead and listen to the entire thing.