Skillcrush

vintageblackglamour: Melba Roy, NASA Mathmetician, at the...

addabirnir — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:42:27 -0500

Melba Roy, NASA Mathmetician, at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland in 1964. Ms. Roy led a group of NASA mathmeticians known as “computers” who tracked the Echo satellites. The first time I shared Ms. Roy on VBG, my friend Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a former postdoc in astrophysics at NASA, helpfully explained what Ms. Roy did in the comment section. I am sharing Chanda’s comment again here: “By the way, since I am a physicist, I might as well explain a little bit about what she did: when we launch satellites into orbit, there are a lot of things to keep track of. We have to ensure that gravitational pull from other bodies, such as other satellites, the moon, etc. don’t perturb and destabilize the orbit. These are extremely hard calculations to do even today, even with a machine-computer. So, what she did was extremely intense, difficult work. The goal of the work, in addition to ensuring satellites remained in a stable orbit, was to know where everything was at all times. So they had to be able to calculate with a high level of accuracy. Anyway, that’s the story behind orbital element timetables”. Photo: NASA/Corbis.

explore-blog: How to fix “things” using your computer – a...

addabirnir — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 17:44:03 -0500

explore-blog:

How to fix “things” using your computer – a visual meditation on the DIY tutorial by the inimitable Wendy MacNaughton, whom we know and love.

Photo

addabirnir — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 16:16:32 -0500

Wrap magazine: Illustrator of the week - Karolin Schnoor

addabirnir — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 16:12:43 -0500

Wrap magazine: Illustrator of the week - Karolin Schnoor:

wrapmagazine:

Having developed a style that is as bold and powerful as it is feminine and folksy, with unusual colour combinations and simple touches of pattern - Karolin Schnoor’s illustrations have thoroughly captivated us all here at Wrap. So we’re delighted to make the London-based artist…

Kara Rota

addabirnir — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 17:00:14 -0400

Kara Rota is Director of Editorial & Partnerships for Cookstr, a technology company dedicated to recipes and nutrition and co-founded by Tipping Point Partners, a New York City-based “institutional entrepreneur.” She is also a freelance food writer who studied writing and food politics at Sarah Lawrence College, where she wrote her undergraduate thesis on technoethics, posthumanism, cyborgs and RoboCop. She tweets @karalearota.

How did you first become interested in tech?

When I was ten years old, we got our first computer—my grandfather’s clunky Compaq PC. My parents drove from South Jersey to Manhattan to pick it up and drove home with me in the backseat cradling the monitor at my feet. I remember its weight in my lap, the smell of electronics and plastic, the excruciating impatience to get it home and make it come alive. It was a portal, a found tear in the fabric of my universe that was a door to another world. The next four years were a blur of Compuserve forums about cats; becoming an entrepreneur on Half.com; AOL kids’ chatrooms; collecting cyberpets on Angelfire pages that I proudly HTML-enabled with glitter marquee titles and guestbooks; reading fan fiction; and then, at some point, emerging from my web-cocoon to make real friends I could write about in my Livejournal.

What is the most beautiful piece of technology ever created?

Small Demons is a company I’m excited about because it makes explicit the disappearing boundary between physical and non-physical (i.e. digital) worlds. It’s a metadata company, obsessively cataloguing the people, places and things that are mentioned in books to create a “Storyverse.” This exercise interchanges and intersperses fictional things – invisible, intangible, and previously unmeasurable – with real objects.

I like technology that breaks down the boundaries between what is real and what is unreal. Everything we build now can be visualized using old metaphors – networks, bridges, lines, webs, nets. Infrastructure has become a metaphor for an increasingly non-physical world in which we live.

What applications do you have open while you’re working?

I break all of the multitasking rules. Some small percentage of my attention is always on my email, and I’m a notorious insta-responder. We work in an open office and gchat each other from two feet away! Between internal and client work, I spent a significant amount of time in Pivotal Tracker, Harvest, Basecamp, and Highrise. I usually have Spotify running in the background, and Twitter if I’m feeling antsy. I go back and forth between screens, so sometimes I’ll be reading an article on my iPad while working on a Keynote presentation on my iMac and responding to emails on my iPhone. I don’t quite have my browser loyalty solidified at the moment, so I’m using Firefox and Chrome simultaneously. I also have pen-and-paper post-its and to-do lists everywhere. I consider those applications too!

You studied technoethics and posthumanism—can you talk briefly about how these disciplines inform your approach to technology and your work at Tipping Point & Cookstr?

I chose Sarah Lawrence College specifically to study creative writing and to never take a math or science class again. I did terribly in high school physics because I could not philosophically wrap my mind around harsh laws about the relationship of space and time and speed and distance. There seemed no room for seeming there, for nonlinear magical thinking.

Slowly in college, I edged into classes in the Science, Technology and Society department, and found that Donna Haraway, Ray Kurzweil, James Hughes, and others talked science and tech in a language I understood. I realized that there wasn’t the same distinction anymore between “serious science” (the kind I “didn’t get” and was “bad at”) and the stuff I loved, like watching social networks evolve.

Tipping Point believes that technology has the power to change everything. The big picture never gets lost in the details of building tech. Cookstr, the food and technology company I manage, which was co-founded by Tipping Point, is a great example.

Cookstr runs on the power of metadata. Metadata creates a standard, a set of tags curated by food experts that are specifically relevant to recipe content. In our CMS, experts can seamlessly attach their knowledge to recipes. The combination of data (recipes) and metadata allow users to access knowledge differently through technology.

As we relearn the importance of food and cooking, technology helps us access expert knowledge, like that in cookbooks, that was once passed down generationally. Metadata allows us to organize content so that we can find it and use it, even generations later.

You can know something as if you’ve always known it!

What was the most important thing that you’ve learned in the past year and how did you learn it?

I’ve learned that often, if you ask for something, you might get it. This is true whether that thing is seemingly small, like a free cake box at Panera or flowers that a florist will throw away; or medium, like product sponsorship for an event you’re planning; or big, like more responsibilities at your job or more compensation in accordance with those responsibilities. I think fear of rejection is so ingrained, as is the assumption that women are supposed to wait to be asked to do something and that it’s inappropriate to speak out about what you want.

Original Article

Progressive Enhancement

addabirnir — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 21:39:13 -0400

Progressive enhancement is the practice of making websites fancier if your computer or phone can handle it, and making ‘em less fancy if it can’t!

We techies take for granted that we update our browsers, computers, and phones almost as frequently as we change our underwear. But for many people in the world, a computer they bought three years ago and a web browser they updated two years ago feel pretty new.

The idea behind progressive enhancement is that instead of fighting the fact that different browsers and different devices have varying degrees of ability, we accept it and work with our limitations. In practice, this means that when building your website you start at the base layer—usually your content—and then add all the fancy CSS and JavaScript interaction on top, but only make those features available to browsers and devices that can handle it.

Thus, instead of having to either go for the lowest common denominator or give certain users the short end of the stick, you deliver a simpler, but still nice looking, version of your site to those users that are browser and device challenged, and a more complicated version to those users that have the latest of everything.

When you visit Slate on your smartphone, you can you read the articles, but you don’t see all the ads, slideshows, blog links or what’s trending on the Washington Post.

The reason for this is twofold: one, Slate has thought long and hard about what it is you want to do on your phone; do you really want to see what is trending on the Washington Post? Probably not.

The other reason is that your phone is not yet as powerful as your computer, meaning that it can’t process as much information as quickly so Slate doesn’t ask it to. Instead, Slate sends your phone a version of its website that still gives you all the important stuff (articles) without it taking forever.

Cocktail Party Fact

Before we had progressive enhancement, there was a popular idea called ‘graceful degradation.’ The graceful degradation ethos says that you design your website for the fanciest browsers and devices and then make sure it looks ok for everyone else.

The distinction between graceful degradation and progressive enhancement is a subtle one, but it’s the kind of thing that developers and technologists love to fight about! In one camp you have the graceful degraders who think that older browsers should be an afterthought (we build for the future!) and in the other camp you have the progressive enhancers who think that your content should be optimized for all platforms (we build for everyone!).

Consternation abounds!

Original Article

In honor of Sally Ride: Never limit yourself!

addabirnir — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 22:10:00 -0400

“Never limit yourself because of othersâ limited imagination;

never limit others because of your own limited imagination.”

- Mae Jemison, Astronaut

Today we celebrate two people: Astronaut Sally Ride and you.

Yesterday we were saddened to learn that Sally Ride had died after a long fight with cancer.

In 1983, Sally Ride broke a major barrier in becoming the first American woman to go into orbit. Nine years later, Mae Jemison followed in her footsteps not only as a woman astronaut but as the first African American woman to go into space.

In honor of Sally’s legacy, and in honor of all the women who imagine the impossible and make it real everyday, we ask you to make a pledge:

I will never limit myself because of others’ limited imagination; I will never limit others because of my own limited imagination.

Download your desktop wallpaper â

Original Article

daniel sinker: OpenNews: Why Develop in the Newsroom?

addabirnir — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:59:44 -0400

daniel sinker: OpenNews: Why Develop in the Newsroom?:

sinker:

As the deadline to apply to become a 2013 Knight-Mozilla Fellow approaches, there’s one question often comes up: Why would I want to work as a developer in the newsroom?

There are all sorts of reasons—from being in the room when news breaks, to working with a community of people creating…

jQuery

addabirnir — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 23:38:54 -0400

jQuery is a library of preset JavaScript tasks that makes it easy and fast to make your site interactive and fun.

JavaScript is a web programming language that allows you to make your website interactive. Do you want to put a photo slideshow on your website? How about a pop-up that invites users to sign up for your newsletter? What about putting an ad on your blog? Yep, you are gonna have to use JavaScript to do any of those things.

JavaScript, however, can be a little verbose. Let’s say that when a user—we will call her Liz Lemon—signs up for your newsletter, you want to say “Thanks for signing up, Liz Lemon!”

Using JavaScript you would need to write:

window.onload = initAll;

function initAll() {
document.getElementById(“submit”).onclick = submitMessage;
}

function submitMessage() {
var greeting = document.getElementById(“name”).getAttribute(“value”);
document.getElementById(“headline”).innerHTML = “Thanks for signing up, ” + greeting;
return false;
}

Not terrible, but since you are a lazy programmer, you will vastly prefer to write this script using jQuery:

$(“#submit”).click(function () {
var greeting = $(“#name”).val();
$(“#headline”).html(“Thanks for signing up, ” + greeting);
return false;
});

Notice that $ sign? It’s the surefire sign that someone is using jQuery.

In order to use jQuery you will have to link to jQuery. That way, when your script calls a jQuery command like click, your browser will know what you are saying. You can either downlaod jQuery and host it on your own website, or you can take advantage of Google’s awesome server power and link to jQuery from there:

Just copy and paste that link tag and stick it in your HTML doc (either in between the tags or in the footer) and you will be jQuery ready-to-go.

So what all can jQuery do? Well let’s see, you can do some awesome fade outs, or make a super slick date picker, or what about making yourself a mobile app?

Now Try This

Go to JSFiddle
Select jQuery 1.7.2 from the drop down menu
Try out some jQuery commands!

Original Article

Tracking Pixel

addabirnir — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 19:52:49 -0400

Tracking pixels are little 1x1 pixel images that allow you to keep track of how many users visit your website or see your advertisement.

Look, here is a tracking pixel for you to see:

Ooooh! Isn’t she just the cutest little tracking pixel you have ever seen?!

When you open this email and read about tracking pixels, one of the ways that we will know that you did so is that you will ask our server to download our little tracking pixel.

So, when an advertiser wants to know how many users see their ad they use a tracking pixel. What they do is embed a small, transparent PNG in their advertisement that the user can’t see but the advertiser can keep track of.

Each time a new person visits the website where the ad is, that user has to download the advertisement, including the 1x1 pixel transparent PNG. Everytime a user downloads the image, their computer sends a message to the advertiser’s server saying:

“Hey, send that pixel over to this computer at IP Address 50.74.75.135.”

The server says, “Yes, ma’am,” sends the tracking pixel over to that IP Address, and makes a note of the event in its server logs.

At the end of the day (or week, or month), the advertiser looks at their server logs and counts up all the different IP Addresses who requested that tracking pixel; if 10,000 different IP Addresses requested the tracking pixel be sent to them, that means 10,000 people saw the ad.

[Pop Quiz: If the advertiser was paying $10 CPM how much money would they owe to the publisher?]

This is the same technology that allows web analytic services like Google Analytics and Chartbeat to tell how many people visited your site.

Cocktail Party Fact

Now that you know about tracking pixels, you should put them to work! If there is ever a web service that you use that doesn’t provide you with all the analytics you desire, you can employ tracking pixels to get the information you need.

Since a certain crowd-funding platform doesn’t provide users with information about how many people visit their project page (they only tell you how many people give you money!) a certain clever developer we know stuck a small transparent image onto his page and looked at his server logs to determine his project’s conversion rate (the number of people who visited the project page and gave money).

Original Article

Marissa Mayer for President

addabirnir — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 23:54:56 -0400

We, at Skillcrush, salute the inimitable Marissa Mayer as she takes on her new role as CEO of Yahoo! We canât think of a better, more fierce, and overall awesome lady to take hold of the reins. She not only has some serious experience in engineering and operations; but also excels at design and product, and has deep domain expertise in location based services and mobile. All skills that make her the perfect fit to lead Yahoo! back from the brink.

Of course, thatâs not ALL we have to say about it:

Jennifer McFadden, Skillcrush COO says:

I salute Marissa for announcing her pregnancy on the same day that she announced her new role. Why? Because that took some serious Chutzpah. If you take a look at some of the questions that have been thrown out there over the past 48 hours, youâll understand why. On top of the obvious, âHow does she do it?,â there have been some doozies:

What should Yahoo! be forced to release regarding her pregnancy (as if it is a deadly disease) and how will this impact shareholder value?

How will she balance it all? Does she really understand that sheâll need more than a few weeks of maternity leave? She has no idea whatâs coming!

Will she have postpartum depression? Will her son be able to latch and breastfeed?

How will she manage to hold the hopes and dreams of every working mother in the world on her shoulders as she is very publicly scrutinized in both of her new roles?

Isnât it funny how that âHow do they do it?â question is never really âHow does HE do it?â This is particularly frustrating to those women, like myself, who ARE doing it. Look at Amanda Steinberg. She launched DailyWorth from her hospital bed while giving birth to her daughter! I, personally, gave birth two days before starting business school. I now run a start-up and am still phasing out of a second jobâall while raising two kids. Both of us have been subjected to the range of âhow do you do it?â questions. As well as the other, more nefarious ones like, âare you going to be able to manage it all? How can you leave your newborn child with someone else? Are you sure that this is the best thing for your baby? Why donât you just defer a year or delay your launch? Are you going to be able to breastfeed? Arenât you being just a bit selfish?â

Come on. This would never come up if it were a guy who was launching a company or starting graduate school or taking over as CEO. And, it never does come up. Because we all think we know how he does it (his wife does it!).

Thomas Jefferson managed to draft one of the single most important documents in this countryâs history, all the while spending time away from his wife and six children. Do you think anyone, at any point, said, âHey Jefferson, you sure you can handle this along with those six kids that youâve got to nurture?â Um, no.

Or, take a look at another Jeff, Jeff Bezos. Did you know that he has four kids who were born while he was running Amazon? No? And, guess what? He runs not one, but two companies! Ever wonder how he does that and is able to be a parent at the same time? Probably not.

So, to all of you folks out there questioning whether this move is right for Marissa or right for Yahoo! or right for her baby, STOP. Â Stop asking us âhow do you do it?â and start acknowledging that we CAN do it. We are doing it. And, so can you.

Adda Birnir, Skillcrush CEO says:

I read that Marissa Mayer was pregnant Tuesday morning.

While in the shower after reading the news, I was totally overwhelmed with excitement or happiness or some other crazy mix of unnameable feelings. For the first time, I began to understand why anyone would ever (ahem, Kristen Bell) be crying and panicking with happiness.

Why was this so overwhelming to me? Why did this announcement mean more to me then two decades worth of evidence that women can be mothers and career women?

My facebook post pretty much says it all

I know about Hillary, and Sandra Day, and Sheryl, and the many women in my own life who gracefully balance work and family.

But I was also a freshman in college when the now infamous âOpt-out Revolutionâ article hit newsstands. And since then, I have been the recipient of almost weekly reminders about the ticking time bomb of my fertility, the ongoing challenges of women having it all, the direct correlation between increased risk of developmental disabilities and advanced maternal age, and a whole host of fear mongering articles from well intentioned and liberal media outlets such as The Atlantic, The New York Times, and NPR.

All pieces, I might add, that I now share with my wonderful and patient boyfriend so he can understand why I am paradoxically afraid of what becoming a mother will do to my career and afraid of what will happen if I donât get pregnant RIGHT-THIS-SECOND-OMG!!!

Here at Skillcrush I think a lot about our userâs emotional needs, in addition to their informational ones. On the surface, we are in the information/education business. But as anyone with even a little bit of familiarity with the issue of women in tech, and all the challenges therein, knows, there is much more to this than âHow to program in Ruby!â

Marissaâs announcement touched me emotionally, on some level deeper than any other prior example of a woman being pregnant or being a mom and having a kick-ass career.

In all of her blonde, pregnant, woman-in-tech bad-assery, Marissa embodied my dueling lifelong desires:

To be a happy, healthy, excited mother-to-be and to be a woman who has strategically and brilliantly taken one high profile leadership role after another.

And contrary to everything I have ever read before, she did both at once.

So to anyone who says it doesnât matter or that women having it all is old news. I say to you: it does matter, it matters to me.

Original Article

FTP & SFTP

addabirnir — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 06:44:02 -0400

FTP & SFTP are two common ways to put your website files on a web server so that they can be accessed via the internet.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and SFTP stands for Secure File Transfer Protocol. The only difference is that the secure one encrypts your files, username and password for greater security. If possible, we recommend that you use SFTP.

You can use FTP & SFTP for lots of different reasons—to share big folders of images with work colleagues or video files with a client. FTP is super useful because you can use it to share files that are many gigabytes in size.

But the way we want you to use FTP is to put your website files onto your web server.

Let’s say you bought www.mywebsite.com and you want to create a little PHP app that greets every visitor with the message:

“Hello! Welcome to my awesome website of awesomeness!”

After you buy the URL and a web hosting package, you need to obtain your FTP information. What you are looking for is:

Whether you should use FTP or SFTP
A URL for your web server (it often looks like ftp.yourwebsite.com OR ftp.hostgator.com)
Your username, often something generated like yourwebsite240532
Your FTP password

Then, what you do is download a free FTP application such as Fetch, FileZilla or Fugu, fill in the appropriate information in the appropriate spots, save the following code snippet into a file called index.php:

And drag and drop that file into the root folder of your FTP web server.

We’re in business baby! Your awesome website of awesomeness can now found by anyone at www.yourwebsite.com.

Original Article

Instinct

addabirnir — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 23:08:29 -0400

Today we are debuting a new series we are calling Anatomy of an App. In this column, we plan to highlight sites that we love andÂ interview the makers, hackers, and designers of these sites about their process. The goal is to help people more easily make the connection between a site’s functionality and the technology that was used to create that functionality.

Got any apps you would love to learn more about? Send us an email at hello@skillcrush.com. Or drop us a note in the comments.

Ever had the urge to learn how to play the guitar? Want to be able to strum along while youâre belting out the lyrics to Bobby McGee around the campfire this summer? Then you need to check out the app Instinct.

So how does it work? First, you select an avatar (I chose one that looked like a slightly-less-kick-ass version of Lisbeth Sander). Each day, youâre given a set list, or, set of tasks to complete. These range from simple, like an intro to frets, to more complicated, like learning full songs.

Donât have a guitar? No problem. The app allows you to use a real guitar and your computerâs built-in mic, or a virtual guitar that you manipulate with your mouse!

What we really love about Instinct is the obvious passion that Blake Jennelle and Brian Stoner have for their product. You can see this in the smallest of details on the site, as well as through the painstakingly rigorous approach that theyâve taken to developing the product.

So, grab a guitar and get Instinct!

What technology did you use to build Instinct and why?

The heart of Instinct is the frontend, with lots of animations and user interaction, so most of our code is JavaScript, CSS and HTML. A lot of people ask if we use HTML5, which has become a buzzword for a bunch of things that have either existed for a long time or weren’t part of the HTML5 spec. We don’t use things like SVG, Canvas or WebGL. Instead we use good old HTML

and tags animated by JavaScript. It has proven to be a lot faster and easier to manage.

We do use many libraries on the frontend, including:

jQuery: For consistent access to the DOM across browsers
Underscore.js: For functional programming methods that work consistently across browsers
Backbone.js: For separating the business logic in our models from the user interaction logic in our views, as well as for client-side routing (a.k.a. changing the page/url without doing a refresh)
Modernizr.js: For feature detection across browsers
Sylvester.js: For the vector math that animates the guitarist’s arms
Mustache.js: For rendering HTML templates via JavaScript

We wanted to use JavaScript on the backend too so we used Node.js. Being able to write our frontend and backend in the same language has been awesome. We’re using the Express framework for Node.js, which helps with things like user sessions and URL routing. But most of our server is really just a REST API that is accessed by the JavaScript on the frontend.

Our database is CouchDB. Â Unlike relational databases that have columns and rows, CouchDB just stores everything in a big JSON objects. In the early stages of building a new product, flexibility is important. CouchDB lets us change our data model quickly without needing to worry about the rigid table structures of a relational database, and that’s been valuable to us.

Lastly, our pitch detection is in Flash. The pitch detection is the piece that listens thru the microphone and detects notes. Unfortunately we need to use Flash to access the microphone consistently across all of the major browsers. Some browsers have started implementing JavaScript APIs for the microphone and we’re very excited for that to become standard.

What are the biggest technical challenges that you face in building the site?

Oh man, there have been a bunch. Pitch detection was our first big challenge. And it’s going to remain a challenge for a long time. Browser and microphone compatibility has been another challenge - headache really! Instinct might work great on most computers but then others will have major problems, and that’s not okay.

Some other hard stuff: The 3D hand that shows the user where to put their fingers. Audio playback. High speed animation. The guitar lesson editor. The data structures that store lessons, music, user scores, etc. And a bunch of others too.

Honestly it hasn’t been easy!

It looks like you’ve spent a lot of time considering the user experience, as well as the overall design of the site. How do you think that good design can contribute to your goals for the site?

Design is HUGELY important. Design determines what a user feels when they use your product. And what they feel is what brings them back again, inspires them to share it with their friends and hopefully, over time, fall in love with it. Design is where your soul as a creator comes through.

Tech is like a stage and the design/user experience is the show. Without the technology, you can’t perform. But without the design/user experience, the performance isn’t worth having.

It’s obviously possible to build a successful business on top of bad design, I’m sure you can think of examples. But it’s getting harder and harder. Users are starting to have more self-esteem in their relationship with technology and are less willing to put up with it.

Plus it’s such terrible karma to frustrate people and waste their time. The web gives you enormous scale. So every time you slack off on design, you can literally waste days, weeks, years of other people’s lives, when you add it all together and that’s not okay!!

We want to thank Blake and Brian for being our first guinea pigs in our new column, Anatomy of an App! You can check out Instinct at www.getinstinct.com and follow them on Twitter @getinstinct.

Original Article

Node.js

addabirnir — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 23:27:52 -0400

Node.js is a JavaScript framework that makes it possible to use JavaScript for backend development.

Once upon a time we told you that there are frontend and backend languages and that JavaScript was a frontend programming language that does all of its work in the browser, right?

Well today we have a new thing to tell you: in the world of the web, things are always cha-cha-changing.

Everything we taught you before is still true, it’s just that now, thanks to Node.js it’s also possible to use JavaScript for backend development.

So why would you want to use JavaScript on the frontend and the backend?

A few reasons. First, simplicity. Why program in two languages when one will do? Second, and more importantly, Node.js is specially designed to make it easy to build data-heavy web applications that will scale well and can work in real-time.

What this means is that web applications built in Node.js are easy to build, can use lots of data (like Facebook), can update in real-time (like Twitter), and can handle lots of users at once. So, when you are featured in a Techcrunch write-up, your Node.js web app won’t crash because it has a special way to handle server requests that make huge traffic spikes no big deal!

So, if you want your web application to do all that, and if you want to use JavaScript for your front and backend code, Node.js is your solution.

Cocktail Party Fact

Thought we were done telling you about all the cool things Node.js can do? Wrong!

Turns out that Node.js is also really great for building web servers, which means making a computer ready to serve as a web server. Why is it so good? Because unlike other web servers, Node.js uses an event-driven model for handling server requests (also called asynchronous input output process or asynchronous I/O), instead of a thread-driven model (also called synchronous I/O or blocking I/O).

The way that Node.js-ers explain what an event-driven model is, is by using the metaphor of a fast food restaurant. If a fast food restaurant used a thread-driven model you would walk up to the counter, place your order with the server, and then wait at the cash register until your food is ready and no one else would be able to order until you had the hamburger in-hand.

Not so efficient, right?

Fortunately, most fast food restaurants use an event-driven model where you go to the register, place your order, pay, and then step aside while you wait for your food so that the next person can order.

As does Node.js!

Original Article

REST

addabirnir — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 00:36:16 -0400

REST, which stands for Representational State Transfer, is a set of guidelines for how to transmit information on the web in a way that can handle all of the trillions of variations in a clean, organized way.

By clearly defining what each piece of information on the web is, establishing a limited set of actions that can be taken, and dictating what technology can be used, REST creates a straightforward and universally adaptable way to handle what would otherwise be a big mess.

REST says that in the world of computers there are resources. Anything can be a resource: a photo of Ryan Gosling, an angry comment, a Dora the Explorer video, and a quote by President Obama are all resources. You can think of resources as individual pieces of content on the web.

The web is made up of a whole bunch of representations of resources. You can think of representations as content holders, commonly known as websites. These representations come in two main formats: a web page that people can look at (usually an HTML file) or a file of data that machines can understand (often XML). Every representation of a resource (every webpage) has a discrete location where you can always find it, its URL.

Now that we have defined what is on the internet, we are then allowed to take only one of four actions:

You can GET the information. When you load www.skillcrush.com you will get a list of tech terms.
You can POST the information, meaning you can create new information. When you send someone an email you literally post them the email.
You can PUT the information, which is internet speak for updating it. When you update your Facebook profile you are putting new information there.
You can DELETE the information. When you delete a Tweet, it’s gone.

And that’s it! The whole internet, governed by a small handful of rules.

The beauty of REST is in its limitations, the beauty of the internet is that within those limitations there are endless possibilities.

Cocktail Party Fact

REST was originally proposed by Roy Fielding when he was a graduate student in Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. Despite the fact that the aim of REST is to create a simple, standardized way to handle things on the web, it’s one of the most often confused technological concepts.

Fortunately, this confusion has inspired lots of different people to come up with creative ways of explaining it. We encourage you to read some of the fun REST explanations, such as Ryan Tomayko’s How I Explained REST to My Wife, as well as some of the more complicated ones, such as this one, which is ironically titled A Brief Introduction to REST.

And if you are feeling particularly adventurous, you can go to the original source itself—Fielding’s entire dissertation on the subject can be found here.

Original Article

Money, Money, Honey

addabirnir — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 09:55:51 -0400

The past few years have seen seismic shifts in the world’s economic system. Banks who presided over Wall Street for decades crumbled and blew away in the wind, economies known for decades of year-over-year growth ground to a halt, and the unemployment rate skyrocketed.

Turns out that there is nothing like economic upheaval to spur a bunch of money-savvy entrepreneurs into action. Everyone knows about the Mints and the Kickstarters, but we’ve got a new crop of money focused companies that you and your wallet should know about.

To the surprisingly exciting future of money!

DailyWorth

DailyWorth talks about it all—the good, the bad, and the UGLY of personal finances. Fight with your husband about money? You are not alone. The good news is, at DailyWorth you can talk about it, learn strategies for how to get out of the hand-to-mouth-to-no-manolo-blahniks cycle, and get everything in line so that you can fund your Roth IRA, pay that kid’s tuition bill, and still have your latte money. Our whole Skillcrush team subscribes!

Future Advisor

Future Advisor uses the latest in get-to-know-you technology to understand your financial situation, your goals, and your risk tolerance, and uses that information to tailor-make an investment plan for your needs. Are you diverse enough? Are you too risky? Have you been sneaking to buy individual stocks when we all know you should be buying indices? If nothing else, signing up is worthwhile if they make good on their promise to save you up to 80% on portfolio fees.

Gumroad

Don’t you love how content on the internet is free? Well, enjoy it while it lasts, because if Gumroad has their way, free will be a thing of the past. Gumroad is a platform that makes it so easy to sell anything (Music! Books! Gossip? Heck! If you can link to it, you can sell it!) that you will want to monetize it ALL.

Wefunder

Love Kickstarter and Indiegogo? Well guess what? Wefunder doesn’t want you to just give your money away, they want you to invest it! With their platform you will be able to invest in any startup you love without being a qualified investor (who has $1 million in their bank account anyways?) Of course, the site isn’t live yet since the JOBS Act doesn’t technically take effect until January 2013, but hey! You can still sign up for “early access.”

Second Market

Think that investing in startups is a little bit too high risk, but find the S&P500 to be a total snore? Good news! You can go buy private stocks on Second Market. Second Market is one of the first companies to standardize the market for buying and selling private company stock. Ok, you won’t be able to look over a company’s complete financial statements like you can on the public market, but hey, that’s a small price to pay for first dibs, right?

Now it’s your turn! Know of any awesome new companies treading the financial waters?

Tell us about them in the comments!

Original Article

CPM, CPC, and CPA

addabirnir — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 09:47:37 -0400

CPM stands for cost-per-mille, mille being Latin for one thousand. In the land of online media, media companies charge advertisers for impressions, which are counted in 1000s.

Let’s say you want to charge $10 per 1000 impressions on your blog, that means that you will charge $10 for every 1000 people who see an advertisement. The way that online advertisers count impressions is by page views, so 1000 pageviews equals 1000 impressions for each ad on the page. If you have 10 ads on the page—voila! You’ve got 10,000 impressions. At $10 per 1000 impressions, that’s $100!

How do advertisers determine how much they will pay for each impression? Black magic! Seriously, there are standard ranges, but as any good sales person knows, it’s all about how you pitch it.

CPM rates can vary from $0.25 to $200, or more. Media companies tend to be able to charge higher rates if a) the advertiser is selling a higher cost good (like fancy watches or electronics) and b) the advertiser believes that the audience is a particularly good fit for their product and particularly prone to open their wallets.

CPC stands for cost-per-click. This is the rate that websites charge advertisers every time someone clicks on an ad. If the CPC for a site is $50, and an ad gets clicked 1000 times over the course of the month, the advertiser pays the publisher $50,000.

Google is famous for their cost-per-click ad selling strategy—all of those Google Ads you see on your search results or next to your email? Google only charges those advertisers if you actually click on the ad. If no one clicks, Google makes no money.

Looking to only pay for ads that drive action? Then you want to check out CPA or cost-per-action (also known as pay-per-performance (PPM) or cost-per-acquisition (CPA)). When a media company charges an advertiser using a CPA model, the advertiser only pays out if a user clicks AND does a specific ACTION.

What does that action have to be? Depends on the advertiser! If Skillcrush ran ads we might pay only for users who signed up for our newsletter. Amazon, on the other hand, might pay only for users who actually bought a book.

One of the best and worst things about online advertising is that it’s really easy to track. Want to know how many people saw your ad? Look at the page views! Want to know how many people clicked? Look at the click rate.

On the surface this looks like a good thing, but that depends on who you ask! Advertisers like it, but media companies don’t because it has dramatically brought down the amount that advertisers are willing to pay for ads because now they know exactly what they are getting.

Cocktail Party Fact

Cost-per-impression is actually how television and magazine advertising has always been priced. Back in the day, magazines used to do all kinds of funny math to bump up their number of impressions. One major American magazine used to count 8 impressions per copy of the magazine!

How could eight people look at EVERY copy of the magazine, you ask? Well you have to account for all the people who picked it up in the grocery store aisle or flipped through it at the doctor’s office or shared it with their friends.

Original Article

Can women in tech have it all?

addabirnir — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 22:54:38 -0400

There has been a great deal of discussion around women and work in the aftermath of Anne Marie Slaughterâs piece for the Atlantic, Why Women Still Canât Have It All.

The article ignited a firestorm of discussion about the status of women in the workplace and given our focus on women and tech, we thought that it was time to weigh in on the idea of women in tech having it all.

Do women in tech face the same challenges as women in other fields? Or is there an opportunity in tech, where startups abound, and flexible work hours and working remotely are commonplace, to create a culture that is more family and worker friendly?

We want to hear your stories! What has worked for you and what hasn’t? How has your company helped you overcome the challenges of balancing work and family, and how could they improve? What sorts of changes should companies make in order to accommodate their workers’ needs?Â Lets talk solutions!

Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

Tereza Nemessanyi, CEO of Honestly Now

“Life is about decisions…and emphasis on the plural. Because it’s not one decision, it’s really a million decisions every day, and year after year different decisions present themselves. We do the best we can, and we’re not perfect.

There is science that says there is tyranny in too much choice. And some people are quick to judge our choices (whatever end of the spectrum they are). A lot of people lose a lot of time with coulda-woulda-shoulda, questioning decisions they made. And I think women are more prone to that than men.

We can’t care so much about what other people think. It’s a lot of psychic weight in our backpacks that does not serve us.

Typical decision: I decided to save money and put my kids in the town camp, but it rained today so swim team is cancelled and camp is half-day at the school instead. Hmph. Bad decision? Or just temporarily crummy luck. Dunno. But at the moment I’m really annoyed. And my mom sent me to the same camp under the same circumstances but there was no choice involved because she couldn’t afford any other camp. So she accepted it and made it positive. So I need to make the here and now work; and, if I can’t, change it.

The biggest surprise for me in life has been how much happens that is totally unexpected that can fundamentally affect your path and the decisions available.

So maybe a woman has her mom around who can be really active helping with the kids for free while she’s plowing through her career. Or maybe her child is special-needs so there’s really no question the child needs a full-time parent advocate. Or maybe she never wanted kids. Or maybe the right life partner never materialized. Or maybe she picked the wrong partner and it’s unraveling. It’s all FINE. There are a million paths to a great life. We can change our lives 100 times. We have to accept and celebrate each others’ decisions.

We need to get off each others’ backs and trust each is busting her hump. And when someone needs a hand, and you have one free, offer her yours. You just never know when you’ll be the one who needs it.”

Tereza Nemessanyi is CEO of Honestly Now, a New York based startup that is disrupting Dear Abby. She blogs at Mashups, Markets, and Motherhood and can be found tweeting @TerezaN.

Melissa Demsak,Â Manager, SQL Architecture, Realogy

“The most important thing about raising a family with two working parents is to clearly define roles for each life/family stage. The second most important thing is deciding what household/child services to outsource.

My husband and I have worked in IT for 20+ years and have two very well adjusted and successful girls (ages 17 & 22). We started our family very young (age 22), so we both always had to work to support our lifestyle.

Early on, while we were in survival mode, I had the opportunity to get paid for overtime testing COBOL programs, I worked as much as I could and my husband took the lead on family tasks. Eventually my husband quit his job to attend a six-month training program during the day and took the lead on family tasks at night while I continued to work overtime. Â After he landed his first job post-training he decided he would rather be a consultant than an employee of a corporation. Â At that time, I took the lead on family tasks and held a job that included health benefits.

Once we got beyond survival mode financially, we had the opportunity to decide what household/child services we could outsource. I chose to have my home cleaned on a bi-weekly basis, because spending that time with my children was a more effective use of my time. Â My husband chose not to do things like mow the lawn or fix leaky pipes since his hourly consulting rate was more than double the cost of these services. It all comes down to time is money and time doesnât wait for technology!

I returned to school to update my skills and transitioned to working as a development DBA (database administrator). As the one who has mostly been responsible for our girls on a daily basis, I chose jobs that were not 24/7 and were close enough to home to allow me the balance I needed. Â Now that our daughters donât need me as their taxi driver and constant companion, itâs time for me to step up a bit and take on a more demanding career.

At 45, Iâm ready for the challenge!”

Melissa Demsak has an intense passion for Data that has followed her through her 20+ years working in various IT roles. Â Sheâs currently working as a Manager of SQL Architecture for a large player in the Real Estate Industry. Â She holds leadership roles in the NJ SQL Server User Group and the NJ Women in Technology.Â She tweets @DataMelange and blogs at Data Melange. Â

Jennifer McFadden, Co-Founder & COO, Skillcrush

“Choose your life partner wiselyâhe/she will be your best ally in the war against mayhem. And, if you are both working, there will be mayhem. There will always be beds that go unmade; breakfasts that are burned; projects that are late; launches that fail; customers who are disappointed; soccer games that are lost. As you get older, you realize that these small things are just thatâsmall things. You have to be willing to move on to the next play. Having a strong team and a good sense of humor can help.

Be comfortable with uncertainty. Be willing to adjust course and slow down or speed up your career as needed. If you want to stay home and raise your kids for a few years, great. Just make sure that youâre doing something else on the side that can be leveraged to help you re-enter the workforce. Donât just volunteer to help organize your local libraryâs seasonal benefit; jump onto Catchafire and use your PR or marketing skills to help organize a social media campaign to get books into the hands of underprivileged children. Use Skillcrush or other online resources to pick up HTML/CSS and build a web page for the libraryâs summer reading program. Choose opportunities that maximize the impact that you can have on an organization while building a skillset that you can leverage later. This isnât selfish; itâs smart.

The conventional, 8-to-6, Monday-through-Friday career paths of the past were created when one parent worked outside of the home and one inside of the home—this does not mean that they are the optimal conditions for you or your employees. Rethink the way that you structure your work and the work of people reporting to you.

Balance all nighters with all-day play dates with your kids/family/spouse/friends…itâs not healthy to work 24/7 and you will burn out. This is true of everyoneâeven the 22-year-old programmer who is just starting out. Donât let someone else bully you into thinking that working 24-hours-a-day will lead you down the path of enlightenment. Theyâre full of crap and just looking to benefit from your enthusiasm and endurance.

If you donât like your current work, quit. Find a new job. There is nothing more draining than spending time away from your family doing unfilling work. If you see a job that looks interesting, find the skills that you need to get it. There are so many amazing offline and online resources available to learn new skillsâthere is no excuse for settling for the mediocrity or boredom that comes from being forced to do uninspiring work.

Learn to say no. As it turns out, you canât do everything all of the time. Buy cupcakes for your kidsâ birthday parties if you have toâbaking is overrated and kids love the over-sugared, blue-and-red-swirly-frosted treat that you can buy at your local grocery store. They wonât judge you for it.

And remember, there is nothing so important that it would warrant missing your childâs birthday. Period.”

Jennifer McFadden isÂ mother of 10-year-old Grace McNelis McFadden and 5-year-old Martha Lillian (aka, Lilly) McFadden. She tweets @jen_mcfadden.

Original Article

Python

addabirnir — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 12:06:01 -0400

To create a “Hello, World!” app using Python, all you need to write is:

print “Hello, World!”

Quite a bit more straightforward than some of these other examples, we think! Web applications like YouTube, Reddit, Dropbox, and Yelp are all powered by Python.

Pythoners, like Rubyists, believe in writing code that is simple, direct, and easy to understand, meaning that even people new to programming should be able to read Python and have a sense for what it’s saying. The Python language is also designed to make nice with other programming languages (it’s a social language!) and rather than force programmers to use one specific programming method, it allows them to use whichever technique they prefer (it’s a flexible language!).

Python is also known for its rich library of tools that make certain tasks easy and fast to accomplish. The language is a favorite among data journalists and natural language scientists for its mapping and text processing abilities.

Python is a great language for beginning programmers and the Python community is especially welcoming of women - Pyladies is an organization of women developers who mentor new Python lady-programmers.

Cocktail Party Fact

Think Python is named for the snake? Think again! Python is actually named after the slightly less scale-y, Monty Python.

As a tribute to the language’s British namesake, Python programmers often use ‘spam’ and ‘eggs’ when they need generic placeholders.

Now Try This

Visit Learn Python The Hardway
Learn why the hardway is better
Enjoy your new found Python know-how!

Original Article

API

addabirnir — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 17:43:36 -0400

When you visit a friend’s Facebook profile, it’s designed for a person to look at. Nice fonts, pretty images, plenty of links, lots of eye candy.

Computers are pretty bad at clicking around on websites and looking at images, though. As a result, they get a special way to interact with the site: an API.

An API lets computers and web sites talk to each other without all those links and styles and pretty images getting in the way. Think of it as a version of the site stripped of everything but the most important pieces of information.

If you wanted to invite all of your Facebook friends to play Farmville with you, it’d be a pain to email them each individually. Instead, you can just ask Farmville to do it for you. How’s it get all their info? Farmville just uses Facebook’s API!

Every time you take a picture on Instagram or make a new post on Tumblr, you can automatically post it to your Twitter feed. How’s that magic happen? Instagram and Tumblr just use Twitter’s API!

So next time you log into Instagram or Farmville or some other new web app using Twitter or Facebook, you’ll know that APIs are hard at working behind the scenes helping sites communicate.

Now try this!

Go to http://www.facebook.com/skillcrush
Change the www. to graph., so the URL is now http://graph.facebook.com/skillcrush
Notice how it’s the same info but formatted in a more computer-friendly way? Congratulations! You’re now looking at Facebook’s API!

Original Article