Business

Startup Best Practices

Here is the presentation I’ve used in my lighting talk at the Java Posse roundup 2010

There are just few ‘lessons’ here. IMHO, the important ones.
Over the past 15 years, I’ve been in start ups and swat teams in side big companies. There are lots of good things that I’ve learn, but also, lots of bold examples to how not to run things. In the end of the day, it’s all about peopleware and open commutation. But like any other aspect in life, lots of other methods you can use in order to be better and excel.

Disclaimer: In some of the slides I took some ideas from Rework book.

Standard
life, Sport

Why you should run on regular bases?

Here are few points that I’ve took from the article in the WSJ:

* People who exercise regularly heal from colds 20-30% faster.
* People who walked briskly for 45 minutes, 5 days a week for 12-15 weeks reduced their number of sick days by 25-50%.
* 36% of US adults didn’t engage in ANY leisure activities in 2008. Can this be true?
*  Exercise can lower the risk of stroke by 27%, diabetes by 50%, high-blood pressure by 40%, risk of recurring breast cancer by 50%, colon cancer by 60%, Alzheimer’s disease by 40%.
* Physical activity reduces erosion of telomeres, which essentially is an anti-aging effect at the cellular level.

So next time you thinking on doing some sport activity – follow Nike rule “Just do it!”.

Standard
Business, life

Good Books I’m reading now

It’s mainly a post to my presents (not that they are going to read it).
Hey, after all these years that you thought me the love of books. Here is a short list of what I’m reading when I don’t have time (usually around midnight). In this list I’ve included some recent books I’ve read:

  • What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures. After Outliers, Blink and Tipping Point anything that Mr. Gladwell will write – I promise to read (as quickly as I can).
  • The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable – it’s very good book on a simple topic. We know NOTHING on the stock market.
    “Assuming more order than exists in chaotic nature” – Our brains are wired for narrative, not statistical uncertainty. And so we tell ourselves simple stories to explain complex thing we don’t–and, most importantly, can’t–know. The truth is that we have no idea why stock markets go up or down on any given day, and whatever reason we give is sure to be grossly simplified, if not flat out wrong.
  • Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
    In a similar way to the Black Swan – it contain lots of answers on how can we recover from an economic crisis.
  • The Intelligent Investor: It is the best book I’ve read about investing. The greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham’s philosophy of “value investing” — which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies — has made The Intelligent Investor the stock market bible ever since its original publication in 1949.
Standard
webdev

Google – Microsoft is moving fast behind you

Very impressive (and short) talk at TED that show that maps.bing.com is moving fast in the direction of Google maps.

Standard
life, Sport

2010 Mavericks in Half Moon bay

This is the competition we are going to watch tomorrow…

Amazing place with great surfers.

Standard
life, Sport, travel

What can I say? Panama man! Panama is the place for surfers

Ahh…. thanks to Yaron – I’ve saw this clip and I’m planing my trip down to Panama.

What an amazing waves!

Standard
good food, life, Sport, travel

Vail 2010

Some (really) good times with friends in the powder of Vail.

Continue reading →

Standard
webdev

PHP is now faster then Java (almost)

It was great to read this blog post Facebook HipHop for PHP. I always like to see big companies like: Yahoo, Google, Facebook etc’ contributing back to the open source community. It seems ‘only’ fair to do it after you leverage open source product in order to build business that worth billions. After read it, I found one big mistake in the middle of the post:
“…This is compared to more traditional compiled languages like C++ and interpreted languages like Java.”

C’mon guys, I guess you wanted to write java script and not Java. Any way, it’s very good new approch that will help us (and lot of other) to improve their hardware usage.
As for Java – it’s still much faster then PHP and other languages. But like in other cases, if you take into consideration that TCO (Total cost of ownership) it’s much better to use languages like PHP, Python, Perl for web development due to the freedom they give you to make lots of changes quickly.

Thank you FB.

Standard
Design, webdev

Web Design in 2010 is not what you think

Very good, short (less then 5min) video from SXSW 2009. Just as early filmmakers struggled to break free from the conventions of live theater, after 10+ years Web designers are still trapped in the structures of the past. Forget pages, linear text and other archaic vestiges of design’s print ancestry; the separation of content from presentation has already changed everything. I sign on every word…

Standard