labs.kortina.net - Latest Comments

Re: About

kortina — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:25:02 -0000

Scot, you found the right person. I will give you a call this evening.

Re: About

scothypnotist — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:07:47 -0000

Andrew,
(I hope you are the right one.)
I just had a wonderful chat with your grandmother.
I am trying to contact you and your company
www.wemuscistore.com.
I need to change my pricing on my CD to $49.95.
My CD is titled Pass It On version 2
My website is www.hypnotichelp.com
I will try to find your phone number is New York.
Hope to hear from you!
Namaste'
Scot
530-848-8262

Re: A Temporally and Spatially Aware Google

kortina — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:26:42 -0000

Yes, I am a bit behind in adoption here, but found the topic interesting
because this stuff finally clicked for me. I guess Google has been making
and effort to push the one box harder lately, or maybe it just took a long
time to educate me. Either way, personalized search is getting to be a hot
topic on my mind again right now.

Re: A Temporally and Spatially Aware Google

gbattle — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:56:18 -0000

Google has been doing on-demand sports scores through Google411 mobile service for some time now Kortina. Just text "nfl eagles" to 46645 (that's "GOOGL") and you'll get tons up to the minute scores and who they play next week. Though I know the point of your post was to examine the mainline search, the development of these mobile services and other niche searches in news, images, products, maps, and most recently music and Twitter has made it a very powerful tool.

Re: A Liberal Arts Education Teaches Students to Analyze and Express Ideas Efficiently

kortina — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:55:06 -0000

I don't think I can place a $ amount on the value I got out of Penn. I met
Iqram there, and many other friends. I was surrounded by tons of smart
people and engaged in interesting debate daily. I now have an instant
connection with amazing alumni and meet new Penn alumns all the time. I
learned from inspiring teachers and peers.

In short, my answer is this: I intend to donate as much as I can to help
others have a similar experience and will not think twice about paying for
my own children to get a similar education. I will work 3 jobs if necessary
to expose them to this environment.

I realize not everyone shares this sentiment, however, so one of the items
on my startup-todolist is an education company, focused on making this sort
of experience more affordable. Prolly will be in five-ten years, though--my
plate is pretty full right now. Education is definitely an area I will
return to however. As a citizen of a democracy, I feel obligated to
contribute to improving education as an educated populace is the only way
for a true democratic society to sustain and improve itself.

Have you seen any sort of startups making this caliber of experience more
accessible? The closest thing I have seen is Youtube, but that does not have
the same sort of ubiquitous learning (learning at the cafeteria and gym)
sort of effects.

Re: A Liberal Arts Education Teaches Students to Analyze and Express Ideas Efficiently

aweissman — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:44:27 -0000

but can you say that value is worth $200,000+?

Re: A Liberal Arts Education Teaches Students to Analyze and Express Ideas Efficiently

kortina — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:26:08 -0000

"you are going to look first and foremost for someone with PHP, or Perl, or
mysql or whatever skills" - hmm, disagree here. Our first hire is going to
be a guy we went to school with who is just really smart. He has not written
software since graduating from college, but is sharp, a hard worker, and
knows how to get things done. Most importantly, he is a self starter, and
needs little direction to execute--he just needs to goal and can discover
the implementation independently.

I hear you on ROI, however, Andy. The value to me of the university
education is in the intangibles. When you go off to university, you leave
your comfort zone and family behind, and move geographically. Campus is a
place where excitement about learning lives. When you go to the dining hall
or gym, you're surrounding by people who are eager to learn and constantly
engaging in discussion with people who are learning new things outside your
domain. It's very tough to duplicate the motivation to learn that results
from living 24x7 in this kind of environment. Sure, you can join meetups and
forums and youtube channels focuses on learning a specific topic, but I have
yet to see the geographic network effects of a college campus duplicated
online.

The closest thing I have seen, actually, is New York City, where everyone
has a story. Everyone is excited about something, has some sort of telos.
Bartenders stories are about their theatre groups or art shows,
entrepreneurs abound, and generally people are excited about something,
looking for opportunities, ready to learn from the rest of the diverse
population. Building cities like this or figuring out how to translate this
environment to the web, I think, are the only way to compete with college
campus education.

Re: A Liberal Arts Education Teaches Students to Analyze and Express Ideas Efficiently

aweissman — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:59:22 -0000

Agreed 100% this is a US problem that I am referring to, yes.

Re the replacement of Steve Jobs - where I disagree is that you would lead to see what someone DID, how they PERFORMED, well before you looked at their course of study

Re: A Liberal Arts Education Teaches Students to Analyze and Express Ideas Efficiently

arctictony — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:55:57 -0000

I take your point Andy. However, I think the wider issue here is not specific to liberal arts but to the American university system as a whole. Despite what any lecturers of mine might recall, I did attend a highly-regarded British university (founded before your country was found ;)) and the cost of my liberal arts/social sciences education for four years was a percentage of what a term would cost at a similarly-ranked university in the US. In fact, the university student body was 25% American largely because of the perceived superior ROI here. That isn't an ROI problem for liberal arts, but for the economics of US study in general. It's got to be next on the list after healthcare.

Yes, if I was looking for a new developer (ie. someone with a specific skillset) I would look for someone trained in those skills. However, if I was looking to replace Steve Jobs, an industry-moulding destructive force of creativity (who lest we forget, has assigned much of the creative inspiration for the original Apple's to the various liberal arts courses, including calligraphy, that he dropped in on) I might look for someone with a broader range of study than the specialization undoubtedly so useful for other roles.

Finally, it's instructive to see how CEOs from various specific backgrounds react to challenges and setbacks. The former marketing guy looks to a marketing solution, the former product guy tries to solve the problem through new product strategy, the former biz dev guy through new deals and distribution channels. Being able to rely on people highly-skilled in a specific areas (with the skillz to pay the billz as you say) is useful, but an effective leader should be aware of the entire toolset and then exploit each of these different people's skillsets to derive advantage.

Re: A Liberal Arts Education Teaches Students to Analyze and Express Ideas Efficiently

aweissman — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:32:44 -0000

Disagree, respectfully, but wholeheartedly.

The question is the ROI of a liberal arts education. Of course if has value, but what is that value relative to its cost. What is the return.

And can't all the attributs you and Kortina mention - intution, argument, analysis - they are not domains exclusive to liberal arts education, but to life. Sure they are enhanced at Harvard Penn wherever, but at what cost (well we know the cost, 50k a year).

When you need a new developer for Twitterfeed or Venmo, you are going to look first and foremost for someone with PHP, or Perl, or mysql or whatever skills. You arent looking for someone with a major in military history, to the exent education even comes up (christ, I dont even know where or if you went to school).

I submit we are in a country where we need to build and produce things, and liberal arts education and the bloat of universities has failed to deliver that.

Re: A Liberal Arts Education Teaches Students to Analyze and Express Ideas Efficiently

arctictony — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:10:51 -0000

Totally agree with this. Another factor that I consider essential is the ability to cover a broad range of different domains, teasing out connections and applying them to new scenarios. I enjoyed Bill' Duggan's book on strategic intuition that goes into how we innovate. So often it is the application or combination of aspects from varied disciplines in a new area that can create huge innovation. For instance, at the moment when trying to think about where Chartbeat goes, I'm spending a fair amount of time (and deriving, for me, valuable insight from) reading military history and theory. I'm then applying what I learn to understand how real-time analytics differs from traditional. Would I think like that without a liberal arts education? I don't think so. It may end in a dead end but it provides me with the opportunity to potentially out-innovate someone who purely thinks down well-trodden paths.

Re: Community and Camaraderie in the 21st Century

kareem — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 06:40:25 -0000

i too was struck by how much something like crossfit filled the void that opened up when i left team sports in university.

it's been fascinating to see how quickly xfit has grown at the vancouver affiliate where i work out, and how the n00bs give back pretty quickly after graduating to the group classes. also fascinating to see how many of those n00bs become evangelists (myself included). it's tough to argue with results in the form of both hard data and feeling great about those bitch-ass workouts paying off.

Re: How To Type Letters for a Dial by Name Directory on Blackberry

Chris — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:41:31 -0000

You can also hold down the alt key and press the letter and it will send the right tone. Works for sure with the pearl and the curve.

Re: Running Barefoot First Thoughts

kortina — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:50:04 -0000

I would recommend trying these shoes out, Si. Running in them is a
great experience, and they're in general very comfortable.

Re: Running Barefoot First Thoughts

si — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:36:38 -0000

hey kort

i did some research into these shoes about a month ago - seemed like an interesting idea, have yet to give them a go..

Re: Design Bit: Export to Calendar Widget

richardaroberts776 — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:52:00 -0000

There are 49 clues for 21 cities around the United States. I’ve compiled all the clues together so that people in each of these cities can have quick and easy access to them. As of 1:30am eastern time on Halloween amtrak promotion code morning, there is no way to “send photos of what you find.

Re: Ignoring pyc and other file patterns in Subversion

kortina — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:27:19 -0000

Done

Re: Ignoring pyc and other file patterns in Subversion

Iñaki Silanes — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:11:33 -0000

Hi Andrew!

Thanks for citing me. May I ask you a tiny favor? The URL you provide links to my old blog. I migrated it to handyfloss.net, so the new URL for the post would be:

http://handyfloss.net/2008.01/ignoring-some-fil...

It would be awesome if you could link to the latter URL instead of the wordpress.com one. Thanks again, in any case.

Re: How to Effectively Use Sharing Links in Automated Emails to Customers

name234234 — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:50:23 -0000

test

Re: How to Effectively Use Sharing Links in Automated Emails to Customers

kortina — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:28:16 -0000

I think disqus makes that possible somehow, but I have never actually
looked into linking comments on two blogs.

Re: How to Effectively Use Sharing Links in Automated Emails to Customers

gbattle — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:39:17 -0000

Very aware that you switched to WP (looks great, btw). I like the idea of authoring my own content on WP, but have it push to Tumblr, Posterous, Twitter and FF/FB. What would be slick is if you tied together the Disqus comment thread across the destinations such that the conversation follows the content, not the distribution channel.
Sent via G-Mobile

Re: Send To Tumblr And Track With Bitly Google Reader Custom Link

kortina — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 05:44:50 -0000

http://files.getdropbox.com/u/800/JingPublic/20...

Name: BitlyHomepage
URL: http://bit.ly/?utm_source=gr_BitlyHomepage&url=...
Icon URL: http://bit.ly/static/images/favicon.png

This will drop the long url into the bitly homepage. The link will be
associated with your Bitly account history and you'll be able to
easily tweet from there.

Re: How to Effectively Use Sharing Links in Automated Emails to Customers

kortina — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 05:41:31 -0000

Ah, Gbattle, there's no more like button cause I ditched tumblr for
wordpress :((

Tumblr excels at making it easy to quote things, like things, relbog,
and share found content. I find Wordpress encourages me to author my
own content more, so I'm back on it instead of Tumblr. (Plus, WP has
much better SEO and it's easier to find things I've written, eg, all
those code snippets and unix tips you've seen me posting.)

Re this post, though, excellent use of sharing links in a receipt email, eh?

Re: How to Effectively Use Sharing Links in Automated Emails to Customers

gbattle — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:11:11 -0000

Where's the "like" button on this post? Good stuff.

Re: Send To Tumblr And Track With Bitly Google Reader Custom Link

nozero — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:50:28 -0000

Interseting post. but im still trying to figure out how to make a button to send to twitter through bitly. can you help?