dan hughes' weblog

I’m looking forward to this technology becoming...

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 18:24:00 -0400

I’m looking forward to this technology becoming commonplace. I especially like the example of using it for remote collaboration.

"If you live each day as if it was your last. Some day you will most certainly be right."

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:28:00 -0400

“If you live each day as if it was your last. Some day you will most certainly be right.”

- Steve Jobs

I never tire of watching this.

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:27:00 -0400

I never tire of watching this.

iCuffLinks http://www.adafruit.com/icufflinks

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:49:21 -0400

iCuffLinks

http://www.adafruit.com/icufflinks

I love this gbattle: Turntable.fm’s co-founder Billy Chasen...

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:13:27 -0400

I love this

gbattle:

Turntable.fm’s co-founder Billy Chasen has his business on lock, literally. You don’t use keys to enter Turntable.fm’s HQ, you send a text message from a white-listed phone number and voila, it opens. This is a much smarter, safer and cheaper option than handing out a ton of keys.

UPDATE: This won a Twilio prize and he explains how to build one yourself.

kateoplis: Fifty miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, the...

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 16:47:49 -0400

kateoplis:

Fifty miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, the Colorado River Delta and its once-rich estuary wetlands—reduced by 95% since the river was restricted by dams—are now as perched as the surrounding Sonoran Desert. Only rare floods or cancelled farm orders allow the river to reach the Gulf of California.

Why The Colorado River Stopped Flowing | NPR

Known by some as “America’s Nile,” the Colorado River stretches about 1,450 miles across seven states and two countries — and photographer Peter McBride has traveled the entire thing, shooting photos for his new book, The Colorado River: Flowing Through Conflict. […]

“This estuary used to be one of the largest desert estuaries in North America,” McBride says. “It ran to the sea for 6 million years, and the river basically stopped in the late ’90s. It used to be 3,000 square miles with lush forests and jaguars and deer. And having walked it … it’s nothing but a cracked, parched arid landscape.” […]

taylordavidson: encosion: Is extreme weather on the rise?....

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:14:54 -0400

taylordavidson:

encosion:

Is extreme weather on the rise?. This storm in South Dakota produced 8-inch diameter hailstones (2010.07.23)

(Source: The Big Picture | Chad Cowan)

Dunno about any claims about the weather, but love the picture.

Temp office for SBM (at least for today until FiOS gets their...

Thu, 26 May 2011 10:43:19 -0400

Temp office for SBM (at least for today until FiOS gets their act together)

File this under “Why didn’t I think of that”.

Wed, 18 May 2011 10:34:28 -0400

File this under “Why didn’t I think of that”.

Awesome. Thanks @Stefmara.

Tue, 17 May 2011 23:37:46 -0400

Awesome. Thanks @Stefmara.

Focus

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 10:21:00 -0400

Quitting one’s job to become a full-time entrepreneur is one hell of a time-management tool (although admittedly not for everyone). When I worked for someone else it was easy to steal away a small amount of time to work on things that perhaps weren’t a huge priority for the company but were simply interesting to me. Google has their official “20% time” that both acknowledges and encourages this. I never worked for Google but it could be said that I always implemented my own personal 20% policy in every job I’ve ever had.* However, that was then. Things are very different as an entrepreneur. All hours of the day I find myself thinking “is what I’m doing right this very moment going to help me get more customers (or retain the ones I’ve got)?” It’s amazing how powerful that question is and how easy it becomes to know what you should be doing at every moment of the day. In fact, I’m asking myself that question right now and that’s why I’m ending this post.

* Actually in practice it was more like a 120% policy, as in my job consumes 100% and I find another 20% elsewhere for my projects :)

Photo by Ihtatho

Need some input, what exactly constitutes a tech company these days? Is Groupon a tech company?

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 10:24:00 -0500

A lot of businesses these days are claiming to be “tech companies”. I’m guilty of it too. I routinely position StorageByMail as a technology company when it suits me. And I can make a very compelling case when I describe how StorageByMail is the technology layer that connects consumers, delivery companies and operators of major fulfillment centers to deliver a superior storage experience. But are we really a tech company? Put another way, when we’re a big public company would you say we’re more likely to be compared with Public Storage (NYSE:PSA) or with Salesforce (NYSE:CRM)? My guess would be the former.

I find it strange when I read articles in the media about Groupon. Reporters all describe Groupon as a tech company. And the supposed tech blogs seem to agree that Groupon is a tech company judging by the quantity of articles. I suppose to some extent if Google attempts to buy your company that automatically qualifies you as a tech company.

The point of this post is not to say who is a tech company and who is not. I don’t know the answer to that question. And at the end of the day it probably doesn’t matter as long as companies are creating value and delivering on their plan. But in the interest of satisfying my curiosity I thought I’d write this post to see what others think.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Is Groupon a tech company? What about StorageByMail? Of all the companies covered on TechCrunch, what percentage would you say are truly tech companies?

Nobody really gives a damn what you built your site in (why I chose asp.net).

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 22:41:00 -0500

Here’s a surefire way to spark a heated discussion —- ask a bunch of technology entrepreneurs what they think is the best technology stack on which to build your company. I did this over and over again before I building StorageByMail.com. There are those who will make a very compelling case for Ruby on Rails, while others will swear by PHP, Python, or even Microsoft ASP.NET. Can Rails scale? Is Microsoft evil? Is the Python developer community robust? I’ve heard all of the arguments and I still can’t answer a single one of these questions. Nor can I tell you what is the best technology stack. But I had a decision to make. I went with Microsoft ASP.NET (and C#), a technology that would rank about one notch above Cobol if one were to rank technologies according to coolness. Here’s why I made the choice I did:

I don’t have a computer science background and as a newbie I found ASP.NET to be unmatched in terms of documentation, the developer community and the quality of its IDE (Visual Studio). These things are important if you’re a beginner.
Hiring quality coders on a bootstrapper’s budget is easier for ASP.NET than it is for anything open source. It just is. If you go the open source route you have to compete with the all the cool kids (Tumblr, Etsy, etc) for talent whereas with Microsoft products you’re competing with Dundler Mifflin. It’s not about the quality of the talent. It’s a simple supply and demand question.
An exit strategy should to some extent inform your technology decisions. In the case of StorageByMail we’re far more likely to catch the eye of Public Storage or Fedex than Google or Facebook. I made a list of likely acquirers and then looked at what kind of programming skills they hire for. It was clear they all favor Microsoft. All things being equal it seemed logical to do the same.
Upon examining my own personal network I realized that I had a good support network of C# programmers to rely upon. And I knew that I was going to be asking them a lot of dumb questions when I ran into trouble. So I might as well work in their language of choice.

At the end of the day things just have to work and customers don’t give a shit what technology you built your site on. Make a choice and move on. Looking back it’s probably one of the least significant decisions I’ve made to date (though I do admittedly have a minor case of Rails envy).

This is not a good day if you need emergency services. I helped...

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 10:25:00 -0500

This is not a good day if you need emergency services. I helped these people push the ambulance out only to walk by five minutes later to see another ambulance stuck in the same spot!

Note to all plow drivers, the next time you drive by an emergency vehicle stuck in a snow bank, pull over and help out!!! I couldn’t believe how many Hoboken city plows drove by and ignored my efforts to flag them down. They looked and just kept on going. One even pulled over a half block ahead to get his breakfast rather than help us. Unbelievable! Time to crack some heads Mayor Zimmer.

Can’t wait to play in this tomorrow!

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 01:24:18 -0500

Can’t wait to play in this tomorrow!

Big Air in Jersey City

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 16:52:47 -0400

These guys put on a hell of a show yesterday in Pavonia Newport.

September is the best time of year in New York.

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:28:47 -0400

September is the best time of year in New York.

Explaining "int main (int argc, const char * argv[])"

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:20:06 -0400

In my quest to teach myself C, I’ve started every program with the same basic function “main()”.

For example,

#include

main()

{

printf(“Hello World”);

}

So I was puzzled when I began using Xcode on the Mac. Xcode begins every new C project with the following as the main function

“int main(int argc, const char * argv[])”

You’re probably wondering what the difference is and so was I. So I turned to Google and found the answer. The parameter argc is the argument count at the time the program is invoked. For example, if your program was called “dan” and you typed “dan one two” into the command line the computer would execute dan.exe after passing “one” and “two” into the program. The value stored in the program for argc would be 3 (including the program name). The parameter argv on the other hand is the actual array of arguments. In our example the array of arguments would be

argv[0] = “dan”

argv[1] = “one”

argv[2] = “two”

It’s pretty common to pass arguments into a program when invoking it. Therefore it makes sense that Xcode adds these parameters to the main function by default. I’m glad I learned that.

sunset on the open road

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 13:25:17 -0400

sunset on the open road

Recap of first Business People Who Code Meetup

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:24:00 -0400

On August 5th we held our first ever Business People Who Code Meetup event. The event was an Introduction to C Programming and it was the first of what will hopefully be a series of events designed to teach programming skills to business people and business skills to programmers.

Here’s my long overdue recap of the event…

APPRECIATION
Thanks Frank Yee for volunteering to teach C programming to all us newbies. This is what this group is all about, members stepping up to share their skills and expertise with others.

Thanks Iliya Fridman and Fridman Law Group for hosting us. You have an awesome space.

Thanks also to everyone who attended.

TOPICS COVERED

Why learn C —- Frank spoke eloquently on the topic, but in case you missed it here’s an article that makes a pretty good case for learning C as your first programming language.
Installing GCC and compiling your first program —- you can’t compile an executable program without a compiler. GCC is the most widely used and it’s completely open source. Click here to download and install it.
Writing a first program —- In our first example we learned about standard libraries (e.g. stdio.h), variables, printf and arrays. Be sure you’re familiar with these topics before the next Meetup.

RESOURCES

Frank recommended a great text book for learning C. I’ll link to it here once I get the name.
How Stuff Works published a solid beginners tutorial that is a must-read.

THINGS I LEARNED

After Frank’s lecture, a lot of self-study and some trial and error, I wrote and compiled a little program that actually does something useful. It’s a quiz engine that asks three simple questions about programming in C. The source code appears below. Try typing it into your text editor and compiling it. It really works!

All of the questions and answers are in the code, so it’s clearly not a scalable quiz engine. One wouldn’t want to have to edit source code and recompile the program just to change the questions and answers. Therefore my next task will be to figure out how to load the quiz data from an external file. Perhaps we’ll even cover that during the next Meetup. Sign up today!