Engineering is about tradeoffs, and each technology has its advantages and drawbacks. Whenever we leave one technology behind and adopt a new one, we’re sacrificing something. We may be making a terrific trade, getting a hundred times as much cool stuff as give up — but we’re still giving up something, and we should be aware […]
Author Archives: Kagan MacTane
A Follow-Up on Pronounceability
Wednesday, September 7th, 2011 – 2:11 pm
Late last year, I wrote about making sure your domain name is both spellable and pronounceable. Well, I just encountered a site that technically gets it right, in that its domain name is exchangebitcoins.com. But as soon as you look at their logo, which presumably tells you what they actually want to be called? At that […]
Google+ Doesn’t Want “Real” Names. They Want WASPonyms.
Friday, August 19th, 2011 – 7:52 pm
Three pieces of news lately about Google+ make it clear that when Google claims they want you to use your “real” name, it’s a load of hooey. First off, a legally mononymous Australian journalist named Stilgherrian was told he couldn’t use that name — his actual, legal name — on Google+. He was not at all pleased, […]
The Problem With Jamie Zawinski and Regular Expressions
Tuesday, August 16th, 2011 – 7:43 pm
Jamie Zawinski, also known simply as jwz, is famous for his quote: “Some people, when confronted with a problem, think ‘I know, I’ll use regular expressions.’ Now they have two problems.” It’s a very amusing line, and I can totally see why people all over the world are using it in their .sig files: It […]
How Many Identities Does a Single Person Have?
Sunday, July 17th, 2011 – 12:36 pm
(This was originally posted on Google+ itself. I’m also keeping it here, for easy reference.) A friend of mine notes that one of the problems of the current Google+ “real names policy” is that “Google is attempting to deal with (I’m assuming) manufacturing a community of 1-to-1 RL presence-to-online presence” — in particular, he says that […]
Before You Can Talk About the Singularity, You Must Define It
Wednesday, July 13th, 2011 – 8:56 am
If you think about technology, and where it may be taking us, it’s impossible to ignore the idea of the Singularity. But if you’re going to talk about it at all, it’s best to start off by defining just what it is you mean. Different people are using the term for a few different concepts […]
The Difference One Site Can Make
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 – 8:16 am
Only a year ago, I was against infinite scroll. In design meetings, I’d point out the way it breaks various aspects of the scroll bar. (You can’t tell how far through the full data-set you are; dragging the “thumb” down causes it to suddenly change place, etc.) But now, I almost expect it when I’m scrolling […]
Some Helpful Tips for Recruiters
Sunday, June 26th, 2011 – 1:39 pm
I received a phone call at work this past week, while I was in the middle of debugging some complicated JavaScript. Usually, my desk phone shows the internal extension that’s calling me; this time, it showed a series of asterisks. Intrigued and confused, I picked it up… and discovered it was a recruiter calling me. […]
My Favorite Firefox Extensions That You Haven’t Heard About
Sunday, June 12th, 2011 – 3:14 pm
Before you comment or email me asking how I could have left out AdBlock Plus, FlashBlock, NoScript, Firebug, or Chris Pederick’s Web Developer Toolbar: Please re-read the last five words of this post’s title. If it’s a well-known extension, it’s off-limits for this post. This is about extensions that very few people have heard of, […]
COICA Is Dead, Long Live the PROTECT IP Act
Thursday, May 12th, 2011 – 8:34 pm
And by “long live the PROTECT IP Act”, I really mean, “let’s kill the PROTECT IP Act, as quickly and as dead as possible”. [Update: At least one petition to the US Congress opposing this bill can be found at Demand Progress; I will update with others as I find out about them.] Back when COICA was winding its […]