Featured Blog Posts (410)

Confession: I'm a news junkie.  I like nothing better than to sink my teeth into a meaty, well-written article.  You know, those pieces that make you feel like an expert after reading them.  For a while, long-form journalism seemed to be a dying species, the victim of sound bites and 30-second video clips.

The advent of the iPad and e-readers are signs of recovery.  The real saviors may be apps like Instapaper and Read it Later, which allow users to store lengthy stories to…

Mashable.com had an excellent article: How Groupon uses the cloud to scale its business. I'm sure there are other startups who've done it, but Groupon is one of the most prominent businesses that have made cloud computing a core part of its strategy from the beginning.

Although the company is based in Chicago, it seemed as if they read the advice of Mika Leuck in her blog post…

A group on Maui has been brainstorming and doing some research on creating a local stock exchange.

The original part of this is to create a more open match making entity using the SEC's intra-state exception to do direct public offerings.  This would create a more open process and allow non-wealthy to also engage in making small investments, plus provide liquidity to those making early investments.

State Senator Roz Baker has introduced a resolution, SCR134 to create a study…

Having spent a year in the Ruby on Rails world, I had become accustomed to coding in a BDD/TDD fashion. Ultimately, I craved my type safety and came back to .NET ready to apply these same proven principles to WPF and Silverlight development. No worries, I thought;  I had used NUnit before going to rails and, upon return, had discoveredStoryQ (a BDD framework) which integrates nicely…

Aloha, currently Hawaii legislators are trying to pass an Internet tax law. Yes, Hawaii legislators think you should be paying even more taxes. Normally I am not a political person but after reading this bill I strongly believe this is bad for Hawaii.

The scary part is If you take a deeper look into this proposed bill you will see it has a dramatic negative affect on Hawaii's tech industry.  This includes the entire online media (content sites, photographers, video, bloggers,…

Many of the best viral videos are spontaneous.  Friends are messing around and happen to have a camcorder handy.  They upload the video, and it goes viral. 

A group of media students in Denmark had a plan.  They would reverse-engineer the key elements of a viral video, and make one.

Here is the result:

If it sounds like these…

About a year ago I blogged in this space about proposed federal legislation that would have opened a new visa pathway for international entrepreneurs with potentially viable business start-up plans.  That bill, sponsored by senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) did not pass into law.  This week the New York Times, in its…

I'm sick of installing software. 

I'm tired of clicking Next 6 times and waiting for dll's to be registered. Why is it random people on the Internet can assemble portable versions of Photoshop but Adobe can't? Anyone?

I'm tired of being told I have to uninstall old versions of something before I can add a new one. See above. Also - mobile apps.

I'm tired of lousy software provisioning for desktop software getting in the way of me doing stuff.…

It's a no brainer. To become a better web designer you must understand your medium and the tools people use to create content for it. Unfortunately in today's post-Flash web those tools are becoming increasingly more difficult for designers to embrace. No longer can designers fall back on Flash's pretty GUI to fly objects around the screen and create awesome two minute site intros. If you want to be today's next gen designer then you will need to learn to program with Javascript. There's…

When Google decided to no longer support the H.264 video format stating patent issues one of the biggest questions I heard being asked was "Why not Flash?". Also, when Apple decided not to support Flash the Android market made the fact that it will support Flash one of it's marketing points. I believe, as far as Google is concerned, Apple couldn't have done them a bigger favor. Many people are looking at the little battles, but missing the war. The dark horse is ChromeOS. 



Google…

I have been an iPhone user from the first generation iPhone, you know... Edge network, no cut and paste, need a charger everywhere iPhone.  My most recent iPhone was a jailbroken iPhone 4.  I resisted jailbreaking for a long time, but when I finally did it, I realized a new world of functionality, Calendar events on the lock screen (Lock Calender), toggles accessible without having to dig through the…

When I was in high school I read about research at the University of Hawaii in small scale self contained ecosystems. The idea fascinated me so I started doing research on how I could build one. In Des Moines, Iowa, where I lived, there is a small rain forest contained in a geodesic dome called the Des Moines Botanical Center. A scientist at the center helped me with a design for a miniature version of the center with the addition…

"Information is the currency of democracy" - Thomas Jefferson

Well if information is the currency of democracy, you'd think we'd keep track of the handlers.

Information has become big business. Duh right? But no I'm not here to talk about Facebook privacy or.. how Apple is trying to establish a content empire.. or how your boss is watching your 4square checkins to track how long you're at lunch.

No I'm here to talk about the more traditional kind. News.…

Along with everyone else who's moved onto HTML5, I've spent significant time looking at the possibilities of the next generation of HTML. 

The Setup

Last year Samsung released an impressive line of Android smartphones on many different carriers.  At the time of release they seemed to be the Android front runner for competition with the iPhone on AT&T .  They even captured the top Android sales spot in Q3 of 2010 as well as …

With Apple's new iTunes subscription feature publishers can publish their digital content via the App Store and collect a recurring subscription fee. Users can easily organize, browse and manage their subscriptions in one place. That sounds great until you hear about the cut Apple is taking: 30% for the…

I realize its sacrilegious to say anything bad about HTML5, but I have to say I am really disappointed in its handling of widgets (i.e. combo boxes, lists, sliders, etc.) HTML5 introduces new form input types such as range, date pickers, color selector, etc. but they are completely opaque and have very narrow APIs. This is due to HTML5's approach of punting to the browser to render and manage the widget. Often the browser in turn punts to the OS. This was the approach Java AWT took when it…

Motorola Atrix

I've been heavily anticipating the release of the Motorola Atrix.  So much so, that I've been looking online for cases and accessories in anticipation of purchasing the Atrix.  If you haven't seen it yet, you've gotta check it out.

The Rumors

Earlier on there were some …

I recently had a somewhat crazy idea to solve a common problem.  It's currently half-baked, and it's related to a project I might be working on, so your comments and thoughts are appreciated.  

Here's the problem: big organizations have a ton of content that needs to go *somewhere* on their website, and often, the really important stuff gets obscured.  It's uncomfortable to visit a site like http://hawaii.edu/ and try and find something, and…

Last year most of the organizations we work with moved to EC2 or Heroku for their web applications and 100% of those people are happier than they were with their dusty old server room. People always think hosting on-site will be cheaper and safer, but its almost always neither when you take into account labor, hardware failures and stress. Google and Amazon are better at this than you…