Entries Tagged 'Community' ↓
August 19th, 2008 — Business, CMS, Community, Geek, Marketing, Media, NYC
Paul Graham doesn’t understand the appeal of New York City to web nerds. He says “Cambridge… feels like a town whose main industry is ideas, while New York’s is finance and Silicon Valley’s is startups.” Not so! New York, for me, is media. And I’m not alone.
I’ll take this point to introduce myself to this blog, Oddly Zen, as this is my first post, and my story informs my defense of New York against Cambridge and Silicon Valley. I do live in New York, and I work in media. I work for Observer Media Group as the technical team leader (head nerd), where I run Observer.com and Politicker.com.
I’m certainly not in New York for the money, and I’m not that envious of those who have more than me. I’m in New York because of the pace and excitement of my niche in software development. The problems in computing for news media are enormous for many reasons; managing web content in a clean and useful way is so much harder than most developers know (if you scoff at that claim, I’ll trade jobs with you for a day).
Anyhow, the bulk of the CMS-needing media companies of the world are in New York, and many of them employ nerds like me to whip their CMS into shape. And as media becomes more interactive and more (gasp) social, startups bubble up around the fringe. There are many such startups in New York City; in fact this is probably true for other industries, like advertising, textiles, and public relations. I just don’t know anything about these domains. The result is that there are a ton of software developers here. And most of us aren’t working in finance. More ⊕
July 28th, 2008 — Ajax, Blogging, Business, Community, Design, Marketing, Stranger than Fiction, Wordpress
On Wednesday, New York Times Co. (NYT) reported disappointing second-quarter earnings, and on Thursday the stock continued in its steep descent.
At the end of trading it stood at 12.48, or virtually half the price it commanded one year ago.
This part of the story is unsurprising, given how the Street is slamming any newspaper stock.
What’s startling is something else: If you back out much of the rest of the company’s portfolio, you arrive at a surprisingly teeny valuation for the vaunted New York Times itself, despite all the respect the brand commands.
July 22nd, 2008 — Community, Humor, Relationships, Sex, Stranger than Fiction
It’s 11pm on a Saturday night and you are on Facebook MySpace Adult Friend Finder. Again.
The urge strikes to browse users. Hmm. Female. 27-32. Within 20 miles. Must like spicy Thai food, Apple tattoos, and recursive jokes… glasses are good. (click!)
You know you’ve done it.
More ⊕
July 22nd, 2008 — Ajax, Blogging, Books, CMS, CSS, Community, Design, Fireworks, How-to, Humor, Marketing, Microsoft, Photoshop, Pimp that App, Politics, Programming, Ruby on Rails, Stranger than Fiction, Wordpress
It’s time to band together and drop the funk.
Geek is the new hip, haven’t you heard? Geek tattoos are chic. Librarian glasses are sexy. Weird is in. And you can be, too.
Oddly Zen is seeking collaborators and guest-bloggers for full-time, part-time, or one-off content contributions in the areas of:
- Ajax (tips, tricks, tutorials, or opinion)
- Apple
- Blogging (the business, the practice, or general coverage)
- Books (ebooks, free chapters, or book reviews)
- Business
- CMS (reviews, open-source projects, WordPress, etc.)
- Community (open source, Ruby or Rails, social media, etc.)
- CSS (tips, tricks, tutorials, or opinion)
- Design (UI, HCI, UX, etc.)
- Graphics (Photoshop or Fireworks tips, tricks, tutorials, or opinion)
- Humor (geek is funny)
- Linux
- Marketing
- Microsoft
- Open source software
- Pimp that App (case studies, tips, tricks, tutorials, or opinion)
- Politics (active and apathetic)
- Programming (mainly Ruby & Co. — possibly C#, Lisp, Erlang, etc.)
- Stranger than Fiction (truth be told, geeky situations are weird and funny)
- WordPress (development, customization, plug-ins, etc.)
- Your Ideas (if it’s geek, or plain good, we’ll post it)
Increase your reach. Enhance your image. Be flagrantly geeky.
And get some link-backs all from the comfort of your cube.
Note: Think of this as an open-source blog. Contribution should make you feel good. 
Also, I’m looking for someone (preferably one other person) to build a Rails application with. It will be a gift to the community as well — and if it makes any cheese, we’ll donate it.
July 18th, 2008 — Asides, Community, Humor, Ruby on Rails, Stranger than Fiction
Well, tonight I was part of the magic, inevitable train-wreck that was Pradipta’s Rolodex. As one of the fated 416 Rails developers, I feel honored. I was highly entertained with the community response and the interesting social experiment that flowed naturally from the snafu. (Even a Twitter meme popped up — #pradipta.)
Thursday night never rocked so hard.
