One of last year’s TechStars companies – Filtrbox – is hiring. They are looking for a Java + LAMP developer and a Flash/Flex/RIA developer. If you fit the bill and are looking for a gig in downtown Boulder with a great early stage company, drop ’em a note at jobs (at) filtrbox.com.
The parents of a close friend just had a direct lightning strike on their house. It immediately burned to the ground and everything was lost. The simple advice from my friend if this ever happens to you is “get out fast and not go back for anything that is not a human being.” She also suggested that you check your home insurance to make sure you are covered for this.
Having just finished reading George Soros’s latest book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crash of 2008 and What It Means my brain is now full of his theories around reflexivity. I have always instinctively agreed with Soros’s philosophy even though I find it incredibly difficult and chewy to work my way through (but that’s true of all philosophy for me.) I’m a great fan of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which, according to my friend Wikipedia, “is the statement that locating a particle in a small region of space makes the velocity of the particle uncertain; and conversely, that measuring the velocity of a particle precisely makes the position uncertain.” Wikipedia suggests that this is often conflated with the Observer Effect (when you observe a phenomenon, you change it), but I think the intersection of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Soros’s Theory of Reflexivity reduce nicely in my brain to the Observer Effect. ...
I heard a “superb” cynical statement today. I have no idea if it is factually correct, have no data (empirical or anecdotal) to support it, but it is such a great potential example of unintended consequences that I thought it was worth putting out there. The statement was “While hybrid vehicles make us feel better, they actually do more harm than good because they result in more driving.” The follow up thought is that for hybrid cars to really work (at today’s efficiency levels), people still need to modify their behavior and drive less (e.g. relying on public transportation or carpooling.) However, once you’ve bought a hybrid, you suddenly feel like you are doing your part and subsequently drive more! This additional driving adds up across the system and increases total system fuel (and other resource) consumption. ...
I’ve been keeping my eyes out for one of these. I hope my friends at Microsoft have been also. Apparently the New South Wales Department of Education and Training (that would be Australia) just dumped Microsoft Outlook/Exchange in favor of Gmail. Before you say “ho hum – it’s only Australia” or “it’s not enterprise – it’s only academia”, let’s look at the numbers. 1.3m seats Previous cost to implement Outlook/Exchange: $33m ($AU) over three years New cost to implement Gmail: $9m ($AU) over three years Outlook/Exchange storage/mailbox: 35MB Gmail storage/mailbox: 6GB Weekly emails sent: over 300k That’s a non-trivial install. (via TechCrunch )
This is a public service announcement for all great software developers in the Boulder / Denver area that are bored and restless at their existing job. Earlier this year, along First Round Capital and SoftTechVC , we funded a new company called Gnip . They’ve added a few people to their team in Boulder and are now looking for a few System Architect / Senior Software Engineers . If you fit the description, drop them an email .
If you are a software engineer at Xilinx that is caught in the current layoff, please drop me an email with your resume. Several of the companies I’m involved in locally – including Rally Software and Gnip – are actively hiring experienced software engineers.
Some great images are coming in already in response to my Request For Images For A Presentation post. I couldn’t resist putting this one up on the heals of the Microsoft / Yahoo! drama. If you don’t get it – well – I can’t help you. (Thanks Ray)
I love a good rant. Especially about software. Joel is one of the best ranters out there – when he gets going there is no stopping him. Last week’s rant was titled Architecture astronauts take over . He takes Microsoft Live Mesh to task and reminds us of the legacy of Hailstorm, Groove, Lotus Notes, and – well – the past. And he explains why synchronization is not the killer app. Well – it sort of it – as long as we don’t realize it’s happening. But then again, the real problem is that there just aren’t enough programmers in the US anymore. ...
Perfect.