A man approaches a Zen Master and asks to be shown the path to enlightenment. The Master replies, “Okay, follow me,” stands up, and walks the man to a nearby river and into the water.

Without warning, the Master forces the man’s head under the water and holds it there as he struggles violently for his life, until he is nearly dead.

At last the Master pulls the man up, gasping for air, and says, “When you want to be enlightened as badly as you wanted to take your next breath just now, come back and see me.”

Really wanting something helps you overcome obstacles to get it.

TV Ads is even possible because television isn’t so old media anymore. The technology is there to let Google do what it does best: process data. Through information provided by set-top boxes from its partner Dish Network, Google lets TV advertisers target specific channels and shows, and identifies not only how many people saw their ads, but also the demographics of the audience.

And if you missed this a few months ago. Slate did a great video overview.  Its always fun to see stuff you work on in the press!

Most deleted scrobbles from last.fm.

Conclusion: People don’t want to admit they like Lady Gaga and Britney Spears.

Last.fm also released their Top 40 of 2009 and, more interestingly, released some raw data for people to play around with.  Analytics are fun and I’d love to see more companies make this kind of aggregate data available.

For example, it let me find this fun fact — Of the top 1000 artists on Last.fm, Lady Gaga received a whopping 3% of the 646 million playbacks.  I’m guessing that doesn’t even count the ones that people later decided to delete.

Its a mashup I wrote that tries to find interesting news based on Google Search Trends. It uses Yahoo! BOSS and the Twitter API and runs on Google App Engine.

Few things I learned:

• App Engine makes writing simple apps and rapid prototyping a breeze.
• Yahoo’s APIs are incredibly developer-friendly.
• Twitter spam-bots will find you even before you tell anyone about your account.

So far, it’s found some interesting articles and a whole lot of Tiger Woods gossip.   I guess that’s the sad reality of what people have been searching for over the past week.  Even cooler, it somehow got two retweets.

Follow it and let me know what you think…

I’m know there has been tons of stuff written about this, but when I read it, I was so skeptical that I thought all those authors were crazy.  But you know I’m not crazy.  So I’m going to tell you why its great.

Photo from hassi on Flickr.

Benefits of pair programming

Not convinced?  How come?  I already said it was awesome (and I put it in bold).  Here are some benefits –

1. It keeps you focused. If you’re anything like me, you probably have a tendency to drift when you hit a stopping point.  Maybe check some e-mail or read your favorite blog.  Not anymore.
2. It helps when you get stuck. Its easy to spend a lot of time trying to figure out something that you’re unfamiliar with.  It always helps to have someone to discuss it with without having to feel bad for interrupting your co-workers all the time.
3. It avoids stupid mistakes. Have you ever spent 30 frustrating minutes trying to figure out why your change isn’t showing up in the output, only to realize that you forgot to hit save?  Yes, yes, you have.  Your partner is likely to notice those things before you spend unnecessary time pulling your hair out.
4. It produces better code. It’s less tempting to take shortcuts, write unreadable code and  ”forget” to test things when you’re working with someone.
5. Its the best way to learn a new code base. The best way to get someone up to speed on a project is to have someone pair program with them.  They’ll spend less time digging around outdated documentation and more time contributing.  I’ve effectively pair programmed with people outside my team who knew absolutely nothing about the project coming in.
6. Its more fun. This one really depends on the people you’re working with, but its definitely a big upside.

How to set up a pair programming workstation

The set-up is really, really important.  Both people need equal access.  You’ll need:

• Two keyboards
• Two mice
• A long, straight desk (no weird angles)
• A giant monitor

Its key for each person to have their own keyboard and mouse so that no one is just sitting there passively watching the other person type.

How to pair program

Now that you’ve got a sweet workstation set up, its time to actually do it.  This part is easy, just start writing code.  Switching off can be a bit tricky at first, but soon it’ll become seamless.

If you’re using Test-Driven Development (writing a test before writing a feature), you could have one person write a test that fails, then have the other person make the test pass and write the next test.  Its an easy way to make sure you’re switching off regularly.

One of the big advantages is that its easier for something to do or fix something than to spend time explaining it.  Notice that something is spelled wrong?  Fix it, you have your own keyboard.  Have an idea for how to do something?  Just write it and let the code speak for itself, instead of trying to explain what you’re trying to do.  You can always delete or edit it as necessary.

Potential Downsides

1. It could take longer than two people working independently. This is true, but I’d argue only if both people know exactly what they’re doing.  More often than not, when you’re working on something new or complex, pair programming will be faster.
2. You could end up hating your co-worker after spending so much time with them. This is true too.  Definitely switch things up often to avoid this.

Love pair programming? Still not convinced?  Leave a comment.

Kids are coming out of school thinking, I want to start the next YouTube or Facebook. If a restaurant served more food than everybody else but lost money on every diner, would it be successful? No.
– Jason Fried

Having lots of users wont automatically generate revenue but it does indicate that you’ve got a useful product.  If something is useful, then you can probably make some money from it.  (Though its probably not as easy as slapping some ads on it and waiting for the checks to come in.)

You have to think about what makes the product useful (either to the user or an advertiser or another party).  If you’re looking to run a business, its probably okay to turn away some users in favor of converting the rest to customers.

Comment spammers seem to be clever people, here are three interesting patterns I’ve noticed to try to get past an approval system (these are all real examples from the past few days) –

Flattery

These comments will look something like:

Are you a professional journalist? You write very well.

or:

Thank you for this valuable post.  It changed my mind.

Who wouldn’t approve something like that?

Jokes

This is the latest form of comment spam that I’ve seen.  It looks like they’ve built up a large set of bad jokes like:

Did you hear about the cannibal who was expelled from school? He was buttering up his teacher.

or:

How you get down from an elephant? You don’t, you get down from ducks.

At least they make the process of approving comments more entertaining.

Irrelevant Insights

These comments are designed to be vague enough to be insightful in any situation:

Though Apple is expensive, its stocks rise quickly.

Mendenhall Glacier.  Glad I got to see one before they all melt away.

Lighthouse. Must be lonely out there.

Vancouver. I just discovered the “stitch” feature. (Apparently someone found this and posted it on a forum. The internet is awesome.)