Jeffrey McManus

The New Thing

Jeffrey McManus header image 1

Our New Product: CodeLesson

August 24th, 2010 · CodeLesson, Collaboration, Content, Community, Work

CodeLesson LogoJust realized I haven’t made mention of our new product CodeLesson here yet (if you’re a Twitter or Facebook follower this will probably be old hat to you). CodeLesson is a place to take instructor-led online training courses. We’re doing technology courses today ’cause that’s mostly what we know, but later on we’ll be doing other types of courses and open up what we’re doing to anyone who wants to teach.

My wonderful wife Carole (who has a Master’s in education) is advising us, and our partner for this project is the indefatigable Ernie Hsiung, late of Yahoo and Ning, who has been working with us on some consulting projects in the last few months and is a really splendid chap.

We have several courses outlined on the site right now, two of which are taking place soon:

Web Programming with PHP (starts September 7). This is a very gentle introduction to Web programming for anyone with a good handle on HTML and CSS. It’s a twelve-week course which will be taught by me. The curriculum was also developed by me in cooperation with the University of Victoria (I’ve been teaching for them for a year now).

Introduction to Web Publishing with WordPress (starts September 20). This class is short (five weeks) and not super technical (no programming). The objective is to help you run your own Web site using the free, open-source WordPress content system. You start with a clean Web server and get all the information you need to set up, configure, work with and customize WordPress.

Online learning is a big deal in the US right now; with the University of California’s move to establish an all-online bachelor’s degree program, it’s safe to say that online learning is approaching a tipping point. But universities and private trade schools have a number of institutional barriers to producing consistently good online courses: they’re constrained by the calendar (they can’t vary the duration of a course because they’re on a semester/quarter schedule), they only teach what their professors happen to know, they innovate at the sluggish pace of a university bureaucracy, there’s a bias toward courses that will support the notion of an expensive campus and against courses that are practical and current, there’s no incentive or infrastructure for instructors to share course content, and a lot of departments and instructors just aren’t attuned to giving their curricula online (many of them actually perceive online learning as a threat). CodeLesson aims to fix those and many other problems by providing a net-native learning experience and eventually opening the experience up to anyone with the desire to teach and learn.

Are there online courses you’d like to take that we haven’t thought of yet? Do you have any questions about the format or content of an online course? Let me know in the comments!

→ No CommentsTags:

The Great Yahoo! Developer Experiment is Over

August 17th, 2010 · Programming, Web/Tech, Yahoo

From Yahoo! comes word that a number of popular developer products, including the MyBlogLog APIs as well as Maps and Local APIs, are soon to be shut down.

The announcement is as tone-deaf as it is disingenuous; it starts by saying that Yahoo’s “commitment is unwavering” and then goes on to vaguely enumerate the number of products they’re eliminating. (Which begs the question: What does “unwavering” actually mean to Yahoo? If your surgeon has an “unwavering” commitment to your health, is it OK for her to occasionally perform surgery without anesthesia? How much am I permitted to waver and still be able to say that I’m unwavering? Could it be possible that to Yahoo, “unwavering” actually means the opposite of what everyone else in the world thinks it means?)

This is a big problem because for every API that is taken away, applications will break. It’s a bigger problem for Yahoo because the more thoughtlessly they manage their platform, the more difficult it will be for anyone to trust them in the future.

When I went to work for Yahoo in 2005 I was given the mission of opening the company to third-party innovation through Web services and other developer products, to create a platform that would endure for the ages, enabling developers to create amazing new applications (and, hopefully, accelerate Yahoo’s business). It’s become clear to me now that this was really just a poorly-conceived experiment, not a serious attempt at creating a platform, and I say this not as an ex-Yahoo employee, but as someone who advises businesses on platform integration today. In other words, my reaction to this is professional, not personal.

So my professional advice for prospective platform providers is to do whatever you can to avoid emulating Yahoo. For developers and companies who are thinking about doing any kind of integration with Yahoo, do whatever you can avoid them until the company’s commitment to providing an open platform is more clear. From a developer and platform perspective, Yahoo is unsafe at any speed.

→ 1 CommentTags:

Singing is Nice

July 14th, 2010 · Music, The Funny

→ 2 CommentsTags:

My Contact Info

July 8th, 2010 · Web/Tech

How cool is this, I just discovered the coolness that is qrcodes and stuck my contact info in one:

If you have a mobile phone with a barcode scanning app you can use it to read this right off the screen and it’ll plop all my contact info into your contacts. Super cool! I just tested this with ShopSavvy for Android but I’m sure it’ll work with other barcode scanning apps as well.

→ No CommentsTags:

Let’s Dance To Joy Division

June 29th, 2010 · Music

With the Wombats.

→ No CommentsTags:

Updated VPS Hosting Price Comparison (June 2010)

June 16th, 2010 · Virtualization, Web/Tech

Linode announced that they’re increasing the amount of RAM by a lot (like 40%) on all of their virtual server products today. I’ve been watching pricing for a few of these services for about a year now and I’ve made a few posts comparing pricing. Today, for most servers under 8GB of RAM, Linode is a better value among the services we’re tracking. Here are the details:

RAM (MB)HD (GB)Bandwidth (GB)Price/MonthCost/RAMNotes
Amazon EC2 Large76808501024248.880.0324
Amazon EC2 Extra Large1536016901024497.760.0324
Amazon EC2 Small1740.8160102462.220.0357Maybe buy Linode 1536 instead
Linode 5125121620019.950.0390Best value for this size
Linode 7687682430029.950.0390Best value for this size
Linode 102410243240039.950.0390Best value for this size
Linode 153615364860059.950.0390Best value for this size
Linode 204820486480079.950.0390Best value for this size
Linode 409640961281600159.950.0391Best value for this size
Slicehost 15.5GB158726202500800.000.0504Buy Amazon EC2 Extra Large instead
Slicehost 8GB81923202500450.000.0549Buy Amazon EC2 Large instead
Slicehost 4GB40961602500250.000.0610Buy Linode 4096 instead
Slicehost 3GB30721201800190.000.0618Buy Linode 4096 instead
Slicehost 2GB2048801200130.000.0635Buy Linode 2048 instead
Slicehost 7687683045049.000.0638Buy Linode 768 instead
Slicehost 3843841522525.000.0651Buy Linode 512 instead
Slicehost 1.5GB153660900100.000.0651Buy Amazon EC2 Small instead
Slicehost 1GB10244060070.000.0684Buy Linode 1024 instead
Slicehost 5125122030038.000.0742Buy Linode 512 instead
Slicehost 2562561015020.000.0781Buy Linode 512 instead

The chart is sorted according to best value, defined in terms of cost per megabyte of RAM per month.

This time rather than placing the data in a chart like I did last time, I calculated it in a spreadsheet so I could come up with a total cost per megabyte of RAM per month. I also included pointers to which product is the better value choice at each price point, so, for example, if you’re thinking about getting the smallest Slicehost machine, you’d actually be better off with a Linode 512, which provides twice the RAM for $0.05 less per month.

As in the past, I’ve stacked up two VPS hosting providers (Linode and Slicehost) against Amazon EC2. (I didn’t do Rackspace Cloud this time because I have yet to hear much about the reputation of that service, and they charge for bandwidth and storage separately so it’s more difficult to do an apples-to-apples comparison. Amazon EC2 charges for bandwidth/storage separately, too, but they provide a handy calculator for that and I couldn’t find anything comparable for Rackspace. Also, Slicehost is owned by Rackspace now.)

As in the past, everyone’s battling for supremacy at the low end but Amazon is still a better choice if you a) need a larger machine, b) need a guaranteed level of CPU, or c) need some of Amazon’s programmability features such as the ability to spin up new virtual machines automatically or if you’re going to use their automatic load balancing feature.

I’d been thinking about using Linode for a while and today’s pricing changes compelled me to sign up for an account for a few upcoming projects we’re working on. So far, so good — I like that Linode’s control panel is a little more granular than Slicehost’s, although I was initially tripped up by the fact that they don’t automatically boot a new instance for your when you provision it.

It’ll be interesting to see what Slicehost does in terms of pricing now, since they haven’t done anything significant there in the year since I’ve been paying close attention to these products.

→ 4 CommentsTags:

Call It The Dead Billionaire’s Tax

June 9th, 2010 · News, Politics

Handbook for the recently deceased

From the NY Times comes this tale of a recently-deceased billionaire, Dan L. Duncan, whose estate will be the first ever billion-dollar estate in the U.S. to pass to his heirs 100% tax-free.

This situation is the bastard child of the Bush-era tax “reform” in which the estate tax was characterized as a “death tax” and repealed. The repeal was rolled back, but it won’t take effect until next year, which means that estates of anyone who kicks off in 2010 will go to the heirs tax-free.

Well played, rich kids!

This is the kind of issue that drives Democrats crazy. Conservatives put forth these policies which are obviously intended to help big businesses and people in top income brackets, label it “freedom” or whatever, and then Democratic leaders don’t have the stones to counter it rhetorically.

There’s certainly nothing unfair about a tax on dead multi-millionaires, which is what the “death tax” actually is. The estate tax has been part of U.S. tax policy for a hundred years, it only affects a tiny percentage of estates, and it has a clear social objective — to help prevent dynastic concentrations of wealth.

The main argument of conservatives against the estate tax is that it’s “double taxation” (taxing someone on money that’s already been subject to an income tax) and that double taxation is somehow wrong. But this argument, like many principles of “fiscal conservatism,” is based on a deceit. You’re already subjected to “double taxation” on every dollar you earn and every dollar you spend (money that’s subject to income tax is also subject to sales tax, excise taxes, cell phone luxury taxes, etc.). So why is the tax on someone who’s already dead a particular problem? The answer undoubtedly lies in the fact that the estate tax only affects multi-millionaires, and in the conservative cosmology, those are the ones who need to be protected most.

Link: Estate Tax Dormant, Billionaire’s Bequest Is Tax-Free – NYTimes.com.

→ 1 CommentTags:

Soon You People Will Be Calling Me Master

June 2nd, 2010 · School, Web/Tech

Today I got word that I’ve been formally admitted to the Master’s program in Computer Science at Colorado State University.

This program leads to the Master of Computer Science degree, which is a terminal, professional degree (as opposed to a research-oriented degree). Think of what I’m doing as the geek analog to an MBA.

I’ve actually been taking courses in the program since last year (which they helpfully allow students to do before they’ve been formally admitted to the program). Being able to take courses on a trial basis was vital for me since it helped verify that the material is at a level I can handle, although I’m carefully strategizing to avoid a few courses in the curriculum that involve a lot of crazy higher math. I’m a somewhat competent algebraist, but my last formal math course was in tenth grade.

The most common reaction I’ve gotten to this was “Why do you need to take more computer courses? You teach computer courses. You’re like mister software.” The truth of it is that there’s always more to learn no matter how much of a ninja you are (which is one reason why I love the field), but there’s a lot of academic CS I didn’t get in my undergrad years since I only took a few CS courses as electives (my undergraduate degree is in English). And although I’ve been doing technology teaching in various corporate settings since I was in my 20s, I want to open the door to potentially do more kinds of teaching later in my career, and having a Master’s would be a prerequisite for some of that.

A note to panicked clients and co-workers: None of this will change my work status or my city of residence; the Colorado State MCS program is all done online and I will be doing all of my coursework in my off-hours, mostly in my underpants. My plan is to progress through the program as slowly as humanly possible, taking a single course per semester until my planned completion in May 2013.

→ No CommentsTags:

Unfortunate and Telling Quotes from Today’s Debate on Repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

May 27th, 2010 · Politics

Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the No. 3 Republican in the House, accused Democrats of trying to use the military “to advance a liberal social agenda” and demanded that Congress “put its priorities in order.”

Shutting down a policy that has eliminated more than 10,000 uniformed solidiers should be a pretty high priority, but maybe the Republicans are more interested in furthering their social bigotry agenda than their national defense agenda.

“We are dissing the troops, that is what we are doing,” said Representative Howard P. McKeon of California, senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee.

Sorry, bro, but the real “diss” was when you sent the military into Iraq.

via Senate Panel Votes to Repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Policy – NYTimes.com.

→ 1 CommentTags:

Figure Out How To Talk To Developers

April 11th, 2010 · Platforms

Some Twitter developers are worried, and even started a Twitter hashtag to discuss it, #unionoftwitterapps. But software developers who build on top of platforms have always experienced the same give and take, other developers say.

“There’s some misunderstanding around platforms,” Mr. Williams, also a Twitter founder, said in a recent interview before the storm blew through the blogosphere. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk to developers about this.”

Free advice for platform providers: Figure out how to talk to developers before you make your platform available.

via Evan Williams’s Message to Twitter Developers – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com.

→ No CommentsTags: