Jeffrey McManus

The New Thing

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Entries Tagged as 'Web/Tech'

The Great Yahoo! Developer Experiment is Over

August 17th, 2010 · 1 Comment · 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 [...]

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My Contact Info

July 8th, 2010 · No Comments · 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 [...]

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Updated VPS Hosting Price Comparison (June 2010)

June 16th, 2010 · 4 Comments · 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 [...]

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Soon You People Will Be Calling Me Master

June 2nd, 2010 · No Comments · 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 [...]

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In Which I Do Various Interesting Things with Various Fine Universities

March 5th, 2010 · No Comments · Web/Tech, Work

In the last six months I’ve been doing a few things with a number of universities:

I’ve been teaching a web design and management course for University of Victoria.
I just started teaching a similar course on web development for Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Both of the classes I’m teaching are online which makes the [...]

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Cities Starting to Collaborate on Open Data Initiatives

February 23rd, 2010 · No Comments · Platforms, Web/Tech

I’ve been keeping an eyeball on open data initiatives in local government for a while now, and as I’ve mentioned here we advised our consulting client BART on their open data initiative last year.
I just noticed that the upcoming San Francisco Open311 initiative is planning to coordinate its efforts with a similar initiative underway in [...]

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Price Points for VPS Hosting Services

February 20th, 2010 · 5 Comments · Virtualization, Web/Tech

Over the past few years I’ve done a few posts highlighting the differences between various virtual hosting services, including Slicehost (which we use today and are happy with) and Amazon EC2 (which we’ve used on behalf of consulting clients and also like quite a bit). But as more virtual hosting products with different price points [...]

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Why Location-Based Systems Will Have No Effect On Crime

February 18th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Collaboration, Content, Community, Web/Tech

I’ve been watching the reaction to this service that uses the Foursquare API to tell the world when someone isn’t home, with the implication that criminals will be firing up their expensive laptops to go find people to rip off. This is nonsense, and it’s kind of surprising that it’s gotten so much attention. I’m [...]

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Skype Will Stop Evaporating Its Customers’ Money

January 13th, 2010 · No Comments · School of Customer Service, Web/Tech

In March 2007 I kvetched about how difficult it was to pay Skype online, and about how crooked it seemed that the money you put in your Skype account vanishes after six months.
Well, it looks like somebody agreed with me, filed a class-action lawsuit, and won. Skype credits will no longer expire after six months, [...]

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Yahoo Pulls Plug on Shopping API

January 12th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Platforms, Web/Tech, Work, Yahoo

I’ve been getting a few pings from folks regarding Yahoo’s plans to transition its Shopping property to a third party. My team at Yahoo launched the Shopping API in August 2005 (although I don’t work for Yahoo anymore so I can’t provide insider answers on what’s going on here).
Since the new partner service (PriceGrabber) apparently [...]

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