Columns

The Future Of Newspapers

My Dad is a journalist. Since a young age, I was exposed to typewriters, printing presses and the smell of fresh ink. Back in the early 70’s, newspaper production was a difficult cycle that took a lot of effort and manual labor.

What hasn’t changed from those years is the need for professional, thought-provoking and unique content. Providing this content should be the focus of the newspaper industry.

The Possibility Of An Open Source Democracy

Imagine you are in the future. You wake up, get some coffee and sit down on your network appliance. You have an energy bill to review.

You open the summarized description of the bill, read how it could affect your country’s diplomatic relations, but how it would also be good for the economy. You browse what other citizen’s comments are. Finally you make up your mind. You press the “approve” button and immediately watch a graph of what the rest of the country thought. You dress up and go to work.

Welcome to the open source democracy.

The Internet Connects People Globally. So Should Your Application.

According to Internet World Stats there are roughly 248 Million Internet users in the US, but that only accounts to 17% of the estimated 1.4 Billion Internet users worldwide. Latin America has roughly 140 Million Internet users. China alone has 253 Million users.

In terms of monetization and traffic it’s immediately apparent why it makes sense to release your site with a global focus. Here’s the how and the why.

Don’t Wait Any Longer: End Procrastination Now!

We’ve all been there. You come in to the office early. You scan the huge list of pending items to complete today. There’s no way you’ll be able to deliver them all on time. You say to yourself “Let me read some blogs or see what people are doing in Facebook. I’m sure I’ll get some ideas or relax to take on the monster pile.” Your co-worker taps you on the shoulder. “Wanna do lunch?”

Where did your morning go?

Television Is Finally Evolving. Or Is It?

It’s 2008, and we still haven’t figured out how to make televisions and the web talk to each other. Apple TV is a fiasco, and DVRs are stuck in their telcos. In this article I want to share some of my personal experiences and how frustrated I am with the state of online media in our living rooms

Got Chrome? (A Real Review Of Google’s Browser)

When I heard Google was coming out with a browser, I tell you, I couldn’t contain myself. I IM’d everyone in the office, and Twittered, FriendFeeded, Ping.fm’d, and while reading the transcript of the launch conference, salivating with primal anxiousness, I refreshed Google’s download page several, several, several times.

And then the download link appeared.

Fast forward to 30 days later and witness something that happens rarely. I’m still using it.

This Cloud Will Rain A Thousand Entrepreneurs

For entrepreneurs, the web is like a sky full of possibilites. With very little investment they can go to their basement, code every night for two weeks and come out with the next Facebook.

But guess what happens if their little project gets picked up by a major blog like Slashdot or ReadWriteWeb. The site’s shared-hosting server gets pounded by millions of requests, and all of a sudden there’s a huge problem: They need money to buy more servers and a cabinet in an expensive datacenter.

Let It Go, Twitter Is Not Going To Die

For the past few weeks there’s been talk of how Twitter is dead, how Twitter is going to die, or why Twitter must die. I think Twitter is just getting started.

Using Ning For An Established Community Site

After 10 years of custom development, I decided to re-launch my community site, Oyeme.com, using the Ning platform. Here are are some of the good things that this environment offers as well as some of the challenges I faced.