Well, it was a fun ride; I’ve moved on from Lolapps, and as of this posting, a week from starting a new gig at the big G (really, that’s Google, not “grad school” as someone had guessed…). The experience has been enormously educational:
- working for a startup since its infancy;
- growing the company in scope and size;
- building apps on top of a rapidly iterating and emerging platform in the Facebook App ecosystem;
I’d easily recommend any aspiring entrepreneurs, engineers, or web-savvy netizens to try their hands on similar opportunities. That said, after having fought the battles and learned the lessons for the better part of two years, I realized it was time for me to bow out of the system and return to more traditional software products.
Here’s why.
Literacy used to be a big deal. That is, not illiteracy; I’m talking about the number of people who could not read or write in the general populous. Nowadays, this problem has largely been eradicated from 1st and 2nd world countries, though admittedly it’s still an issue in the 3rd world.
It’s not just about reading a newspaper or writing a report, but more on the quality of said literature. So much of “knowledge work” present in current jobs require some degree of writing, that schools have continued to emphasize the skill, testing it with the likes of essay questions in entrance exams (i.e., SAT’s and GRE’s). And they barely started teaching us how to type properly 15 years ago, though I’d imagine general computer skills and speed typing ought to be a part of the core curriculum by now.
Can we get some love for programming too?
It’s been an Apple-tastic year of hardware for me, as I added a good amount of Job-sean computing power:
- Starting work at LOLapps, I asked for a behemoth of a laptop, the 17″ Macbook Pro. It turns out web development work is well-suited for the mac.
- I wanted a home media server; the Mac Mini made sense given its sexy form factor and reasonable price.
- The iPhone 3GS was a natural upgrade from the OG iPhone.
- And I just got another Macbook Pro for personal use.
Am I just another inductee into the Apple cult?
I was going to type up a short post on some rather badly taken pictures of my new computer parts; I upgraded my computer recently, and a few friends asked for specs and pics:
It was a long-overdue upgrade; I have a fairly recent graphics card, but coupled with a CPU four years young, the card’s graphical prowess had been going to waste. With four cores and more RAM, this machine’s has been making Vista 64-bit fly.
As a matter of fact, it was surprisingly easy to put the parts together, and every time I build a box it seems like the manufacturers take the time to put in additional labels or helpful hinges to make the process as simple as possible. If only they’d stop making new standards on connectors every few years to force customers to buy adapters or shiny new gadgets.
You’d think that software – especially free software – would avoid these hardware follies.
I like my PS3. Despite its high asking price and insistence on the best audio and video equipment, there’s a lot of value packed inside that giant black box of immovable shiny metal. It’s too bad that in these trouble times, the machine is completely unattractive to customers’ wallets.
Despite the shoddy sales, Sony finally realized – in beta form – one of the cornerstones of their online strategy. The virtual microtransactive land of Playstation Home is a chatroom, game extension, and virtual avatar system, all rolled into one tidy world.
And it’s completely sterile.
