Just Win, Baby

parislemon:

The biggest challenge I faced as a tech blogger was a simple one: motivation. By that, I don’t mean that it was hard to write — it never was. But towards the end, it was getting hard to get excited to write on a daily basis. I needed to be driven. That’s when I’m at my best.

Tech blogging is a game. Most of those still doing it probably won’t admit it, but it is. That’s the only way you can think about it if you aim to be the best. Competition pushes everyone. With blogging, as with all things, you have to be in it to win it.

Now, there are several ways to play this game. And there are different standards of winning. At first, when I was a no-name blogger writing on my own, my goal was simply to get recognized. When I achieved that, my goal had to switch. So it became writing the best headlines. Then it became being more prolific than anyone else. Then it was getting to the top of Google News. Then it was owning certain areas of coverage (location, etc). Then it was writing long “thought” pieces while retaining readership. 

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marsbot:

10/11/11 Just another Tuesday in the office 

Rest In Peace, Dennis Ritchie

didip:

Man, this past weeks have been such a downer. Dennis Ritchie, the co-creator of C and Unix has passed away (1941-2011).

# include <stdio.h>

int main()

{

    printf(“Thank you so much for creating C and Unix.”);

    return 1;

}

Incenives for building Instaright

It’s been almost one year since, I’ve developed early version of Instaright - Instapaper addon for Firefox.

What I was thinking at moment? Basically, I was trying to solve problem I had using Instapaper Bookmarklet. Sometimes, I new that I want to bookmark link without visiting it, just based on link or based on context where link is located. Quote from AMO site:

This addon was created from frustration created by existing Instapaper Bookmarklet , which does not allow you bookmark link without visiting it. And I hate clicking …

Incentives are same as for dozen on entrepreneurs starting their own business. Except, this is not business since addon rely on existing product and its growth. Instaright as product holds very small cap of market, but has tremendous opportunity.

If someone asked me if I would be on same project one year after, I would hardly believe it. After all, it is just a pet project that was squeezed  between daywork and other projects. Just.

As product have been developing and gaining more features, incent for maintaining addon have changed. Usage analytics and stats have been run on daily/weekly basis ( check out instaright.appspot.com/stats) and learning from those date pushed addon in different direction - real time updates, which have provided need for realtime bookmarking service.

One features that can find appliance in many use cases are XMPP updated via chat. More about it in next post.