Category: Web work

These days, most of my work is very related to the online world. Building web sites, reviewing web applications, integrating with web services, coordinating people who are far away from each other, etc. Whenever I find a new tool or service or an innovative, interesting idea about working online, I share it in this category.

An Analysis of Foursquare’s Popularity After Removing Check-Ins

Junkyard Sam runs a quick “Analysis of Foursquare’s Popularity After Removing Check-Ins“.  Very well pointed out.  The split of Foursquare with Swarm was a mistake.  As a constant user of the app I felt bad about it.  I still use Swarm occasionally.  And I can’t remember the last time I loaded Foursquare.  I wish they’d merge them back together.  That was fun.

foursquare

GitHub announcing git large file storage

An exciting announcement comes from GitHub yet again – Large File System for git.   The large files problem has been affecting quite a few teams that I’ve been a part of.  It’s nice to see both an open source solution to the problem and a commercially supported service for the busy folk.

git lfs

9 Squares – 3 second animated GIFs from 9 designers

9 Squares – An international collaboration of 9 different designer/animators. Each designer creates an abstract, 350px, 3 second animated square to make up a single GIF loop, from a 4-colour palette. Just for fun. Twice a month. Probably.

9 squares

Replacing Instagram plugin

WP Instagram Digest out. DsgnWrks Instagram Importer in. The old plugin was working more or less fine, but it lacked a bit in customization and in support of the somewhat newer WordPress features.  After stumbling upon this blog post, I decided it was time to try something new.

Some of the reasons for the replacement:

  • Import each individual Instagram photo separately, rather than a gallery.  Galleries are complicated, and often doesn’t look too good, especially with narrow WordPress themes, like the one I’m using now.
  • Customize title and content of the post.  The new plugin supports Instagram filters (which I won’t use) and locations (which I will).
  • Hashtag handling – the new plugin can strip off hashtags from post titles and content, and, instead use them as tags and or categories.
  • Support for post types – having them now as Image post type makes more sense (I’ve also converted all the previous posts too).

What did Billion Dollar Companies Look Like at the Series A?

Here is an interesting look at some of the well-known companies – What did Billion Dollar Companies Look Like at the Series A?

billion dollar startups

The article gets into some of the common criteria, which I’ll briefly list here:

  1. Easy-to-Dismiss Ideas
  2. Competitive Markets
  3. Reinventing Existing Consumer Behavior
  4. Untested Founders
  5. Zero Monetization