I can’t remember the last time the sunsetting of an online service bugged me all that much. These days there are so many alternatives out there that why give a rip? I guess there aren’t a ton of things I’m absolutely married to. One key exception to that rule those are some of the Google Apps. Things like Gmail, Google Docs, and yes, Reader are apps that I use every day and have made a part of my daily workflow for so long now that it’s hard to imagine an alternative. And today was a massive wake up call as Google announced they’ll be shutting down the service on July 1st. - Read More -
March 13, 2013
Google Reader’s shutdown is a serious wake up call
March 12, 2013
The Problem with DEFCAD
Cody Wilson, a self-described “crypto-anarchist” (sweet jesus here we go) and founder of Defense Distributed, the group that made news last year for 3D printing gun parts is back in the limelight for a new project to build an alternative to Thingiverse to house illicit 3D models that are usually pulled from other websites. The new site is called DEFCAD and promises to open source ALL THE THINGS while drawing a line in the sand when it comes to 3D models and copyright/IP infringement. Let me say this from the outset: I agree that a site like DEFCAD needs to exist. I also believe DEFCAD and Cody Wilson are doing a lot of harm to the 3D printing community and wish they’d stop insisting on misrepresenting that community. - Read More -
March 10, 2013
Hacking the SodaStream
A few months back I took home the SodaStream we had in the office since we hadn’t been using it and my wife and I enjoy soda. I figured we’d play around with it to see if it’s really cost effective to use one. I’ve learned quite a bit about their ecosystem in the past few months and the numbers are really interesting. So this post will break down just how expensive the SodaStream can be compared to just buying soda outright, but I’ll also talk about some changes we’ve made to save money. - Read More -
March 1, 2013
Imagining an Incubator Program
I do some of my best work on the weekend. That’s not to say that DTLT isn’t a great place to work or that we don’t get a lot done during the week. In fact I’m sure my wife has wished on more than one occasion that I’d leave my work there and not be glued to the laptop so much on evenings and weekends. But the reality is that the work I do during the day is often very different from the work I feel free to do on the weekend. And it’s got me thinking and wondering what it would look like to flip some of that. - Read More -
February 23, 2013
Dropping Dropbox
Ever since we replaced the built-in app installer in Plesk that we use for the Domain of One’s Own hosting panel with Installatron there’s one piece of software I’ve been meaning to play around with, ownCloud. The elevator pitch is that ownCloud installs on your hosted space and functions exactly like Dropbox (including desktop and mobile apps) for file sharing and storage. But in reality there a lot more to it than that, hence this post. - Read More -
