tekArtist

From “GigaOM: How Not to End Up as an Anachronism“:

There are always seemingly good reasons to continue doing things the way they were done in the past, and transition always presents challenges. As ironic as it may be, we continue to see software applications deployed as a service but which fail to use any service-based infrastructure themselves. They are two basic reasons for this situation: Change of existing operational services is hard. So is changing people behavior.

One of the advantages of working for a startup is that there is no baggage to deal with, leaving you with great freedom of innovation.

On the other hand, vendor and infrastructure lock-in is something that we, as technologists, have all had to deal with in one form or another. The challenge is to develop an ability to spot nascent trends and innovations early on, so as to gage and potentially leverage them as they emerge, rather than miss the boat and be left behind.

I think I’m not too bad at what I do, but then again, there are people like Sylvain, Joe and Chris (to only name a few) who always help keeping me modest on this front.

Funny the pace plans can change at, isn’t it? I was all organized and looking forward to formally announce my return to the world of independent consulting when things started to take an even more interesting turn instead.

I am in fact very happy to announce that I have now officially joined the ranks of the Praized Media team.

Praized Media is a startup company working on a web-based application that will enable you to find and discover local places and merchants with help from people you can trust. It’s also a tool that will structure local conversations within blogs and a new platform for local search providers to generate leads from the untapped social media market.

I’ve been following Praized since mid-2007, when they really started to show up on my radar as a serious[ly fun] and innovative venture, oozing with potential, and backed by a winning trio of entrepreneurs: Sebastien Provencher, Sylvain Carle and Harry Wakefield. A fact which was only reinforced when Garage Technology Ventures decided to fund the company last September.

I’ve been given the opportunity to increasingly involve myself in the company as a consultant since last December. The way things were evolving, I could not longer deny the clear fact that this is a project I want to be an integral part of. Something I can unequivocally see myself focusing on, even providing segues into some of involvements in the web and open source communities.

Luckily for me, the feeling seemed to be mutual and today marked my first day on staff. Suffice to say, I’m sporting a mile long smile about it all.

Praized is currently in stealth-mode, so although I can’t say much more, I can definitely hint that great things are coming! And with the people already on board, I’m in for a fun ride, striving to keep up with and help them in their efforts.

Thanks for the opportunity, team! But shame on you though. Now I’ll have to can that site I worked on for my consulting biz’… ;-p

From: “Kodak: A Thousand Nerds - TechTalk”

Compressed-graphite field plotter:
This example of inscriptive technology is a dactylically manipulated lignin/cellulose-encased crystalline carbon allotrope allowing shear force deposition for semiotic and representational modification of planar compressed-cellulose substrates.

I dare you to think of what the device might be before checking the answer out.

See “BMX Corey Martinez Session Federal“.

Note: The whole video is great, but the amazing stuff starts about half-way into it (~2 min.).

I’ve been stopping myself from buying another BMX for years, thinking “bald dude + trick bike = not so cool”, but seeing stuff like this just makes me think “Hey, I’ve got kids, don’t I?”.

Gotta show them how to not get hurt, right? Right? Riiiight!

Worked for skateboarding and snowboarding, after all. :p

From “Platform Internationalization“:

… we have a quick way for applications to integrate with users in new locales. We are now sending a param “fb_sig_locale” to all canvas pages that signals the locale set for the visiting user. Feel free to use this to begin localizing.

Good thing to know, since Facebook is now available in Spanish, with French and German to come shortly.