where art thou?

Wau, that was quite a bit since I posted for the last time. I guess saying that I was busy is probably a lame excuse. However, I am not quite sure anymore what to think about the advice of people like Chad Folwer. In his otherwise very entertaining book "My Job Went to India" he recommends amongst other things to:

• 'Let your voice be heard' - meaning write a blog
• 'Release your code' - meaning contribute to open source
• 'Practise, Practise, Practise' - by for example participating in Top Coder competitions

All these things make perfect sense, but put them on top of a (at least) 40 hours working week, a girlfriend and a quite time consuming hobby like skydiving and you soon wish the day would have 48 hours :)

I learned quickly I just had do one thing at the time and for the last couple of months I decided to work on point two of the above list. So I got involved into Hibernate Search which combines two great Java technologies, namely Hibernate and the search engine Lucene. To be honest my contributions were rather modest, but nevertheless I am proud of the fact that Hibernate Search just a couple of days ago released its first 'GA' release. If you want to know more have a look at this article on The Server Side. If you are even more interested have a look the blog No Relation To...

I am not sure where this all is leading me, but right now I am just happy that I finally wrote again a few lines :)

--Hardy

Some reasons behind the success of Facebook

It is time to write some about facebook - the fastest growing social networking site right now. I have been using it for several weeks now that many of my friends in sweden has started using it. It started out as a networking site for college students but has opened up for anyone lately. In August it had some 19 million unique visitors compared to the 60 million accessing myspace. [according to this article] So why is facebook such a success? I have been using it for some weeks now and here is some reasons I see. [1. it really looks good] So what is the secret behind facebooks success? Compared to myspace it is really good looking. But myspace may be one of the worst looking web apps there is out there. [2. anyone can extend it] Ok - maybe not anyone but anyone with some skill in HTML can extend it which has resulted in a multitude of good, not-so-good and really bad applications for the platform. With this kind of extensibility it really is a platform. Some might call it a framework. Read more in the developer wiki. The business counterpart of facebook - LinkedIn - announced in June that they will release an API as well. This is surely made to counter facebook. [3. it is addictive] As ypulse notices there are concerns about possible negative effects on productivity. But new things are addictive for a while and then it turns out if they are useful. If so people continue to use them because they are needed - if not - they die. [4. anyone can extend it revisited] Another cool thing with the extensibility is that existing social networking sites like del.icio.us, ilike, last.fm, flickr, flixster and so on are adding facebook integration. This may be the biggest reason of the success of facebook - you can use it as it is and you can access and alter your 3 other favorite social networking sites. And your friend can see your web presence in one place.

Geocaching - a great way to get outdoors

I just have to tell you a little about my new hobby. I share it with my family and a couple of coworkers. It is called geocaching. People hide caches (most often small boxes with random content) and post their coordinates to an internet site where anyone can pick them up and go hunting. We bought a Magellan GPS 2 weeks ago and have found 13 caches this far. Today we found a travel bug and a geocoin - these are trackable items that people send on journeys. The travel bug started its trip in Australia heading for England. We pick it up at one place and drop it off at some other place that is hopefully closer to its destination. It is really a simple game and might appear a bit childish or nerdy but its a fun way to get outdoors and who cares anyway.... Check it out at geocaching.com. I found this little piece about the history of geocaching while browsing a bit...