Family guy and web developer
A single device that can be used on the go as well as having the same functionality as a desktop computer when you dock it!
The Ubuntu phone marks a significant milestone that nobody else in the mobile business has managed to nail yet. It runs the same codebase as the rest of the Ubuntu family, meaning it can be docked and used as a real computer or synchronized with a slab and turned into a tablet.
— Convergence is key by Owened
The only answers that matter are dollars spent. People answer when they pay for something. That’s the only answer that really matters.
So put a price on it and put it up for sale. If people buy that’s a yes. Change the price. If people buy, that’s a yes. If people stop buying,
that’s a no. Crude? Maybe. But it’s real.— How to price something by 37 Signals
Having multiple social networks can be a real headache if you're trying to manage them all at once. When I created my App.net profile and made that my new home, I stopped posting to Twitter for a few months. Also I have only just re-created a LinkedIn account in the last few months. Recently I have stuck with posting only to one network, but with Twitter and LinkedIn sitting in hibernation, I thought it might be a good idea to use them. With the freelancing way of working now in full swing, I am toying with the idea of using Twitter and LinkedIn to share updates to my availability for contracts and interesting links from the web development world.
Using these networks to market myself as a freelancer is a great way of using these networks without me just abandoning them for one network. The truth is that these days people are rarely exclusive members of one single network. I know there is people who share all their updates across all networks, but I think that is counterproductive. This can take up a lot of your time, especially when you start getting replies from different people on different networks.
What I will be doing is continually posting to App.net anything that I wish, but for my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, I'll be sharing blog posts on freelancing, web development and availability as well as sharing interesting links on web development using Ruby and hopefully other languages. I'm getting the tools in place I need to make this happen, namely a Buffer account and perhaps some triggers setup on IFTTT if needed.
Hopefully this will result in more leads for freelancing work and also increase my reputation in these networks as a web developer who is passionate about what he does. We'll see how it goes.
The other week I read about a popular journaling app for the iPhone that allows you to populate your journal by aggregating your posts from your various social networks. I was saddened to hear that this was being touted as a selling point for journaling software. Here's why I don't see it as a benefit.
When you aggregate posts and actions from various social networks, you're effectively just pulling the random stuff that you throw out to the world on a daily basis. Often it's a spur of the moment thought or opinion. How many times have you posted publicly you were going to do something but didn't see it through? I've lost track myself. Promises of using different programming languages and frameworks have all been broken because that post that I made publicly is a spur of the moment action. Aggregating media is not a form of journaling because it pollutes your journal with whimsical statements and promises that are often written on the spur of the moment.
Journaling is the act of writing down your thoughts in private. Whether it's a digital journal or pen and paper, journaling is the act of organising your thoughts and putting them down so that you can reflect on it now and later. It's a log of your thoughts, opinions and actions. Your successes and failures. Sometimes you'll like what you write, sometimes you won't. When you start noticing trends in your journal entries, then you can start to take action.Ten journal entries in the same month about your wish to write a book say more about your passion and willingness to do this than a one off tweet on Twitter. It's these trends in your journal entries that let you identify what you want to do rather than what you would like to do.
Your journal is your life in the words that you write to yourself, not to the world.
Should you TDD your MVP?
This question came up on the Hacker News website a few days ago. Reading through the comments there was a very mixed response as what people preferred to do.
First let me describe a couple of things for readers of a non-programming persuasion. TDD (or test-driven development as its more commonly known) is a way of writing code. Essentially it boils down to writing a test for the code that we are about to write. This test fails until we implement the correct code to make it pass. The MVP mentioned here is a minimum viable product. This is the simplest implementation of a product that will deliver value.Got the acronyms sorted? Okay, let's crack on.
I have built a couple of MVP's with test-driven development. I have to say that using TDD to drive the product worked well for me. It gave me the confidence to ship the product once I knew it working. And that really for me is what an MVP is all about. Shipping the simplest thing that can work. We know it is working as we have the tests to prove it and from working code we can then be confident in shipping a product that provides value.
An MVP without tests is simply a throwaway application in my eyes. It's code that serves a short term purpose such as learning something new or proving a simple technique.Others might argue that this is exactly the point of a lean startup. To test an idea. However in order to test that idea for a product we need to have something that the product can offer the customer, and that needs to be value that the customer can see. Value that you can certify is working correctly.
Each to their own really, but I'll keep TDD'ing my MVPs in the meantime.
This year's theme was all set to be something else, but due to the fact I am currently trying to make it as a freelance web developer, I thought a change in the theme for the year would help my identify my goal for the year. So this year's theme is independence, but it's not just career independence. Let me fill you in.
My way of defining career independence is to be an independent developer. Simple. I want to ultimately pick and choose the work that I want to do in the future. I want to be independent of another company's goals and objectives and work towards my goals.
This is going to be a long term goal, that will require me putting in a lot of hours at the start. I'll be building products, open source applications and libraries and doing a lot of writing.The flip side of this is that I will be hopefully more financially independent. No-one can argue that times are hard for many of us, but I don't want to simply get by month to month working my ass off and doing a dreadful commute to play office politics.
I want to build products that solve problems and generate revenue.With a suite of products on the market, I'm hoping that at least one of these can generate enough revenue that will allow me to be more flexible in the work I do day to day.
It's a dream that many want, but very few take up. I've decided to simply put this out there. Then in a year's time, you can email me and say, "So Matthew, how did the whole independence thing go?". I know what I want the reply to be, but there's a lot of work ahead to get the right reply in place.
Let's see what 2013 brings for being independent.
I previously wrote about the importance of maintaining your professional network. Today we're going to talk about the same thing, except in the real world.
I'm not one for attending mass networking events. These events are good if you want to find new contacts or be introduced to someone for the first time, but for existing contacts I prefer a more focused meeting. One to one networking if you like.Let me tell you about my mate John.
We worked together about ten years ago for a software vendor specialising in risk management software for health organisations. I loved the job and I loved working with John. He frequently used mind mapping to discuss problems in our software and always provided a great service to our customers. When we were all made redundant, me and John decided to stay in touch.
Over the last decade, I've met up with John about every four months. When each of us are armed with a coffee and a cake, the conversations goes from family life to careers and technology. We talk about ideas for software products, interesting applications, risk management, decision tools and more. The majority of the conversations always falls back to ideas for risk management and decision tools for the web.
It's a great chance to catch up with a good friend, but it also gives me the chance to find out what's happening in his career, his contacts and whether they are any opportunities for career moves. It's times like this that I appreciate the one to one nature of conversation. The conversation is fast, detailed and always leads to an idea or two. No email, no messaging, no smoke signals. You can't file this meeting away for later like you would an email or message, and then forget about it. While networking through the digital world is necessary, so is meetings like this. Whether it's frequent or not, the chance to find out what's happening, discuss ideas and ventures can always lead to an opportunity to further your career or skills.
The next time you find someone on LinkedIn that you want to connect with, remember the people you currently have in your network. When was the last time you had a one to one meeting with someone who influences you?
