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Source: http://spf13.com/post/index.xml

1. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Posts on spf13</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/</link><description>Recent content in Posts on spf13</description><generator>Hugo</generator><language>en-us</language><copyright>Copyright (c) 2008 - 2022, Steve Francia; all rights reserved.</copyright><lastBuildDate>Tue, 19 Aug 2025 17:01:34 -0400</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://spf13.com/post/index.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title>Cobra &amp; Viper Fortify Security as Part of GitHub Secure Open Source Fund</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/cobra-viper-fortify-security-as-part-of-github-secure-open-source-fund/</link><pubDate>Tue, 19 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/cobra-viper-fortify-security-as-part-of-github-secure-open-source-fund/</guid><description>&lt;p>I&amp;rsquo;ve spent most of my career working in New York City. Every morning, I&amp;rsquo;d walk past those towering skyscrapers, genuinely amazed at what humans can build together. The engineering, the coordination, the trust required. It&amp;rsquo;s breathtaking.&lt;/p>
2. &lt;p>What fascinates me most is the foundation. While everyone admires the gleaming towers, I think about the engineers who spent months planning what goes sixty feet underground. That invisible work makes everything else possible. No Instagram posts about foundation concrete. No TED talk talks about rebar placement.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>spf13 Google --></title><link>https://spf13.com/p/spf13-google--/</link><pubDate>Mon, 18 Jul 2022 16:49:39 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/spf13-google--/</guid><description>&lt;p>I’m leaving my role as the Product Lead for the Go Language at Google. I’m super proud of everything the Go team has accomplished in the last six years, and I&amp;rsquo;ve never been more excited for Go&amp;rsquo;s future. &lt;strong>Read on if you&amp;rsquo;re interested in what led me to my decision, what I&amp;rsquo;ll be doing next, and what I&amp;rsquo;ll miss about my time at Google.&lt;/strong>&lt;/p>
3. <h2 id="go-has-been-my-passion-for-the-past-10-years">Go has been my passion for the past 10 years</h2>
4. &lt;p>Ten years ago, I used Go for the first time. I immediately fell in love with the language and its simple elegance. For the first time in a long time, I loved programming again. So much so that I was eager to write Go whenever I could. This led to the creation of &lt;a href="https://gohugo.io">Hugo&lt;/a>, &lt;a href="https://cobra.dev">Cobra&lt;/a>, &lt;a href="https://github.com/spf13/viper">Viper&lt;/a> and a handful of &lt;a href="https://github.com/spf13">additional Go libraries&lt;/a>.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>The New spf13.com</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/the-new-spf13.com/</link><pubDate>Wed, 16 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/the-new-spf13.com/</guid><description>&lt;p>I&amp;rsquo;m proud to present the new and improved &lt;a href="https://spf13.com">spf13.com&lt;/a> a dramatic redesign of the very first &lt;a href="https://gohugo.io">Hugo&lt;/a> powered website.&lt;/p>
5. &lt;p>After 25 years of building websites I&amp;rsquo;m happy to say that this is the best website I&amp;rsquo;ve ever made and I look forward to sharing more content than I ever have before. Something about the new design is really inviting and honestly just makes me happy, and I think it&amp;rsquo;s going to be a big motivator to write more content.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>InfoQ interview - Go Language at 13 Years</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/infoq-interview-go-language-at-13-years/</link><pubDate>Thu, 30 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/infoq-interview-go-language-at-13-years/</guid><description>&lt;p>I had the pleasure of speaking with Olimpiu Pop from &lt;a href="https://www.infoq.com/">InfoQ&lt;/a> about the Go language and community.&lt;/p>
6. &lt;p>The article can be found at &lt;a href="https://www.infoq.com/articles/go-language-13-years">https://www.infoq.com/articles/go-language-13-years&lt;/a>.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Gophers Say GopherCon Edition</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/gophers-say-gophercon-edition/</link><pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/gophers-say-gophercon-edition/</guid><description>&lt;p>Go Time panelists Natalie &amp;amp; Jon join forces with Go Team members Steve Francia, Katie Hockman, Julie Qui, and Rob Findley to battle it out and see who can better guess what the GopherCon gophers had to say!&lt;/p>
7. <p>Listen to the podcast at <a href="https://changelog.com/gotime/211">https://changelog.com/gotime/211</a></p>
8. <h2 id="transcript">Transcript</h2>
9. &lt;p>&lt;strong>Mat Ryer:&lt;/strong> Hello, and welcome to this Go Time GopherCon extravaganza&amp;hellip; Yeah, extravaganza, yeah. I&amp;rsquo;m Mat Ryer, and I&amp;rsquo;m thrilled to announce that today again we&amp;rsquo;re playing Gophers Say, the excellent, popular, family game show based on Family Feud, or Family Fortunes if you&amp;rsquo;re in the U.K, which I am.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Rust vs Go: Better Together</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/rust-vs-go-better-together/</link><pubDate>Fri, 12 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/rust-vs-go-better-together/</guid><description>While others may see &lt;a href="https://www.rust-lang.org/">Rust&lt;/a> and &lt;a href="https://go.dev/">Go&lt;/a> as competitive programming languages, neither the Rust nor the Go teams do. Quite the contrary, our teams have deep respect for what the others are doing, and see the languages as complimentary with a shared vision of modernizing the state of software development industry-wide.</description></item><item><title>Break things on purpose podcast</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/break-things-on-purpose-podcast/</link><pubDate>Wed, 10 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/break-things-on-purpose-podcast/</guid><description>&lt;p>I had the privilage of sitting down with my friend Jason Yee as a guest on his podcast.&lt;/p>
10. <p>Listen to the podcast at <a href="https://www.gremlin.com/blog/podcast-break-things-on-purpose-steve-francia-product-and-strategy-lead-at-google/">https://www.gremlin.com/blog/podcast-break-things-on-purpose-steve-francia-product-and-strategy-lead-at-google/</a></p>
11. <h2 id="transcript">Transcript</h2>
12. &lt;p>Jason Yee: Hey, everyone. Welcome to Build Things On Purpose. Our slight deviation from the Break Things On Purpose podcast, where we talk with people that have made really cool things and we learn some tips from them about how we can make cool things as well, things that are reliable and that scale well. So joining us today we have Steve Francia.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Grokking Go.dev - Go Time Podcast</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/grokking-go.dev-go-time-podcast/</link><pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/grokking-go.dev-go-time-podcast/</guid><description>&lt;p>I had the privilage of joining my coworker Julie Qiu as we talked with our friends Carmen, Mat and Jon about the new website we are launching for Go, &lt;a href="https://go.dev">go.dev&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
13. <p>Listen to the podcast at <a href="https://changelog.com/gotime/115">https://changelog.com/gotime/115</a></p>
14. <h2 id="transcript">Transcript</h2>
15. &lt;p>&lt;strong>Mat Ryer:&lt;/strong> Hello, and welcome to GoTime! I&amp;rsquo;m Mat Ryer. Today we&amp;rsquo;re talking about Go.dev. It&amp;rsquo;s a user-friendly hub of curated resources for Go, and we&amp;rsquo;re lucky enough to have three of the brains behind it joining us today: Carmen Andoh, Steve Francia (also known as @spf13) and Julie Qiu. Hello, everybody!&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>New Go Branding Strategy</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/new-go-branding-strategy/</link><pubDate>Thu, 03 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/new-go-branding-strategy/</guid><description>&lt;p>I joined the GoTime podcast and told them EVERYTHING about Go’s new branding strategy (and don’t worry, the gopher isn’t going anywhere!)&lt;/p>
16. <p>Listen to the podcast at <a href="https://changelog.com/gotime/79">https://changelog.com/gotime/79</a></p>
17. <h2 id="transcript">Transcript</h2>
18. <p><strong>Adam Stacoviak:</strong> And we’re live, too… Do you want a little music?</p>
19. <p><strong>Carlisia Thompson:</strong> Yeah…</p>
20. &lt;p>&lt;strong>Adam Stacoviak:&lt;/strong> Let&amp;rsquo;s get some music going here. This is our 8-bit, Steve. What do you think about the 8-bit? [music playing] Yes&amp;hellip;! Yes! Get it, BMC! Do you like that?&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Go Developer Survey</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/go-developer-survey/</link><pubDate>Thu, 09 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/go-developer-survey/</guid><description>&lt;p>I joined GoTime to talk about the results of the 2016 Go Developer Survey and other interesting Go projects and news.&lt;/p>
21. <p>Listen to the podcast at <a href="https://changelog.com/gotime/38">https://changelog.com/gotime/38</a></p>
22. <h2 id="transcript">Transcript</h2>
23. &lt;p>&lt;strong>Erik St. Martin:&lt;/strong> Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of GoTime. Today&amp;rsquo;s episode is number 38, and our sponsors for today are Backtrace and the Ultimate Go Training Series. Today on the show we have myself, Erik St. Martin, Carlisia Pinto is also on the show - say hello, Carlisia&amp;hellip;&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Hugo goes global</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/hugo-goes-global/</link><pubDate>Fri, 07 Oct 2016 10:56:02 -0400</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/hugo-goes-global/</guid><description>&lt;p>Hugo is going Global! Hugo 0.17, released today, is our best and fastest
24. release ever! <strong>Hugo 0.17 is nearly twice as fast as Hugo 0.16</strong> and adds
25. <strong>full support for multilingual websites</strong> with i18n support throughout all
26. of Hugo.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>I’m joining the Go team at Google</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/im-joining-the-go-team-at-google/</link><pubDate>Thu, 15 Sep 2016 16:15:03 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/im-joining-the-go-team-at-google/</guid><description>&lt;p>I am honored to share that I have joined Google as a member of the Go team and will be primarily based in NYC.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>How To Be A Good Open Source Community Member</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/how-to-be-a-good-open-source-community-member/</link><pubDate>Tue, 17 Mar 2015 15:24:07 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/how-to-be-a-good-open-source-community-member/</guid><description>&lt;p>A friend of mine who is a very talented writer recently became
27. intrigued with open source and asked me to help her to understand how to
28. be a good open source community member.</p>
29. <p>Open source is one of the most unusual things in the world. Is there any other
30. profession where highly skilled professionals donate their free time to give
31. their work away for free? Many spend long hours at their day
32. jobs, just to spend their nights and weekends doing the same thing.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Hugo Summer 2014 Update</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/hugo-summer-2014-update/</link><pubDate>Thu, 02 Oct 2014 13:28:42 -0400</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/hugo-summer-2014-update/</guid><description>&lt;p>Hugo, the fast and flexible static site generator, is really coming of
33. age. I wanted to give a quick update about the progress Hugo has been
34. making over the past couple months.</p>
35. <h1 id="new-website">New Website</h1>
36. <p>Hugo can now be found at <a href="http://gohugo.io">http://gohugo.io</a>. Update your bookmarks.</p>
37. <h1 id="new-team-members">New Team Members</h1>
38. <p>I want to formally welcome our newest team members.</p>
39. <p><a href="https://github.com/tatsushid">Tatsushi Demachi</a> has been making
40. excellent contributions hugo, particularly with extensions to the
41. template capabilities. The two biggest additions to the layouts, where and
42. groupBy both came from him.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Evangelism is NOT Sales</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/evangelism-is-not-sales/</link><pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 13:17:48 -0400</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/evangelism-is-not-sales/</guid><description>&lt;p>I recently had a discussion with a CFO of a technology company. We were
43. meeting because he is trying to better understand the role technical
44. evangelism could play within his company. Ten minutes into our
45. conversation he said, “so evangelism is pretty much rogue sales”.
46. Internally I cringed. I politely corrected him that the two could not be
47. further apart.</p>
48. <p>Allow me to be a bit philosophical or rather, etymological here.
49. Evangelism is an apt title for what it does. Let’s look back at the
50. origin of the word. The Old English ‘gōdspell’ (a union of two words
51. good and spell. Spell meaning news here. This is a translation of the
52. Greek word ’euangélion’ which also means good news. Breaking it down
53. further, this is ’eu-’ + ‘angelos’. Angelos means messenger and eu-
54. means good. So this is someone who brings good news. Throughout the
55. centuries the words have developed strong religious overtones, the
56. initial terms were more generally used.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Pointers vs References</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/pointers-vs-references/</link><pubDate>Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/pointers-vs-references/</guid><description>&lt;p>Some languages including C, C++ support pointers. Other languages including
57. C++, Java, Python, Ruby, Perl and PHP all support references. On the surface
58. both references and pointers are very similar, both are used to have one
59. variable provide access to another. With both providing a lot of the same
60. capabilities, it’s often unclear what is different between these different
61. mechanisms. In this article I will illustrate the difference between
62. pointers and references.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Is Go an Object Oriented language?</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/is-go-an-object-oriented-language/</link><pubDate>Mon, 09 Jun 2014 01:18:04 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/is-go-an-object-oriented-language/</guid><description>&lt;p>To truly understand what it means to be ‘object-oriented’ you need to look back
63. at the origination of the concept. The first object oriented language, simula,
64. emerged in the 1960s. It introduced objects, classes, inheritance and
65. subclasses, virtual methods, coroutines, and a lot more. Perhaps most
66. importantly, it introduced a paradigm shift of thinking of data and logic as
67. completely independent.</p>
68. <p>While you many not be familiar with Simula, you are no doubt familiar with
69. languages that refer to it as their inspiration including Java, C++, C# &
70. Smalltalk, which in turn have been the inspiration for Objective C, Python,
71. Ruby, Javascript, Scala, PHP, Perl… a veritable list of nearly all popular
72. languages in use today. This shift in thinking has taken over, so much so that
73. most programmers alive today have never written code any other
74. way.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>9 MongoDB 2.6 Drivers Released</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/9-mongodb-2.6-drivers-released/</link><pubDate>Mon, 07 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/9-mongodb-2.6-drivers-released/</guid><description>&lt;p>I’m pleased to announce the coordinated release of drivers in 9
75. languages in preparation for the release of MongoDB 2.6. This is the
76. largest driver release in the history of MongoDB, both in terms of code
77. changes as well as in terms of drivers released. Official Drivers for C,
78. C++, C# (.net), Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, Ruby and Scala were all
79. released with Perl following shortly. In the upcoming weeks community
80. drivers will be updated to take advantage of the new features present
81. in MongoDB 2.6. With both community and official drivers MongoDB is
82. supported in over two dozen languages and platforms.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Cross Compiling with Go</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/cross-compiling-with-go/</link><pubDate>Fri, 28 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/cross-compiling-with-go/</guid><description>&lt;p>One of the great features of golang is that you can compile executables
83. for many different platforms and architectures from a single machine. It’s
84. really nice to be able to provide executables of
85. <a href="https://gohugo.io">Hugo</a> for a bunch of different platforms and
86. architectures without having to have all these different machines in
87. a build cluster.</p>
88. <p>As I’ve been working with Hugo, I’ve wanted to make the experience of
89. cross compiling as easy and painless as possible. My first attempt was
90. following the <a href="http://dave.cheney.net/2013/07/09/an-introduction-to-cross-compilation-with-go-1-1">excellent guide by Dave
91. Cheney</a>.
92. It provides a bash script that automated the process, but wasn’t very
93. customizable. I started writing another script to adjust the behavior to
94. what I needed when I came across <a href="https://github.com/laher/goxc">goxc</a>. Inspired by Dave’s script,
95. <a href="https://github.com/laher/goxc">goxc</a> is a go application that not only cross compiles, but also
96. can compress the different binaries and package them with the readme and
97. license. It’s customizable and easy to use.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Why I use spf13-vim</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/why-i-use-spf13-vim/</link><pubDate>Fri, 17 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/why-i-use-spf13-vim/</guid><description>&lt;p>&lt;a href="http://vim.spf13.com">spf13-vim&lt;/a>, a completely cross platform
98. distribution of vim plugins and resources for Vim, GVim and MacVim stays
99. true to it’s vim roots while adding modern features including a plugin
100. management system, a curated plugin set with customized configuration,
101. advanced autocomplete, tags, support for dozens of languages and much
102. more.</p>
103. <p>I recently read a thread where the author asked for feedback on whether
104. or not to use spf13-vim. Responses varied greatly with some people
105. loving it to others claiming it was bloated and overkill. Some suggested
106. everyone should create their own configuration from scratch. Not
107. surprisingly many of these criticisms were accompanied by links to
108. people’s own vim configurations. With so many options out there, why
109. would anyone use spf13-vim. While I can’t speak for anyone else, here
110. are four reasons why I use spf13-vim.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>A modern CLI Commander for go</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/a-modern-cli-commander-for-go/</link><pubDate>Thu, 07 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/a-modern-cli-commander-for-go/</guid><description>&lt;p>While developing &lt;a href="https://gohugo.io">Hugo&lt;/a> I became disappointed
111. with the interface limitations flags alone provide. A quick look at
112. virtually any command line application (ls, grep, less, etc) reveals
113. that most applications overuse flags to do everything and often allow
114. conflicting flags to be applied.</p>
115. <p>Even though hugo is relatively simple, we already had the ability to
116. stack flags that didn’t make sense. You can set the port using –port
117. but this only has an effect if you also specified –server. Clearly
118. another mechanism is needed.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Refactoring with go fmt</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/refactoring-with-go-fmt/</link><pubDate>Mon, 07 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/refactoring-with-go-fmt/</guid><description>&lt;p>I&amp;rsquo;ve recently been getting into go. I&amp;rsquo;ve built a &lt;a href="https://gohugo.io">few
119. applications</a> <a href="https://spf13.com/post/announcing-cobra">and</a> <a href="http://spf13.com/project/nitro">libraries</a>.</p>
120. &lt;p>For this post, let&amp;rsquo;s explore the &amp;lsquo;gofmt&amp;rsquo; or &amp;lsquo;go fmt&amp;rsquo; tool further.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Go Go Hugo blog</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/go-go-hugo-blog/</link><pubDate>Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/go-go-hugo-blog/</guid><description>&lt;p>After after a few months of work I&amp;rsquo;m happy to display the newest incarnation of spf13.com.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>MongoDB Driver days hackathon round up</title><link>https://spf13.com/p/10gen-driver-days-mongodb-hack-a-thon/</link><pubDate>Fri, 16 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/p/10gen-driver-days-mongodb-hack-a-thon/</guid><description>&lt;p>Two times a year the drivers team at 10gen gathers together for a face
121. to face meeting to spend time together working on issues and setting
122. forth our goals for the upcoming six months. In September 2012 we all
123. converged on New York City for the second ever driver days. This time we
124. split up into teams for a hack-a-thon. As maintainers of drivers &
125. integrations in over a dozen different languages while we are on the
126. same team, it isn’t often that we actually work together on the same
127. codebase. The hack-a-thon gave us a chance to do just that. We split up
128. into 5 teams each having members from different languages. Without
129. further ado, here is what we came up with.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>The Biggest Myths Surrounding Disaster Recovery</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/top-4-biggest-myths-surrounding-disaster-recovery/</link><pubDate>Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/top-4-biggest-myths-surrounding-disaster-recovery/</guid><description>&lt;p>There are a variety of reasons businesses either do not have a disaster
130. recovery plan or their current plan is substandard.  The beliefs of the
131. people in charge of developing these processes (business owners and IT
132. department) play a significant role in how effective the overall
133. strategy will be.  This is problematic when the decision-makers have
134. bought into one or more of the common myths surrounding disaster
135. recovery.</p>
136. <h2 id="myth--disaster-recovery-is-expensive-and-resource-intensive">Myth – Disaster Recovery is Expensive and Resource Intensive</h2>
137. <p>One of the biggest reasons businesses put off developing a disaster
138. recovery strategy is because they believe it will become too expensive
139. and resource intensive.  As a result, they view it as more of a luxury
140. than a necessity.  The truth is as technology continues to evolve; the
141. costs associated with disaster recovery continue to fall. 
142. Virtualization, standardization, and automation have all played key
143. roles in making disaster recovery more affordable.  They have reduced
144. the number of people required to restore systems which significantly
145. decreases personnel costs.  In fact, a streamlined disaster recovery
146. strategy can require only one person.  Virtualization also reduces the
147. initial capital investment because redundant physical infrastructure is
148. no longer necessary.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Protecting Intellectual Property on Your Blog</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/protect-intellectual-property-on-your-blog/</link><pubDate>Mon, 24 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/protect-intellectual-property-on-your-blog/</guid><description>&lt;p>The protection of your intellectual property, or any information that
149. you post to your blog, forum or website, can be a tricky subject. While
150. there are those unscrupulous few out there in the cyber world who will
151. purposely copy your words as their own, there are more people that are
152. simply ignorant of the laws, unaware that they are stealing when they
153. copy and reuse your musings. According to a criminal lawyer at an
154. Orlando based firm that we spoke to, there are steps that you can take
155. to make sure that your intellectual property is protected. Here’s what
156. you can do:&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Giving the most viewed presentation on slideshare ever at OSCON</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/how-i-gave-the-most-viewed-presentation-in-the-history-of-oscon/</link><pubDate>Mon, 17 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/how-i-gave-the-most-viewed-presentation-in-the-history-of-oscon/</guid><description>&lt;p>At OSCON 2012 in Portland I gave a presentation on &lt;a href="http://spf13.com/presentation/building-your-first-mongodb-app-oscon-2012" title="Building your first MongoDB app – OSCON 2012">building your first
157. MongoDB
158. application</a>.
159. Over 150 people were in the audience, a pretty significant number of
160. this type of hands on tutorial. Certainly worth the weeks of preparation
161. that went into developing it. While at OSCON I put the slides online at
162. SlideShare where during the four day conference the amassed over 20k
163. views and within a couple weeks over 30k views. Within a month it had
164. been viewed more than ten times the total attendees at OSCON, one of the
165. largest technical conferences in the world.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>How to deliver a great conference tutorial</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/how-to-deliver-great-conference-tutorials/</link><pubDate>Wed, 05 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/how-to-deliver-great-conference-tutorials/</guid><description>&lt;p>I recently returned from &lt;a href="http://www.oscon.com/oscon2010" title="OSCON">OSCON&lt;/a>
166. where I was able to give one of the more popular presentations at the
167. conference. I presented on the morning of the first day and throughout
168. the entire week people kept coming up to me telling me how much they
169. enjoyed my tutorial and how bored they were at the sessions they
170. attended since. Here are the secrets of how I gave such a compelling
171. &lt;a href="http://spf13.com/post/how-i-gave-the-most-viewed-presentation-in-the-history-of-oscon/" title="How I gave the most viewed presentation in the history of OSCON">presentation&lt;/a>.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Add PhotoshopCS5 support to Picasa</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/adding-photoshopcs5-support-to-picasa/</link><pubDate>Mon, 13 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/adding-photoshopcs5-support-to-picasa/</guid><description>&lt;p>If you are like me you use Picasa to manage your photos, but recognize
172. that the editing options are very limited. You can easily add a button
173. in Picasa that will allow you to edit the current picture in photoshop.</p>
174. <p>I took an existing button built for PhotoshopCS3 and updated it to work
175. with this more contemporary version. It’s limited to working only on
176. Windows.</p>
177. <p><a href="picasa://importbutton/?url=https://s3.amazonaws.com/spf13-cdn/uploads/PhotoshopCS5.pbz">Install Photoshop CS5 Button in
178. Picasa&lt;/a>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Getting Started with MongoDB and PHP</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/getting-started-with-mongodb-and-php/</link><pubDate>Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/getting-started-with-mongodb-and-php/</guid><description>&lt;figure >
180. <img src="PHPandMongoDB.jpg" alt="Getting Started with MongoDB and PHP" />
183. </figure>
184.  
185. <p>Nearly 3 years ago I discovered a new database that literally changed my
186. life. I know, that’s a pretty bold claim, but it’s true. While leading
187. the engineering team at <a href="http://osky.co/uGeJpa">OpenSky</a> I faced a
188. problem I was well familiar with. How to build a e-commerce product
189. that: 1. Provided performance and scale 2. Handled many verticals and 3.
190. Provided proper indexing on key attributes. In search for a better
191. solution to this problem I encountered MongoDB. I soon experienced a
192. realization that not only was MongoDB the solution to my e-commerce
193. challenge, but fundamentally would change the way all development
194. happens.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Don't look now, I'm on DZone</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/dont-look-now-im-on-dzone/</link><pubDate>Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/dont-look-now-im-on-dzone/</guid><description>&lt;p>I’m happy to announce that going forward you’ll be able to read my
195. articles on DZone as well as spf13.com. DZone has invited me to join
196. their MVB program. They describe their program as:</p>
197. <blockquote>
198. <p>DZone’s Most Valuable Blogger program brings together a group of
199. highly talented bloggers, authors, and technologists actively writing
200. about topics of interest to the developer community. These people are
201. recognized in the industry for their contributions and deep technical
202. knowledge on subjects ranging from software design and architecture to
203. programming on a range of platforms including Java, .NET, Ruby and
204. others.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>New personal site powered by GitHub Pages</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/new-personal-site-powered-by-github-pages/</link><pubDate>Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/new-personal-site-powered-by-github-pages/</guid><description>&lt;p>At 10gen we had new headshots taken recently. I think mine came out
205. great. I took this opporitunity to play with GitHub pages and update
206. <a href="http://stevefrancia.com">http://stevefrancia.com</a>. You should goto
207. <a href="http://stevefrancia.com">http://stevefrancia.com</a> and checkout my new
208. personal page. If you like it, fork it. The entire page is
209. here <a href="https://github.com/spf13/spf13.github.com">https://github.com/spf13/spf13.github.com</a>,
210. it being
211. a derivative of <a href="https://github.com/weightshift/The-Personal-Page">https://github.com/weightshift/The-Personal-Page</a>.</p>
212. &lt;p>&lt;a href="http://stevefrancia.com">&lt;img src="https://spf13.com/uploads/2012/04/stevefrancia.com_-1024x640.png" alt="" title="stevefrancia.com">&lt;/a>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>spf13-vim 3.0 release and new website</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/spf13-vim-3-0-release-and-new-website/</link><pubDate>Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/spf13-vim-3-0-release-and-new-website/</guid><description>&lt;p>This post is a bit behind the actual releases, but should be announced
213. here nevertheless. Announcing the 3rd major release of spf13-vim.
214. spf13-vim is a distribution of vim plugins and resources for Vim, GVim
215. and MacVim. It is a completely cross platform distribution that stays
216. true to the feel of vim while providing modern features like a plugin
217. management system, autocomplete, tags and tons more. It grew out of my
218. vim configuration which I put on GitHub. As more an more people began to
219. use it contributions came back and flurished. It now ranks as one of the
220. top .5% of projects on github.Additionally I created a new site for this
221. project. <a href="http://vim.spf13.com">http://vim.spf13.com</a> is entirely
222. powered by GitHub pages. If you would like to contribute, simply fork
223. spf13-vim, checkout the gh-pages branch and make a pull request.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Getting started with Drupal and MongoDB</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/getting-started-with-drupal-and-mongodb/</link><pubDate>Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/getting-started-with-drupal-and-mongodb/</guid><description>&lt;p>MongoDB is the most full featured scalable database taking the tech
224. world by storm. Drupal is the standard in content management powering
225. magazines, blogs online newspapers and much more. It’s only natural that
226. they would get together to provide a fast dynamic scalable CMS system.
227. Whenever a Drupal site needs to scale dynamic content they turn to
228. MongoDB to be able to deliver. The <a href="http://examiner.com">Examiner.com</a>
229. was the pioneer in this approach and many Drupal sites have followed
230. suit.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>MongoDB and PHP, The Book</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/mongodb-and-php-the-book/</link><pubDate>Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/mongodb-and-php-the-book/</guid><description>&lt;p>I wrote a book. It is published by O’Reilly, and available now on Amazon, O’Reilly Media and
231. a bunch of other sites, available in both print and as an ebook.</p>
232. <p>From the introduction:</p>
233. <blockquote>
234. <p>What would happen if you optimized a data store for the operations
235. application developers actually use? You’d arrive at MongoDB, the
236. reliable document-oriented database. With this concise guide, you’ll
237. learn how to build elegant database applications with MongoDB and PHP.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Backup, Replication and Disaster Recovery</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/backups-replication-and-disaster-recovery/</link><pubDate>Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/backups-replication-and-disaster-recovery/</guid><description>&lt;p>One of the most common concerns people have is how to ensure that their
238. application is safe, secure and available in the event of an emergency.
239. Often I have found that people are mistakenly believe that they are
240. protected when in fact they often have ignored potential scenarios.</p>
241. <p>The principles explained apply equally well in RDBMSs, MongoDB and other
242. databases.</p>
243. <h2 id="potential-scenarios-to-protect-against">Potential scenarios to protect against</h2>
244. <ol>
245. <li>
246. <h3 id="drive-failure">Drive failure</h3>
247. </li>
248. <li>
249. <h3 id="machine-failure">Machine failure</h3>
250. </li>
251. <li>
252. <h3 id="switch-failure">Switch failure</h3>
253. </li>
254. <li>
255. <h3 id="power-circuit-failure">Power circuit failure</h3>
256. </li>
257. <li>
258. <h3 id="data-center-failure">Data center failure</h3>
259. </li>
260. <li>
261. <h3 id="intrusion">Intrusion</h3>
262. </li>
263. <li>
264. <h3 id="fat-fingers">Fat fingers</h3>
265. </li>
266. <li>
267. <h3 id="programmer-error">Programmer error</h3>
268. </li>
269. </ol>
270. <h2 id="raid">Raid</h2>
271. <p>To prevent drive failure use multiple drives in a single machine for
272. high availability. RAID 10 provides the best performance with high
273. availability. RAID 10 consists of a minimum of 4 disks which are split
274. into mirrored pairs. The raid controller stripes across the pairs.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Windows Power User Tools</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/windows-power-user-tools/</link><pubDate>Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/windows-power-user-tools/</guid><description>&lt;p>I’m a huge fan of Windows 7. It’s the first time I’ve ever run a
275. Microsoft OS on my primary (home) machine.  I’ve compiled a set of
276. programs that I have found to be invaluable in using Windows for serious
277. development and computing. All are free and clean of any ads or spyware.</p>
278. <h2 id="easeus-partition-master-91-home-edition"><a href="http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm">EaseUS® Partition Master 9.1 Home Edition</a></h2>
279.  
280. <figure class="third right">
282. <img src="https://spf13.com/post/windows-power-user-tools/resize-partition.gif" alt="resize partition" />
285. </figure>
286.  
287. <p>As Partition Magic alternative, EaseUS Partition Master Home Edition is
288. a ALL-IN-ONE partition solution and disk management freeware. It allows
289. you to extend partition (especially for system drive), manage disk space
290. easily, settle low disk space problem on MBR and GUID partition table
291. (GPT) disk under Windows 2000/XP/Vista/<a href="http://www.partition-tool.com/resource/resize-partition-windows-7.htm">Windows
292. 7</a> (SP1
293. included) 32 bit and 64 bit system.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>LDS SORT Tech Conference 2011</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/lds-sort-tech-conference-2011/</link><pubDate>Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/lds-sort-tech-conference-2011/</guid><description>&lt;p>Last week I had the opportunity to attend the LDS Church’s SORT tech
294. conference. Nearly 1200 people were in attendance. There were 23
295. concurrent tracks and I was able to present two presentations and be on
296. a panel with other NoSQL solutions including Cassandra, CouchDB, Neo4j,
297. Riak and MarkLogic. The panel went for 90 minutes the first half being
298. an 5 – 10 minute introduction of each technology and the second half
299. being a QA period. It concluded with the audience of about 250 voting in
300. realtime for their favorite technology. MongoDB won nicely with nearly
301. 2x the votes of the next closest technology. We received a 6 foot tall
302. trophy. It was the biggest trophy I’ve ever received. MongoDB is the
303. yellow piece of the pie.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Hybrid Cloud Computing</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/hybrid-cloud-computing/</link><pubDate>Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/hybrid-cloud-computing/</guid><description>&lt;p>Traditionally ecommerce companies have had no place in the cloud. The
304. lack of established standards, multi-tenancy nature and need to be PCI
305. compliant have been three large barriers to entry for any organization
306. exploring this possibility. Recently many e-commerce companies
307. (including OpenSky) have begun to implement a hybrid approach to
308. infrastructure mixing traditional data centers with cloud offerings to
309. achieve a best of both worlds solution.</p>
310. &lt;p>Here is how I approached this when I was at OpenSky.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Where have all the good databases gone?</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/where-have-all-the-good-databases-gone/</link><pubDate>Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/where-have-all-the-good-databases-gone/</guid><description>&lt;p>Perhaps you’ll recognize these words, “About five years ago I started to
311. notice an odd thing. The products that the database vendors were
312. building had less and less to do with what the customers wanted. … So,
313. what is this growing disconnect?” Those words were <a href="http://adambosworth.wordpress.com/2004/12/29/where-have-all-the-good-databases-gone/">written in 2004 by
314. Adam
315. Bosworth</a>,
316. a veteren of Microsoft, Google and BEA. In the 7 years since things have
317. only gotten worse. Open source products came to maturity (if you can
318. call it that), but none improved on any of the challenges Bosworth
319. outlines. He points out 3 things that everyone wants in a database, but
320. nobody is providing.. well nobody except
321. &lt;a href="http://www.mongodb.org/" title="MongoDB">MongoDB&lt;/a>.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Easy bash scripting with shflags</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/easy-bash-scripting-with-shflags/</link><pubDate>Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/easy-bash-scripting-with-shflags/</guid><description>&lt;p>One of the most frustrating things about bash scripts is how challenging
322. it is to create unix style executables. You know, the ones where you can
323. pass in -h or –help and see the set of options for the program. Up until
324. now this has been a very manual process in bash, but no longer. Enter
325. the shflags project from Kate Ward where a bash library takes care of
326. all the nasty work and producing an elegant way to add option (or
327. argument) support to your scripts.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Competition for the Cloud Heats Up</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/competition-for-the-cloud-heats-up/</link><pubDate>Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/competition-for-the-cloud-heats-up/</guid><description>&lt;p>Cloud no longer a single vendor game. For years cloud computing has been
328. synonymous with Amazon whose <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/" title="Amazon Web Services">Amazon Web
329. Services</a> really created
330. and defined the space. In the past year other providers have matured and
331. in some areas even surpassing Amazon.</p>
332. <p>In a conversation with Scott White, the VP of Sales from
333. <a href="http://www.rackspace.com" title="Rackspace">Rackspace</a>, he related to me
334. their approach on the cloud and how customers are utilizing their cloud
335. offering. Their current growth rate is pretty staggering. It’s a
336. magnitude higher than their managed hosting offering. Rackspace somewhat
337. trepidatiously entered the cloud market. It did so with Mosso, a subsidy
338. of Rackspace that operated for two years under a separate brand,
339. seemingly to distance the initiative from the Rackspace name in the
340. event it was a failure. It succeeded and has been rebranded as the
341. Rackspace Cloud. What is interesting about this offering is, in part
342. thanks to their background and existing infrastructure, they provide
343. hybrid computing offerings. Where all on the same subnet you can have
344. some nodes utilizing their traditional managed hosting offering where
345. other nodes are in the cloud elastically growing to meet demand.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Creating a Symfony2 Console Command</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/creating-a-symfony2-console-command/</link><pubDate>Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/creating-a-symfony2-console-command/</guid><description>&lt;figure >
347. <img src="https://spf13.com/post/creating-a-symfony2-console-command/symfony_ss.png" alt="symfony" />
350. </figure>
351.  
352. <p>One of the weaknesses of PHP as a languages has always been it’s ability
353. to write proper command line utilities. Yes PHP is pretty much built to
354. drive the web, and it does that rather well, but there are plenty of
355. reasons to want to be able to write a program that is callable from the
356. command line that interfaces with your web app. Symfony2 does a rather
357. good job at providing a nice toolset to build command line applications
358. in php.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Pandora's IPO ... a sign of the times</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/pandoras-ipo-a-sign-of-the-times/</link><pubDate>Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/pandoras-ipo-a-sign-of-the-times/</guid><description>&lt;p>&lt;a href="http://Pandora.com" title="Pandora">Pandora&lt;/a> filed their IPO today. By end of
359. day Pandora was worth 3.2 Billion . The amazing thing about stock is it
360. really has no direct correlation to a companies actual performance, but
361. is rather valued based on perception, hype and desire. All very human
362. emotions, not logic. Apparently all the people who purchased Pandora $P
363. stock today hadn’t read Pandora’s filing with the SEC. I did. Here’s
364. what you need to know.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>The Browser as an application platform</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/the-browser-as-a-application-platform/</link><pubDate>Tue, 07 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/the-browser-as-a-application-platform/</guid><description>&lt;p>With Google launching their &lt;a href="http://www.google.com/chrome" title="Google Chrome">chrome
365. book</a> is significant as it
366. reflects a substantial shift in the world of computing. For the first
367. time ever, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_platform" title="Computing platform">application
368. platform</a>
369. isn’t the operating system, nor is it adobe air, .net or java, it’s the
370. browser. The browser once, a simple tool for fetching and rendering
371. content is now the most important <strong>application</strong> platform in the world.</p>
372. <p>Ultimately the reason we are converging on the browser being the
373. platform is because java failed. If java came any bit close to it’s
374. promised mission, the underlying operating system wouldn’t matter and
375. every application would be written in java.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Creating your own Symfony2 Bundle</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/creating-your-own-symfony2-bundle/</link><pubDate>Tue, 24 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/creating-your-own-symfony2-bundle/</guid><description>&lt;figure >
377. <img src="https://spf13.com/post/creating-your-own-symfony2-bundle/symfony_ss.png" alt="symfony" />
380. </figure>
381.  
382. <p><a href="http://symfony.com/">Symfony2</a> is a great web framework.
383. <a href="https://opensky.com">OpenSky</a> is built on this framework and we are one
384. of the largest contributors to it. The primary building block for
385. Symfony2 is a bundle. Through it’s bundle system Symfony 2.0 achieves a
386. level of modularity I haven’t seen in other web frameworks. A bundle
387. permits a developer to add functionality to the framework and is the
388. best way to develop applications with Symfony2. In this post I’ll show
389. you how to create your own bundle.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Release early, release often to minimize risk</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/release-early-release-often-to-minimize-risk/</link><pubDate>Thu, 05 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/release-early-release-often-to-minimize-risk/</guid><description>&lt;p>Release Cycles have been debated for the last 30 years and will
390. certainly be for the next 30. Arguments for longer release cycles with
391. larger releases usually focus on how risky these rapid releases are and
392. the stability and polish these larger releases with their longer cycles
393. bring. These arguments are absolute rubbish. To add to the discussion
394. I’ll put a different emphasis than I’ve heard before. Release early and
395. release often &lt;strong>to minimize risk&lt;/strong>.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>My Favorite Rands Posts</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/my-favorite-rands-posts/</link><pubDate>Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/my-favorite-rands-posts/</guid><description>&lt;p>If you don’t know Rands (real name &lt;a href="http://www.randsinrepose.com/" title="Rands">Michael
396. Lopp</a>), you should. His blog is
397. full of excellent content from someone who successfully figured out how
398. to transition from managing bits to Managing Humans (also the title of his
399. first book). Whether you are a developer, a tech manager, or manage
400. something else, you’ll find value in his posts. I’ve been reading his
401. blog for years and it’s influenced my decisions greatly.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Announcing Projects &amp; Presentations</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/announcing-projects-presentations/</link><pubDate>Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/announcing-projects-presentations/</guid><description>&lt;p>I’ve decided to expand the scope of this site a bit to be more than just
402. a blog. It makes sense, many of my posts are how tos and often for my
403. own projects. Additionally now each project will have a legitimate
404. project “homepage” for things like <a href="http://github.com/spf13">GitHub</a>
405. where that’s requested.</p>
406. <p>So without further ado… Please checkout my
407. <a href="http://spf13.com/projects" title="Projects">Projects</a> and
408. <a href="http://spf13.com/presentations" title="Presentations">Presentations</a> sections
409. of my website <a href="http://spf13.com">spf13.com</a>.</p>
410. <p>For now most of the projects are centered around
411. <a href="http://spf13.com/project/spf13-vim" title="spf13-vim : A better Vim Distribution">VIM</a>
412. and <a href="http://spf13.com/project/piv" title="PIV : PHP Integration for VIM">PHP</a>
413. and the Presentations around
414. <a href="http://spf13.com/post/mongodb-ecommerce-a-perfect-combination" title="MongoDB & Ecommerce : A Perfect Combination">Ecommerce</a>
415. and
416. <a href="http://spf13.com/post/augmenting-rdbms-with-nosql-for-e-commerce" title="Augmenting RDBMS with NoSQL for e-commerce">MongoDB</a>.
417. This is certain to change in the upcoming weeks, especially as I have
418. more time to create more project pages.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Getting Started with Symfony2</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/getting-started-with-symfony2/</link><pubDate>Mon, 07 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/getting-started-with-symfony2/</guid><description>&lt;figure >
420. <img src="https://spf13.com/post/getting-started-with-symfony2/symfony_ss.png" alt="symfony" />
423. </figure>
424.  
425. <p>In a follow up to my popular post <a href="http://spf13.com/post/symfony2" title="On Symfony2">on
426. Symfony2</a>, the open source
427. PHP framework we use at <a href="http://shopopensky.com">OpenSky</a>, I’m providing
428. an easy guide to getting started using <a href="http://symfony.com">Symfony2</a>.
429. This isn’t your basic “Hello World”, but a practical guide to beginning
430. a project with Symfony2.</p>
431. <h2 id="requirements">Requirements</h2>
432. <p>To get started with Symfony2 you should have a working install of Git as
433. well as a well made install of PHP version 5.3+.</p>
434. &lt;p>Symfony2 also requires internationalization support compiled into PHP.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>On Symfony2</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/symfony2/</link><pubDate>Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/symfony2/</guid><description>&lt;figure >
436. <img src="https://spf13.com/post/symfony2/symfony_ss.png" alt="symfony" />
439. </figure>
440.  
441. <h3 id="disclaimer">Disclaimer</h3>
442. <p><em>I’ve got a couple disclaimers in writing this. 1. I’m one of the
443. primary authors of the <a href="http://zoopframework.com">Zoop Framework for
444. PHP</a>. It’s pretty much the first web framework
445. for PHP dating back to 2001. In spite of it’s age it’s still quite
446. relevant and in use by thousands worldwide. 2. I run engineering for
447. <a href="http://shopopensky.com">OpenSky</a> where we elected to build our
448. ecommerce platform on the <a href="http://symfony-reloaded.org">Symfony2
449. framework</a> and have since become the 2nd
450. largest contributors to it. You may wonder why given my background I
451. chose to use a different framework. This post should answer that well…&lt;/em>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>The perfect .vimrc vim config file</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/perfect-vimrc-vim-config-file/</link><pubDate>Thu, 27 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/perfect-vimrc-vim-config-file/</guid><description>&lt;p>I have spent the last few years tweaking and refining my VIM
452. configuration. This is the ultimate VIM configuration .vimrc file. It is
453. well organized and documented. It is on
454. <a href="http://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim">GitHub</a> so you can always grab the
455. latest. It works well alone, but is intended to be paired with the
456. plugins and configuration found in my complete .vim configuration also
457. hosted on <a href="http://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim">GitHub</a>.</p>
458. <h2 id="the-perfect-vimrc-file">The Perfect .vimrc file</h2>
459. &lt;p>&lt;em>Last updated May 26th 2011&lt;/em>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>The most productive 20 minutes of my day</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/the-most-productive-20-minutes-of-my-day/</link><pubDate>Fri, 14 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/the-most-productive-20-minutes-of-my-day/</guid><description>&lt;p>As part of my new years resolution to get in shape and spend less dough
460. I decided that I’d be better of walking from Grand Central to my office
461. on 18th St. I save ~$5 a day not taking the subway and get all the
462. extra benefit of walking the 1.5 miles.</p>
463. <p>A few days into this something wonderful and unexpected happened.
464. Instead of spending 20 minutes riding in a cattle car, I was able to
465. take 25 minutes where I was able to think about everything I had to do
466. for the day. It gave me time to prepare, plan, review and reflect. I’ve
467. gained more in productivity than I though possible simply by taking a
468. good amount of time to be alone with my thoughts. I’ve solved problems,
469. came to conclusions and had sudden epiphanies much quicker thanks to
470. this dedicated time to think.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Software Development's Magic Triangle</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/software-developments-magic-triangle/</link><pubDate>Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/software-developments-magic-triangle/</guid><description>&lt;p>There’s an old adage “Fast, Cheap, Good; Pick Two”. This situation is
471. called a magic triangle. You can have two and only two, if you try for
472. all three you will compromise all three. Fools often try, losing
473. everything.</p>
474. <p>In the world of software development, another magic triangle exists. You
475. can pick any two of the three, but not all three, so figure out what’s
476. truly important.</p>
477. <h2 id="fixed-schedules---fixed-features---high-quality">Fixed Schedules      Fixed Features      High Quality</h2>
478. <p>Unfortunately business owners rarely have visibility into the last one
479. (Quality). While it’s rare anyone would intentionally sacrifice quality,
480. you’ll commonly hear “I want feature W, X, Y & Z and I want them
481. yesterday” with no thought to tomorrow. They will cut it every time
482. without even realizing it.  Every time a CTO says yes to this request
483. the world becomes a slightly worse place. The amount of debt incurred is
484. (almost) never worth it. Over time the debt from a lack of focus on
485. quality slows down every single operation until features take weeks
486. instead of days. It’s the single most expensive item to cut and will
487. inevitably lead to the ruin of the company / product over time. If you
488. believe that’s still an option, you should read <a href="http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2006/04/20/10.html">1.0 by
489. Rands&lt;/a>.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>16 lessons from 16 years</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/16-lessons-from-16-years/</link><pubDate>Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/16-lessons-from-16-years/</guid><description>&lt;p>I’ve been working in the technology industry for the last 16 years. I’ve
490. learned a lot. I wanted to share the lessons I’ve learned over the past
491. 16 years, I figured one for each year seemed nice. It’s harder to make a
492. short list than a long one and I had to cut out some helpful things,
493. perhaps I’ll follow this up with another one with the things that didn’t
494. make the list. This list is pretty applicable to anyone, not just
495. technologists.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Selling on OpenSky</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/selling-on-opensky/</link><pubDate>Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/selling-on-opensky/</guid><description>&lt;p>As anyone who reads my blog or follows my tweets knows, I’ve been
496. working for a new startup called
497. <a href="http://theopenskyproject.com" title="OpenSky">OpenSky</a> since February 2010.
498. We’ve launched a new ecommerce platform and aim to reinvent ecommerce as
499. people know it online.</p>
500. <p>One of the big things we are doing is making it so anyone can sell
501. OpenSky products from anywhere online. In the spirit of eating my own
502. dogfood, I’ve become an OpenSky seller. These are products that I have
503. and use in my home. I won’t recommend anything I don’t use and can
504. personally vouch for. Periodically, I’ll be posting great products I find
505. here to share with my readers. See my first set of products for sale
506. after the fold.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Watch what you say</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/watch-what-you-say/</link><pubDate>Sun, 11 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/watch-what-you-say/</guid><description>&lt;p>I came across an article today titled “&lt;a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/nov/11/rules-if-boss-follows-you-on-twitter-etiquette">Help! My boss is on
507. twitter</a>“.
508. Allow me to share a secret with you, if you current boss isn’t on
509. twitter yet, I can guarantee that your next one will be. Social media
510. has caught on like wildfire. In all the excitement too often people
511. forget that everything that you say on twitter / facebook and others is
512. being published and recorded. This isn’t a private conversation you are
513. having. Just because it’s not at the top of your feed doesn’t mean that
514. it’s not there.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Ultimate Vim Config</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/ultimate-vim-config/</link><pubDate>Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/ultimate-vim-config/</guid><description>&lt;p>I have spent the last few years tweaking and refining my VIM
515. configuration until I had the Ultimate Vim Config.  It is well organized
516. and documented taking full advantage of Tpope’s
517. <a href="http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2332">pathogen</a> for a
518. excellent clean and modular configuration. The Ultimate vim config
519. contains the perfect .vimrc file combined with an excellent set of
520. plugins all easily managed thanks to pathogen and git. It is on
521. <a href="http://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim">GitHub</a> so you can always grab the
522. latest.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Moving to WordPress</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/moving-to-wordpress/</link><pubDate>Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/moving-to-wordpress/</guid><description>&lt;p>I’ve used &lt;a href="http://www.drupal.org" title="Drupal">Drupal&lt;/a> to power my blog
523. since I started it over 2 years ago. It has been a bitter sweet
524. relationship, but in general I’ve been pleased. In those two years,
525. <a href="http://wordpress.org" title="WordPress">WordPress</a> as a product has rocketed
526. past Drupal, and feels much more mature. While Drupal 7 should level the
527. field a bit, it’s a ways away and WordPress 3.0 is already here.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>The Golden Hammer</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/the-golden-hammer/</link><pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/the-golden-hammer/</guid><description>&lt;p>Every so often a “new” technology catches on. Right now it’s nosql
528. databases. A couple years ago it was Ruby, before that it was java. Each
529. arise because they propose a solution to an existing problem, or in
530. other words a better way of doing something.. something, but not
531. everything.</p>
532. <p>Unfortunately knowing when to use the technology requires actual
533. experience with it, which never seems to catch up to the hype engine
534. quickly enough, so consequently the technology transforms into a “golden
535. hammer”. Better at everything and ready to displace everything that
536. existed before. Of course this nearly never happens because it’s not
537. rarely true. Current technologies exist because they do something well.
538. when a new technology emerges it will likely be good at a different
539. thing meaning the two will co-exist.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>NoSQL Databases</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/nosql-databases/</link><pubDate>Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/nosql-databases/</guid><description>&lt;p>Amazon, Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter all started on sql databases
540. (all but Amazon on MySQL) and have transitioned to incorporated nosql
541. databases into their infrastructure, though many utilize both relational
542. databases as well as non-relational ones.</p>
543. <p>I’ve compiled a few resources to help bring you up to speed on nosql
544. databases.</p>
545. <h2 id="major-sites-using-nosql">Major sites using NoSQL</h2>
546. <ul>
547. <li>Amazon :
548. (Dynamo) <a href="http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/10/amazons_dynamo.html">http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/10/amazons_dynamo.html</a></li>
549. <li>LinkedIn :
550. (Voldemort) <a href="http://blog.linkedin.com/2009/03/20/project-voldemort-scaling-simple-storage-at-linkedin/">http://blog.linkedin.com/2009/03/20/project-voldemort-scaling-simple-storage-at-linkedin/</a></li>
551. <li>Digg :
552. (Cassandra) <a href="http://about.digg.com/blog/saying-yes-nosql-going-steady-cassandra">http://about.digg.com/blog/saying-yes-nosql-going-steady-cassandra</a></li>
553. <li>Facebook :
554. (Cassandra) <a href="http://cassandra.apache.org/">http://cassandra.apache.org/</a></li>
555. <li>Twitter :
556. (Cassandra) <a href="http://nosql.mypopescu.com/post/407159447/cassandra-twitter-an-interview-with-ryan-king">http://nosql.mypopescu.com/post/407159447/cassandra-twitter-an-interview-with-ryan-king</a></li>
557. </ul>
558. <h2 id="key-articles-to-read">Key articles to read..</h2>
559. <ul>
560. <li><a href="http://adamblog.heroku.com/past/2009/7/6/sql_databases_dont_scale/">http://adamblog.heroku.com/past/2009/7/6/sql_databases_dont_scale/</a></li>
561. <li><a href="http://adamblog.heroku.com/past/2009/7/8/sql_databases_are_an_overapplied_solution_and_what_to_use_instead/">http://adamblog.heroku.com/past/2009/7/8/sql_databases_are_an_overapplied_solution_and_what_to_use_instead/</a></li>
562. <li><a href="https://www.cloudkick.com/blog/2010/mar/02/4_months_with_cassandra/">https://www.cloudkick.com/blog/2010/mar/02/4_months_with_cassandra/</a></li>
563. <li><a href="http://cattell.net/datastores/Datastores.pdf">http://cattell.net/datastores/Datastores.pdf</a>
564. <- <strong>Best overview</strong></li>
565. <li><a href="http://ria101.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/hbase-vs-cassandra-why-we-moved/">http://ria101.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/hbase-vs-cassandra-why-we-moved/</a></li>
566. </ul>
567. <h2 id="some-slides">Some Slides</h2>
568. <p><strong><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/guestdfd1ec/design-patterns-for-distributed-nonrelational-databases" title="Design Patterns for Distributed Non-Relational Databases">Design Patterns for Distributed Non-Relational
569. Databases&lt;/a>&lt;/strong>&lt;div class="embed slideshare">&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Next Gen PHP Frameworks</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/next-gen-php-frameworks/</link><pubDate>Fri, 02 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/next-gen-php-frameworks/</guid><description>&lt;p>With the release of PHP 5.3, PHP released the most significant
570. capabilities in years. Specifically the addition of Late Static
571. Bindings, Lambda Functions and Closures, and Namespaces has changed
572. everything. These new features open new doors for solutions previously
573. impossible. As a result in recent months there has been a flood of new
574. frameworks and libraries taking advantage of these new features.
575. Effectively we are approaching the third wave of PHP frameworks.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Finding the Right People</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/finding-the-right-people/</link><pubDate>Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/finding-the-right-people/</guid><description>&lt;p>Since I began at Open Sky a few weeks ago I have been tasked with
576. building out a great team. Over the course of my career I have
577. interviewed hundreds of people (mostly developers) and hired dozens. At
578. OpenSky I was able to find and hire 6 fantastic employees in my first 6
579. weeks and wanted to share some of the tips and techniques I have learned
580. over the years and found successful.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Transitions</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/transitions/</link><pubDate>Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/transitions/</guid><description>&lt;p>I couldn’t be more excited to announce that I have accepted a position
581. at <a href="http://theopenskyproject.com">The Open Sky Project</a>. I am leading
582. the architecture, development and technology.</p>
583. <p>It’s rare in life that one has the opportunity to do what they love to
584. do and be paid to do it. Even rarer is to do something great with people
585. you love working with. At OpenSky I have found this and more. There is
586. an energy and excitement at OpenSky; come spend 10 minutes in our office
587. and you will feel it. The team is passionate about what they are doing
588. and the passion is growing.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>VIM Crash Course</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/vim-crash-course/</link><pubDate>Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/vim-crash-course/</guid><description>&lt;p>Most developers know the basics of VIM, enough to edit a conf file, but
589. most stay there, unaware of the power and beauty of vim. One of my
590. developers has expressed desire to abandon the bloated GUI ways of
591. eclipse and discover VIM. I have been using VIM for such a long time I
592. forgot how difficult that transition is. Here are some resources and
593. approaches to help you learn vim.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Unix Jobs Management</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/unix-jobs-management/</link><pubDate>Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/unix-jobs-management/</guid><description>&lt;p>Every self respecting linux, mac os X or *nix user should have a solid
594. handle on managing jobs in unix. The following will explain how to run
595. tasks in the background, bring tasks to the foreground, background
596. already running tasks and keeping a task running while logged out.</p>
597. <h2 id="run-a-task-in-the-background">Run a task in the background</h2>
598. <p>All you need to to is follow a command with the ‘&’ character. Pretty
599. simple. What this does is start the command and background it. It will
600. keep running and when it is finished it will present the results to the
601. foreground.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Human readable du sorted by size</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/human-readable-du-sorted-by-size/</link><pubDate>Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/human-readable-du-sorted-by-size/</guid><description>&lt;p>du is the *nix command for &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_%28Unix%29" title="Du (Unix)">disk
602. usage</a>. It tells
603. you how much space everything in the given directory is taking
604. up. <a href="http://www.gnu.org/" title="GNU">GNU</a> du introduced a handy option -h
605. making it human readable, or showing sizes using K, M, G rather than
606. bytes. Unfortunately this makes it not sortable numerically. Here’s how
607. to sort du by size and keep it as human readable.</p>
608. &lt;p>Insert the following function into your .profile or .bash_profile file.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Benchmarking Cloudfront (and S3)</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/benchmarking-cloudfront-and-s3/</link><pubDate>Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/benchmarking-cloudfront-and-s3/</guid><description>&lt;p>&lt;a href="http://amazon.com/" title="Amazon">Amazon&lt;/a> has done it again bringing another
609. computing service to the masses. This time it’s the Content Delivery
610. Network
611. or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network" title="Content delivery network">CDN</a>.
612. Cloudfront is a direct competitor to other popular CDNs such
613. as <a href="http://www.akamai.com" title="Akamai">Akamai</a>. While Akamai requires a
614. fairly substantial amount of traffic to become a customer, Cloudfront
615. doesn’t. It follows all of Amazons, pay for what you use mentality. This
616. means that everyone can benefit from incorporating Cloudfront into their
617. blog, site, store, etc..&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Using the right keys</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/using-the-right-keys/</link><pubDate>Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/using-the-right-keys/</guid><description>&lt;p>Today I was visiting a friends office and like many offices in NYC they
618. have a shared bathroom in the hall for the entire floor. In this
619. building it had five buttons on the door that when pressed in the
620. correct order unlocked the door. A simple password.</p>
621. <p>In our office we have a similarly shared bathroom, but instead of a
622. password, we have a physical key required to unlock the door.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>REST vs SOAP, the difference between soap and rest</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/soap-vs-rest/</link><pubDate>Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/soap-vs-rest/</guid><description>&lt;p>Someone asked me a question today “Why would anyone choose SOAP (&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP" title="SOAP">Simple
623. Object Access Protocol</a>)
624. instead of REST (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer" title="Representational State Transfer">Representational State
625. Transfer</a>)?”
626. My response: “The general rule of thumb I’ve always heard is ‘Unless you
627. have a definitive reason to use SOAP use REST’”. He asked “what’s one
628. reason?” I thought about it for a minute and honestly answered that I
629. haven’t ever come across a reason. My background is building great
630. internet companies.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>My Online Business Card (Vcard)</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/my-online-business-card-vcard/</link><pubDate>Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/my-online-business-card-vcard/</guid><description>&lt;p>I wanted to polish up my javascript coding so I decided that the best
631. way to do that was with a project that I’ve been wanted to do for a
632. while anyway, my own identity site, or my online business card, or my
633. online vcard. The idea was inspired by <a href="http://timvandamme.com/" title="Tim Van Damme">Tim Van
634. Damme</a>’s website.</p>
635. <p>To accomplish this I wrote a jquery plugin to handle the navigation,
636. animation etc.. The site itself is rather simple, a single html page and
637. a few images. The markup is written in such a way that it works
638. perfectly (minus the hiding and animation) even when javascript isn’t
639. present.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>7 security practices you need to follow</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/7-security-practices-you-need-to-follow/</link><pubDate>Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/7-security-practices-you-need-to-follow/</guid><description>&lt;p>Some of this may seem like a broken record, yet every single time you
640. hear about a bank losing millions of customer data, or a company having
641. a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_security" title="Computer security">security
642. breach</a>
643. they consistently have failed to implement and enforce the most basic
644. security practices. Here are 7 simple security practices that you cannot
645. afford to not follow.</p>
646. <h3 id="1-secure-pass-phrases">1. Secure pass phrases</h3>
647. <p>Throw away the notion of
648. a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password" title="Password">password</a>. Pass
649. phrases consisting of multiple words and symbols are considerably more
650. secure and easy to remember. Most people use the same password for
651. everything and it’s almost always a word or a word+#. A good <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passphrase" title="Passphrase">pass
652. phrase</a> can be
653. something like “Mary.had.@.little.Lamb”. It’s really easy to remember
654. and nearly impossible to guess or brute force. Using a password
655. management system like One Password for Mac is also a good idea.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Secure Automated, Key Based SSH</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/secure-automated-key-based-ssh/</link><pubDate>Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/secure-automated-key-based-ssh/</guid><description>&lt;p>SSH is great and secure… Unless you need to automate it. Then it sucks
656. because your only options are to create a passwordless key, or login add
657. your key
658. to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ssh-agent" title="Ssh-agent">ssh-agent</a>, stay
659. logged in forever. Here’s a quick guide to having the best of both
660. worlds. A Secure SSH Connection that can be used in automated scripts. (
661. with the single catch, that upon reboot you need to re-enter your key’s
662. password ) Create and Distribute your Key&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Fascinating interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/fascinating-interview-with-steve-jobs-and-bill-gates/</link><pubDate>Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/fascinating-interview-with-steve-jobs-and-bill-gates/</guid><description>&lt;p>In 2007, &lt;a href="http://allthingsd.com/" title="All Things Digital">All Things
663. Digital</a> held a fascinating
664. interview with both <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/billg/default.mspx" title="Bill Gates">Bill
665. Gates</a>
666. and <a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/person/steve-jobs" title="Steve Jobs">Steve
667. Jobs</a>.</p>
668. <p>This interview runs for 90 minutes and it’s worth every minute.</p>
669. <p>It’s clear that they have a reasonably good relationship and clearly
670. know each other well. They have a genuine and sincere respect for each
671. other. It’s amazing how firm a grasp both have on the industry as a
672. whole. Steve is clearly passionate about the engineering aspects of his
673. business, while Bill is full geek about the coding and operates very
674. much in a shrewd business mentality.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>The Importance of Focus</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/the-importance-of-focus/</link><pubDate>Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/the-importance-of-focus/</guid><description>&lt;p>Imagine
675. if <a href="http://www.apple.com" title="Apple">Apple</a>, <a href="http://disney.go.com" title="The Walt Disney Company">Disney</a>, <a href="http://www.microsoft.com" title="Microsoft">Microsoft</a>,
676. etc had chased every oppotunity that they came across. One thing is
677. certain, you wouldn’t recognize their name today. Each of these
678. companies was successful because of extreme focus around a central
679. vision. As <a href="http://www.billcosby.com/" title="Bill Cosby">Bill Cosby</a> said..
680. “I don’t know the key to success but the key to failure is to try to
681. please everyone.”</p>
682. <p><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/billg/default.mspx" title="Bill Gates">Bill
683. Gates</a>
684. achieved monumental success with Microsoft, and attributes “focus” as
685. the key to his success. He stated “maintaining focus is a key to
686. success. You should understand your circle of competence and spend your
687. time and energy there…I’ve learned that only through focus can you do
688. world-class things, no matter how capable you are.”&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Getting Started With Drupal</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/getting-started-with-drupal/</link><pubDate>Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/getting-started-with-drupal/</guid><description>&lt;p>&lt;a href="http://www.drupal.org" title="Drupal">Drupal&lt;/a> is a very powerful &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management" title="Content management">content
689. management</a>
690. solution. It powered an earlier version of this website as well as
691. <a href="http://zoopframework.com">zoopframework.com</a>. Drupal is a relatively
692. easy to use system, but there are a few key concepts that you really
693. need to understand in getting started. I often find that webcasts are
694. fantastic resources for instruction. I recently helped a non-techie
695. friend setup a drupal site and was surprised at how many (really bad)
696. drupal videos existed online. I have compiled some of the better ones
697. here as a resource and guide to getting started with Drupal.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Vim Plugins: snipMate</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/vim-plugins-snipmate/</link><pubDate>Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/vim-plugins-snipmate/</guid><description>&lt;h2 id="why-use-it">Why use it&lt;/h2>
698. <ul>
699. <li>It’s super easy to use</li>
700. <li>It has tons of snippets</li>
701. <li>It’s pretty well compatible with TextMate snippets for easy
702. portability</li>
703. <li>Dynamic variables, for all the times you use the same string
704. multiple times</li>
705. <li>It’s really easy to define your own snippets</li>
706. <li>It’s better than anything else out there, trust me I’ve tried them
707. all</li>
708. </ul>
709. <p>Sometimes a video works better to explain things.. check out this video</p>
710. <style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }</style><div class='embed-container'><iframe src='https://player.vimeo.com/video/3535418' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
711. <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/3535418">snipMate.vim Introductory Screencast</a> from
712. <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1404868">Michael Sanders</a> on
713. &lt;a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo&lt;/a>.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Checking Vendor References</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/checking-vendor-references/</link><pubDate>Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/checking-vendor-references/</guid><description>&lt;p>One task that should be part of every IT managers is performing
714. reference checks on potential vendors. A vendor reference check goes
715. beyond the sales pitch to reveal the true nature of a product or
716. company. If you’re not performing reference checks you are susceptible
717. of falling prey to a slick sales pitch with nothing but trouble behind
718. it.</p>
719. <p>Vendors only provide the customers they are certain will give a glowing
720. endorsement. You need to know the right approach and the right questions
721. to ask. If you do, you can ascertain quickly if the vendor is right for
722. you.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>A Better Follow Friday</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/a-better-follow-friday/</link><pubDate>Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/a-better-follow-friday/</guid><description>&lt;p>Follow Friday is a common practice
723. on <a href="http://twitter.com/" title="Twitter">Twitter</a> where many people spend
724. friday posting things like #FF
725. @<a href="http://twitter.com/aplusk" title="Ashton Kutcher">aplusk</a>
726. @<a href="http://twitter.com/guykawasaki" title="Guy Kawasaki">guykawasaki</a> …  This
727. practice is distracting at best and fails to accomplish the single
728. purpose it intends. Follow friday began as way to share lesser known
729. twitter users with your community. A great idea that quickly grew out of
730. control. I propose a better implementation that will not only accomplish
731. the original intent but will do so in a non-distrcting manner by
732. leveraging twitter lists. I propose that any individual that wants to
733. share their recent finds, favorite follows or other gems create a list
734. called “recommends”. Keep a handful of people on this list. Cycle them
735. out as often as you like. You can find mine
736. at&lt;a href="http://twitter.com/spf13/recommends">@spf13/recommends&lt;/a>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Engaging Employees</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/engaging-employees/</link><pubDate>Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/engaging-employees/</guid><description>&lt;p>There is one trait that if possessed can virtually ensure success, the
737. ability to nurture a culture of engaged workers.</p>
738. <p>Engaged workers do work harder or longer, but that’s not the core
739. benefit, rather an engaged employee will demonstrate commitment,
740. dedication, initiative and will work for the company (rather than for a
741. paycheck). Engaged workers require no supervision and little management.
742. Only when employees are properly engaged can organization move as one
743. towards a unified goal. When employees are engaged, organizations will
744. succeed because all the participants will ensure it.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Installing Git on a Shared Host</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/installing-git-on-a-shared-host/</link><pubDate>Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/installing-git-on-a-shared-host/</guid><description>&lt;p>&lt;a href="http://git-scm.com/" title="Git">Git&lt;/a> is a fantastic tool and is
745. very useful for deployment. If you can’t install git system wide or
746. don’t want to mess with installing it on the entire system here is an
747. easy way to install it for a single user. This also works well on <a href="http://apple.com/macosx/" title="Mac OS X">Mac
748. OS X</a> where installing git is more
749. challenging than necessary. Script included</p>
750. <p>I used this script to install git on 1and1. The same script should work
751. anywhere with no or little modification.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Apple's iconic presentations</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/apples-iconic-presentations/</link><pubDate>Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/apples-iconic-presentations/</guid><description>&lt;p>Recently a book came out &lt;a href="http://carminegallo.com/stevejobsbook/">The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to
752. be Insanely Great in Front of Any
753. Audience</a>. Jobs has mastered the
754. art of presenting. I thought it would be interesting to look at his
755. presentations over the years. Here are the three biggest
756. announcements <a href="http://www.apple.com" title="Apple">Apple</a> has
757. made.. <a href="http://www.apple.com/imac/" title="IMac">iMac</a> (Jobs first product
758. after
759. returning),<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod" title="IPod">iPod</a>, <a href="http://www.apple.com/iphone" title="iPhone">iPhone</a>.</p>
760. <p>Look at how his personal style has changed over the years. As time
761. progress he began to emulate his products more. His appearance is much
762. simpler and more refined. Look at how his presentation style has
763. changed over the years. In his iMac presentation, Steve gives us a well
764. presented, but somewhat canned and tech heavy product pitch. Notice how
765. the word count on the slides dramatically decreases over time. The
766. presentations become more about the image and visual storytelling,
767. rather than the details. When we reach the iPhone announcement he is full
768. on storytelling. His story has villains, peril and a hero (Apple, and by
769. extension, Steve Jobs himself).&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Vim Plugins: NERD Commenter</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/vim-plugins-nerd-commenter/</link><pubDate>Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/vim-plugins-nerd-commenter/</guid><description>&lt;p>The NERD Commenter is an indispensable tool when programming in
770. <a href="http://www.vim.org/" title="Vim">VIM</a>. It understands like a
771. zillion different file types and properly comments each. It can handle
772. single line, multi line, partial line commenting as well as nesting. If
773. you’re programming in VIM you really should be using it.</p>
774. <p>It is simple enough to use. Most commands are mapped to ,c[character].
775. The command you are probably going to use the most is ,c<space> which
776. intelligently toggles a comment on or off.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Mastering the Command Line</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/mastering-the-command-line/</link><pubDate>Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/mastering-the-command-line/</guid><description>&lt;p>If you use *nix, no doubt you’ve spent some time on the &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_interface" title="Command-line interface">command
777. line</a>.
778. Here are a few of the most helpful tricks you can use in the bash shell
779. to really optimize your time, impress your friends, and make everyone
780. else feel inferior… not to mention become more productive. People
781. familar with the command line can usually work considerably faster (for
782. most tasks) than you can through a gui. So be brave, embrace the
783. keyboard and master the <a href="http://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/bash/bashtop.html" title="Bash">bash
784. shell&lt;/a>.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Conclusion of the Blog-a-thon</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/conclusion-of-the-blog-a-thon/</link><pubDate>Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/conclusion-of-the-blog-a-thon/</guid><description>&lt;p>Today marks the last post of my blog-a-thon. It has been a learning and
785. growing experience. I have blogged more time in the past 4 weeks as I
786. did the prior 52. It was challenging and rewarding.</p>
787. <p>I feel I have developed as a blogger and having 3 posts a week has
788. brought the blog to the front of my mind. Not only did I write many
789. articles, but I’ve started a bunch more and have ideas for even more
790. than that. Needless to say increasing the frequency of posts actually
791. increased my depth of topics and ideas.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Take Time to Help Others</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/take-time-to-help-others/</link><pubDate>Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/take-time-to-help-others/</guid><description>&lt;p>While it may not seem intuitive taking time out to selflessly help
792. others will help you more than them. This week I haven’t had much time
793. to blog largely because this week many opportunities arose to help
794. others and I took them. Some at work, some outside of work. Helping
795. others will endear them to you. Not only will you ultimately benefit
796. more than what you’ve invested in helping others, but you will also make
797. a real difference in the lives of those whom you work with.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Windows 7 launch notes</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/windows-7-launch-notes/</link><pubDate>Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/windows-7-launch-notes/</guid><description>&lt;p>I was fortunate to be able to attend
798. the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com" title="Microsoft">Microsoft</a> Launch Developer
799. Preview meeting in NYC.
800. <a href="http://www.microsoft.com" title="Microsoft">Microsoft</a> is holding these all
801. over the country to prepare IT and developers for the upcoming launch.
802. Overall it was a good meeting and Microsoft is delivering a great
803. product. More importantly they have a really good chance of overcoming
804. the bad taste of vista and emerge as a innovation leader. These are my
805. notes taken during the meeting with some of my insights.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>54% US Companies Ban Social Media... and That's Fine</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/54-us-companies-ban-social-media-and-thats-fine/</link><pubDate>Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/54-us-companies-ban-social-media-and-thats-fine/</guid><description>&lt;p>According to a study commissioned by &lt;a href="http://www.roberthalftechnology.com" title="Robert Half Technology">Robert Half
806. Technology</a>,
807. an IT staffing company, 54 percent of U.S. companies say they’ve banned
808. workers from using social networking sites like
809. <a href="http://twitter.com" title="Twitter">Twitter</a>,
810. <a href="http://facebook.com" title="Facebook">Facebook</a>,
811. <a href="http://www.linkedin.com" title="LinkedIn">LinkedIn</a> and
812. <a href="http://myspace.com" title="MySpace">MySpace</a> while at work. Source: <a href="http://%20http://ibtimes.com.au/articles/20091013/54-percent-companies-ban-facebook-twitter-work.htm">54% of
813. Companies ban Facebook,
814. Twitter…</a></p>
815. <p>We should be shocked that this number isn’t higher. Let’s look at this
816. realistically. For many professions, networking is crucial to success,
817. but in most professions, it is personal networking, not online that is
818. beneficial. For instance, I don’t want my doctor on twitter. Can you
819. imagine an surgeon breaking to tweet or check his feed. Seems not only
820. ridiculous but dangerous. A lawyer tweeting about his current case would
821. clearly be a breach of trust. Would it be appropriate for the delivery
822. driver to be tweeting while on the job, no because his job requires him
823. to concentrate on the road. Or what about a retail employee or server.
824. Certainly they are not being paid to tweet, but rather take care of the
825. customers. For many jobs social networking / social media provides a
826. distraction from the task at hand.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Managing Your Social Media Presence</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/managing-your-social-media-presence/</link><pubDate>Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/managing-your-social-media-presence/</guid><description>&lt;p>As social media continues to emerge, many professionals are curious on
827. what is the best way to manage these various networks. For posting
828. updates I have found <a href="http://ping.fm" title="Ping.fm">ping.fm</a> an invaluable
829. resource. I use it to manage updates across all my networks
830. including <a href="http://twitter.com/spf13" title="Twitter">Twitter</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/steve.francia" title="Facebook">Facebook</a>,<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevefrancia" title="LinkedIn">LinkedIn</a>,
831. Flicker, <a href="http://friendfeed.com/stevefrancia" title="FriendFeed">FriendFeed</a>
832. and more. Here’s the skinny on how I utilize this resource.</p>
833. <p>If you’re not familar with ping.fm it enables one to post updates to one
834. or many different websites though email, web, IM, SMS and widgets.
835. Ping.fm also supports images so they can be sent via any of those
836. methods that support images. One of my favorite features of Ping.fm is
837. it’s ability to cross post or selectively post to groups. It does this
838. in an elegant manner through using groups. To send an update to a group,
839. all one needs to do is prepend my update with a #groupname and it will
840. only update those groups.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>The Death of Search</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/the-death-of-search/</link><pubDate>Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/the-death-of-search/</guid><description>&lt;p>Social media will be the next innovation in the most unlikely of places,
841. search ( leveraging the community to scale infinitely ). It’s not that
842. people will all together stop searching, but the approach that they take
843. to finding information will become increasingly social (rather than
844. algorithmic) in nature.</p>
845. <p>For the last decade, search always seems on the cusp of “intelligent”
846. results. Each new engine promises to be able to overcome “search
847. overload” as Microsoft puts is. Yet none have been able to actualize
848. this goal. If you want to know the best place in NYC to get pizza, you
849. don’t  ask
850. google](<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=best+pizza+in+nyc)">http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=best+pizza+in+nyc)</a>. Why,
851. because google will give you hundreds of results, without any acutal
852. value attached to them. You will certainly find better responses by
853. inquiring through social media.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>How I Blog</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/how-i-blog/</link><pubDate>Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/how-i-blog/</guid><description>&lt;p>Not surprisingly, given my semi random content, I arrive at my posts a
854. few different ways.</p>
855. <h3 id="1-i-better-write-this-down-or-ill-never-remember-it">1. I better write this down or I’ll never remember it</h3>
856. <p>These posts are the result of a rather frustrating night of problem
857. solving. After reading tons of documentation and googling around,
858. reading forums and discussing on IRC I finally got it working. Now I
859. better write it down so I know how to do it next time.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Analyzing and Improving Conversion</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/analyzing-and-improving-conversion/</link><pubDate>Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/analyzing-and-improving-conversion/</guid><description>&lt;p>Conversion is one of those core metrics that every business depends on
860. and strives to improve. Improving your conversion rate
861. (while maintaining a consistent traffic level) is the single most
862. important goal any business should have. Not only will your sales
863. increase without adding additional load but your marketing will be more
864. efficient so you can spend more money driving more sales. All to often
865. people get caught up with improving conversion rates. It is important to
866. recognize that <strong>improving conversion is not the goal, increasing sales
867. is</strong>. Improving conversion is one method of increasing sales only when
868. it isn’t the result of lower traffic (lower traffic / same sales =
869. improved conversion).&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Ranking Social Media</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/ranking-social-media/</link><pubDate>Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/ranking-social-media/</guid><description>&lt;p>In business it’s common to use sales as a metric to determine success.
870. Songs, albums, books and movies are all ranked on “best seller” charts.
871. While this isn’t a perfect metric, it is largely useful due to the
872. innate control built within. There is friction to a sale in that buying
873. something costs money of which people have a limited supply. This makes
874. it so that someone couldn’t just repeatedly buy their own song, album,
875. book or movie and have a best seller (not to mention they would be
876. losing a ton of money to the distribution and retail channels).&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>My Own Private Blogathon</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/my-own-private-blogathon/</link><pubDate>Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/my-own-private-blogathon/</guid><description>&lt;p>Someone once said a goal is a dream until you write it down … in your
877. blog and tell the world about it.</p>
878. <p>In an effort to focus on blogging a bit more frequently I have decided
879. to start a blogathon beginning today. <strong>I will write a post every
880. Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next four weeks</strong>. I think this
881. rate will permit me to continue to keep quality posts, while increasing
882. the frequency and consequently the quantity. As usual my posts can be
883. expected to be quite random, perhaps more so than ever. This is a major
884. undertaking for me as currently I have been posting about once a month
885. since I started this blog. The goal here is to embark on a blogging
886. journey and hopefully create some great content along the way.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Using Nginx as a Load Balancer</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/using-nginx-as-a-load-balancer/</link><pubDate>Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/using-nginx-as-a-load-balancer/</guid><description>&lt;p>Nginx is a relatively new web server that has a light footprint
887. and relatively easy configuration. The following configuration
888. demonstrates how to properly use nginx as a load balancer in
889. front of two web servers.</p>
890. <pre><code>pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
891.  
892. events {
893. worker_connections 1024;
894. }
895.  
896. http {
897. include mime.types;
898.  
899. default_type application/octet-stream;
900. sendfile on;
901. keepalive_timeout 75;
902. proxy_buffering off;
903. log_not_found off;
904. error_log /dev/null;
905. access_log off;
906. proxy_connect_timeout 20;
907. client_header_timeout 60;
908. client_body_timeout 60;
909. send_timeout 60;
910.  
911. server {
912. listen 127.0.0.1:80;
913. location /nginx_status {
914. stub_status on;
915. access_log off;
916. allow 127.0.0.1;
917. deny all;
918. }
919. }
920.  
921. server {
922. listen in:80;
923. server_name dev.portero.com;
924.  
925. location ~ ^/(skin|media)/ {
926. root /mnt/fs/vhosts/dev.portero.com/public_html;
927. expires 30d;
928. }
929.  
930. location / {
931. proxy_pass http://portero;
932. }
933. }
934.  
935. upstream portero {
936. server out1;
937. server out2;
938. }
939. }
940. </code></pre>
941. <h2 id="related-articles">Related articles</h2>
942. <ul>
943. <li><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ashfame/handling-web-servers-of-high-traffic-sites">Handling web servers of high traffic
944. sites</a>
945. (slideshare.net)</li>
946. &lt;/ul></description></item><item><title>Featured in CIO Magazine!</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/featured-in-cio-magazine/</link><pubDate>Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/featured-in-cio-magazine/</guid><description>&lt;p>I don’t know what could be more shocking that opening this month’s
947. edition of CIO magazine and discovering that my blog, this very blog
948. that you are currently reading is one of two blogs featured this month.
949. I am humbled and honored to be mentioned and included with such great
950. peers. To all my new readers I look forward to connecting with you
951. via <a href="http://spf13.com/twitter">Twitter</a>
952. or <a href="http://spf13.com/linkedin">LinkedIn</a>. Check
953. out &lt;a href="http://www.cio.com/">cio.com&lt;/a> for more great content.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Choosing a Hosting Partner</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/choosing-a-hosting-partner/</link><pubDate>Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/choosing-a-hosting-partner/</guid><description>&lt;p>No question about it, choosing a good hosting partner is one of the most
954. important decisions a CTO / CIO can make, especially in a .com company.
955. I recently had to choose a hosting partner for the
956. new <a href="http://portero.com">portero.com</a>. Since the space changes so
957. rapidly the last provider you used may no longer be the best fit for you
958. now. Here’s 10 criteria you need to evaluate when analyzing a hosting
959. partner.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Social Media Recognition</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/social-media-recognition/</link><pubDate>Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/social-media-recognition/</guid><description>&lt;p>Recently I’ve been fortunate to be recognized in a few publications.
960. I extend a warm welcome to all my new friends and followers. I look
961. forward to engaging with you.</p>
962. <ul>
963. <li><a href="http://www.ciozone.com/index.php/Career/12-CIOs-Who-Love-Social-Media.html%20">12 CIOs Who Love Social
964. Media</a></li>
965. <li><a href="http://mosnarcommunications.blogspot.com/2009/06/luxury-50-top-twitter-users.html">Luxury 50 Top Twitter
966. Users</a></li>
967. <li><a href="http://www.ciodashboard.com/cio-twitter-dashboard/">CIO Twitter
968. Dashboard</a></li>
969. </ul>
970.  
971. <figure class="twothirds">
973. <img src="https://spf13.com/post/social-media-recognition/3730060061_ee4e0d8880_o.jpg" alt="12 CIOs Who Love Social Media-2 by steve.francia, on Flickr" />
976. <figcaption>
977. <p>
978. 12 CIOs Who Love Social Media-2 by steve.francia, on Flickr
982. </p>
983. </figcaption>
985. </figure>
986.  
987. <h2 id="related-articles">Related Articles</h2>
988. <ul>
989. <li><a href="http://ericbrown.com/the-new-cio-social-media-the-enterprise.htm/trackback">The New CIO: Social Media and the
990. Enterprise</a>(ericbrown.com)</li>
991. &lt;/ul></description></item><item><title>New Facebook in Depth Review</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/new-facebook-in-depth-review/</link><pubDate>Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/new-facebook-in-depth-review/</guid><description>&lt;p>Facebook just unveiled their biggest change yet.
992. The <a href="http://www.new.facebook.com" title="http://www.new.facebook.com">http://www.new.facebook.com</a>
993. website is a preview of the next design of Facebook. The new design
994. places more emphasis on friends and actions and downplays the
995. applications. There is a lot more than just design going on. They also
996. reveal some new functionality. I will present an in-depth review of what
997. to expect from Facebook complete with screenshots.</p>
998. <h1 id="new-profile-screen">New Profile Screen</h1>
999. <p>The new profile screen is where the meat of the changes are. First of
1000. all the new layout is a welcome change. Noticibly missing are the
1001. excessive applications that were turning Facebook into myspace (and that
1002. is a bad thing). It is very ajax driven and most actions happen without
1003. leaving the page.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Setting up Subversion with multiple access methods</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/setting-up-subversion-with-multiple-access-methods/</link><pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/setting-up-subversion-with-multiple-access-methods/</guid><description>&lt;p>One thing that
1004. makes <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/" title="Subversion">subversion</a>
1005. such a powerful revision system is it’s ability to permit multiple
1006. methods of access. Https, WebDAV, SSH and
1007. svnserve. In spite of svn’s ability to support multiple access methods,
1008. doing so simultaniously can be quite challenging. Typically one will run
1009. into permission issues as the http(s) access will all be written to the
1010. filesystem as the user running the webserver.
1011. The SSH access will all write to the filesystem under each users given account.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Scaling Web Sites (LAMP) : Top Resources</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/scaling-web-sites-lamp-top-resources-2/</link><pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/scaling-web-sites-lamp-top-resources-2/</guid><description>&lt;p>Luckily it’s 2009 and there have been a bunch of successful websites
1012. that have had to deal with large
1013. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalability" title="Scalability">scalability</a>
1014. challenges. Many have been kind enough to share their knowledge with the
1015. world. Here is a list of the best books, articles, presentations and
1016. practices from the likes of <a href="http://twitter.com" title="Twitter">Twitter</a>,
1017. <a href="http://facebook.com" title="Facebook">Facebook</a>,
1018. <a href="http://www.flickr.com" title="Flickr">Flickr</a> and more.</p>
1019. <h1 id="books">Books</h1>
1020. <h2 id="building-scalable-web-sites"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites-applications/dp/0596102356"><strong>Building Scalable Web Sites</strong></a></h2>
1021. <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites-applications/dp/0596102356"><strong>Building, scaling, and optimizing the next generation of web
1022. applications by Cal
1023. Henderson</strong></a></p>
1024. <p>Cal of Flickr fame has written the definitive resource on scaling web
1025. apps.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>How to Fix a Broken Marketplace (eBay)</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/how-to-fix-a-broken-marketplace-ebay/</link><pubDate>Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/how-to-fix-a-broken-marketplace-ebay/</guid><description>&lt;p>Do you still remember when &lt;a href="http://ebay.com" title="eBay">eBay&lt;/a> was a great
1026. place to buy and sell things? Today most auctions close without a single bid and
1027. very few are purchased at all. Most items are sold by “power sellers”
1028. which is really code word for businesses. Heck, most sellers are
1029. probably businesses at this point. As eBay discovers it isn’t recession
1030. proof and scrambles to become a primarily “buy it now” channel it needs
1031. to remember what eBay was.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Stop Twitter from Becoming the next MySpace</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/stop-twitter-from-becoming-the-next-myspace/</link><pubDate>Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/stop-twitter-from-becoming-the-next-myspace/</guid><description>&lt;p>6 months ago &lt;a href="http://twitter.com" title="Twitter">Twitter&lt;/a> was the best place
1032. in existence to use and develop great relations with key players in
1033. industry, brilliant thinkers and friends. It has since become popular,
1034. and like the kids trying to be popular in high school, has become a
1035. whore. Not that it was ever exclusive by restrictions, but rather by
1036. obscurity. Now twitter is being over run with spammers, marketeers ( is
1037. there a difference ), robots, celebrities, fake celebrities, ghost
1038. writers and a whole flood of me too people.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Facebook Meets Twitter &amp; FriendFeed</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/facebook-meets-twitter-friendfeed/</link><pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/facebook-meets-twitter-friendfeed/</guid><description>&lt;p>For the past few months &lt;a href="http://facebook.com" title="Facebook">Facebook&lt;/a> has
1039. been obsessed with <a href="http://twitter.com/blog" title="Twitter">Twitter</a>. It’s
1040. easy to see why. Twitter is addicitve. Many twitter users are constantly
1041. on twitter. Whenever you goto twitter there is always something new
1042. happening. Facebook obviously wants this experience on facebook. Why not
1043. copy twitter. I think Facebook could do it and do it better. Last week
1044. Facebook unveiled their new home page layout. Inspite of critical
1045. feedback. It is a vast improvement with lots of potential.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Growing in a Down Economy</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/growing-in-the-down-economy/</link><pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/growing-in-the-down-economy/</guid><description>&lt;h1 id="trimming-the-fat">Trimming the Fat&lt;/h1>
1046. <p>I am all in favor of trimming the fat. Every company has inefficiencies
1047. and employees that aren’t adding value to the company. This exercise of
1048. fat trimming should be an ongoing exercise, quarterly. If a company
1049. larger than 200 employees is firing 10% or more of their employees they
1050. have a serious management issue. No well run company can operate
1051. efficiently with 10%+ of “fat”, and no company can expect to grow while
1052. letting go 10%+ of their staff. While wall street praises companies for
1053. taking bold drastic action, all the while they are destroying both the
1054. company, and the country that supports them.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Backup Your Files</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/backup-your-files/</link><pubDate>Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/backup-your-files/</guid><description>&lt;p>One of the worst experiences you can have as a computer operator is to
1055. realize you (or something else) just did something and wiped out your
1056. files. The purpose of this article is to show you how to automatically
1057. backup your files often and automatically. I use this setup to backup my
1058. documents every hour (I save more often then that). This gives me hourly
1059. versions of all my files I am working on. It even protects me from
1060. accidentally saving over an important document (at least to the last
1061. hour).&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Portero Raises 6.6 Million</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/portero-raises-6-6-million/</link><pubDate>Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/portero-raises-6-6-million/</guid><description>&lt;figure class="third right">
1063. <img src="https://spf13.com/post/portero-raises-6-6-million/portero.png" />
1066. </figure>
1067.  
1068. <p>I am happy to announce that <a href="http://www.portero.com/">Portero</a> has
1069. raised $6.6 million in funding. The round was led by <a href="http://www.lfecapital.com/" title="LFE Capital">LFE
1070. Capital</a> joined by returning
1071. backers including Grosvenor
1072. Funds. <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/19/portero-raises-66-million-round-for-online-luxury-goods-marketplace/">TechCrunch</a>
1073. picked up the announcement early this morning and featured us on their
1074. home page. As I have a bit of an insiders view, I felt it was my place
1075. to provide a bit of insight into why Portero is such a great company.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Backing up MySQL</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/backing-up-mysql/</link><pubDate>Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/backing-up-mysql/</guid><description>&lt;p>I don’t know very many people that haven’t been devastated by the loss
1076. of data… Yet I am baffled that millions of professional IT workers still
1077. ignore backing up their data. Since computers are great at doing
1078. repetitive things
1079. like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup" title="Backup">backups</a>.. why not
1080. spend 20 minutes setting up your machine to backup your files for you.
1081. This guide will be specific to <a href="http://www.mysql.com" title="MySQL">mysql</a> to
1082. create a local copy of the backup. Then read my other guide about
1083. copying files securely to a remote backup server for the 2nd part.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>One Hundred Pushups</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/one-hundred-pushups/</link><pubDate>Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/one-hundred-pushups/</guid><description>&lt;p>A while back a bunch of people were twittering about the 100 pushup
1084. challenge. Thanksgiving was the catalyst for me. I began my quest for
1085. better health about a week ago.</p>
1086. <p>The premise of the challenge is quite simple. It is a six week program,
1087. that if followed, you can do 100 consecutive good form push ups at the
1088. end of the program. I am in decent enough shape now, despite not
1089. visiting the gym as often as I should. During the initial test I erked
1090. out 31 pushups. I knew there was another teir at 30, so that was my
1091. goal. I have been tracking my progress
1092. here &lt;a href="http://spf13.com/pushups">http://spf13.com/pushups&lt;/a>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>How RIM handed the mobile market over to Apple</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/how-rim-handed-the-mobile-market-over-to-apple/</link><pubDate>Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/how-rim-handed-the-mobile-market-over-to-apple/</guid><description>&lt;p>&lt;em>&lt;strong>Hint: It has nothing to do with touch screens.&lt;/strong>&lt;/em>&lt;/p>
1093. <p>While <a href="http://rim.com" title="Research In Motion">RIM</a> scrambles to create the
1094. next greatest device, or their
1095. “<a href="http://www.apple.com/iphone" title="iPhone 3G">iPhone</a> killer” it needs to
1096. recognize that it’s no longer about the device. RIM don’t you remember
1097. that touchscreens aren’t new.. Palm had them back in the 90′s … before
1098. you crushed them.</p>
1099. <h2 id="when-rimruled-the-world">When RIM ruled the world</h2>
1100. <p>RIM knows what it takes to dethrone the current market leader.
1101. RIM accomplished just that crushing a powerful and established palm.
1102. RIM was successful where palm wasn’t for two reasons.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Hire Your Next Consultant Using Twitter</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/hire-your-next-consultant-using-twitter/</link><pubDate>Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/hire-your-next-consultant-using-twitter/</guid><description>&lt;p>At Portero we had an issue with our network.&lt;/p>
1103. <p>I know enough
1104. about networking to understand the basics. I actually used to work on
1105. the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_IOS" title="Cisco IOS">IOS</a> back
1106. during the dawn of the internet. Though things have changed since then,
1107. the biggest issue is I don’t remember enough to fix network
1108. configuration issues on the router level.</p>
1109. <p>Before I took the post at Portero, we had a company we contracted to
1110. configure all of our <a href="http://www.cisco.com" title="Cisco Systems">Cisco</a>
1111. equipment. They sold us the equipment and peformed the original
1112. installation. Unfortunately they had some issues that they were never
1113. able to solve. Despite going up the ladder to the executive level, they
1114. still were unable to properly configure
1115. a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_network" title="Virtual private network">VPN</a>
1116. connection for us. More shocked than anything at their inability to
1117. perform a core function of the companies competence, I terminated our
1118. contract with them and began a search for a replacement.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Promotion</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/promotion/</link><pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/promotion/</guid><description>&lt;p>Permit me to shamelesly announce my promotion to &lt;a href="http://www2.portero.com/our-team" title="Chief information officer">Chief Information
1119. Officer</a>
1120. at <a href="http://portero.com">Portero Inc</a>.</p>
1121. <h3 id="here-is-the-press-release-on-the-wire-this-week">Here is the Press Release on the wire this week.</h3>
1122. <p><a href="http://www.portero.com" title="Portero">Portero</a>, Inc., is pleased to
1123. announce the promotion of Steve P. Francia to the position of Chief
1124. Information Officer (CIO), effective immediately. He will continue to
1125. report to <a href="http://twitter.com/NexamCapital" title="Michael Sheldon">Michael
1126. Sheldon</a>, the
1127. company’s chairman and CEO, and will be responsible for operations and
1128. technology for the company.  In this role he will guide web, technology
1129. and infrastructure developments, which will further contribute to rapid
1130. and efficient growth, improved customer satisfaction and real-time
1131. business intelligence.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Why are you still shopping offline?</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/why-are-you-still-shopping-offline/</link><pubDate>Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/why-are-you-still-shopping-offline/</guid><description>&lt;p>Today I visited one of the largest national office supply outlets. I had
1132. a specific purpose in mind. I needed to pickup 2 wireless routers and 1
1133. audio cable. What transpired caused me to wonder why anyone does any
1134. offline shopping anymore.</p>
1135. <p>My experience at the store caused me to reflect on the many things we
1136. simply put up with at the store which we would never permit online.</p>
1137. <p>To begin with I had to drive to the store. For me this was about a 25
1138. minute round trip during a traffic filled rush hour. My best estimate is
1139. that I used 2+ gallons of gas. Arriving at the parking lot, I had to
1140. wait and circle before a spot was available. I thought “do that many
1141. people really shop for office supplies at 6pm on a Wednesday night?”
1142. Entering the store I realized why. It was a madhouse of teenagers and
1143. their parents. Should have guessed, mid August = back to school. I
1144. located the section for the networking equipment pretty quickly as it
1145. was relatively close to the entrance and well marked. The selection was
1146. pretty slim. They didn’t carry the model I wanted so I ended up settling
1147. with a the next best model (with the promise of 14 days to return)
1148. because that was the best one they carried. As I was searching through
1149. the routers for the right one, I overheard a conversation between a
1150. staff member and a customer. The staff member was telling the customer
1151. how bad Vista was and all that was wrong with it. I don’t like Vista
1152. very much, or really any MS operating system (I would pick windows 2000
1153. if I had to choose). It was quite funny how completely wrong he was. He
1154. was attacking Vista on all the points that were it’s strengths, and
1155. clearly hadn’t every used it. This was the so called expert that the
1156. brick and mortar store provide. Honestly could you ask for more. If
1157. people really knew what they were talking about they wouldn’t be working
1158. retail.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Managing Multiple Firefox Profiles in OS X</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/managing-multiple-firefox-profiles-in-os-x/</link><pubDate>Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/managing-multiple-firefox-profiles-in-os-x/</guid><description>&lt;p>One of the great features of
1159. <a href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/" title="Firefox">Firefox</a> is the
1160. ability to manage multiple profiles. This is a very handy feature with
1161. many different uses. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to do on a
1162. <a href="http://apple.com/macosx/" title="Mac OS X">mac</a>. I will show you how to setup
1163. multiple profiles on a mac that appear and run like normal mac
1164. applications so you can click on them and run them from quicksilver.</p>
1165. &lt;p>&lt;em>UPDATED 10/16/09 : Now working with Snow Leopard!&lt;/em>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Using SVK to Increase Productivity</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/using-svk-to-increase-productivity/</link><pubDate>Sat, 23 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/using-svk-to-increase-productivity/</guid><description>&lt;p>SVK is a client for SVN built using perl. It makes a number of
1166. improvements over the standard svn client, while retaining much of the
1167. same feel. It works with the standard Subversion server and works
1168. perfectly in an environment with some users using svn and some using svk
1169. on the client side. It provides a number of sizable advantages over the
1170. standard svn client and is a must have for any development project.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>The 15 Best Vim Plugins</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/the-15-best-vim-plugins/</link><pubDate>Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/the-15-best-vim-plugins/</guid><description>&lt;p>One of the things that makes vim great is that it can be extended
1171. through plugins. There are plugins for more than you would expect. I
1172. have gathered together the 15 best plugins. I’ve included these plugins
1173. as part of my <a href="http://spf13.com/post/ultimate-vim-config">ultimate VIM
1174. configuration</a> which has been
1175. featured on many sites and is hosted on
1176. <a href="https://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim">github</a>.  I’ve also begun a series
1177. of posts on some of these plugins including
1178. <a href="http://spf13.com/post/vim-plugins-snipmate">snipmate</a> and
1179. <a href="http://spf13.com/post/vim-plugins-nerd-commenter">NerdCommenter</a>.</p>
1180. <h2 id="general">General</h2>
1181. <h3 id="related-posts">Related Posts</h3>
1182. <ul>
1183. <li><a href="http://spf13.com/post/vim-plugins-nerd-commenter/">Vim Plugins: NERD
1184. Commenter</a></li>
1185. <li><a href="http://spf13.com/post/spf13-vim-3-0-release-and-new-website/">spf13-vim 3.0 release and new
1186. website</a></li>
1187. <li><a href="http://spf13.com/post/perfect-vimrc-vim-config-file/">The perfect .vimrc vim config
1188. file</a></li>
1189. <li><a href="http://spf13.com/post/vim-crash-course/">VIM Crash Course</a></li>
1190. <li><a href="http://spf13.com/post/vim-plugins-snipmate/">Vim Plugins: snipMate</a></li>
1191. <li><a href="http://spf13.com/post/ultimate-vim-config/">Ultimate Vim Config</a></li>
1192. </ul>
1193. <h3 id="supertab"><a href="http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1643">SuperTab</a></h3>
1194. &lt;p>Do all your insert-mode completion with Tab.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Implementing a Corporate Wiki</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/implementing-a-corporate-wiki/</link><pubDate>Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/implementing-a-corporate-wiki/</guid><description>&lt;p>It seems all of a sudden, the two buzz words in the corporate IT world
1195. are wiki and blog. Corporate wikis are emerging as cheap, intelligent,
1196. flexible systems for shared-document collaboration and content
1197. management. Because they are browser based, wikis are quite easy to
1198. implement and deploy.</p>
1199. <p>The wiki works well in the corporate world as it solves two problematic
1200. areas, the need for internal collaboration and document management.</p>
1201. <h2 id="collaboration">Collaboration</h2>
1202. <p>A wiki aims to replace the email, review, reply-to-all, repeat cycle
1203. most corporate environments are more than familiar with. A wiki enables
1204. documents to be written collaboratively, in near real time.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Why are you not on Twitter</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/why-are-you-not-on-twitter/</link><pubDate>Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/why-are-you-not-on-twitter/</guid><description>&lt;p>Over the last 2 weeks I have found myself asking that question more
1205. times than I can remember. When I first heard
1206. about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-blogging" title="Micro-blogging">microblogging</a>—or
1207. Twitter, the primary service that started the microblogging
1208. movement—over a year ago I thought it was a stupid fad and wouldn’t
1209. last. I mean what value can possibly be passed along in 140 characters
1210. or less. 2 weeks ago I was convinced to
1211. try &lt;a href="http://www.twitter.com/" title="Twitter">Twitter&lt;/a> and I am hooked.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Be more productive using GNU Screen</title><link>https://spf13.com/post/be-more-productive-using-gnu-screen/</link><pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://spf13.com/post/be-more-productive-using-gnu-screen/</guid><description>&lt;p>Despite living in the age of multicore
1212. processors, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface" title="Graphical user interface">GUI</a>
1213. everything and mountains of ram, I continually find myself more
1214. productive with a terminal open. Especially when that terminal is
1215. running <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/screen" title="GNU Screen">GNU Screen</a>.</p>
1216. <h1 id="aboutgnu-screen">About <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/screen" title="GNU Screen">GNU Screen</a></h1>
1217. <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Screen" title="GNU Screen">GNU Screen</a> is a
1218. free terminal multiplexer developed by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Project" title="GNU Project">the GNU
1219. Project</a>. It
1220. allows a user to access multiple separate terminal sessions inside a
1221. single <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_emulator" title="Terminal emulator">terminal
1222. window</a>
1223. or remote terminal session. It is useful for dealing with multiple
1224. programs from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_line_interface" title="Command line interface">command
1225. line</a>,
1226. and for separating programs from the shell that started the program.<br>
1227. -courtesy of wikipedia&lt;/p></description></item></channel></rss>

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