Topic: Software Development
Jeff & Joel are back with guests this week - joining them are Kyle Brandt and George Beech, our very own sysadmins/ops guys/[insert your own term here]
People like free, especially when it comes to apps. Ben Lorica, a Senior Analyst at O'Reilly Media, Inc., summarizes the popularity and economic trends of apps for both iPhones and iPads. He also presents statistics on how long apps stay popular, what makes them popular, and why price might not be a major factor after all.
So it's been a couple weeks since our last podcast, but Jeff & Joel are back and ready to catch up on everything they missed. There's no guest this week, just 60+ minutes of that Jeff & Joel banter that (we hope) you've grown to love.
The latest version of MariaDB is much faster and has microsecond-measuring analytics to prove it. Michael Widenius, "Monty" of Monty Program AB, reports on the development schedule of MariaDB, in which the team is drastically improving performance times, while maintaining drop-in compatibility with MySQL. At the end of this talk, Widenius outlines the feature wishlist of MariaDB 5.6.
The concept of scalability has been around as long as the need to deal with ever-expanding systems has. Marty Abbott and Michael Fisher, authors of the book Scalability Rules: 50 Principles for Scaling Web Sites, discuss the problems with how technology experts have to deal with expansion as more organizations increase their web presence. Having written an earlier book (The Art of Scalability), they are uniquely qualified to give practical advice to IT professionals.
Dr. Moira Gunn hears about life as Google employee from author and former Director of Consumer Marketing and Brand Management, Doug Edwards, as outlined in his new book, I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59.
Joining Jeff and Joel this week is Michael Natkin, from our Cooking.SE site. Michael is especially interesting because he is a computer programmer, but he doesn't answer questions at Stack Overflow, only on the Cooking site (he's our first guest to do so!) - he also writes over at Herbivoracious (which he started back in 2007).
Miguel De Icaza joins Jeff & Joel this week to discuss everything from Miguel's many projects to identity on the internet to playdates for toddlers. Miguel is a force in the software world, having initiated and contributed to all kinds of products over the years - he's also well known for being one of the most productive programmers out there.
Twitter filters billions of messages, and uses quite a few systems and tools to make that data flow. Jeremy Cole, founder of Proven Scaling, discusses the MySQL software used by Twitter, as well as many challenges Twitter faces with massive data storage. He also presents technical facts, figures, and solutions that the site uses to run smoothly.
Web forms suck, but they can be delightful, if designers will adopt a new mindset and use the latest tools. Luke Wroblewski has studied rich interactions in Javascript to find the best improvements over plain old web forms. He suggests novel ways to use data collected where people already live, in email, IM, and web services, so no forms are needed. And he delights in new kinds of interaction possible on mobile devices, with their sensors, soft keyboards, and advanced displays. Today, web forms can be wonderful.
