Maven Notes

Wylio: Tool to find Free Creative Commons media

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 02:41:00 +0000

photo © 2008 adit chandra | more info(via: Wylio)

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Is the quality/experience of programmers the most important success factor on a software project?

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 14:11:00 +0000

Is the quality/experience of programmers the most important success factor on a software project?

False. Processes and discipline to follow them are more important.

In my experience I've always found out that when looking for the root cause of delays/defects/failures the phrase "we need more experienced developers" is followed by "because this program/application is harder than any other program/application" and then by "because she will use her experience to solve/design/analyze the current issue(s)" and then by "because we didn't solved/designed/analyzed at the right moment" and then "because we didn't know how to dit, didn't know the process or didn't even identified the need to solve/design/analyze it".

Current software projects are big and complex and when faced without discipline or without a team thinking they will surely fail despite the experience of the team members.

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People who keep their minds open are more goal-directed and more motivated #FB

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:41:00 +0000

The Willpower Paradox: Scientific American

"Here is how Senay tested this notion. He had a group of volunteers work on a series of anagrams—changing the word “sauce” to “cause,” for example, or “when” to “hewn.” But before starting this task, half the volunteers were told to contemplate whether they would work on anagrams, while the others simply thought about the fact that they would be doing anagrams in a few minutes. The difference is subtle, but the former were basically putting their mind into wondering mode, while the latter were asserting themselves and their will. It is the difference between “Will I do this?” and “I will do this.”

The results were provocative. People with wondering minds completed significantly more anagrams than did those with willful minds. In other words, the people who kept their minds open were more goal-directed and more motivated than those who declared their objective to themselves.

These findings are counterintuitive. Think about it. Why would asserting one’s intentions undermine rather than advance a stated goal? Perhaps, Senay hypothesized, it is because questions by their nature speak to possibility and freedom of choice. Meditating on them might enhance feelings of autonomy and intrinsic motivation, creating a mind-set that promotes success."

» Full Scientific American article…

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Third-base coaching position carries greater prestige… and it's more 'white'

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:59:00 +0000

Baseball’s Praised Diversity Is Stranded at First Base - NYTimes.com

Among baseball’s 30 teams, only 23 percent of the third-base coaches are members of minorities, compared with 67 percent of its first-base coaches. The disparity has existed for decades but it is now about twice as large as it was in 1990, based on an analysis by The New York Times.

The question is why.

It is more than a mysterious quirk: the third-base coaching position carries greater prestige, the pay is better and the position is often a steppingstone to a managerial job.

NYTimes.com - Full article

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Incorrect Opinions on Energy Efficiency

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:47:00 +0000

Survey Probes Americans' Incorrect Opinions on Energy Efficiency
Scientific American

"The researchers started their survey with a simple open-ended question: What's the single most-effective thing you can do to conserve energy? More than 40 percent of the respondents said one of three things: Turn off lights, drive less or change the thermostat.

Less than 10 percent identified what experts generally agree are the most effective measures - insulate the house or use more efficient appliances or cars."

» Full Scientific American article

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Taxonomy of social networking data — Bruce Schneier — #social

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:44:00 +0000

Crypto-Gram: August 15, 2010
— Bruce Schneier

«Below is my taxonomy of social networking data, which I first presented at the Internet Governance Forum meeting last November, and again -- revised -- at an OECD workshop on the role of Internet intermediaries in June.

1. Service data is the data you give to a social networking site in order to use it. Such data might include your legal name, your age, and your credit-card number.

2. Disclosed data is what you post on your own pages: blog entries, photographs, messages, comments, and so on.

3. Entrusted data is what you post on other people's pages. It's basically the same stuff as disclosed data, but the difference is that you don't have control over the data once you post it -- another user does.

4. Incidental data is what other people post about you: a paragraph about you that someone else writes, a picture of you that someone else takes and posts. Again, it's basically the same stuff as disclosed data, but the difference is that you don't have control over it, and you didn't create it in the first place.

5. Behavioral data is data the site collects about your habits by recording what you do and who you do it with. It might include games you play, topics you write about, news articles you access (and what that says about your political leanings), and so on.

6. Derived data is data about you that is derived from all the other data. For example, if 80 percent of your friends self-identify as gay, you're likely gay yourself.»

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Rapid cloud development using Google App Engine for the Cycle Hire Widget Android application

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:58:00 +0000

"The development team at LFT were able to quickly come up-to-speed on learning a new programming language and development environment in order to build and launch the App Engine backend service for their Android mobile app to the world in less than one week. The executive summary:

• Attended 1-hour Thursday night presentation on Google App Engine (Jul 22)

• Started to learn Python and App Engine on Saturday afternoon

• Launched live service Wednesday, announcing their Android app with an App Engine backend (Jul 28)"

Full article.

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Untitled

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 22:54:00 +0000

Google Books Determines That There Are 129,864,880 Books In The World (For Now)
Article from CrunchGear

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Chiste: 23% de los accidentes de tránsito son provocados por el consumo de alcohol... (sigue)

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:56:00 +0000

Un reciente estudio realizado por el Área de control y estadística de
La Secretaría de Seguridad Pública, afirma que el 23% de los accidentes de
tránsito, si leíste muy bien: el 23 % son provocados por el consumo de alcohol.

Esto significa que el otro 77% de los accidentes son causados por hijos de la
chingada que toman agua, jugos, refrescos de dieta y de sabor, horchatitas,
jamaiquitas, cafecitos y todas esas pendejadas!!!

Por lo tanto, ¡¡¡ cuídate de los pinches abstemios !!!

ATENTAMENTE:
ALGUIEN que se preocupa UN CHINGO por ti....!

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The next time I'm dreaming, I want to remember I'm dreaming

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 16:22:00 +0000

Descriptions of "lucid dreaming" —dreams in which you know you're dreaming— date back at least to Aristotle. Most people can recall at least one lucid dream, and perhaps one in 10 has them regularly. A half century ago some researchers still insisted that lucid dreaming is a contradiction in terms; if we are aware we are dreaming, we must be at least semiawake.

Scientific American article

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Ten key indicators show global warming "undeniable": Scientific American

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:19:00 +0000

Scientific American: Ten key indicators show global warming "undeniable"

-- Higher temperatures over land

-- Higher temperatures over oceans

-- Higher ocean heat content

-- Higher near-surface air temperatures (temperatures in the troposphere, where Earth's weather occurs)

-- Higher humidity

-- Higher sea surface temperatures

-- Higher sea levels

-- Less sea ice

-- Less snow cover

-- Shrinking glaciers

Scientific American: Ten key indicators show global warming "undeniable"

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How Can You Control Your Dreams?: Scientific American #inception

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 16:02:00 +0000

SciAm: http://bit.ly/9P2VRU

"That we can control our own dreams is quite true and really much more so than people seem to know or realize. The details of how to do it are very different depending on whether you're trying to induce lucid dreams, whether you're trying to dream about particular content or whether you're trying to dream a solution to a particular personal or objective problem. "

http://bit.ly/9P2VRU

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Religious leaders should be held accountable when their irrational ideas turn harmful

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:30:00 +0000

Faith and Foolishness — Scientific American

Every two years the National Science Foundation produces a report, Science and Engineering Indicators, designed to probe the public’s understanding of science concepts. And every two years we relearn the sad fact that U.S. adults are less willing to accept evolution and the big bang as factual than adults in other industrial countries.

Except for this time. Was there suddenly a quantum leap in U.S. science literacy? Sadly, no. Rather the National Science Board, which oversees the foundation, chose to leave the section that discussed these issues out of the 2010 edition, claiming the questions were “flawed indicators of scientific knowledge because responses conflated knowledge and beliefs.” In short, if their religious beliefs require respondents to discard scientific facts, the board doesn’t think it appropriate to expose that truth.

The section does exist, however, and Science magazine obtained it. When presented with the statement “human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,” just 45 percent of respondents indicated “true.” Compare this figure with the affirmative percentages in Japan (78), Europe (70), China (69) and South Korea (64). Only 33 percent of Americans agreed that “the universe began with a big explosion.”

Faith and Foolishness — Scientific American

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Boredom can be lethal

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:44:00 +0000

«They discovered that those who expressed severe job boredom were 2.5 times more likely to be dead of cardiovascular disease. Their conclusion: “those who report being bored are more likely to die younger than those who are not bored.”»

Technoccult: http://bit.ly/cdOslc

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Great PCMagazine article explaining how to print from an iPad

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 15:57:00 +0000

Great PCMagazine article explaining how to print from an iPad: http://bit.ly/ce58Gp

«iPad printing apps claim to do a lot, but in our testing, many of them simply didn't work. There's definitely still room for a brilliant third-party app which can print to a range of Wi-Fi printers, because we couldn't find one. The best we could find was Air Sharing HD, an app that reliably prints to printers shared by Macs on the same Wi-Fi network as your iPad, but even that had some formatting oddities.

There are three basic types of iPad printing apps. The first, supposedly, print directly to Wi-Fi-enabled printers. The second look out on your Wi-Fi network for Macs sharing printers, and can print to the shared printers without any intervention from the Mac's user. This is a decent solution if you go somewhere with Macs and printers. The third type requires you to run a server in the background on a Mac or PC every time you want to print something. I consider that an unforgivable kludge; at that point, you might as well just sync your iPad… http://bit.ly/ce58Gp »

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Cops using Will.i.am's iPad to track down thief

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 14:37:00 +0000

Cops using Will.i.am's iPad to track down thief: http://bit.ly/bf1UjX [TUAW]

«… law enforcement officials have honed in on the the perpetrator using the iPad's GPS functionality, and are close to making an arrest…» http://bit.ly/bf1UjX [TUAW]

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iPhone: How to restore 3G data after upgrading to iOS4

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:52:00 +0000

Sometimes, the process to upgrade iPhone to iOS4 corrupts the configuration for 3G data. You can see a 3G icon on the status bar, but all apps requiring Internet report that there is no connection. This problem don't affect WiFi connections.

These are the steps I followed to restore the 3G data connection:

1. Download "iPhone Configuration Utility" from Apple site:

2. Run the "iPhone Configuration Utility" and select "Configuration Profiles" from the left sidebar.

3. Click "New" on the toolbar.

4. Fill the "General" section with a name, identifier and description of your choice for the profile.

5. Fill the "Advanced" section with the details of your phone carrier. For Telcel (Mexico) I provided these values:
- APN: internet.itelcel.com
- User: webgprs
- Password: webgprs2002
- Proxy: 148.233.151.240

6. Connect your iPhone using USB and select it on the left sidebar.

7. Go to the "Configuration Profiles" and click 'Install' on your profile.

And done, you must have now 3G data again.

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A Task Management Service — tip via @nttd

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:06:00 +0000

A Task Management Service That Maximizes Productivity

Staying productive is hard, what with all the exciting ways to waste time the Internet provides.

Fortunately, there’s Action Method, a service that helps your organize and execute all your projects.

Start by creating a new action—cleaning out your storage room, say—and assigning it to a project, be it work-related or personal.

Action Method allows you to delegate tasks to other people using their email address. You can even send a “nag” to remind someone of a task you assigned to them.

If there’s a work in progress that requires some input, you can begin a discussion thread (this is great for avoiding email inbox overload). You can even upload pictures and documents for quick feedback.

The first 50 new action steps are free. After that, the service costs $12 a month or $99 for a year (there’s also a free iPhone app).

Use it or you may end up being showcased on a future episode of Hoarders.

Visit Action Method: http://netted.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ea7544b086a8473bd90e4c1e3&id=4c0989bee4&e=aac23f4330

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3 Tips for Writing Reader-Friendly Memos

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:57:00 +0000

HBR: http://link.email.hbr.org/r/2ZBO/OPYM0/XTJCSG/I2ZZE/B9O1B/QN/h

In business today, readers are time-pressed, content-driven, and decision-focused. To write effectively, remember that they want simple and direct communications. Here are three tips for giving readers what they want and need:

1. Avoid complex phrasing. Writing elegantly is not important; delivering smart content is. Let the message stand out more than your language.

2. Be concise. Many memo writers get hung up on "flow." But flowing sentences tend to be long and dense. You don't need choppy sentences, just hardworking ones that deliver content concisely.

3. Skip the jargon. Jargon can be a useful way to communicate among experts, but you should never use jargon if it's meaningless, if you don't understand it, or when your audience isn't familiar with it.

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iMovie requires a front face camera, it won't work in 3G/S iPhones

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 01:38:00 +0000

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

LOST ending in corporate language by ExecuNet

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:29:00 +0000

June 07, 2010

So, in the end, LOST turned out to be a helluva long job interview. For those who didn't spend the last six years alternately fascinated and frustrated by the series, I'll translate it into corporate language:

Like many good leaders, Jacob, knowing his tenure was coming to a close, had a succession plan. Well in advance of retirement, he started filling his talent pipeline and selected his top potential replacements. Due to the "unavailability" of some of his recruits at the last stages of the interview, very few candidates made it to the final slate.

The position came with tremendous responsibility and Jacob elected the candidates undergo an arduous series of situational interviews to assess their skills and qualifications. Plane crashes, death, destruction, explosions, polar bears, time travel, electromagnetism, good Locke/bad Locke, and a smoke monster — all to determine who was most qualified for the role of island caretaker.

An interview is an opportunity for candidates to evaluate if the role is a good fit for them too, and of those remaining — Jack, Hurley and Sawyer — two seem less certain they want the position. So Jack selects himself as Jacob's replacement, and when he inquires about the length of his employment contract, Jacob tells Jack he must do the job as long as he can.

Instead of a handshake, Jack drinks from Jacob's cup, and immediately begins onboarding into his new role by accompanying the evil John Locke on a business trip into a cave. But Jack is among the 12 percent that ExecuNet-surveyed recruiters report don't complete their first year in a new job and during a hostile takeover, he learns this role was only for a turnaround specialist on an interim assignment.

Before his exit interview, Jack expediently manages the institutional knowledge transfer to Hurley, who, with his servant leadership qualities, turns out is better suited for the longer term role.

The end.

ExecuNet

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Instaviz for iPad is unstable and not iPad style

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 03:41:00 +0000

I bought Instaviz despite of the negative reviews because I really liked the demo videos and wanted it to work.

But the app is really unstable, I've using it for an hour and it's the first iPad app I have that crashes every single time (I have around 40 iPad apps and 100+ iPhone apps). And to make things worse it doesn't save anything, so, if in the middle of your work you want to delete something, be prepared to lose all of your nodes.

If you want to use this for Process drawing be warned that the app doesn't appropriately handle multiple arrows between two shapes, this is annoying if you're trying to use a Diamond as a conditional to return to the previous step.

And its looks and edit style is so iPhone-ish that you can easily tell that it's the same application with a bigger canvas, developers didn't even try to take advantage of the bigger screen and to define a smoother way to rename nodes.

I give Instaviz two stars just for the way it recognizes what you draw, and that's all about this app.

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Create a custom search provider in IE8 for your favorite sites

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:58:00 +0000

In Internet Explorer 8 is pretty easy to add a custom search provider for your favorite sites, so you can search on your site using the standard search bar on IE8.

In our company we have a governance tool and several times a day I need to search for requests given their number.

Someone send me request ID to review.
I open the governance tool.
I click search request.
I enter the request ID and click search.

To add this search in IE8 I just needed to repeat the previous process using TEST as the request ID on step 1, and then copy the URL of the webpage from the step 4 and paste it on this webpage

And that's it, after you enter a name and press Install you can type you can search on your site using the standard search bar on IE8.

Disable Narrator on Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 20:10:00 +0000

I enabled Narrator on Windows 7, just for fun, and it's really annoying and harder to configure than the Mac OSX voice.

So I tried to get rid of it but even when I closed it, Windows 7 reopen it on every restart. Clicking on the Control Panel I found how to disable it for good:

Control Panel
Ease of Access
Ease of Access Center
Use the computer without a display
Uncheck> Turn on Narrator

Steps that worked for me to jailbrake my iPhone 3G 3.1.2 using #blackra1n

noreply@blogger.com (Juan) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:53:00 +0000

3G support in Blackra1n is "flaky", as GeoHot himself said on Twitter.

I tried several times and following different procedures described in related forums, but I always ended with the iPhone in recovery mode.

Until I found a sequence that worked for me in this post :

Plug the iPhone in the computer.
In iTunes uncheck the option "Automatically sync this iPhone when connected".
Close iTunes.
Optional: Several posts recommend to kill the iTunes/iPod processes, but I didn't see a difference doing this.
Start Blackra1n and press the button "Make it rain".
You should see the iPhone going to recovery mode (USB and iTunes logo) and Blackra1n changing to "Running". If you see this for more than 30 seconds then the process has failed. This is what happens on iPhones 3G.
Close Blackra1n.
Start Blackra1n again, but DO NOT press the button.
Hold Power and Home buttons on your iPhone. Don't release the buttons, you must see the screen going black,
After some seconds you must see the Apple logo, release the Power button, holding the Home button.
Don't release Home button, you must see the recovery mode logo (USB + iTunes) and then press "Make it rain" in Blackra1n.
Almost immediately you should see the GeoHot image instead of the Recovery mode logo.
Release the button, and wait for the process to finish. Once the iPhone rebooted you'll see the Blackra1n app to install Cydia or RockApp.

This worked for me,

Good luck!