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- Jonathan Heiliger, top Facebook exec, may leave [Rumormonger]October 6 2008
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Will the last tech executive to leave Facebook please turn off the lights at the datacenter? We hear Jonathan Heiliger, Facebook's operations VP charged with running the social network's expansive server network, has been interviewing for other jobs. He just completed a year at the company, which is usually when employees' stock-and-options packages begin to vest. Odd: We thought Heiliger might be happier at the company with the appointment of Marc Andreessen to Facebook's board.Heiliger previously worked for Andreessen at Opsware. One would think the chrome-domed entrepreneur, now chairman of Ning, would prove a powerful ally in the fierce political battles that have roiled Facebook since the appointment of Sheryl Sandberg, a Beltway insider turned Internet executive, as COO. Nothing's certain, and Heiliger may well stay. But for him to be so unhappy as to openly entertain job offers? The social network's executive suite seems to be coming unplugged.
- Share anything. Anytime. Anywhere.May 6 2008
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Shared by paul
And the notes are automatically imported into FriendFeed!Have you ever wanted to share something that you were reading, but you didn't want to go through the hassle of subscribing to a whole feed for a single interesting article? And what about sharing content from sites with no feeds? There you are, reading along, and you think to yourself, "If only everything on the web had a 'Share' button like in Google Reader!"
As it turns out, there's all sorts of information "out there" just waiting to be streamed, shared and otherwise consumed by you and your friends. Now you can finally show all of your Reader friends that awesome talking cat video you found, your favorite grilled trout recipe, or reviews of the best brunch place in your neighborhood -- all without a subscription.
Here are a few new ways you can add and share interesting things in Reader:
Share anything with a bookmarklet - Just drag this link from the Notes page up to your brow
- Hello, World: Meet XobniMay 4 2008
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This is the first of a three-part series on the Xobni launch. Come back on Thursday to check out Part II of the story. This series was co-written with Marie Baca.
Every day, millions of people are forced to deal with the inefficiencies of Outlook. Almost 50,000 people have tried the early versions of Xobni's private beta. Today, we are opening the floodgates and allowing anyone to download a beta version of Xobni's eponymous product for free.
You can read our official announcement here. The New York Times details our launch in this article.
I've devoted this post to explaining why we built Xobni's software the way we did. The other posts in this series will document the journey up to the launch.Email Overload
Experts say that there are two types of email users: Cleaners and Keepers. Cleaners receive only a few emails a day, and they meticulously file each email into a specific folder. Keepers, on the other hand, receive copious amounts of email, and although they may start out with a good organizational system, it is quickly abandoned. We designed Xobni for the Keepers — the everyday people who need a product - Running Java in JavaScriptApril 27 2008
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Welcome Waxy.org and Slashdot readers. I blog about JavaScript, like it's my job, feel free to subscribe for a ton more posts like this.
Related Posts:
When I was in Tokyo this past fall speaking at the Shibuya.JS user group I had the opportunity to see a number of interesting JavaScript projects that have yet to make it outside of Japan.
One project, in particular, really caught my eye. It's called Orto [PDF, Japanese] and is an implementation of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM
- Learning a new gameApril 27 2008
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Game software has come a long way for usability and new user
education. I've been trying to play some old classics recently; the
1997 commercial success Heroes
of Might and Magic 2 or indie old-school roguelike Decker. Each time I last
about 10 minutes and give up in frustration because I can't figure the
damn thing out.
Older games had a steep learning curve. You were expected to read the manual and be interested enough to spend several hours figuring out how the game works. But in the past few years games have gotten really good at the new user experience, making the game playable right from the start. Game manuals have mostly disappeared, replaced by colour text, art, or spoiler guides.
Complicated desktop appliations like Photoshop could learn a lot from how games educate new players on how to use them. Maybe complex web sites, too; part of why Flickr is successful is that it's complex but has an easy path into it. The key is to have a rewarding, simple experience at the beginning with a few core useful/fun features that don't require a lot of tutorial text. Let the application unfold slowly, a gentle learning curve as the user experiences the environment.
The first time I played World of Warcraft it took me many hours to finish the newbie zone and get to level 10. Now I can do it in just an hour or two but that initial experience is s