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Pras Sarkar blogs about web technology, music, social networks, digital identities and other random things.


Become a specialist at being a generalistJune 9

At my day job at Yahoo! Research, I get to interview my fair share of engineers. Almost always, the candidates seem to fall into one of two types - the specialists and the generalists. The specialists are those who come from a strong background of fundamentals. Over years, they have honed and assimilated the details of their language or technology of choice. The generalists are the hungry scavengers. They try everything at least once, are infatuated with exploring every new technology or programming language and have built up a repertoire of buzzwords in their resumes.

The question often asked is: if you were asked to choose from two candidates - a specialist and a generalist - which would you choose? Like most things in life, it’s not a binary answer. There isn’t a right or wrong answer. There are, however, right or wrong decisions on hiring the right candidate for the right job. Each type of candidate has their strengths and weaknesses. It’s best to make the decision after careful evaluation of how closely aligned these types of candidates are to the job requirements and to the company at large.

This post is intended to be an introduction to a series of posts where I hope to give valuable tips on becoming an effective generalist. Before we begin though, I’d like to clarify a couple of things. By offering tips on becoming a better generalist, I don’t mean to suggest in any way that a

Attached is my resume and DNAApril 8

Double helix courtesy of mrhappy from Flickr

Imagine if the attempts by startups in the genome space like 23andMe were to succeed at cataloging everyone’s DNA. Would this piece of DNA become the ultimate representation of who and what you are? What would be the effects of having all the things that make you uniquely human be reduced to a string of characters?

It’s interesting to wonder if there would exist social networks around your DNA. Imagine a Facebook-style profile page that is uniquely identified by your DNA. Others could browse for the abilities that make you unique, your inherent strengths (and possibly your weaknesses), and possibly “friend” you based on your DNA. Maybe your DNA will be your OpenID or MicroID?

Here are a few interesting thoughts on how different applications could/would use your DNA:

  • Dating sites - Matching people based on their DNA would outperform any complex dating algorithm out there right now (or so I believe). Imagine choosing your partner not just based on an algorithm’s recommendation, but based on specific scientific properties - maybe someone
Why upgrade to Wordpress 2.5 (5 min version)March 30

Wordpress 2.5 finally launched after a few delays, and it hasn’t disappointed. I was glad to see them concentrating on revamping the Dashboard and the general Admin area. Wordpress has proven itself to be a solid extensible platform, but their admin area lacked in usability and flexibility.

The upgrade process was a snap thanks to this guide. The whole process took about 20 mins (backup, downloading the new version, overwriting, setting up plugins, and tweaking the template). Luckily, none of the plugins I use had any problems (including the Actionstreams plugin).

Here’s what I like about this release:

  • Visual Editor: The interface is less cluttered and slick. The full-screen version rocks.
  • Tags: Even though they were introduced as a core functionality in a previous release, they weren’t really usable until the new AJAXy version came along in this release.
  • Widget-based dashboard: Now plugins can use the Dashboard
SocialThing is better than FriendFeedMarch 20

There I said it. Is it true? You tell me.

Comparing FriendFeed to SocialThing is not like comparing gelato to ice cream (regular, fatty kind). Rather, they are really two sides of the same coin. FriendFeed aggregates your activities. SocialThing aggregates your friends’ activities.

Why people get into flame wars over this is beyond me. But clearly, people feel strongly either way.

Unfortunately, during this heated school yard brawl, I fear a very important question is going overlooked. Regardless of how aggregating services collate all the information, what is their strategy for propagating conversations back to the original source? FriendFeed’s strategy is to start a completely new thread of discussion. SocialThing instead attempts to back-propagate to the original source (at least in the case of Twitter).

Setting aside the emotions and hype, which model is better? Is it better t

New Actionstreams Wordpress Plugin releasedMarch 10

Stephen Paul Weber released a new Actionstreams Wordpress Plugin today at the DiSo forums. You can see a live version powering the “My Lifestream” section to the right. Inspired largely by the MovableType Actionstreams plugin, this one is really fast, extensible and supports a wide range of services (I’m working with Stephen to add support for Tumblr, Google Reader and others that aren’t supported just yet)

Download:

Installation steps:

  1. Download and unzip the file into /wp-content/plugins
  2. Activate the “Actionstream” plugin through the WP Plugins admin page
  3. Go to Users > Action Stream and set up your services with the needed info
  4. As you add services, you should start to see actions in the Preview section
  5. Add <?php actionstream_render(); ?> where ever you want to display it in your template

Updates: