Friday, March 27, 2015

The Joel Test For Programmers (The Simple Programmer Test)

LINK TO THE ARTICLE


A while back—the year 2000 to be exact—Joel Spolsky wrote a blog post entitled: “The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code.”

Many software engineers and developers use this test for evaluating a company to determine if a company is a good company to work for.
In fact, many software development organizations use the Joel Test as a sort of self-test to determine what they need to work on.
Here is what the Joel Test looks like, in case you aren’t familiar:
The Joel Test
  1. Do you use source control?joel-spolsky
  2. Can you make a build in one step?
  3. Do you make daily builds?
  4. Do you have a bug database?
  5. Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
  6. Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
  7. Do you have a spec?
  8. Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
  9. Do you use the best tools money can buy?
  10. Do you have testers?
  11. Do new candidates write code during their interview?
  12. Do you do hallway usability testing?

Safe Browsing and Google Analytics: Keeping More Users Safe, Together

Safe Browsing and Google Analytics: Keeping More Users Safe, Together

Thursday, February 26, 2015 | 10:23 AM
Labels:
The following was originally posted on the Google Online Security Blog.
If you run a web site, you may already be familiar with Google Webmaster Tools and how it lets you know if Safe Browsing finds something problematic on your site. For example, we’ll notify you if your site is delivering malware, which is usually a sign that it’s been hacked. We’re extending our Safe Browsing protections to automatically display notifications to all Google Analytics users via familiar Google Analytics Notifications.
Google Safe Browsing has been protecting people across the Internet for over eight years and we're always looking for ways to extend that protection even further. Notifications like these help webmasters like you act quickly to respond to any issues. Fast response helps keep your site—and your visitors—safe.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Up and Running with Google Cloud Platform (2013) with Joseph Lowery

I'm always interested in what Google is doing. While this video is 2 years old and ancient in the digital world, I still wanted to gauge how well I kept up on Google for the past few years and what I was using that was successful for me, but also what I wasn't using and probably should have.

Overview

Google Cloud Platform makes the robust infrastructure of Google—including its high-speed network, servers, and software—available on an enterprise level but accessible to the everyday web developer. In this course, author Joseph Lowery introduces each of the service's five products: App Engine, Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and Cloud SQL. Learn the basics of hosting a mobile app with App Engine and see how to analyze massive datasets in seconds with BigQuery. Then explore the benefits of Cloud Storage, including unlimited file storage and fast data retrieval, and learn how to establish a cloud-based private network with Compute Engine. Finally, the course walks through setting up and managing a cloud-based relational database with Cloud SQL.

Topics

  • Why Google Cloud Platform?
  • Deploying an app with Google App Engine
  • Activating and working with Google Cloud Storage
  • Loading, querying, and exporting data with BigQuery
  • Working with Cloud Storage buckets
  • Managing cloud-based private networks
  • Importing and exporting data
  • Scheduling backups
  • Working with Google Datastore

Author

Joseph Lowery's books about the web and web-building tools are international bestsellers, having sold more than 400,000 copies worldwide in eleven different languages. His most recent books are the Dreamweaver CS5 Bible, HTML5 24-Hour Trainer and Adobe CS4 Web Workflows. Joe also wrote Dreamweaver 8: Beyond the Basics from lynda.com. He's built hundreds of web sites over the years, as well as numerous extensions and applications to help other web designers.

As a programmer, Joseph contributed two extensions to releases of Fireworks and many extensions available for Dreamweaver. He has presented at Adobe MAX numerous times, Seybold in both Boston and San Francisco, ThunderLizard's Web World, and KW Media Group's Mac Design Conference.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Bookmarking Sites for Musicians and Bands with Bobby Owsinski


My cousin has been producing music for over a decade and often times our conversation will turn to how to best market his product and what type of CMS to use for his website. We've tried Weebly, WordPress, no CMS, and Joomla. As his professional music and business career have moved forward, he is always willing to try something new to grab a larger audience and increase is ROI. This video does a nice job of giving you a few outlets to share your work on to hopefully get stumbled upon - pun intended.

Overview

Get some quick tips from Bobby Owsinski on sharing your music, website, and blog with dedicated readers on platforms like StumbleUpon and reddit. Bobby reviews the top four social bookmarking sites, and reviews the pros and cons of using these platforms to market your music.

Looking for more music marketing tips? See our other courses by music industry insider Bobby Owsinski, including Social Media Basics for Musicians and Bands, Facebook for Musicians and Bands, and YouTube for Musicians and Bands.

Topics

  • What are bookmarking sites?
  • Submitting to sites
  • Using StumbleAds
  • Tips for increasing your submission's success

Authors

Using his music and recording experience combined with an easy-to-understand writing style, Bobby Owsinski has become one of the best-selling authors in the music recording industry, with sixteen books that are now staples in audio recording, music, and music business programs in colleges around the world. Based in Los Angeles, Bobby is also a producer of several music-oriented television shows and can frequently be seen as a moderator, panelist, or presenter at a variety of industry conferences.

Friday, March 13, 2015

Online Video Course Office for iPhone First Look by Lynda.com and Nick Brazzi

I am always interested in productivity life hacks and this video focused on how to use the MS office products on an Apple iPhone.

Overview

The new Word, Excel, and PowerPoint iPhone apps have arrived—and Microsoft is offering them for free for all users. Get a quick look at the Office apps with author Nick Brazzi as he explores their look and feel, outlines which app features require an Office 365 subscription, and highlights the new Dropbox integration.

Author

Nick has been teaching desktop productivity and video editing for over 10 years. Before joining lynda.com, he was a software trainer and instruction designer for Apple, and a regular guest speaker for several Macintosh user groups in the Silicon Valley. In his spare time, Nick demonstrates his skills in various unicycle-related sports.

Google Code Project Hosting Explodes

Hello,

Earlier today, Google announced we will be turning down Google Code Project Hosting. The service started in 2006 with the goal of providing a scalable and reliable way of hosting open source projects. Since that time, millions of people have contributed to open source projects hosted on the site.
But a lot has changed since 2006. In the past nine years, many other options for hosting open source projects have popped up, along with vibrant communities of developers. It’s time to recognize that Google Code’s mission to provide open source projects a home has been accomplished by others, such as GitHub and Bitbucket.

We will be shutting down Google Code over the coming months. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new projects, but will remain functionally unchanged until August 2015. After that, project data will be read-only. Early next year, the site will shut down, but project data will be available for download in an archive format.

The simplest option would be to use the Google Code Exporter, a new tool that will allow you to export your projects directly to GitHub. Alternatively, we have documentation on how to migrate to other services — GitHub, Bitbucket, and SourceForge — manually.

For more information, please see the Google Open Source blog or contact google-code-shutdown@google.com.

-The Google Code team

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Google Drive Essential Training by Lynda.com and Jess Stratton


I am loving Lynda.com and the wonderful tutorials on increasing knowledge. I appreciate that they have the integration with LinkedIn because even if it is a silly course that I already know 90% of, I still like to listen to the video and add it to my certificates. You never know what type of specialty someone is looking for and while you might be in a high tech role, you could easily be missing one key buzz word.


Overview

In this course, Jess Stratton teaches the essentials of creating, formatting, and sharing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and forms with Google Drive. Discover the differences between the Google Docs and the new Google Drive. Then learn how to work with your files—creating, converting, syncing, and deleting—plus tips on organizing and searching Drive. Then it is on to the basics of inserting and formatting images, text, tables, and data inside documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and the Google Forms feature for polling an audience and collecting responses. You'll also learn about creating with Google Drawings, the best ways to collaborate using Google Docs, and how to save time with templates.

Topics

  • Accessing Google Drive
  • Uploading existing files
  • Syncing files between your computer and Google Drive
  • Using filters to find files
  • Creating and naming documents
  • Inserting images, headers and footers, and page breaks
  • Creating a presentation
  • Working with spreadsheet functions and formulas
  • Creating forms and collecting responses
  • Building flowcharts
  • Sharing files with other Google users
  • Commenting in a file
  • Creating a file from a template

Author

For over 10 years, Jess Stratton has operated her own technology consulting business, creating and maintaining databases for both enterprise and small-to-medium businesses, building websites, setting up networks, and coaching teams, employees, and individuals to harness the latest desktop and mobile technology for increased productivity. Jess is now a full-time staff author at lynda.com, in addition to being a regular and regarded presenter at Lotus Notes conferences and a contributing author for several industry print and web magazines, textbooks, podcasts, webcasts, and other popular sites, including Lifehacker.com. You can find Jess on her website at www.solacelearning.com or follow her on Twitter @NerdGirlJess.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

10 SEO Myths that Friggin' Tick Me Off by SEO MOZ

http://moz.com/blog/seo-myths

I love SEO. I love talking about SEO. Most non-SEO folk you talk to are generally very nice people. They may not understand everything you say, but they often nod their head and smile. The open-minded may even ask you to look at their site.

On the other hand, there's the non-SEO "expert" (loosely defined as someone who has a cousin in marketing) who represents a different beast altogether. Well intentioned but misinformed, they believe SEO is urban legend, no better than a Ponzi scheme.

Here's what I have to say to a few of the worst offenders. 3 of the top 10

1. SEO is a scam
2. Google will figure it out
3. We did SEO once

Monday, March 9, 2015

When it comes to gaming, our only limits are our own imagination

Go Read - http://www.futuristspeaker.com/2015/02/four-rules-for-game-testing-our-way-to-a-better-future/


RULE #1 – Every system can be modeled, game tested, and optimized on a broad scale.

RULE #2 – Future technologies will enable us to extend the field of play far beyond the digital world.

RULE #3 – Game testing is an iterative process requiring continuous ‘leveling up’ to optimize and fine-tune system performance. 

RULE #4 – Future systems will bear little resemblance to those in existence today.

When it comes to gaming, our only limits are our own imagination

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Joe Tye's 2013 presentation, 12 Reasons Culture Eats Strategy



Further explanation and real-world examples come from business author Joe Tye's 2013 presentation, 12 Reasons Culture Eats Strategy. Here are 10 of them that especially apply to library cultures:
  1. People are loyal to culture not to strategy.
  2. Culture provides resilience in tough times.
  3. Culture is more efficient than strategy.
  4. Culture creates competitive differentiation.
  5. A brittle culture can doom even a great organization.
  6. When culture and strategy collide, culture will win.
  7. Cultural miscues are more damaging than strategic ones.
  8. Culture provides greater discipline than disciplinary action does.
  9. Culture provides a level of risk protection that cannot be attained with strategy alone.
  10. Culture has a significant impact on your bottom line.

Friday, March 6, 2015

Preparing for your Review with Lynda.com and Dr. Todd Dewett

Love it or hate it, your review is the best record of your performance. Careful preparation can ensure you articulate your needs, have examples of your best work ready, and anticipate and answer questions your boss might ask. Discover how to prepare for your review and make it a productive conversation. Todd Dewett shares five simple steps for success.

  • Understanding your review schedule
  • Using your calendar
  • Preparing for Evaluation
  • Finding and sharing work samples
  • Preparing for the Meeting


Todd Dewett is a popular speaker in the United States, who inspires leaders and builds stronger teams. He is an author, coach, consultant, and Harley Davidson nut. After beginning his career with Andersen Consulting and Ernst & Young, Todd spent a decade as a professor of management, until performing and coaching became full-time pursuits. Each year he speaks to and works with thousands of professionals around the world for Fortune 500 clients, government agencies, major conferences, and nonprofit organizations. His most recent book is Show Your Ink: Stories about Leadership and Life. His unique rock-star take on leadership has resulted in quotes in the New York Times, BusinessWeek, Forbes, CNN, Investors Business Daily, Entrepreneur, MSNBC, and hundreds of other outlets. Visit his home online at www.drdewett.com.

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

MOZ 2015 Online Marketing Industry Survey



We're very excited to announce the 2015 Online Marketing Industry Survey is ready. This is the fifth edition of the survey, which started in 2008 as the SEO Industry Survey, and has also been known as the Moz Industry Survey. Some of what we hope to learn and share:
  • Demographics: Who is practicing inbound marketing and SEO today? Where do we work and live?
  • Agencies vs. in-house vs. other: How are agencies growing? What's the average size? Who is doing inbound marketing on their own?
  • Tactics and strategies: What's working for people today? How have strategies and tactics evolved?
  • Tools and technology: What are marketers using to discover opportunities, promote themselves, and measure the results?
  • Budget and spending: What tools and platforms are marketers investing in?
This year's survey was redesigned to be easier and only take less than 10 minutes. When the results are in we'll share the data freely with you and the rest of the world, along with the insights we've gleaned from it.


I do find this data interesting and relevant to furthering my career.

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Applying WebTables in Practice via Google

Applying WebTables in Practice Sreeram Balakrishnan, Alon Halevy, Boulos Harb, Hongrae Lee, Jayant Madhavan, Afshin Rostamizadeh, Warren Shen, Kenneth Wilder, Fei Wu, Cong Yu Google Research {sreevb,halevy,harb,hrlee,jayant,rostami,whshen,wilder,wufei,congyu}@google.com

EXAMPLE

54ee2f4a4fa809.31701150.jpg

ABSTRACT


We started investigating the collection of HTML tables on the Web and developed the WebTables system a few years ago [4]. Since then, our work has been motivated by applying WebTables in a broad set of applications at Google, resulting in several product launches. In this paper, we describe the challenges faced, lessons learned, and new insights that we gained from our efforts. The main challenges we faced in our efforts were (1) identifying tables that are likely to contain high-quality data (as opposed to tables used for navigation, layout, or formatting), and (2) recovering the semantics of these tables or signals that hint at their semantics. The result is a semantically enriched table corpus that we used to develop several services. First, we created a search engine for structured data whose index includes over a hundred million HTML tables. Second, we enabled users of Google Docs (through its Research Panel) to find relevant data tables and to insert such data into their documents as needed. Most recently, we brought WebTables to a much broader audience by using the table corpus to provide richer tabular snippets for fact-seeking web search queries on Google.com.

http://www.cidrdb.org/cidr2015/Papers/CIDR15_Paper3.pdf


ANALYSIS

There are many pages on the Web that are filled with data in the form of tables. It's possible that if you weren't paying attention you may have missed Google Table Search entirely—it hasn't gotten a lot of press as far as I can tell. If you include tabular data on the pages of your site, though, you may be able to find tables from your site included in the results from a query in Google Table Search.

http://moz.com/blog/google-structured-snippets