August 19th, 2008 — by Austin Smith — CMS, Community, Marketing, Media, NYC, business, geek
Paul Graham doesn’t understand the appeal of New York City to web nerds. He says “Cambridge… feels like a town whose main industry is ideas, while New York’s is finance and Silicon Valley’s is startups.” Not so! New York, for me, is media. And I’m not alone.
I’ll take this point to introduce myself to this blog, Oddly Zen, as this is my first post, and my story informs my defense of New York against Cambridge and Silicon Valley. I do live in New York, and I work in media. I work for Observer Media Group as the technical team leader (head nerd), where I run Observer.com and Politicker.com.
I’m certainly not in New York for the money, and I’m not that envious of those who have more than me. I’m in New York because of the pace and excitement of my niche in software development. The problems in computing for news media are enormous for many reasons; managing web content in a clean and useful way is so much harder than most developers know (if you scoff at that claim, I’ll trade jobs with you for a day).
Anyhow, the bulk of the CMS-needing media companies of the world are in New York, and many of them employ nerds like me to whip their CMS into shape. And as media becomes more interactive and more (gasp) social, startups bubble up around the fringe. There are many such startups in New York City; in fact this is probably true for other industries, like advertising, textiles, and public relations. I just don’t know anything about these domains. The result is that there are a ton of software developers here. And most of us aren’t working in finance. More »
July 28th, 2008 — by Mark Coates — Ajax, Blogging, Community, Design, Marketing, Stranger than Fiction, Wordpress, business
On Wednesday, New York Times Co. (NYT) reported disappointing second-quarter earnings, and on Thursday the stock continued in its steep descent.
At the end of trading it stood at 12.48, or virtually half the price it commanded one year ago.
This part of the story is unsurprising, given how the Street is slamming any newspaper stock.
What’s startling is something else: If you back out much of the rest of the company’s portfolio, you arrive at a surprisingly teeny valuation for the vaunted New York Times itself, despite all the respect the brand commands.
July 22nd, 2008 — by Mark Coates — Community, Humor, Relationships, Sex, Stranger than Fiction
It’s 11pm on a Saturday night and you are on Facebook MySpace Adult Friend Finder. Again.
The urge strikes to browse users. Hmm. Female. 27-32. Within 20 miles. Must like spicy Thai food, Apple tattoos, and recursive jokes… glasses are good. (click!)
You know you’ve done it.
More »
July 22nd, 2008 — by Mark Coates — Ajax, Blogging, Books, CMS, CSS, Community, Design, Fireworks, How-to, Humor, Marketing, Microsoft, Photoshop, Pimp that App, Politics, Programming, Ruby on Rails, Stranger than Fiction, Wordpress
It’s time to band together and drop the funk.
Geek is the new hip, haven’t you heard? Geek tattoos are chic. Librarian glasses are sexy. Weird is in. And you can be, too.
Oddly Zen is seeking collaborators and guest-bloggers for full-time, part-time, or one-off content contributions in the areas of:
- Ajax (tips, tricks, tutorials, or opinion)
- Apple
- Blogging (the business, the practice, or general coverage)
- Books (ebooks, free chapters, or book reviews)
- Business
- CMS (reviews, open-source projects, WordPress, etc.)
- Community (open source, Ruby or Rails, social media, etc.)
- CSS (tips, tricks, tutorials, or opinion)
- Design (UI, HCI, UX, etc.)
- Graphics (Photoshop or Fireworks tips, tricks, tutorials, or opinion)
- Humor (geek is funny)
- Linux
- Marketing
- Microsoft
- Open source software
- Pimp that App (case studies, tips, tricks, tutorials, or opinion)
- Politics (active and apathetic)
- Programming (mainly Ruby & Co. — possibly C#, Lisp, Erlang, etc.)
- Stranger than Fiction (truth be told, geeky situations are weird and funny)
- WordPress (development, customization, plug-ins, etc.)
- Your Ideas (if it’s geek, or plain good, we’ll post it)
Increase your reach. Enhance your image. Be flagrantly geeky.
And get some link-backs all from the comfort of your cube.
Note: Think of this as an open-source blog. Contribution should make you feel good. 
Also, I’m looking for someone (preferably one other person) to build a Rails application with. It will be a gift to the community as well — and if it makes any cheese, we’ll donate it.
July 20th, 2008 — by Mark Coates — Ajax, Design, How-to, Marketing, Pimp that App
Guess who’s back, back again…?
Is your application a hooptie? Could it stand a ghetto-fabulous makeover of MTV-sized proportions? Chances are, even if it is washed and waxed, it could probably move on up to the big time by following a few nuggets of kind reflection.
I’ve been kicking around some thoughts and observations of various social media sites and APIs. And guess what? My eyes have seen the glory of the pimping of your app. That’s right — just follow these golden rules and you, too, can go from limp to pimp.
More »
July 18th, 2008 — by Mark Coates — Asides, Community, Humor, Ruby on Rails, Stranger than Fiction
Well, tonight I was part of the magic, inevitable train-wreck that was Pradipta’s Rolodex. As one of the fated 416 Rails developers, I feel honored. I was highly entertained with the community response and the interesting social experiment that flowed naturally from the snafu. (Even a Twitter meme popped up — #pradipta.)
Thursday night never rocked so hard.
April 23rd, 2008 — by Mark Coates — Ajax, Books, CMS, Programming, Ruby on Rails
I visited one of my favorite sites today — A List Apart. I was excited to see an article entitled “Getting Started with Ruby on Rails.” Like the name suggests, it is a solid introduction to Ruby on Rails and programming with the framework. Through Rails has already won many converts, it is still just being picked up by scads of developers… those who thought it best to wait until it was more supported or more mature.
I began experimenting with Rails fairly early due to a coworker’s suggestion. Then I dove in head-first when I started working for a firm specializing in Ruby on Rails development. And I’ve loved every minute of this wild ride. It is more fulfilling than previous frameworks I’ve used — ASP.NET, in particular. This feeling is due in heavy measure to the eloquence of Ruby the language, it’s natural feel, but also to the design considerations of the Rails framework. It is true that constraint can spawn creativity… ask anyone who has written a Sonnet and followed the appropriate conventions including Iambic Pentameter and the rhyme scheme. In this way, Rails allows me greater creativity and flexibility through its constraints. More »
April 17th, 2008 — by Mark Coates — Microsoft, Programming, Ruby on Rails
I wrote about the ASP.NET MVC Framework previously — and since then, had a chance to take a look at the source code and provide some feedback of my own. In my opinion, it has a long way to go, but it is a great step in the right direction from Microsoft. Not only are they moving toward public involvement in releases and a more acceptable release schedule, but a better overall philosophy of community involvement and adherence to de facto web application code design standards. It seems MS got the hint from the success of Open-source frameworks and felt the need to compete. Who says Open-source competition for developers hearts and minds is not a good thing? More »
