Jeremy Zawodny's blog

Good Food, Eating, and Diet Advice Talk by Michael Pollan

I've been a fan of Michael Pollan's work for some time now, so I was quite happy to run across a video of a recent talk he gave at Google in which he discusses the current understanding of food and nutrition as well as what's wrong with our "system" today.

Even if his name doesn't ring a bell, you may have heard of some of his books: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, and Food Fight: The Citizen's Guide to a Food and Farm Bill.

Anyway, enjoy the video.

And, if you found that interesting, allow me to resurrect my 2+ years old diet posts. They seem to still garner a fair amount of attention, and recent readers may not have been reading when I first wrote them.

• Diet Tips or How To Lose Weight with a Spreadsheet and a Web Site
• The Diet Plan and The Three Habits
• The Diet Spreadsheet
• Diet Tips: How To Eat Less
• Diet Plans and Goal Setting: How Many Calories?
• Closing Diet Tips and Advice

Monkeying with Search

A few weeks ago, at the Web 2.0 Expo, Matt Cutts dropped by the Yahoo! booth and we got to chatting a bit. He mentioned being impressed by Yahoo's willingness to monkey with our search results page--meaning Search Monkey, the tool that allows site owners (like me) and developers (like me) to, for lack of a better term, pimp their result.

I haven't had a chance to write up anything about Search Monkey yet, but luckily Rasmus dove in and wrote up a developer-centric summary. As he notes, there's a launch party later this week at Yahoo. Drop by for some food, drink, and more information about Search Monkey.

Why is it hard to work with big public companies?

People often ask questions like that. And from the inside it's clear that things aren't as easy as we wished they'd be. But I've never thought long enough about the issue to figure it out for myself, let alone try to explain it to others.

Luckily Greg Cohn has. Here's just a bit of what he says in Doing Business with the Semi-Permeable Corporation:

Today’s environment is transparent, open, and conversational - meaning almost anyone can get to anyone and communicate with them publicly, semi-publicly, or privately. This is great - when I need to find someone, it tends to be quite easy to reach them directly or with one degree of separation via my network. When someone needs to reach me, I am equally easy to find (and in fact have a public “contact me” email link that’s one click away from a search on my name). As conversations become substantive, companies are increasingly transparent about their objectives, plans, competition, and even finances, all of which materially increase effectiveness.

So much for the good stuff. The challenges are: a) that I’m still under the constraints of a public company, and can not in any way be “conversational” about material inside information; and b) that open doors like mine are magnets for everything from unrelated BU inquiries (from people who should know better) to “the Yahoo! suggestion box”, and the signal-to-noise ratio of inbound items can create a lot of distractions and confusion if I don’t filter aggressively.

I can definitely sympathize with the second bit. I don't know how many random inquiries I get each month, but it can be a lot to deal with. Help me with my research project. Introduce me to someone in My Yahoo! Tell me my Yahoo! password. Fix my email. Buy these pills. The list goes on!

And I digress...

Seriously, go read what Greg wrote. He did a good job of helping people to see the world from the other side.

Web Developer Needed

The Yahoo! Developer Network (otherwise known as "YDN", also known as "where I work") is looking for a skilled webdev to work full-time at Yahoo! HQ in Sunnyvale, California.

Here's a bit of the boilerplate about the job. I've left out the "who is yahoo" stuff, since I assume your know what Yahoo is if you managed to work the Internet long enough to find this. :-)

The ideal candidate will have a strong command of JavaScript 1.0-1.5, DHTML, DOM Levels 0-2, CSS 1-2.1, HTML & XHTML, web standards, PHP, object-oriented programming, cross-browser compatibility issues, progressive enhancement, optimization techniques (both in file weight and perceived/actual rendering speed), accessibility, device-portability techniques, and internationalization issues.

Knowledge of XML, HTTP, Apache, MySQL, remote scripting, state management, working within a Unix environment, CVS, and bug tracking tools is highly desirable. A Computer Science degree with 5+ years of related work experience is required.

The environment is fast-paced with numerous user-centered iterative design & development cycles. You'll be responsible for building everything from proof-of-concepts and usability prototypes to deployment-quality code.

Interested?

Shoot me your resume and I'll get you hooked up with the hiring manager.

Open Source Nonsense: Microsoft and Yahoo Flamebait?

Writing on OStatic, Reuven Lerner (whose writing I've read in various places over the years) appears to be hitting the crack pipe in explaining how he wonders if Microsoft buying Yahoo would lead to Yahoo ditching open source projects.

Huh?

That's what I thought. Here's what he says

Back when Microsoft announced its intention to buy Yahoo, many of us wondered whether Yahoo would be forced to get rid of its open-source projects in the wake of such a purchase. But after reading the press releases put out by Yahoo, in which they seem to indicate that they're aiming not only to survive, but to become a stronger and more profitable company, I have to wonder whether this might force Yahoo to give up some of its open-source projects.

While it's not at all clear who "us" is there (open source community? OStatic writers? Israeli developers?), the implication that Open Source is somehow more expensive could use a bit of support. But let's go on and look for it.

My reasoning is as follows: Yahoo is not as profitable as it needs to be, which means that they begin to shed low-margin business units. Yahoo has already indicated its willingness to give much or all of its advertising business to Google; this presumably means that everything is on the table.

Okay...

While it's undoubtedly true that open-source software has many benefits, we have yet to see an obvious indication that development (and giving away) open-source software leads to higher profits. Indeed, while we cannot pin Sun's steep decline in the last quarter solely on its embrace of open-source software, the correlation seems too strong to ignore. Which means that if Yahoo is looking to restrict itself to profitable ventures, they might stop funding some of the open-source projects they have supported until now.

Huh?!?!

Hadoop is critical to many business operations within Yahoo, including Yahoo Search. Based on what the folks from that team have said, I find it hard to believe that getting on board with Hadoop was more expensive than rolling our own (again). And lower expenses often lead to higher profits, right?

And then there's PHP, another very important piece of infrastructure at Yahoo. It replaced a dozen other half-baked languages years ago. Maintaining a single server-side scripting language is far less expensive than a dozen that all suck more than PHP.

I could go on. But let's keep reading...

He then ends the article by saying the following, which really should have been at the beginning so that people wouldn't waste time hoping for a well thought out argument.

I should note that what I'm writing is pure speculation: No one at Yahoo has even hinted that their support of such projects as YUI and Hadoop will go away. And indeed, those tools are essential to Yahoo's future, which means that we can expect them to continue to survive.

I think there's a damned good reason that nobody has hinted that way: It'd be stupid to do so.

I've generally been pleased by the quality of writing at thinking on the GigaOm blogs. But this one really leaves me scratching my head. Was this supposed to be some kind of Open Source flamebait

Explaining the Cognitive Surplus

I really enjoyed watching Clay Shirky's talk on Cognitive Surplus at the Web 2.0 Expo last week. He does such a good job at explaining how and why watching TV is no longer the de-facto spare time activity that I'm going to simple force people to watch it when they claim not to understand how I have no time to watch television.

See for yourself...

It occurs to me that people like me, meaning generation X (as we're called), are part of possible the last generation where hours of TV watching every evening was a truly universal activity.

Even if I had a Tivo, I probably wouldn't find the time to really use it.

I've always enjoyed Clay's presentations and this one is no exception. Carve yourself out 15 minutes of whatever it is you'd normally be doing and give it a listen.

Quasar Fuel Efficient Light Sport Airplane

According to this AVweb story, a Brazilian-made light sport aircraft could set records for fuel efficiency if it lives up to claims.

Powered by a 121-pound HKS-700E 60-hp 4-stroke engine that promoter GeBe LLC says sips about 1.7-3.5 gallons per hour, GeBe claims the roughly 500 pound aircraft could be "the greenest aircraft on the planet," or, less subtly, "the most efficient commercially available aircraft on earth." The company also calls the Quasar Lite a "2-seat trainer" and likens its handling qualities to "a Pitts in the air." In terms that should prove less subjective, the aircraft's fuselage is composite, its 30-foot-span wings are aluminum and the tail is aluminum structure with Dacron covering.

With 20-gallon tanks, the aircraft's range is listed at 1,060 miles (10 hours at economy cruise) and its cruising speed at 75 percent power is listed at 130 mph with stall at 45 with flaps down. Maximum rate of climb at gross weight is listed at 550 ft/min and Quasar told us when they fly the aircraft it generally climbs 700 ft/min with full fuel and one pilot aboard. Quasar also says they routinely fly the aircraft at 120 mph true burning two gallons per hour.

Drool...

With prices at the avgas pump in the $5.25/gallon range here in the Bay Area, such a plane could sell quite well for casual fliers.

How to Get Rich with Green Putty

I realized something amusing today. If you take a 3 ounce wad of putty (just enough to put in your hand and squeeze it), color it green, and put it in a little plastic container, you can call it TheraPutty and sell it as a hand therapy product in hospitals and medical offices.

As far as I can tell, the key is to make it an unmistakable shade of green.

The trick to getting rich is selling this 50 cents worth of putty and plastic for just under $8.

And, in related news, I've posted my first video to Flickr.

I have the fun of spending about 5 minutes doing that 3-5 times a day--along with a few other finger strengthening exercises. Believe it or not, my finger is healing up pretty well so far.

Dear Yahoo and Microsoft Management

Please do something.

Soon.

You know what I'm talking about.

There are a lot of people wondering what the future holds and it seems like we're in yet another indefinite holding pattern while you do whatever it is you're doing and cannot talk about.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world marches on.

While the public staring contest is great drama for the incessant technology news machine, the rest of us are rather sick of this. I say this as a concerned observer, fan of Yahoo, employee, and shareholder.

Your Friend,

Jeremy

Maybe Microsoft is Right...

It's funny how infrequently you hear anyone (at least around here) say that, but it was my first reaction to this post which can best be summarized with a few excerpts:

Q: What do you get when you cross a browser application with the ability to go offline?

A: A client application without any the goodness that the platform (be it Windows or OS X) has to offer.

Really? Do people really want this?

...and...

Perhaps there’s been so much blah blah blah about web 2.0, social networks, etc., or that folks have just gotten so lazy that they’ve forgotten how to write client applications. It’s sad really.

You can come at this from many points of view, really. Maybe the web is best thought of as the focus and the desktop is merely there for when the web is not. Or maybe the desktop is the focus and the web is there as an add-on (current browser technology certainly points this way). Or maybe the two should be on equal footing, as much as possible. Or...

But it occurs to me that when you consider the question in terms like I excerpted above, it make Microsoft's strategy look a little less like they need to catch up with Google.

Not entirely, but enough to remind you that there are some smart people there too...

F-16 R/C Scale Model with Afterburner!

Only once have a I seen a scale model fighter jet up close. That was a few years ago in Florida. I watched someone do and engine run-up test on a model F-15 while his friend held it in place.

What impressed me most is how jet-like the micro-jet engines sound. It really does seem like you're witnessing a fighter jet trying to fly.

So it was with some fascination and pleasure I watch this video and wondered how I would feel about test flying one for the first time, knowing how much time and money goes into it.

But it sure would be fun! Especially when it has an afterburner.

High Performance MySQL, Second Edition

While my involvement can generously be labeled as "minimal", the second edition of High Performance MySQL is slated to hit store shelves soon.

pre-order on Amazon.com

More info is available on O'Reilly.

Thanks to Baron, Peter, Vadim, and Arjen for picking up the torch to get a greatly expanded seconded edition done and out the door. There's a heck of a lot of new material in it.