bits·done

Introducing the LONDON STARTUPS twitter lists

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:21:58 +0100

It’s never been about how many twitter followers do you have, but who you follow. My people skills aren’t too great - so twitter, with it’s bite sized information packets and no facial expressions to listen to are great.

The London startup lists I’ve put together have been dogfood tested for a while now, worked well for me to monitor what’s really going on. I believe they’re complete enough to be offered to the public.

I’ve created quite a few lists, and a little chart to explain it all. The little icons are ordered in descending influence order. No, I’m not telling the formula. To see the chart in big, click on this image, or just go to http://ls.tjp.hu/:

@tjp/london-startup-scene has all the twitter accounts that have any connection to London and startup. Bit noisy though.

@tjp/london-startups - this is a list of official twitter accounts of startups - mind, some of the London startups are left out ~~because they’ve no idea how to use twitter~~ in order to keep it noise-free.

@london-startup-schmooze is about organizations you have to friends with to launch your startup. Meetups, conferences and VC firms. They often announce events/opportunities you should know about. If you’ve just arrived to London, this is the list to see where to go to meet people.

@london-startup-people - the mob who runs it. All the people who has some or more connection with London startups. Good to take the temperature.

@london-startup-prophets - one would say it’s a London-based angel investor list, bit the definition is a bit more sophisticated: it’s people with either brains, connections or money, in some cases all of these. Serial entrepreneurs, startup-focused journalists, angels / VCs.

Feel free to follow any of these, and here’s a little reminder: I’m only human, I make mistages (haha, unbelievably funny!). If you think someone is not on the right list or someone is missing, please tell me on twitter: @tjp.

The London startup twitter lists.

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:15:00 +0100

The London startup twitter lists.

Experimenting a bit.

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:57:26 +0100

Experimenting a bit.

dcancel: This is my startup’s strategic plan. What’s yours?

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 17:46:22 +0100

dcancel:

This is my startup’s strategic plan. What’s yours?

I’m pleased to announce that after a long wait, Bubble...

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:45:24 +0100

I’m pleased to announce that after a long wait, Bubble Trouble FREE edition has arrived to the App Store. It’s not high resolution, the colours are a bit paler, but: it’s free.

Download from the App Store.

Or, if you have an iPhone 4 (with the gorgeous high-res screen), the full fat Bubble Trouble is highly recommended.

Where do you go when twitter fails?

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:34:00 +0100

Where do you go when twitter fails?

giantrobotlasers: there is no spoon. pretty!

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:50:14 +0100

giantrobotlasers:

there is no spoon.

pretty!

1000000 eyeballs!

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:25:17 +0100

1000000 eyeballs!

PicFog, albeit briefly, mentioned in an actual paper. My impact...

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:20:51 +0100

PicFog, albeit briefly, mentioned in an actual paper. My impact factor is rocketing.

my friends J & K

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 00:58:11 +0100

I just did some research on PicFog for my new tumbleblog when it occured to me it’s not nice that you can’t navigate with the usual J (down) and K (up) keyboard commands.

So now you can!

Country graph of PicFog visitors yesterday - the darker the...

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:15:24 +0100

Country graph of PicFog visitors yesterday - the darker the green, the more visitors we had. Guess in which country was the current #G20 meeting.

BBC NEWS | Health | Sitting straight ‘bad for backs’

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 16:52:46 +0100

BBC NEWS | Health | Sitting straight ‘bad for backs’

New pages on PicFog A couple of new pages just appeared: An...

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:51:26 +0100

New pages on PicFog

A couple of new pages just appeared:

An about page, that describes what is PicFog, how it’s done, why is it like what it is.
PicFog Capitals helps you finding a big city with -lots- of pictures.
PicFog Mayors (pictured) is the same with twitter users - we list the users that post a lot of pictures and get retweeted a lot.
The Recently trending page is kind of an archive for the breaking news trends - it shows what was popular in the last day, week and month.

These pages will hopefully make new users find their ways around PicFog.

Also, we have a newsletter - you’d better sign up in your settings page.

Refactor code in the lean way - Janos's three-step guide

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:14:00 +0100

A couple of months ago I started to rewrite the site from scratch. The intention was to start from something -really- simple, add the currently existing features one-by-one, and when PicFog 2 is ready, just replace the old site with the new. So, naively, I started with a nice little {}, and got on with refactoring everything I could put my hands on.

And then reality kicked in: with the limited amount of time I have on my hands (one day a week, plus whatever I can steal from weekends), I have to be really prudent with my time. If I have to finish the following by the end of the day:

bug to fix,
a feature to polish
do some refactoring,

I have to look at what’s the best value I can deliver. And refactoring may feel good (I’m a developer after all), but the other two actually ship something. So when my charts showed I’m not shipping enough, I changed tactics: took a look at the half-refactored code, and took the new stuff and chucked into the current one, roughly one a week.

The last feature I pulled in to PicFog was infinite scroll - it’s very smooth, both the code and the actual feature (much better than the previous incarnation), give it a try! Have a look at the E3 pictures - you really need a nice smooth scrolling there.

…

So here is Janos’s lean refactoring guide in three simple steps:

Start doing some code refactoring.
Get real: Identify the usable organs in your half ready code.
Put the organs to your live code. Don’t think a lot, you already have.

And: profit!

Did this tactic produce good code?

Probably not as good as The Perfect Refactor, but I still managed to improve the quality of my code (not that anyone cares, ha!), and actually got rid of some annoying nuances.

Is this the ideal way of doing it?

If you have infinite amount of development resources, probably not. If you write The perfect code on your first try, probably not. But if you’re lean by design (and I’m very lean, trust me), you might want to follow the three magic steps. And careful: all three steps are equally important. You have to do some refactoring (at least in head, ha), then have to identify what can you use, then have to relatively mindlessly do the organ transplant thing.

Is lean refactoring the ultimate tactic?

For certain things, it worked suprisingly well for me.

Back end / database code: perfect.

Code that doesn’t fundamentally change the interface, just improves it: good.

Minor interface changes, be careful.

Interface design: I think it’s the perfect way to kill a design is to replace different features one by one, making the experience confusing and inconsistent. You might want to approach this one differently. But hey, I’m just a developer, I don’t do design.

Blackheath bike&kite weekend

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 17:04:38 +0100

Blackheath bike&kite weekend

caterpillarcowboy: Chris isn’t pulling any punches on this one....

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 10:18:33 +0100

caterpillarcowboy:

Chris isn’t pulling any punches on this one. He’s referring to this blog post written by son of former American Express CEO and current VC at RRE James D. Robinson IV. You can read Chris’ take on this on his blog.

PicFog press - May 2010

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 12:21:58 +0100

A selection of PicFog mentions from the last month. I’ll try to make this section regular.

PicFog was mentioned in the Swiss radio station DRS 3 in the programme called ‘DRS 3 Digital’. Listen to it here.
The Dutch newspaper Volksrant wasted two pages on silly twitter pictures - the article is titled Picfog brengt orde in fotomist op Twitter which I believe means “Picfog brings order to photo fog on Twitter”.
DigitalLiving.ch article: PicFog: die Welt in Bildern, aka. “PicFog: the world in pictures”. They also mention we’re web 2.0, which is an extra Brucie Bonus point.
There was a quick mention in c’t, a German computer magazine.
Fotointern.ch: PicFog: Unglaublich, was alles auf Twitter hochgeladen wird (PicFog: Incredibly, all of which will be uploaded on Twitter)
Social media blog Thoughtpick raises the issue of privacy about PicFog - they may have a point, but I kind of like the clean privacy strategy of Twitter.
Ah, and this is exciting - PicFog was even mentioned in my home country. “Real-time pictures from the twitter fog”, or Real-time képek a twitter-ködből in the ultimate tounge-twister language, Hungarian.

What a month!

I’ve hidden a couple of small interface improvements on...

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:39:00 +0100

I’ve hidden a couple of small interface improvements on this picture. Namely:

There’s a big, pressable PicFog logo on the top left to bring you back to the main page.
And there’s a new tagline on it: “Quick image search”. It probably describes more what PicFog is good for.
Fiddled a bit with Breaking / trending topics - as a result, it shows a bit more relevant results on the left.
Trending topics also shows when the topic started to trend.
Also, if you click on one of the trending topics, it becomes pale (:visited) so that you go on seeing the other trending pics.
Ah, and you can hide the left menu!

Quite a few of these changes are based on the survey.io survey I’ve put to the site - dozens of users filled it, with some very useful feedback. I highly recommend Survey.io for rapid prototyping.

Technology stack evolution on PicFog Of course, reality is a bit...

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:00:00 +0100

Technology stack evolution on PicFog

Of course, reality is a bit more complicated than this. See the current state here: PicFog.

quick capsule review of nodejs

Fri, 28 May 2010 17:43:48 +0100

extremely powerful / in places, horribly ugly.

(I wanted to post more today, 3 different posts are in draft, but i’m sucked in.)