Sol Young – Page 31 – Out in his elements…

Flow – Jabber/XMPP as an RSS over HTTP replacement

Posted on April 18, 2008 by Sol Young with 6 Comments

Twitter on XMPP is just the beginning…

Courtesy NASA Glenn Research Center

I’ve been using Twitter as a main source of news and entertainment (it’s entertaining and informative to have commentary coming in with links, events, articles, and photos). Most everything pertinent to my areas of interest are discussed, so the latest news is passed around as discussion.

As my series on flow describes, my Twitter stream is received through a GTalk client and I’m receiving about 30 to 40 tweets per minute.

This is a lot of incoming information. A lot more than one could read and keep up with all day. It’s valuable for periods of time… Jump in to the river, jump out. This is sort of like news.

Now, I love RSS. I spend a good hour per day reading feeds. I believe it will be the standard in syndication for years to come. And maybe it will be the format passed over XMPP channels, too. In using Twitter for my flow of information I have discovered how amazing real-time updates of news can be, and how HTTP (the current method of pulling RSS feeds from various servers) isn’t powerful enough.

Imagine Google Reader being push based. Instead of periodically receiving items every five, ten, or fifteen minutes. You receive new blog entries, articles, etc, within milliseconds of their publication. This becomes amazingly powerful because you are no longer reading what happened, you are participating in what is happening.

Comment systems become conversation engines. Discussions and exchanges of information become natural, rather than one-way.

HTTP and web services, with their beautiful RESTfulness, won’t be going away. They have a very effective place for on-demand pulls of data. What I’m describing is a move away from HTTP and web services which currently poll – the enablement of FriendFeed, Twitter, blogs, and news services to fire off announcements on a push basis…

Nobody wants to wait three minutes before receiving their next round of updates. We want it when it happens.

Posted in Architecture, Flow, FriendFeed, RSS, Web Services, XMPP

The morning habit of highly effective people – wake up for yourself

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Sol Young with 9 Comments

Valley Forge Sunrise Deer

Early Sunrise in Valley Forge – 2003

In Stephen R. Covey‘s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, shared traits and behaviors of effective people are described (at the strategic level). I’ve found one habit, at the functional level, which seems to span every effective person I’ve met. I do it too.

It’s waking up and doing something you enjoy. By starting the day and doing something focused, for yourself, you’re establishing a sort of leadership over your day. Instead of waking up and being ruled/owned by the clock, it’s getting up and taking control of the day.

Personally, I run. It starts with getting up, stretching, and hitting the pavement. This time is my time. While my legs are spinning, my mind is churning through any challenges or plans for the day. Most everyone I’ve met who are business leaders do something for themselves first.

It can be anything… Coffee and a newspaper, yoga, morning television news, surfing, gardening, art, etc. You can start off by getting in to the office at 7:00am if that’s what you want. The point is that you’re doing this for yourself and not for anyone else. Your day is starting off under your lead.

Posted in Managing, Nike+, Running

Hints of grad school – I want my MBA

Posted on April 13, 2008 by Sol Young with 5 Comments

Galina and I went on our first bike ride of Spring (pics). We rode past the Philadelphia Art Museum, along the riverfront and over to UPenn. A large part of the day was spent at a Wharton volleyball tournament with some great friends.

We met some new people while sitting in the bleachers and hanging out. It’s refreshing to visit and meet intelligent, driven, and interesting folks. While it’ll be a couple years before I can consider attending, I’m looking forward to it more than ever.

Posted in Bicycling, Education

Back in my routine – daily running, RSS+flow, and dev

Posted on April 11, 2008April 13, 2008 by Sol Young with Leave a comment

Latest run results… Almost to my goal of < 7:00 pace…

Today is special… It marks the first day of getting back in to my preferred routine. Here it is:

Get up early and hit a good run.
Read RSS (and now some flow) over breakfast.
Drive to the office (while continuing to read RSS).
Have a productive day of dev.
Get home and enjoy some afternoon/evening time with family.
Read more, code more, free time before bed…

For the last few months my routine has been thrashed. Very productive, but insane…

Wake up just in time leave for the office.
Have a productive day of dev.
Get home and follow up with emails and later dev projects.
Do demolition/remodeling/construction with my wife.
Fall in to bed, catch 15 minutes of news.

The latter routine has accomplished a remodeled home, most recently the bathroom, but hasn’t allowed for much mental expansion or physical fitness.

Posted in iofy, Nike+, Running