About Asides

My "asides" are short reblogged entries that are currently powered by Posterous. You can also view them at asides.bmannconsulting.com.

My feed of asides is the same as my old link blog address. It only contains items that have not been promoted to the front page.

Asides by Boris Mann

Google Apps Marketplace = App Store for Cloud Apps

March 10, 2010 - 2:19am by bmann Tags:

Today, we're making it easier for these users and software providers to do business in the cloud with a new online store for integrated business applications. The Google Apps Marketplace allows Google Apps customers to easily discover, deploy and manage cloud applications that integrate with Google Apps. More than 50 companies are now selling applications across a range of businesses

Learning the culture

March 9, 2010 - 4:28pm by bmann Tags:

Asking questions kills innovation aka learn to do by doing /via @rtanglao cc @sherrett

March 2, 2010 - 1:06am by bmann Tags:

So what's the alternative? Substitute early action for never-ending analysis. Figure out the quickest, cheapest way to do something market-facing to start the iterative process that so frequently typifies innovation. Be prepared to make quick decisions, but have the driver of the decision be in-market data, not conceptual analysis. In other words, go small and learn. Pitch (or even sell) your idea to colleagues. Open up a kiosk in a shopping mall for a week. Create a quick-and-dirty website describing your idea. Be prepared to make quick decisions.

The future can't be analytically derived. Of course it's almost always valuable to think comprehensively about a new idea. But maintain a healthy balance between analysis and action. If you get stuck in "What about..." loops, you'll never get the results you seek.

via innosight.com

My friend James' personal blog is called 'Learn to do by doing' and that's what this post is about. I've quoted the last bits, which call out the punchline - you need to break out of asking questions and just *do*.

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Windows Phone 7 vs. Android /via @gruber

March 2, 2010 - 1:06am by bmann Tags:

The big three mobile platforms right now are iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android. (Feel free to add Nokia as a fourth.) I think Windows Phone 7 is most competitive with Android, because that’s the one with the same business model: licensing the OS to OEM hardware makers. They’re even competing for attention from the very same hardware makers, especially HTC.

Europe has become the 'flyover states' of the mobile industry /via @rtanglao

February 28, 2010 - 11:08am by bmann Tags:

"Europe has become the 'flyover states' of the mobile industry," says a senior European executive, referring to the disparaging term used to describe middle America by high-powered business travellers shuttling between California and New York.

Posterous doesn't work with Drupal unless blog module is enabled

February 28, 2010 - 1:17am by bmann Tags:

…so the moral of the story is that you need to hack (*gasp*!) the blogapi.module. Starting at line 187, I basically just reset any incoming requests for type "blog" to type "post" (which is the machine name of the content type that I use on my site).

// BM: go ahead and do the check if it isn't blog

if ($blogid !== 'blog') {

if (($error = _blogapi_validate_blogid($blogid)) !== TRUE) {

Crappy US online coverage of the Olympics #van2010 cc @jbristowe

February 28, 2010 - 12:48am by bmann Tags:

With the 2010 Winter Olympics wrapping up this weekend in Vancouver, I hope we can put the past behind us. That is, the past of crappy U.S. online coverage of a major global sporting event, with the key offender being exclusive distributor NBC.

The real world is clamoring to crawl into cyberspace

February 26, 2010 - 12:45am by bmann Tags:

This is where the future is entirely in your hands. You can leave here today promising yourself to invent the future, to write meaning explicitly onto the real world, to transform our relationship to the universe of objects. Or, you can wait for someone else to come along and do it. Because someone inevitably will. Every day, the pressure grows. The real world is clamoring to crawl into cyberspace. You can open the door.

via blog.futurestreetconsulting.com

Drupal core maintainers

February 22, 2010 - 12:43am by bmann Tags:

There should be, for any given issue, at least one person besides the core maintainers that has it come up in a custom search they have bookmarked and check regularly. It doesn't matter as much whether that's grouped by module or subsystem or whatever, just that everything has that level of attention. (Which also makes those people the go-to person for the core maintainers, too.)

Putting stuff out in the world is so weird /via @heyrocker

February 17, 2010 - 4:32pm by bmann Tags:

This always amazes me. Putting stuff out in the world is so weird. You put it out there, and I see people have it installed in the usage stats, but I barely hear anything. My queue is reasonably dead. Who are these people? What are they doing? I have no idea. I mostly just assume its people who tried it to play with it and forgot to disable it when they were done.

Flash-based restaurant websites suck cc @markbusse @letsgofordinner

February 16, 2010 - 9:03pm by bmann Tags:

Me: (tries to visit a local restaurant’s website via iPhone)
Restaurant website: I require Flash. Fuck off.
Me: I just want to know how late you’re open.
Website: Nope.
Me: But I’m on my phone. Don’t you have a little “HTML Version” link up in the corner or something?
Website: I’m ignoring you.

Any host on the web should be able to implement these open protocols /via @samruby

February 14, 2010 - 8:59pm by bmann Tags:

The best way to get a sense of where the Buzz API is heading is to take a look at http://code.google.com/apis/buzz/. You'll notice that the "coming soon" section mentions a ton of protocols—Activity Streams, Atom, AtomPub, MediaRSS, WebFinger, PubSubHubbub, Salmon, OAuth, XFN, etc.