Slantwise

This blog is moving

JFP — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:52:10 +0000

If this blog looks empty, it’s because it’s been moved here.

Why You Should Read ZDNet

JFP — Tue, 01 May 2007 00:16:00 +0000

Check out this video on ZDNet.

Mac Sales Soar – Thank Vista!

JFP — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 02:20:41 +0000

As Philip Elmer-Dewitt points out, Mac sales soared in Q1. This was mostly due to laptop sales. I’m part of this soaring, because I bought a MacBook recently. Why did I finally choose a Mac over Windows? One reason was that my kids use Macs at school. Another was that I don’t do Windows development anymore. The main reason, though, was that I took a look at Vista and decided it was too much trouble to go through the upgrade. Moreover, I couldn’t save money by buying a Windows laptop, because Vista’s requirements meant that I had to buy a higher-end laptop to run it. So, the Mac won out.

MySQL Conference 2007

JFP — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 02:12:26 +0000

I just spent two very enjoyable days at the MySQL Conference in Santa Clara. My take on the conference has been published on ZDNet by Dan Farber in this post: MySQL’s success leads to customer frustration. The headline is Dan’s, not mine, though I concur with the sentiment.

Scoble and Full-Text RSS Feeds Vs. Partial-Text Feeds

JFP — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 15:41:48 +0000

Scoble has another post on the subject of full-text RSS vs. partial-text RSS in which he argues that major sites like ZDNet would gain more than they lose by offering full-text feeds. I think he just doesn’t understand the economics of running a major content site. Scoble could link to ZDNet every day and it still wouldn’t affect the traffic. He is just too small a fish in the internet pond. Meanwhile, splogging of ZDNet content is already a problem that is causing us pain, and probably hurting us in Google. Full-text RSS would just make that Google problem worse, and would probably cost more traffic than ZDNet would gain from Scoble’s increased willingness to link.

Tweet Vs. Blog

JFP — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 19:29:10 +0000

So, I am not the most prolific blogger anyway, but I have become even less likely to blog now that I have Twitter. Most of what I have to say is more suited to 140 characters than to a blog entry.

Twitter Addiction

JFP — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 21:38:00 +0000

So, I have been playing with Twitter the last couple of days, and I have become completely addicted. If you want to see how boring my life is, you can check it out here. As a more useful use of Twitter, I played around with the API, and you can now track the postings from ZDNet blogs on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ZDNetBlogs.

On The Web, You Can’t Escape Your Past

JFP — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 17:06:03 +0000

So, I was playing around with ZoomInfo, and I found a link to a profile of me that was put up when I worked for a cool Web 1.0 startup called Newmediary.com. Here’s the Profile in its entirety:

John “Puff Daddy” Potter happily works at Newmediary.com as a Software Engineer. He often strides in well before dawn and goes right to work, then waits for hours until someone else makes the coffee.

A recent haircut has restored John’s boyish charm, which faded during his recent years at Community NewsDealers Inc., a division of The Boston Globe, where he worked as a Programmer / Analyst.

He is the co-author of this year’s groundbreaking book, HTML User’s Interactive Workbook, with Newmediary colleague Alayna Cohn. The book is skyrocketing up the Amazon charts … why not give it a nudge.

All time not spent in his cube is occupied with attempting to turn the mud patch around his house into a lawn.

And, here’s the ZoomInfo link.

Shift-Insert on the Mac

JFP — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:04:31 +0000

So, one of the things that I find annoying about my Mac is the lack of an insert key. Luckily, I ran across this tip somewhere (I can’t find the link any more). Function+M is the insert key on the Mac. Also, Function+Period is the delete key.

Matt Mullenwegg Profile

JFP — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:09:52 +0000

The profile of Matt Mullenwegg for which I was interviewed is now available online. You can see it at either the Sydney Morning Herald or The Age (Brisbane). Dan Skeen, the author gives me a shout-out at his blog