Posted March 20th, 2010 by karinesabatier
More and more people are starting to realize how dangerous it is to trust one powerful company with all your data. We’re speaking of Google of course, but it could be any company running actually on several monopoles, like they do.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, maybe these links are a good start
Un mois sans Google… c’est fini (french)
[Bilan] Sources de revenus de Google (french)
Google AdWords influe sur le référencement naturel ? (french)
25 trucs que Google connaît sur vous (french)
Things Google knows about you (english)
Should You Trust Google with Your Audience Data? (english)
It’s not that my data is SO important to the rest of the world that it has to be kept private. It’s just that it’s MY data and I don’t like feeling vulnerable.
Think of it this way : if I ever am deprived of my Google account access, can my work / my company survive?
So for the past weeks I’ve tried to find Google alternatives and get used to them. I had already found a good alternative to gmail with Zoho and Fastmail (transition was quite easy because I never really liked the gmail interface anyway). For google docs Zoho provides a nice and painless import. And I don’t use shared docs that much, only for unimportant data. I use Open Office for the rest.
I’ve never used any of these Google powered apps : Picasa, Blogger, Google Desktop, Google calendar, Adsense, Health, Checkout, Answers, Adwords.
I don’t use Chrome, I use Firefox 95% of the time and the latest version of Opera. I use Flock to browse Flickr while I photo-surf.
I rarely go to Youtube, I prefer Vimeo, it’s authentic, creative and hi-res.
That leaves me with Google Search, Google Analytics, Google Maps, and Google Reader. I’m still looking for quality equivalent solutions.
Zen habits gave me some clues in this article: How I Became (Mostly) Google-free in About a Day. Scroogle is indeed a good replacement, coupled with Ixquick it works just fine. I haven’t had the time yet to test clutsy but I will.
The hardest thing to replace is probably Analytics (I’m only a very occasional Maps and Reader user). Analytics is so simple to use and offers so many options that it’s going to be hard to find an equivalent. Any hints welcome :)
Tags :
Tags: don't be evil, google, trust
Posted February 7th, 2010 by karinesabatier
I’ve learned a lot from the first Ruby coding dojo we organized last thursday.
First, this dojo reinforced some strong convictions of mine:
- practice is the essence of art. Whether you are a musician, an illustrator, a surgeon, or a sportsman, it is indeed by practicing everyday the same gestures (and by learning more of them) that you tend towards perfection.
- the best way to teach and share is to practice together, exchange views, talk about the code at hand. And do it a lot. At Eyeka’s I have practiced enough pair programming to feel the benefits of everyday technical discussions on myself (that’s how I learned Ruby & Rails from scratch) and on others (that’s when I saw good programmers become excellent ones).
I also discovered that the kata is not so much about what you do but rather about how you do it, how you present your code to others, how you explain your thought process and how you structure your ideas so they follow an intuitive flow, even for people who aren’t familiar with the concepts you’re dealing with. You surely can have a great kata on a very simple exercise.
Last but not least, I have been really impressed by Emmanuel Gaillot’s performance which undoubtfully required a fair amount of preparation and a strong concentration. The kata he chose to present — to a non Rubyist audience — was consistent and a very good example of simple and powerful Ruby code accessible to everyone.
It demonstrated the great intuitiveness of the language itself and was perfect to introduce and demonstrate the power and usefulness of Test Driven Development. For 2 hours we’ve been really doing TDD by the book (and not trying to cope with the test coverage afterwards)… And we got to see Shoes in action, Yay!
We’ll keep you posted for the next one!
Tags :
Tags: coding dojo, coding kata, Emmanuel Gaillot, Rennes on Rails, Ruby, ruby kata, Shoes, TDD
Posted January 27th, 2010 by karinesabatier
My january TagCloud generated by Wordle.net
Tags :
Tags: tagcloud, wordle.net
Posted January 17th, 2010 by karinesabatier
(In case you wonder, I am not related to either Snapfish or Photoways, I’m just an ordinary customer)
Lately, I’ve been testing two competing photo printers : Photobox (aka as Photoways) and Snapfish.
Let me start by saying I used to be a faithful Photobox client for 5 years. I’ve always thought they rates were a bit expensive but they (used to) have a very good printing quality for what I call everyday pictures (I exclude B&W from this). Their books are also a very good product and I made several good gifts out of them.
Until 18 months ago.
I don’t know what happened in their photo labs or if they changed their printers settings but since then I’ve had 2 batches totally ruined, one of them containing 57 pics printed with a reddish tint that made everyone look like they had measles. For christmas, I had ordered a deluxe calendar that was supposedly shipped on dec. 17 (marked as “delivered on time for christmas”) then lost, then reprinted. It finally arrived… yesterday.
I tried to have the measles batch reprinted, but it took me so many emails and discussions that I finally gave up. I was asked to fax my request and then send by snail mail the whole bunch of prints (at my expense) to just get the case opened in their CMS. This “case” is still unsettled. You people at Photobox really do everything you can to dissuade your customers.
So I turned to HP’s Snapfish. First, I love what HP does with Magcloud. Second, I could print 50 pics for free to test it.
It turns out Snapfish is really great. The upload tool is simple, web embedded and does not require you to install any stand-alone tool on your machine. Yet it allows you to upload as many pics as you want at a time and it resumes broken (or interrupted) uploads as well. Bandwidth seems good (though I live in the countrysite and have a very slow connection). Snapfish can also link to your Flickr account, a very good idea to save time and avoid spending hours uploading what you already have.
But what I like the most is the collage prints and posters. On a 10×15 cm print, you can mix up to 20 photos and stuff more pictures on one print. I use this a lot because I have trouble deciding which photos to print or not, and also because I have series of pictures that tell a little story. Great tool for that!
Here is an example of a recently printed 50x75cm poster:
The poster arrived 4 days after I ordered it, neatly packed in a cardboard tube and with beautiful color and contrast rendering (by the way be sure to UNCHECK the “auto-correct” option box – french version – when you order your prints, the auto correct… well doesn’t correct really well :)
Oh and did I mention that with each order you usually get a discount for the next one?
Bye bye Photobox, Hello Snapfish!
Tags :
Tags: Magcloud, photo poster, photo prints, Photobox, prints, Snapfish
