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Current Topic: Miscellaneous |
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Zoompf: Or, Why Billy Hoffman Left Security To Work On Web Performance |
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Topic: Miscellaneous |
6:26 pm EDT, Oct 30, 2009 |
Today I'm launching Zoompf, a new kind of web performance company. We don't deploy sensors, simulate user load, or monitor your application from data centers around the global. We don't try to answer the question "How fast are my web apps?" We answer the next logical and frankly more important question: "How do I make my web applications go faster?" Zoompf's technology crawls and identifies over 150 specific problems with your web application that impacts web performance. You can learn more by downloading our Optimizing Web Performance presentation. Bu this post is not about what Zoompf does. It's about why I'm doing Zoompf. Why on earth would I leave an amazing career in a successful industry and resign from an awesome job in a down economy? A lot of close friends have asked whether I'm crazy or not in the last month. But after I've explained the incredible opportunity behind what I'm doing their outlook completely changes and they become very supportive, offering time, funding, and recommendations. The business case for performance is obvious. Faster apps increase revenue. Using resources more efficiently reduces operational costs. This is why the performance testing market is huge. But there is a gap in this market when it comes to performance testing of modern web applications. Talk to anyone about web performance and they start talking about the usual suspects: -Refactoring, optimizing, JITing, caching application code and data -Database tuning, queries, store procedures, indexes, denormalizing tables -Reverse proxies, memcached, Varnish, load balancers, SSL accelerators, etc.
But recent research has found generating dynamic content accounts for typically less than 10% of page load times. The vast majority of page load time is spent downloading, parsing, and rendering all the components that make up a modern application. It is on the front end, and not on the back end, where optimizations can be made that drop seconds off load times. JavaScript code, CSS, the inner workings of browsers, HTTP voodoo. I am a thought leader in exactly this space. The majority of widely known web performance optimization practices today focus on the application tier or the database tier. Traditional performance testings tools do no front end optimization testing. And yet the front end has the biggest impact on web application performance in modern applications. Do you see the disconnect yet? This is an enormous opportunity. This is why I created Zoompf.
Billy, we wish you the best of luck. Zoompf: Or, Why Billy Hoffman Left Security To Work On Web Performance |
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DailyBuzzCoffee Opens in Queen Creek, Arizona |
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Topic: Miscellaneous |
7:05 pm EDT, Mar 11, 2008 |
Today's the day. Daily Buzz Coffee officially opens its doors. I'm eager to see what happens. I hope you'll stop by. We've already met a number of you.
Bill McCauley, a friend to several folks here at MemeStreams, has successfully opened his coffee house in Arizona! March 10th was their first day. Congratulations Bill! DailyBuzzCoffee Opens in Queen Creek, Arizona |
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Topic: Miscellaneous |
9:52 am EST, Jan 27, 2008 |
Ever read a book (required or otherwise) and upon finishing it thought to yourself, "Wow. That was terrible. I totally feel dumber after reading that."? I know I have. Well, like any good scientist, I decided to see how well my personal experience matches reality. How might one do this? Well, here's one idea. 1. Get a friend of yours to download, using Facebook, the ten most popular books at every college (manually -- as not to violate Facebook's ToS). These ten books are indicative of the overall intellectual milieu of that college. 2. Download the average SAT/ACT score for students attending every college. 3. Presto! We have a correlation between books and dumbitude (smartitude too)! Books <=> Colleges <=> Average SAT Scores 4. Plot the average SAT of each book, discarding books with too few samples to have a reliable average. 5. Post the results on your website, pondering what the Internet will think of it. Yes, I'm aware correlation ≠ causation. The results are awesome regardless of direction of causality. You can stop sending me email about this distinction. Thanks.
Virgil strikes again! Booksthatmakeyoudumb |
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Silicon Valley Sleuth: Scoop: Digg is used for Sun stock manipulation |
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Topic: Miscellaneous |
2:01 pm EST, Mar 18, 2006 |
Something extremely weird is going on over on Digg.com. Today for the third time in a short period, a story got promoted to the front page where a blogger raises a baseless rumour about Google buying Sun. And as is explained further down, it appears that this is the result of a coordinated effort to fool Digg into promoting the story.
Here is the money quote: "I don't think it's possible to game Digg because it requires such a mass of people who have been vetted through our algorithms." - Digg CEO
Sure dude. Thats not a story thats going to work for very long... Silicon Valley Sleuth: Scoop: Digg is used for Sun stock manipulation |
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Spats Over Security Roil Summit in Chile (washingtonpost.com) |
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Topic: Miscellaneous |
3:28 am EST, Nov 22, 2004 |
] Then Bush either realized he was missing something, or he ] heard the commotion. The president, who is rarely alone, ] even in his own house, turned and walked back to the ] front door unaccompanied, facing the backs of a sea of ] dark suits. Bush, with his right hand, reached over the ] suits and pointed insistently at Trotta. At first the ] officials, with their backs to him and their heads in the ] rumble, did not realize it was the president intervening. ] Bush then braced himself against someone and lunged to ] retrieve the agent, who was still arguing with the ] Chileans. The shocked Chilean officials then released ] Trotta. ] ] Trotta walked in behind Bush, who looked enormously ] pleased with himself. He was wearing the expression that ] some critics call a smirk, and his eyebrows shot up as if ] to wink at bystanders. I rarely like Bush, but this is one of those moments. Right on. Spats Over Security Roil Summit in Chile (washingtonpost.com) |
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Topic: Miscellaneous |
8:52 am EST, Jan 20, 2004 |
] This collection of web pages documents Brad's activity on ] the system and the people who's lives he effected, from ] the first day he logged on MemeStreams to the day he ] passed on. Brad |
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Topic: Miscellaneous |
12:35 am EST, Dec 20, 2003 |
John Perry Barlow has started a blog! ] Here I am, in the lobby of the highly attitudinal W Hotel ] in San Francisco, creating my very first blog entry. ] ] Joichi Ito, a blog sensei if ever there was one, is introducing ] me to the Blogosphere. I'm wary. Am I too old a dog to blog? ] Am I actually too sick of things virtual to plunge myself ] deeper into electronic immateriality? ] ] We'll see. ] ] But, I am motivated. For years, I've been sending out ] BarlowSpams and then privately enjoying the responses, ] both from friendz and friendz of friendz. Now I will have a ] place to pass to these on to our little community and, with ] luck, grow this into something besides my own little ] personality cult. BarlowFriendz |
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The Google random picture generator |
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Topic: Miscellaneous |
1:46 am EST, Dec 7, 2003 |
I didn't recommend this before so I'm doing it now. This webpage will redirect you to a Google image search using a random search term based on the filename scheme used by many popular digital cameras. What results is the most random, random sampling of pictures. Basically, it offers random views into people's lives... See something interesting and you can dive in and explore. Its really quite an experience. The Google random picture generator |
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