Codenames are one word. Exceptions are few and far between. The reason? Efficiency. A codename is chosen as a time saver. My first significant product, Paradox for Windows 1.0, had a great codename “Tsunami”. It met all the requirements: a single word, nerd interesting, and it simply told the tale of what we were attempting to do with the product - there’s something big coming, we’re building the first easy to use relational database to the then-emerging Windows platform. Good codename.
Codenames document your product culture and there is an economy to these names. Every single product in your company doesn’t need such a name. My rule of thumb is that a codename designates a product or project of significance. What is significant is entirely up to you, but I know that you will never make a project significant by giving it a codename. If your idea or product is shitty, a codename will never help.
The people who are building the product are the only ones qualified to pick the right name of the product. If Marketing is picking a codename, you don’t work at a product company, you work at a marketing company. Good luck with that.
For the creative team, codenames are symbols of pride and vision. The best codenames stem from consuming thought about solving the problem at hand, which ironically is the the same place great products come from.
Thoughtful piece by John Gruber on the state of Nintendo:
Here is what I’d like to see Nintendo do.
Make two great games for iOS (iPhone-only if necessary, but universal iPhone/iPad if it works with the concept). Not ports of existing 3DS or Wii games, but two brand new games designed from the ground up with iOS’s touchscreen, accelerometer, (cameras?), and lack of D-pad/action buttons in mind. (“Mario Kart Touch” would be my suggestion; I’d buy that sight unseen.) Put the same amount of effort into these games that Nintendo does for their Wii and 3DS games. When they’re ready, promote the hell out of them. Steal Steve Jobs’s angle and position them not as in any way giving up on their own platforms but as some much-needed ice water for people in hell. Sell them for $14.99 or maybe even $19.99.
If done well, I would buy them the moment they were released. I have been a Nintendo supporter for most of my life. In fact, I only bought the original PlayStation for the continuation of the Final Fantasy series. I grew up on Nintendo, and their mainstay franchises like Zelda, Mario, and Metroid. What set them apart was great storytelling and characters.
I own both a DS and a 3DS, and both feel clunky. They each have a couple of really well done games, but after using a modern GPU, a retina touch screen, and a streamlined OS, it is hard not to constantly see the flaws. The new 2DS is concerning as well, because hardware-wise this really looks like a downward trajectory.
The smart money has always been on diversification. Nintendo has a huge stable of loyal supporters, who are carrying best-of-breed hardware in their pockets everyday. I can only imagine how great it would be to have Nintendo’s storytelling and characters on modern, high-quality hardware.
Another idea: There is the forthcoming game controller API in iOS 7, a perfect opportunity to define an enhanced premium gaming experience, sooner rather than later. Although, embracing modern control interfaces (motion, voice, eye tracking, mind reading, etc.) is where the puck is heading.
The plump grapes picked in Oakville on Thursday likely will end up in Mumm’s brut rosé, said winemaker Ludovic Der-vin. “It’s been actually a really good growing season…Spring was really mild”
Mumm’s Brut Rosé is one of our favorites, and is especially good on a warm summer afternoon.
First and foremost, getting Linode up and running with an Ubuntu 13.04 LAMP setup is as easy as just following the first four Quick Start Guides (Getting Started, Securing Your Server, Hosting a Website, and Adding DNS Records) provided in the Linode Library.
Setting up the Second Crack static-file weblog system was a bit more challenging. Everything you need to know to get it up and running is outlined on Marco’s GitHub site, but it is not easy to digest without a bit of work (probably by design, given the profuse warnings).
As I worked to get my installation configured, I found a couple of good write-ups (Wynja, Gibbs, Egan, and Stewart), but none of them were tailored to the Ubuntu setup that I was using.
Nick Wynja’s Deploy Second Crack (and the associated GitHub Project) was the most valuable of those articles, but it leveraged CentOS and made some assumptions about the system setup that I didn’t like, specifically needing a special ‘blog’ user and disabling the firewall.
Although I didn’t end up actually running the DeploySecondCrack setup scripts, looking through the included files like deploysecondcrack.sh and the other config files provided a wealth of assistance for an ex-sysadmin who hadn’t worked with command-line Unix in a couple of years.
When I first went through this, I skipped setting up Dropbox, and I got secondcrack working with a local source folder /home/myuser/blog-src. In retrospect, I was just being impatient. Ultimately, you will setup Dropbox because it makes this system wonderful to use. If you choose to not set Dropbox up from the beginning, you’ll have to move your existing blog source folder, and change your config.php file to point to it. Given my experience, and if I had to do it over, I would recommend setting up Dropbox prior to Step 2 below.
Steps I used to get Second Crack running:
Copy the secondcrack files to /home/myuser/secondcrack/
Ensure the Paths and Blog Metadata sections are correct in /home/myuser/secondcrack/config.phpconfig.php example
Add a line to /etc/crontab to run the secondcrack engine. crontab example
At this point you should be able to save an example test-draft.md file to your equivalent of /home/myuser/blog-src/drafts/ folder and see a preview html output in /home/myuser/blog-src/drafts/_previews/
Install Dropbox. (I shared a server Dropbox folder to my main Dropbox account for easy access.)
Update /home/myuser/secondcrack/config.php with new paths because I moved my blog-src location into Dropbox folder.
Notes:
If you need to edit or remove files after publishing, clearing the /home/myuser/secondcrack/cache folder (as Marco instructs) after doing so, has solved any consistency issues I’ve seen.
To create a “Link style” post manually, add a Link: header to the *.md draft:
Sample Link Post
================
Link: http://www.awesomesite.com/breakingstory
Add your interesting post here
Nebulous Notes has been a great app for creating and editing Markdown posts on iOS.
MarkdownPad 2 has been equally nice when I need to makes edits from Windows.
I haven’t setup the bookmarklets yet, but plan to soon.
I’ve created this site to serve as a creative outlet for my writing. It is a reinvestment in a skill that for many years, I have only used sparingly. As I start this journey anew, I am exited about where it will take me, and the evolution of voice and subject matter that is sure to occur.
there will always be the open web for the geeks, the misfits, the eccentrics, the control freaks, and any other term we can think of to proudly express our healthy skepticism of giving up too much control over what really should be ours.
In tandem with having a space to write, I also have a black box in which to experiment with web technologies, and to embrace the idea of owning my identity.
I would be remiss to not mention a couple of the people who provided inspiration for this endeavor: Rands, Marco, Gruber, Dediu, and Siracusa.