from The Netflix Tech Blog http://techblog.netflix.com/ By Brian Harrington & Greg Orzell
In a previous blog post about auto scaling, I mentioned that we would be open sourcing the library that we use to expose application metrics. Servo is that library. It is designed to make it easy for developers to export metrics from their application code, register them with JMX, and publish them to external monitoring systems such as Amazon's CloudWatch. This is especially important at Netflix because we are a data driven company and it is essential that we know what is going on inside our applications in near real time. As we increased our use of auto scaling based on application load, it became important for us to be able to publish custom metrics to CloudWatch so that we could configure auto-scaling policies based on the metrics that most accurately capture the load for a given application. We already had the servo framework in place to publish data to our internal monitoring system, so it was extended to allow for exporting a subset (AWS charges on a per metric basis) of the data into CloudWatch.
Features

Simple: It is trivial to expose and publish metrics without having to write lots of code such as MBean interfaces.

JMX Registration: JMX is the standard monitoring interface for Java and can be queried by many existing tools. Servo makes it easy to expose metrics to JMX so they can be viewed from a wide variety of Java tools such as VisualVM.

Flexible publishing: Once metrics are exposed, it should be easy to regularly poll the metrics and make them available for internal reporting systems, logs, and services like Amazon's CloudWatch. There is also support for filtering to reduce cost for systems that charge per metric, and asynchronous publishing to help isolate the collection from downstream systems that can have unpredictable latency.

The rest of this post provides a quick preview of Servo, for a more detailed overview see the Servo wiki.

Registering Metrics

Registering metrics is designed to be both easy and flexible. Using annotations you can call out the fields or methods that should be monitored for a class and specify both static and dynamic metadata. The example below shows a basic server class with some stats about the number of connections and amount of data that as been seen.

See the annotations wiki page for a more detailed summary of the available annotations and the options that are available. Once you have annotated your class, you will need to register each new object instance with the registry in order for the metrics to get exposed. A default registry is provided that exports metrics to JMX.
Now that the instance is registered metrics should be visible in tools like VisualVM when you run your application.

Publishing Metrics

After getting into JMX, the next step is to collect the data and make it available to other systems. The servo library provides three main interfaces for collecting and publishing data:

MetricObserver: an observer is a class that accepts updates to the metric values. Implementations are provided for keeping samples in memory, exporting to files, and exporting to CloudWatch.

MetricPoller: a poller provides a way to collect metrics from a given source. Implementations are provided for querying metrics associated with a monitor registry and arbitrary metrics exposed to JMX.

MetricFilter: filters are used to restrict the set of metrics that are polled. The filter is passed in to the poll method call so that metrics that can be expensive to collect, will be ignored as soon as possible. Implementations are provided for filtering based on a regular expression and prefixes such as package names.

The example below shows how to configure the collection of metrics each minute to store them on the local file system.

By simply using a different observer, we can instead export the metrics to a monitoring system like CloudWatch.
You have to provide your AWS credentials and namespace at initialization. Servo also provides some helpers for tagging the metrics with common dimensions such as the auto scaling group and instance id. CloudWatch data can be retrieved using the standard Amazon tools and APIs.
Related Links

Servo ProjectServo DocumentationNetflix Open Source

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9Source: http://pinboard.in/

covers both form-urlencoding (RFC2396) and regular encading

API Craft — it's like Minecraft except the blocks you build with are web services. #seeyouthere

"Our acceleration layer consists of several Varnish servers, which allow us to serve a large amount of media with only a limited app stack beneath them. We have a long-tail of static media, so we run Varnish with a file-based rather than in-memory storage backend. Varnish is fast, and incredibly configurable through its inbuilt DSL. Furthermore, its command-line tools for inspecting live traffic are second to none, and are incredibly useful in tracking down odd site behaviour."

"EasyXDM gives you the ability to make cross-domain requests securely from a client to a server and even from a client to a client. The real beauty of it is that it can even open a socket-like device that you can use to communicate rather efficiently … in every browser. Even IE6.

Here’s what the creators have to say about it.

At the core easyXDM provides a transport stack capable of passing string based messages between two windows, a consumer (the main document) and a provider (a document included using an iframe). It does this by using one of several available techniques, always selecting the most efficient one for the current browser.
For all implementations the transport stack offers bi-directionality, reliability, queueing and sender-verification.

Using JavaScript only (no Flash, Silverlight, extra html files etc) easyXDM provides the following browsers with stacks with latency of less than 15ms: [IE6+, FF1+, Opera9+, Chrome2+, Safari4+]"

a flash-based visualization like the powers of 10

nice, simple tool

from The Pickled Piper http://hapdaniel.wordpress.com

Some Background

Pipes V1 was written in Perl, and Pipes V2 is written in Java. The two languages have their different ways of doing things, and those aren’t always going to be compatible.

The Original Patterns

These are the ones the Pipes documentation still points to:

http://uk3.php.net/strftime

Most of those still work. So we can use %a to obtain an abbreviated representation of the day, Mon to Sun, and %A to obtain a full representation, Monday to Sunday. The Pipes team have worked to ensure that as many of the parameters as possible still work. Unfortunately some parameters, such as %P for lower-case am/pm no longer work: Java has no equivalent format. %p can still be used to obtain an upper-case AM/PM.

The Java Patterns

Although it’s not mentioned in the documentation, standard Java patterns can also be used. Those can be found at:

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html

Java takes a different approach to Perl in the way it allows for different formats. For instance, the pattern letter of a day is E. EEE or shorter will return, for instance, Mon. EEEE or longer will return Monday. The pattern letter for the month is M. For February M returns 2, MM returns 02, MMM returns Feb and MMMM or longer returns February.

Both the original, Perl, patterns and the Java patterns are supported, but I wouldn’t try mixing bits of Perl with bits of Java.

One handed keyboard

from Lifehacker Feed Cleaner 2.0 http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=_KqfbFy42xGm7SnDp2IyXQ

Do your loved ones a favor and organize these important documents so in case something happens to you they can easily make financial decisions and act on your behalf. The Wall Street Journal explains which policies and documents to make accessible.

This is similar to our "in-case-of-emergency everything document" master kit we advocate creating and updating regularly.

The WSJ article includes additional helpful guidelines such as filling out a durable financial power-of-attorney form and healthcare power-of-attorney form so your heirs can make financial and healthcare decisions on your behalf. The article also clears up questions about things like what happens to your bank accounts when you die and they become inactive (they become the property of the state). The graphic is also a useful way to see at a glance what papers you might need to gather and update.

The 25 Documents You Need Before You Die | The Wall Street Journal

from Cool Tools http://www.kk.org/cooltools/

Chased by the Light

This project is a zen masterpiece. It is also a behavior-modifiying challenge for all digital photographers: Look instead of click.

In the 1990s veteran magazine photographer Jim Brandenbrug gave himself an impossible assignment: "For 90 days between the autumn equinox and winter solstice I would make only one photograph a day. There would be no second exposure, no second chance." A single exposure, a single click per day! He was using film, and he was photographing wildlife, including elusive animals in the north woods in upper Minnesota. Film is unforgiving. For amateur and professional alike getting even an acceptable photo in these conditions with one shot requires relying on the Force. Yet Brandenburg found, or made, one beauty after another. Most mortals would need a hundred shots to get one like these. The 90 images stand strong each on their own, but the complete symphony is one of the most impressive acts of mindfulness I’ve seen.

(The full set of images were also published in a smaller format in the November 1997 issue of National Geographic.)

Besides the book, there is now an iPad app.

-- KK

Chased by the Light
Jim Brandenburg
1998, 104 pages
$35

Available from Amazon

App $10

Sample Excerpts

I sensed there would be lessons learned. There were, but not always those I had imagined. Some were merely lessons remembered, recapturing things I had forgotten, such as remaining open to chance, and that, in nature, not all beauty is giant in scale. One such lesson occurred on October 15th, the twenty-third day. It was late and I despaired of capturing anything of value. The day was dark and gloomy; my mood reflected the weather. I wandered through the dripping forest all day long. Tired, hungry , and wet, I was near tears. I was mentally beating myself for having passed up several deer portraits and the chance to photograph a playful otter. None of those scenes spoke to me at the time.

*

But perhaps because I was patient, and perhaps because, as natives do on a vision quest, I had reached my physical limits, I became open to the possibility revealed by a single red maple leaf floating on a dark-water pond. My spirits rose the instant I saw it, and although the day was very late and what little light there had been was fleeing rapidly, I studied the scene from every angle. Finally, unsure of my choice, I made the shot anyway, thankful at least that the long day had ended. Once more I was surprised by the result. The image seems to have a lyrical quality, with a rhythm in the long grass.

from The Wirecutter http://thewirecutter.com

We spend so much time sitting in front out our computers watching videos and listening to music, it only makes sense to get some decent speakers to go along with your setup. I think the Audioengine 2s are the way to go. Here's why.

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 "We live in a world that is increasingly coded, that is, it exists as a composite of physical space and language and software, a strange hybridity that I have been trying to articulate in the New Aesthetic that others have been pointing at too, in Kevin Slavin’s algotremors, in BERG’s robot-readable world, in Timo‘s beautifully compelling compilation of machine visions … I’ve been talking about the fact that the best arrangements for our most complex spaces rely on a highly specialised cooperation between humans and intelligent agents, and the fact that the best chess is not played by computers against humans—they outstripped us long ago—but by teams of computers and humans. Twenty-two of the top thirty Wikipedia editors are bots. Knowledge and literature are coded spaces too. Stuart Geiger puts this succinctly: “a non-vitalistic ethnography: an account of a culture devoid of life. Like with Latour and agency, once we show that life is not a necessary criterion for this thing called culture, then the fun really begins.” This is why I am increasingly pro-Artificial Life. … I want to build a system for cooperating with software and chance."Source: http://pinboard.in/

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 Cold wars hotting up: "Screenwise … step toward becoming one of the biggest consumer data companies"; Google black box!Source: http://twitter.com/

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 Jason is a JSON viewer & editor for Mac OS X. It can open local documents as well as download JSON data via HTTP and, in case of invalid data, an error message is presented and the line containing the error is highlighted.Source: http://pinboard.in/

If you use Gmail you may become frustrated when you click a mailto: link by accident and now your desktop client of Outlook or Mail starts up. Thanks to navigator.registerProtocolHandler() (which we've covered here before) you can wire up Gmail as your default mail client for all mailto: links in Chrome and Firefox.

from LukeW | Digital Product Design and Strategy http://www.lukew.com/

In his Mobile Myths presentation, Josh Clark walked through a number of common mobile misperceptions. Here are my notes from his presentation.

Mobile Users are Rushed & Distracted

We started with an over-simplified almost condescending view of mobile users. But there’s lots of different modes of mobile use.

Fast, distracted use is a big part of mobile but it’s not the only use. For example 40% of people use in the bathroom.

The assumption everyone is hurried leads us to strip out important features.

Example: Alibris is differentiated by selling out-of-print & rare books but they stripped this feature out of the mobile experience. Intentionally. Because they assumed people would not make commitments to pricey books online. At the same time, eBay mobile sells thousands of cars on mobile.

25% of adult mobile users in the US rarely ever use the desktop to get online. That’s 8% of US adults that exclusively use the mobile Web. They need access to your core functionality.

Mobile is Less

Mobile is not just a companion to the desktop.

In reality we do everything we can on a mobile device like writing long emails even though it may be painful.

Don’t confuse context with intent. Being on a small screen doesn’t change intent. It’s like an author says: “this is the paperback, let’s take out a chapter.”

Pay attention to the transition between services not just within a single property. The seams between properties and products matter.

Mobile can be organized differently or adjusted. But the core content and features should be available on desktop & mobile.

In many cases, mobile is not less but more. Mobile has superpowers.

QR codes had 400% growth in the top magazines. Overwhelming they are associated with ads in these situations.

QR codes are called “robot barf” because they are opaque -it’s not clear what they will do before you can them.

Too often the results of scanning QR codes are not worth the effort. We’re training people to not expect good experiences after scanning. We need to give people good reasons to engage with these services.

Ralph Lauren used pictures of their brand in their QR codes and saw a 3x increase over plain QR codes.

Make it clear what is behind your QR codes. It can motivate people to scan.

Mobile is All About Apps

There’s a lot we can do with phones that isn’t tied to native operating system capabilities.

We are still an SMS and text culture. Text messages work well for engagement. SMS has a great response rate. Currently people look at all text messages they get. The channel has not been poisoned yet so it still works.

Apps vs. Web: the mobile web is becoming more capable but we still have an app culture. Doing something (games, repetitive functions) is associated with apps. Looking things up, more “one time” tasks are associated with Web.

You can reach a wider audience with the Web, no download required is better for one time decisions.

When something has app-like qualities, it’s better served as an app.

Apps have really rich, polished interactions. They move away from buttons and old interaction styles. Touch gestures can make things better, not just different. That’s an important distinction.

You’re Just Building a Digital Product

You are not building a digital product. You’re building a brand/service.

This is only the beginning: we’ll only have more channels as we move forward. We need to focus on the service you offer above all the channels.

Build a robust back-end service and think of apps as windows into your content.

Think of your content & features as water. Adapting to the vessels they are put into.

Seamless content across devices is becoming an expectation. Services like Netflix & Kindle are driving this expectation.

Don’t think app, think service.

Services like iCloud create a world where people want their content everywhere.

It’s not a product it’s a platform. Whether brand or technical platform.

Eveywhereness is a design nightmare. Designers don’t like infinity -it’s a hard goal to reach.

Thinking of common mindsets is a good way to break things down.

Micro-tasking, local, and bored. Micro-tasking is in & out and one of the things that drive common mis-perceptions about mobile uses.

Local scenarios can help you find stuff near you but it can also interact with your immediate surroundings. Shopper app rearranges your grocery list based on the layout of the store you are in. WordLens translates text in front of you. IntoNow identifies the TV show you are currently watching based on audio stream. These are all "local" use cases.

I’m Bored is I have attention to spend. The mainstream is now looking to software for not only entertainment but even emotional connections as well. These are sweet spots for apps: long form entertainment & task-driven workflow.

Apps are an accessory for phones now. They’re a personal expression of you.

Allow people to create representations of themselves. Whether aspiration, prior, or current reflections.

from Delicious/network/earth2marsh http://www.delicious.com/network/earth2marsh Forget the charts. Forget the rules. Talk, trust, learn, adapt. The tools are just that, tools. Use the ones that work for you. On this project. With this team. Success does not hinge on whether you use Jira, or Mingle, or Pivotal Tracker, Google Docs, or Excel, or sticky notes, or hand signals and a series of grunts.

via @rem: Drag and drop images and get a data url: http://t.co/mrxXLwge (includes trimming of transparent space) no server required :)

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 "Social networks have turned out to be of fundamental importance both for our understanding human sociality and for the design of digital communication technology. However, social networks are themselves based on dyadic relationships and we have little understanding of the dynamics of close relationships and how these change over time. Evolutionary theory suggests that, even in monogamous mating systems, the pattern of investment in close relationships should vary across the lifespan when post-weaning investment plays an important role in maximising fitness. Mobile phone data sets provide us with a unique window into the structure of relationships and the way these change across the lifespan. We here use data from a large national mobile phone dataset to demonstrate striking sex differences in the pattern in the gender-bias of preferred relationships that reflect the way the reproductive investment strategies of the two sexes change across the lifespan: these differences mainly reflect women’s shifting patterns of investment in reproduction and parental care. These results suggest that human social strategies may have more complex dynamics than we have tended to assume and a life-history perspective may be crucial for understanding them."Source: http://pinboard.in/

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 Ah, the bogus takedown. The latest is that apparently the NFL somehow and for some reason took down Chrysler's Clint Eastwood Super Bowl commercial from YouTube. Pretty much every advertiser put up their commercials on YouTube, and it's unclear why or how the NFL might claim any sort of copyright on any of those ads. But, for some time that's exactly what happened, making Chrysler's own website promoting the ad look pretty silly:Source: http://pinboard.in/

from Lifehacker Feed Cleaner 2.0 http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=_KqfbFy42xGm7SnDp2IyXQ

It might sound counterintuitive to add an expense in order to save more on travel, but you can actually access hidden discounts by booking more than just a flight, at least with British Airways. Independent Traveler writer Jamey Bergman saved $1,400 by adding a car rental to his flight.

British Airways says that when you select a package option (flight plus car or flight plus hotel), they then sell the package as a tour operator, with preferential rates passed on to you. Testing this myself for a round-trip flight from New York to London, adding a car rental shaved almost $500 off the price of the plane ticket alone.

This may or may not apply for other airlines or perhaps travel sites as well. I briefly tried a few other airlines (American Airlines, United) to see if they had similar secret package savings, but didn't see the same flight-plus-car rental search. (American Airlines, Expedia, and other travel sites do advertise savings if you combine hotel and airfare—but the savings isn't the same.) Still, it's worth a try when booking your next trip to compare the cost of a package with just the airfare alone, just in case. You might be pleasantly surprised.

A Clever Secret to Getting a Cheaper Airfare | Independent Traveler

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 Turns a web page into a Mardown doc with images and footnoted linksSource: http://pinboard.in/

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 So in this guide I’d like to put together some basic steps for building any iOS app. I’ll be focusing exclusively on iPhone & iPod Touch devices since iPad opens up a whole new chapter of research. You aren’t required to understand Objective-C or MVC programming to get started with this Xcode guide. But any dedicated iOS app developer will study at least some basic syntax guidelines.Source: http://pinboard.in/

from LukeW | Digital Product Design and Strategy http://www.lukew.com/

In her Hacking Your Users’ Brains talk at An Event Apart in Atlanta, GA 2012 Aviva Rosenstein outlined how visual perception and customer research can help manage user expectations in your software applications. Here's my notes from her talk:

Brain hack: an exploit based on how users perceive and/or understand information.

Get inside the heads of your users so you can make websites more usable. Focus on perception and comprehension: how do people see and make sense of a visual interface. Understanding visual perception can help you see through your user’s eyes.

What are people’s needs and goals and how do you meet their expectations? User research can help you understand their needs, recognize their pain, speak their language, and help them succeed.

Visual Perception

People see similar visual treatments and group them. Our brains are wired to make associations based on how similar or close to each other things are visually.

If you move an action button too far away from the element it is associated with, it takes people a while to make the connection.

Proximity & similarity also apply to text (not just visual elements). Separating text can separate messages. Different fonts indicate different elements.

Negative space & grouping can help manage where people’s eyes stop when looking at a composition or an application interface.

Different font treatments help people distinguish different elements in an interface.

Don’t use color as the only way to communicate information. Always pair it with something else. This helps people with color blindness issues.

Noticing movement is an evolutionary enhancement that helped us survive in the world. However online, animation is often used to draw our attention to distractions (ads, promotions) instead of to content.

Depth can also communicate the wrong information. Exmaple: tilted pie graphs. Our brains have a tough time with spatial relationships. First we have to create a mental model of the object, then we have to rotate it, and finally make sense of it.

We can train people where or where not to look on a Web page. Through years of colorful banner ads at the top of pages, we’ve trained people not to look in colorful headers.

Presbyopia: elderly vision. To switch between near & far vision, the lens in your eye needs to change shape. As you get older it gets harder for that lens to flex. This means older people need bigger fonts to read.

People read faster when lines are longer but most people will say they prefer shorter line lengths even though they read them slower.

We’re hard-wired to look at faces. If you put faces on your Web sites, they’ll attract attention.

We’ve conditioned people over time to associate meaning with symbols. If you aren’t consistent with your use of these symbols, you can slow people down as they won’t know what to expect from common controls.

There are cultural differences with hand symbols so tread carefully when using them in your designs.

User Expectations

It’s not a matter of asking people what they want. It’s a matter of finding out why they need something. Get to the underlying motivation.

Learn how to ask the next question and listen to answers.

It doesn’t take a lot of time to test your basic assumptions about a problem you think people have. This is worth doing so you don’t go down the wrong path.

Different types of users have different assumptions. Don’t assume you are representative of your user base.

Find out: what do users need & want? What do they do now? How do they feel about it? What can you improve?

Just two days are often enough to get answers to some of these key questions.

First define your target audience, then find them and get to know them. You need to get people to talk with you. Rewards can help motivate people to help.

Research Types

Asking questions is a good start but it’s not enough. Human recall about behavior is not great. We often forget or over report behaviors that make us look good –even in anonymous surveys.

What people say they do and what they do are two different things. Questions can gather information about opinions but not behaviors.

To learn about actual behaviors, you have to go where your customers are and observe them.

Environments can highlight what roles people play (that are relevant to your site or service), how information moves between roles, what goals they have for each task, the context they work under (space, timing, etc.), and what they need from you to reach their goals.

Pain: find out what hurts the most when people are trying to achieve goals. People get blinders on when they’ve been doing some thing the same way over and over.

Be prepared to learn. Assume your customers are the experts, not you. Blend in, shut up, and listen.

Sort through all your notes by putting each insight on a separate post-it. Put them on a wall and work together to analyze what you’ve observed.

How people expect content to be organized is important if you want people to find things on your site. You can use closed or open sorts to have customers help you organize things.

Use interviews to explore needs/feelings, elicit opinions/rationale, get concept feedback, or validate assumptions.

You can use quick tests to see if users can navigate your site, if they find it easy to accomplish goals. It’s your job to find issues. Be careful not to lead people.

"The Google Authenticator project includes implementations of one-time passcode generators for several mobile platforms, as well as a pluggable authentication module (PAM). One-time passcodes are generated using open standards developed by the Initiative for Open Authentication (OATH).

These implementations support the HMAC-Based One-time Password (HOTP) algorithm specified in RFC 4226 and the Time-based One-time Password (TOTP) algorithm currently in draft.

"

"ClockSync synchronizes device system clock with atomic time from Internet via NTP (Network Time Protocol).
Useful if provider doesn't support NITZ, sends incorrect time or if your device/ROM has heavy clock drift.
"

"Networked entities face three major challenges today. Theft of or unauthorized access to confidential data is a constant concern. The inability to share data over a network without an increased security risk limits the ability of organizations to conduct business in the most efficient way. And the lack of a viable single sign-on framework is inhibiting the growth of electronic commerce and networked operations.

The Initiative for Open Authentication (OATH) addresses these challenges with standard, open technology that is available to all. OATH is taking an all-encompassing approach, delivering solutions that allow for strong authentication of all users on all devices, across all networks.

OATH's vision is of the network of the future: a network where consumers feel secure entering personal information online, where business partners can safely collaborate and share data across domains, and where devices constitute secure threads in a tightly-woven network fabric. We envision a network held together with standard protocols. With foresight and planning, OATH's vision is turning the dream of a secure, universal network into reality."

Handy tool for establishing ping times btw servers in different countries.

oh yay

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 @jrburke FWIW, this is part of an experiment I'm doing to implement macros in wiki text that run embedded JS templatesSource: http://twitter.com/

from Lifehacker Feed Cleaner 2.0 http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=_KqfbFy42xGm7SnDp2IyXQ

Avocados are amazing things—they're delicious on their own, but they also have a lot of healthy fats, dietary fibers, and vitamins, and despite their high caloric value, they're remarkably easy to prepare. If you have an avocado that's too firm to use for something else, or you're just in the mood for something new and healthy for breakfast, slice it in half, remove the pit, and carve out a little space in the center. Crack an egg where the pit was, and bake. In a few minutes, you'll have a delicious, protein and vitamin-packed breakfast treat that's rich enough to keep you going all morning.

The recipe itself is pretty simple, and comes to us thanks to reddit user fungz0r:

preheat oven to 425, have cast iron pan in there

Slice avocado in half, take out pit

take pan out, put avocado half on, crack egg in

put whatever you want on top

place in oven and cook till your eggs [are done how you] desire

Avocados are used in all sorts of breakfast dishes, but this is a great example of using the avocado as a breakfast dish, and pretty tasty one at that.

Do you have any other quick breakfast tricks you'd like to share? Interested in giving this one a try? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Baked avocado and egg | reddit

> Here's my perspective... I view URLs and HTTP as a serialization layer for communication between software processes (RPC).

Right. REST views it differently. That's what you're missing. REST is a means for computers to communicate, but not through procedure calls. They communicate through transferring stateful representations. Hence the name.

Amazon review: "If you have even been involved in a software project (a) as a developer and did not know what the end product is going to be used for or how it will be used or (b) as an architect who spent countless hours with your stakeholders and domain experts trying to figure out how to go about architecting your application, then you should read this book. Read it again after you have read it for the first time. This book is packed with pointers, information, tips, how-tos, "down to earth" practical samples, and even conversational examples that one could have while gathering requirements. Evans in his book fills a wide gap that we all tend to come across while designing software applications."

"In Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models, Martin Fowler focuses on the end result of object-oriented analysis and design - the models themselves. He shares with you his wealth of object modeling experience and his keen eye for identifying repeating problems and transforming them into reusable models. Analysis Patterns provides a catalogue of patterns that have emerged in a wide range of domains including trading, measurement, accounting and organizational relationships. Recognizing that conceptual patterns cannot exist in isolation, the author also presents a series of "support patterns" that discuss how to turn conceptual models into software that in turn fits into an architecture for a large information system. Included in each pattern is the reasoning behind their design, rules for when they should and should not be used, and tips for implementation."

"Another way to get at this - when you discuss your application with end users (those who presumably know little about programming) what are the words they themselves use repeatedly?

Those are the words you should be designing your application around.

If you haven't yet had this conversion with prospective users - stop everything right now and don't write another line of code until you do! Only then will your team have an idea of what needs to be built.

I know nothing about financial software, but if I had to guess, I'd say some of the resources might go by names such as "Report", "Payment", "Transfer", and "Currency".

There are a number of good books on this part of the software design process. Two I can recommend are Domain Driven Design and Analysis Patterns."

Awesome post from Bob Aman on good URI design

two friends posting 1 pic every day from the east and west coast

" I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain."

"Never look back unless you are planning to go that way"

from where I got the concept of, "informing people against their will."

"API T&Cs will often be tightly linked to the terms already set for the web versions of a service where they exist since the API will likely allow access to much of the same functionality. We commonly see companies binding API users to both the service T&Cs as well as API specific terms."

from Cool Tools http://www.kk.org/cooltools/
When you get sick and tired of reapplying those adhesive felt furniture feet to all your furniture every time they come off (go ahead, look under something; a lot of them are coming off or missing aren't they?), you can get these improved ones that I found a few years ago.

The round metal rivet hammers easily into the end of the leg with a tack hammer, and the metal part doesn't break like the kind with the single skinny nail in the center. (And the adhesive kind, as you no doubt have noticed, do not stay properly attached for very long at all.) I have never had one of these fail yet.

This vendor has them for a good price; they have a $25 minimum, which means you have to order about 80. However, you can also get them at Amazon.

-- Charles Kiblinger

Safeglides Tap-In Felt Furniture Pad
$8 for pack of 16

Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Highland Woodworking

Sample Excerpts:

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 Simply brilliant:

"Kinect hacks have been used for many a grand feat, from a tool that helps the blind navigate more easily to hands-free questing in World of Warcraft and virtual cat brushing. The Mirracle system projects a CT image onto the user's reflection to give the illusion of seeing inside one's own body. So why not integrate the powers of Microsoft Kinect with a mirror to teach such subjects as basic anatomy?

Maybe they could make it into a revision game for the Xbox 360?Source: http://pinboard.in/

from Delicious/network/earth2marsh http://www.delicious.com/network/earth2marsh Work your ass off by example. A leader who is always present, ridiculously responsive and contributes real, hard work sets the right pace and tone.

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 RT @BenRegenspan: In yet another sign the Mayans were right, IE6 market share *grew* in January: (via @abraham)Source: http://twitter.com/

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9Source: http://delicious.com/

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9Source: http://pinboard.in/

"Let's say I want to design RESTful api for finding cities by zip codes. I come up with resources called 'cities' nested into zip codes, so that GET on http://api.addressbook.com/zip_codes/02125/cities returns document containing, say, two records which represent Dorchester and Boston.

My question is: how such url can be discovered through HATEOAS? It's probably impractical to expose index of all ~40K zip codes under http://api.addressbook.com/zip_codes. Even if it's not a problem to have 40K item index, remember that I've made this example up and there are collections of much greater magnitude out there.

So essentially, I would want to expose not link, but link template, rather, like this: http://api.addressbook.com/zip_codes/{:zip_code}/cities, and that goes against principles and relies on out-of-band knowledge possessed by a client.

Problem 2

Let's say I want to expose cities index with certain filtering capabilities:

GET on http://api.addressbook.com/cities?name=X would return only cities with names matching X.

GET on http://api.addressbook.com/cities?min_population=Y would only return cities with population equal or greater than Y.

Of course these two filters can be used together: http://api.addressbook.com/cities?name=X&min_population=Y.

Here I'd like to expose not only url, but also these two possible query options and the fact that they can be combined. This seems to be simply impossible without client's out-of-band knowledge of semantics of those filters and principles behind combining them into dynamic URLs.

So how principles behind HATEOAS can help making such trivial API really RESTful?"

"In the end SOAP and REST are very different approaches to solving slightly different sets of problems. REST based web services may be easier create and integrate; but some problems, such as system wide distributed transactions, can be more straightforward to implement using behavior centric models like SOAP."

from Product Management Blog http://www.alwaysbeshipping.com/

Was just reading the Facebook S-1 and found this description pretty cool.  I love the mantra "code wins arguments."

 

The Hacker Way

 

As part of building a strong company, we work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people. We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way.

 

The word “hacker” has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.

 

The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.

 

Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words “Done is better than perfect” painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.

 

Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline. Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works. There’s a hacker mantra that you’ll hear a lot around Facebook offices: “Code wins arguments.”

 

Hacker culture is also extremely open and meritocratic. Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people.

 

To encourage this approach, every few months we have a hackathon, where everyone builds prototypes for new ideas they have. At the end, the whole team gets together and looks at everything that has been built. Many of our most successful products came out of hackathons, including Timeline, chat, video, our mobile development framework and some of our most important infrastructure like the HipHop compiler.

 

To make sure all our engineers share this approach, we require all new engineers — even managers whose primary job will not be to write code — to go through a program called Bootcamp where they learn our codebase, our tools and our approach. There are a lot of folks in the industry who manage engineers and don’t want to code themselves, but the type of hands-on people we’re looking for are willing and able to go through Bootcamp.

 

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 Nice simple examples of git taggingSource: http://pinboard.in/

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 Making API responses match the request Content-Type | Twitter Developers #yaySource: http://twitter.com/

from Cool Tools http://www.kk.org/cooltools/
These Monoflo storage containers, most commonly seen in the back of grocery store delivery trucks, are the best solution I've found for moving, shipping, and storing stuff. Every other system I've used previously had a fatal flaw. In particular, the Rubbermaid and Sterilite totes I've tried all cracked, failed to stack well, and had lids (when I could find them) that never seemed to fit properly (especially if you came close to loading them to full capacity).

Manufactured here in the USA by Monoflo, a company that specializes in industrial storage and delivery solutions, these totes are really well made and far superior. Originally designed for light industry, they work just as well in domestic settings.

I own ten of the 16-gallon nestable totes. Five went to a project that required the distribution of kits filled with educational materials to local schools, and the other five I use at home for storage. While they aren't exactly a sight for sore eyes (I keep them tucked away when at home), everything else about them sings with utility.

They stack efficiently and safely (I've stacked all ten with weight inside and they barely budge when shoved). When empty, the two halves of the attached lid fall to the side allowing the containers to nest perfectly. They have reinforced holes moulded into the handles for zip ties that secure the lids shut when needed. Unlike others I've tried these crates don't buckle or crack when moving (I've filled one with as much water as I and a friend could lift, and it held fast). And despite being made of a hard plastic they are fairly comfortable to carry.

Speaking of which, they're made out of a high-density polyethylene resin (reminiscent of milk crates) that is far sturdier than alternatives like Rubbermaid. A testament to their durability came when I shipped them across country via FedEx (the heaviest weighing 80-lbs) and everyone arrived without failure; no cracks, chips, or broken hinges, despite what was clearly rough handling over a 3,000 mile journey.
Not everybody will love the criss-cross "multi-fingered" lids, but I find that they work well, stay closed when moving, and create a uniform flat surface for stacking. The biggest problem emerges when trying to access anything when the crates are stacked.

Overall, I have found the 16-gallon size to be perfect for my needs. Anymore, and they'd be so big I wouldn't be able to move them myself when fully loaded. And while they aren't the cheapest storage solution around at $15 a piece, I know they will last far longer than all the others I've tried. Highly recommended.

-- Oliver Hulland

Monoflo Nestable Tote
16-gallons
12.5"H x 16.6"W x 27.2"L
$20

Available from Ace Hardware

[Note: I believe they are eligible for a volume-discount and free ship-to-store at Ace Hardware. And check out this PDF for more information and sizing. --OH]

Manufactured by Monoflo

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 "My mother sat up suddenly, looked around, delighted, and asked, “What happened here?”" via Paul (Twitter)Source:

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 PriSpy is a universal price tracking tool. If you are on a shopping tour finding some products that are quite interessting but not in your budget plan - press the PriSpy button! We will check the price daily for you. If the price drops we will inform you immediately.Source: http://pinboard.in/

from Lifehacker Feed Cleaner 2.0 http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=_KqfbFy42xGm7SnDp2IyXQ

Networking is a key skill to have, especially when you're looking for a new job. Not all of us are great at it, though, and some may think of networking as simply schmoozing with people. LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman describes how to invest in your relationships now as a way to build a truly helpful professional network.

With co-writer Ben Casnocha, Hoffman writes in The Start-Up of You (excerpted on Fortune) that the best thing to do is to maintain an active, up-to-date network, and that most professionals have five to ten active alliances—people you can consult with, collaborate on opportunities with, promote, and defend. Invest in that network and think of it as an "interesting people" fund.

His suggestions for nurturing your network:

In the next day: Look at your calendar for the past six months and identify the five people you spend the most time with — are you happy with their influence on you?

In the next week: Introduce two people who do not know each other but ought to. Then think about a challenge you face and ask for an introduction to a connection in your network who could help. Imagine you got laid off from your job today. Who are the 10 people you'd e-mail for advice? Don't wait — invest in those relationships now.

In the next month: Identify a weaker tie with whom you'd like to build an alliance. Help him by giving him a small gift — forward an article or job posting.

Create an "interesting people fund" to which you automatically funnel a certain percentage of your paycheck. Use it to pay for coffees and the occasional plane ticket to meet new people and shore up existing relationships.

Consider it an investment in your career.

For much more networking advice, hit the link for the full excerpt of the book. Photo by Suncor Energy

The real way to build a social network | CNN Money

"way, was constantly running up against browser bugs. WebKit wouldn't show an empty line at the end of the document, and in some releases would suddenly get unbearably slow. Firefox would show the cursor in the wrong place. Internet Explorer would insist on linkifying everything that looked like a URL or email address, a behaviour that can't be turned off. Some bugs I managed to work around (which was often a frustrating, painful process), others, such as the Firefox cursor placement, I gave up on, and had to tell user after user that they were known problems, but not something I could help.

Also, there is the fact that designMode (which seemed to b"

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 @ndw Both (kinda).Source: http://twitter.com/

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 You have to watch this. All your preconceptions are wrong.Source: http://pinboard.in/

from Cool Tools http://www.kk.org/cooltools/
Ever wish you could whip up a pot of chicken and dumplings, go on your bike ride or canoe paddle or even just hike, and have it piping hot and ready for you when you get back to the car? Ok, more likely it rained or snowed on your ride/paddle/hike and you're shivering and wish you had any hot food back at the car. This is experience speaking.

Nissan, the makers of vacuum mugs to keep your coffee warmer longer, also makes a 4-quart powerless crockpot. No plugs. No heater. It's wonderful.

Here's how it works: pull the inner pot out of the device and put it on the range at home (or the stove at camp). Insert ingredients. Heat 'em up to a boil. Put the inner-lid on, then insert the inner pot into the outer pot. Seal the outer-lid. Put the whole device in your car (or your boat, or your dogsled). Have some fun for 3-6 hours. Open the pots and dish out the steaming food.

Incredibly, the first time this device was debuted in the U.S., it was marketed towards tailgaters and, well, flopped. But I had heard about it, and even though it was unavailable on this continent, managed to have a pot shipped over from Taiwan.

Avid outdoorswoman that I am, I had other uses for this kitchen gadget then side dishes for the football stadium parking lot. One morning, I shucked into my wetsuit and paddled into Emerald Bay in Lake Tahoe and back, fighting the chill May wind both ways. After landing the boat, I hopped on my mountain bike and rode the famous Flume trail from the highway up to the snow line. I saw thunderclouds across the mountains and booked down to the car, 2,000 feet below, almost making it before the rain began. I was shivery; just short of hypothermic. I was also happy that before I'd launched the bike, I had the foresight to boil elbow mac, burger, and canned tomatos in the Nissan Thermal Cooker. Hot food = life.

The crock pot has recently come back on the market, and is again being hyped as a tailgater essential. Bah. Tailgaters and church-potluckers aren't going to shell out $149 for a crockpot. People who do endurance races in the northern climates: now there's your target audience. And don't forget that this crockpot is more electricity-efficient than the normal kitchen plug-in models; it takes none once it's hot so it makes a great kitchen addition for the average treehugger.

-- Rita Nygren

Thermos Thermal Cooker
$180

Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Thermos

Sample Excerpts:

Simple recipes:
1 lb hamburger, browned
2 cans diced tomato
1 lb of elbow mac
Combine ingredients, bring to boil, seal, wait 3 hours. Serves 2-4 people.

Rice-a-roni (any flavor)
Butter
Canned chicken
Fresh veggies, diced
Prepare rice as directed on box. When you get to the cover and simmer stage, dump in the chicken and veggies, then seal in pot. Cook a little longer then directions call for. Servers 2.

2 cans chicken broth
1 can chicken
2 cups wild rice blend
2 cups Simply Veggies (freeze dried vegetables)
Bay leaf
Salt & pepper
Combine ingredients and boil, leave over heat for 5-10 minutes. Seal in pot. Wait 2-4 hours. Serves 4-8 people.

"All Streets consists of 240 million individual road segments. No other features — no outlines, cities, or types of terrain — are marked, yet canyons and mountains emerge as the roads course around them, and sparser webs of road mark less populated areas. "

from Delicious/network/earth2marsh http://www.delicious.com/network/earth2marsh 1. PhoneGap 2. Titanium 3. Sencha Touch 4. M-Project 5. jQTouch 6. jQuery Mobile 7. NimbleKit 8. Wink 9. Jo

from Delicious/network/earth2marsh http://www.delicious.com/network/earth2marsh The Two Things about Software Engineering: 1) Nothing about the code (size, speed, elegance, conformance to standards, etc.) is important if it doesn't actually work. 2) Whatever you don't have automated tests for probably doesn't work (and if it happens to work now, it will inevitably stop working at some point in the future without your noticing).

from Delicious/network/earth2marsh http://www.delicious.com/network/earth2marsh Tenzing is a query engine built on top of MapReduce for ad hoc analysis of Google data. Tenzing supports a mostly complete SQL implementation (with several extensions) combined with several key characteristics such as heterogeneity, high performance, scalability, reliability, metadata awareness, low latency, support for columnar storage and structured data, and easy extensibility. Tenzing is currently used internally at Google by 1000+ employees and serves 10000+ queries per day over 1.5 petabytes of compressed data. In this paper, we describe the architecture and implementation of Tenzing, and present benchmarks of typical analytical queries.

from Delicious/network/earth2marsh http://www.delicious.com/network/earth2marsh In January 2012, we sit again on the cusp of three grand technological transformations with the potential to rival that of the past century. All find their epicenters in America: big data, smart manufacturing and the wireless revolution.

from Lifehacker Feed Cleaner 2.0 http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=_KqfbFy42xGm7SnDp2IyXQ

Those greasy, food-splattered stove burners are gruesome and a real chore to try to scrub clean. With an overnight soak of cheap ammonia, however, that thick coating of crud comes off like nothing, writes Vivienne at the V Spot blog.

The instructions are clear and simple:

Take about 1/4 cup of ammonia and seal it up with one of the burners in a large ziploc bag. You only need a little ammonia in the bag. You are not trying to soak the burner… you just want to seal it up with the ammonia fumes.

The overnight soak is enough to make cleanup as easy as wiping off the surface with a sponge.

As some commenters have noted in the article thread, you can also use a large garbage bag to deep clean a bunch of items, and also recycle the ammonia. Deep cleaning of one of the grimiest things in the house—on the cheap and without the elbow grease is a win in my book.

For more details, pics, and precautions (e.g., don't do this on aluminum surfaces because of pitting, and don't ever combine ammonia with bleach), hit up the full post below.

Cleaning Stove Burners & Grates Using Ammonia | The V Spot

"Design flows that are tied to clear objectives allow us to create a positive user experience and a valuable one for the business we’re working for. In this article, we’ll show you how spending more time up front designing user flows leads to better results for both the user and business. Then we’ll look in depth at a common flow for e-commerce websites (the customer acquisition funnel), as well as provide tips on optimizing it to create a complete customer experience."

"But here’s the cool part: If you study, wait, and then study again, the longer the wait, the more you’ll have learned after this second study session. Bjork explains it this way: “When we access things from our memory, we do more than reveal it’s there. It’s not like a playback. What we retrieve becomes more retrievable in the future. Provided the retrieval succeeds, the more difficult and involved the retrieval, the more beneficial it is.”"

"Forget about forgetting, said Bjork. People tend to think that learning is building up something in your memory and that forgetting is losing the things you built. But in some respects the opposite is true."

""We used HTML5's Application Cache to make the site available offline. Users can look up full information about conferences they're attending even if they have no data connection. As a conference goer, offline access is very important, I can almost hear champagne corks popping in mobile network offices whenever I'm forced to use data abroad.
The offline specification wasn't really designed with data-driven sites in mind, which is why we're one of the first to launch with offline support. We're looking forward to talking about the crazy hacks we had to throw at the specification to make it behave.

All our imagery is double-resolution, so everything looks sharp on high-density devices, the lack of which gives mobile web apps that 'inferior' look. We also share mustache templates between the server & device, and use XHR + the HTML5 history API to update pages. This keeps the user experience snappy as the browser doesn't have to re-parse the JavaScript per page."

from Delicious/network/earth2marsh http://www.delicious.com/network/earth2marsh 1. The Monastery 2. The Dorm Room 3. The Apartment 4. The Condo 5. The Stately Manor

RT @bhorowitz: Why we started Andreessen Horowitz

from Marginal Revolution http://marginalrevolution.com

The age structure of achievement is being ratcheted upward, due to specialization and the growth of knowledge.  Mathematicians used to prove theorems at age 20, now it happens at age 30, because there is so much to learn along the way.  If you are a smart 22-year-old, just out of Harvard, you probably cannot walk into a widget factory and quickly design a better machine.  (Note that in “immature” economic sectors, such as social networks circa 2006, young people can and do make immediate significant contributions and indeed they dominated the sector.)  Yet you and your parents expect you to earn a high income — now — and to affiliate with other smart, highly educated people, maybe even marry one of them.  It won’t work to move to Dayton and spend four years studying widget machines.

You will seek out jobs which reward a high “G factor,” or high general intelligence.  That means finance, law, and consulting.  You are productive fairly quickly, you make good contacts with other smart people, and you can demonstrate that you are smart, for future employment prospects.

The rest of the world is increasingly specialized, so the returns to your general intelligence, as a complementary factor, are growing too, in spite of your lack of widget knowledge.  “Hey you, think about what you are doing!  Are you sure?  How about this?” often sounds bogus to outsiders but every now and then it pays off and generates a high expected marginal product.

Both supply and demand sustain this Smithian equilibrium.

There are other factors of relevance, as explained over a very good session last night; the people there comprised about half of my Twitter feed.

from Cool Tools http://www.kk.org/cooltools/
The PeaPod is a travel bed for kids. My kids have outgrown it now, but this was the best thing when they were little and we were on the road a lot.

It replaces the traditional travel crib (sometimes called a pack-and-play). We had one of those, and it was huge and heavy. When my daughter was young, I think we flew 14 times her first year of life. The first few times we checked the old travel crib. It was heavy, bulky, and difficult to deal with when we had her as well. Impossible if it was one of us traveling with her.

The PeaPod folds up and is no bigger/heavier than a large diaper bag. It will pack right in with a car seat when traveling by air. When traveling on the road or even just across town, it packs and unpacks easily. It afforded us a much more convenient and easy way to travel with kids. It's usable by one person with no hassle, and the footprint is less than a traditional travel crib. We've even taken it camping and set it up inside our tent.

The whole thing is self-contained like those hoop style sun shades. There's an elastic strap that goes across the diameter of the hoop. When you take the strap off, it pops right open like a self-opening tent because it actually is a self-opening mini tent. It's just as easy to break down. Two-to-three minutes max to put it up and break it down. You can check out this video to see what's involved.

It also comes with a sleeping bag that fits perfectly. Depending on the model, it may come with an inflatable mattress. The lower end ones don't have a mattress (the P201 does). The middle tier come with an inflatable mattress and a manual pump (which is what I use). The higher end units come with a self-inflatable mattress like a Therm-a-rest.

I'm not kidding when I say that it changed the way we travel. I'll even go so far as to say that we made several international trips with small children that made their sleeping arrangements an afterthought rather than a major concern simply because we had a peapod.

I know baby gear isn't a typical cool tool kind of post, but it is pretty cool. Overall, it's just a better solution to the issue of having a safe place for your child to sleep when you're away from home.

-- Chuck Balog

Kidco PeaPod Plus P201
$75

Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Kidco

from Pinboard Network RSS Improver http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b22b9c9acee5906aab7e8a7645a247a9 There are those faithful who will never surrender their little white Apple earbuds. To them we say: Wear proudly. But for the rest, for those who don’t want to deal with sub-par sound, earbuds flopping around and having to hunt for foam covers, come with us — and we’ll show you a world of possibilities. Of the five sets in our shootout, four are canalphones that fit in the ear canal — which right off the bat means they’ll do a significantly better job of staying in your ears than ordinary earbuds (like Apple’s); they’ll also seal out some of the ambient noise around you. The fifth set, the Urbanears Medis, is technically an earbud but employs a unique method of staying put. All beat the Apple buds for sound.Source: http://pinboard.in/