Karmona Pragmatic Blog

Yahoo have released the Y!OS (Yahoo Open Strategy) 1.0 platform.

This is a cool set of simple APIs that can give you access to everything you ever wanted in Y! but was afraid to ask for…

Yahoo! Social Platform (YSP)
// The Yahoo Social Platform is a set of RESTful APIs for Profiles, Connections, Updates, Contacts and Status.

Yahoo! Query Language (YQL)
// The Yahoo Query Language is a web service that functions much like SQL (see example below)

OAuth Authentication
// OAuth is the authentication and authorization standard Yahoo has decided to use when giving third parties access to Yahoo user data.

Yahoo! Applications Platform (YAP)
// Currently very limited and in a restricted sandbox.

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Example: How to use YQL APIs to access MyBlogLog profiles?

Simply ask for all the community members of MyBlogLog community with this YQL:

select * from mybloglog.members.find where community_id in (select id from mybloglog.community.find where name=”Karmona Pragmatic Blog”)

And once you have the IDs you can ask for my personal profile by:

select * from mybloglog.member where member_id =”2008070609482910″

Well… together with the existing BOSS API, this set of APIs is a powerful enablers to the Y! development network and I am sure some cool stuff are going to emerge from this innovative move…

Amazing!!!

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* You can have more YQL experiments using the YQL Console

** Boss Hack Day is coming to Tel-Aviv | November 6, 2008 @ Feature (!!!)

“All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Jerry Madden retired from NASA in 1995 as Associate Director of Flight Projects at Goddard Space Flight Center.
During his distinguished 37-year career, he have collected more than 100 observations about project management

IMHO, these are the best three:

(#14) Never ask management to make a decision that you can make. Assume you have the authority to make decisions unless you know there is a document that states unequivocally that you cannot.

// I have deleted the last part since I really think that people should strive to make decisions even if there is a document that states that you can’t…

(#16) Never make excuses; instead, present plans of actions to be taken

// IMHO, NO Results with a GOOD excuse will never even resemble Results

(#59) Running does not take the place of thinking. For yourself, you must take time to smell the roses. For your work, you must take time to understand the consequences of your actions.

//You better THINK!

I am very “proud” to introduce the ultimate geek widget: Base 64 Encode / Decode Online Widget

Q. Where can I see this dark magic?

A. Here… :)

Q. How can I add this cool Base64 widget to my blog?

A. Simply copy-paste this little script:
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<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://blog.karmona.com/base64widget.js” ></script>

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Q. Does this blog widget support ALL blog platforms?

A. Sure… (including dasBlog :)

Please contact me if you have any issues / questions / suggestions,

Have fun!

When “The Moscow Cats Theater” came to New York, the Russian clown Yuri Kuklachev was interviewed:  “the secret of training them is realizing that you can’t force cats to do anything [...] If the cat likes to sit you can’t force her to do anything else [...] Each cat likes to do her own trick [...] Maruska is the only one who does the handstand. I find the cat and see what they like to do and use that in the show [...] I have a cat now that loves to be in the water…”

– REUTERS, 2006

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Personally, I think that managing engineers is much more complicated than herding cats (although I didn’t have the twisted pleasure to herd a cat yet)

When you go out of your way to hire the best people around than soon enough you will find yourself herding a superior, class A, hyper-developed mutant Ligers* who are much more knowledgeable than the herder (a.k.a. you)

In this environment you have to learn to simply trust your people (although this is not simple at all :), mark the vision, let them loose and only help to get rid of the stones in their way (this concept was best described as the Open Kimono** policy in Peopleware)

Well…. Managing the Delver Engineers is like Herding Legendary Ligers and you need to make a superior effort to see what these ligers “likes to do” and run fast enough to set the Vision and move the rocks out of the way.

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* The Liger, is a (huge) hybrid cross between a male lion and a female tiger

** Open Kimono Attitude: You take no steps to defend yourself from the people you have put in positions of trust.

By the way, The best answer I found on the origin of the term “Herding Cats” was in Google Answers

According to the Chinese Zodiac, the Year of 2008 is a Year of the Rat (Earth), which begins on February 7, 2008 and ends on January 25, 2009. First in the cycle of 12 Animal signs, Rat Year begins the sequence and recurs every twelfth year.

So… what did we have until now?

• Beijing Olympic Games a.k.a. 51 Chinese Gold Medalists

• Chinese in Space a.k.a The taikonauts, Zhai Zhigang emerged from the hatch of the Shenzhou-7 spacecraft for a 13-minute space-walk

• Yesterday we had the Skype privacy thingy a.k.a. Skype admitted that TOM-Skype, the Chinese version of the Skype service, had been scanning users’ text messages for sensitive keywords like. Falun Gong, Taiwan independence, Karmona Pragmatic Blog etc.

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Two insignificant Ratatouille facts:

• Sir Ian Holm, the voice of Skinner (3′ 6″ tall head, Napoleon looking chef at Gusteau’s), is two feet taller than Skinner and has played Napoleon Bonaparte three times in his illustrious career.

• Skinner’s name is a nod to behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, famous for his experiments with rats.

5 intriguing facts on SSD

The 1st  modern SSD was developed by StorageTek in 1978 (which was acquired 27 years later by Sun for US$4.1 billion)

Google plan to use Intel’s SSD in Production Search Systems in Q2 2008 – The company’s adoption of solid state drives will save energy, speed search, and potentially lead to a shortage of 16-GB and 32-GB NAND flash chips…

Prices for SSD drives are expected to halve every ~9 months (!!!)

In the future everything will be on SSD ;)

We have bought a simple OCZ 128GB – SATA II 2.5 SSD for benchmarking and we are not too happy with it yet.

…

With the recent Russian spam attack on my business inbox, I have found out three interesting facts:

First, I really “prefer” my spam in English / Hebrew.
Second, Mr. Gates didn’t keep his promise* (what???) to a world without spam…
Third, Spam isn’t personal, everybody have it and Symantec have some nice monthly statistics** about it so we could all feel normal back again.

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Spam highlights from last two reports (8-9/2008)

- More than 80% of our emails are spam!

- Top spam “stories”

• Breaking News…McCain Chooses Paris Hilton as Running Mate
• Download IE7 … the Latest Version (I know someone who tried it :)
• Malware + Spam + Phishing = The Trifecta of Threats to Financial Institutions (I got a lot of these…)
• Olympic-Themed Spam Continued in August 2008
• Spammers’ Bullseye: Obama, McCain and the Olympic Games
• World War III Spam Hoax (I must admit, this one is really innovative :)
• Phishing Email Targets Microsoft POP3 User Data
• Bilingual Spam Messages Emerge

- Spam categories

• Internet 27% (was 18% in June)
• Products 20%
• Financial 17%
• Health 17%
• Scams 7%
• Leisure 4%
• Fraud 4%
• Adult 4%

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* “Two years from now, spam will be solved” (Bill Gates, DAVOS – Switzerland; Jan. 2004)
** Each month Symantec publishes its State-of-the-Spam-Report highlighting major spam events or trends observed during the previous month.