7 posts tagged “six apart”

...a third of our code is written by dogs.

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I rarely can remember what I dream about. I know I have some pretty awesome dreams, but they usually *poof* away when I wake up. So, it's weird that I can remember the dream I was having this morning.

I'd bought a plant for Randy, Nick, and Ben as a congratulations for doing a release. I don't know what release, but just a release. I brought it over to Randy to show him and I was like, "Yeah... I guess it was kind of dumb to get one plant for all three of you, because now I don't know where we should put it." Oh, and Randy didn't sit next to me like in real life. He sat where Whitaker sits. Anyway, Randy goes, "How about over there?" and FLINGS THE PLANT ACROSS THE ROOM, breaking the pot and scattering plant everywhere. What a dick!!

I got all upset and stomped off. I yelled across the room at him, "YOU'RE A FUCKING ASSHOLE, AND I HOPE YOU CHOKE," which made me immediately feel a little bad when I saw the disturbed look on Tatsuhiko's face. Randy, grinning maniacally, took off his shoe and threw it at me, but I blocked it.

I think at this point, I was going to toss his shoe out the window in to the street, but I woke up.

Anyway... someone should have a talk with that guy. He's really out of control.

Startups can sometimes be a royal pain in the ass. Sometimes you have to miss out on a vacation or a night out. You don't have a start and end time to work. You're always at work. You check email constantly. You put out little fires All. The. Time. Most of the time, the personalities at a startup are strong ones, so you fight. You fight like siblings who've been sharing a room a little too long. You're never the smartest one. Someone can always kick you down a peg. You don't roll in money, even when all your friends are. Instead, you lovingly stroke a little pile of stock options, hoping that they'll one day be worth more than the paper they're printed on. There's no Christmas bonus. There's no 20 paid holidays per year. What there is is a lot of work to do and not a lot of time in which to do it.

I love every minute, though. I love working with insanely smart people who are passionate about what they do. I love working on products that I'm proud of, and that people GET. I love that every day is a learning experience, and that my drive to become better never stagnates. I love that my ideas are listened to and considered, regardless of my job title or how inappropriate it would be at some larger companies for me to contribute them. These are the rewards of the startup, and to me they're worth more than money or public stock or job security.

Today, though... I'm loving on THIS startup. Don't get me wrong, I'm usually loving on this startup, but today it moves me. I love that I work on a product that would move someone to write this, and that I work for a company that would reward such an action with this (those last two links are very much worth clicking on). I know I'll get half a dozen private messages or IMs from people telling me what a fucking cornball I am, but I don't really care. I'm very proud and happy to work here and be part of what Six Apart does, both in terms of innovation and technical achievement, and personal connections and relationships.

Throughout my career, connecting with customers has always been my first priority. It might be because of my tech support background, or all those long nights at AAA I spent sending tow trucks out to pull peoples' cars out of the washes in rural parts of Arizona. One way or another, it was pushed in to my brain early on that you are nothing without your customers, and you'd better not ever forget it. I never do. I form relationships with them. I make time for them. I appreciate them. Six Apart does all of those things too and that's why I'm here. I like you guys, and I want you to like us.

That said, you tell anyone I wrote such sappy shit and I will cut you.

A while ago, Byrne asked me if I would write a testimonial for his awesome test case management software, Test Run. It took me a while, but I was happy to oblige with the following. I think it's pretty good.

“Test Run is one of the simplest and most efficient test case/test plan management tools I’ve ever used. Tagging test cases, as opposed to sorting them in a hierarchy offers much more flexibility without sacrificing organizational integrity. Test Run has everything I need, without a lot of superfluous features that would make it hard to learn. My team can focus on writing quick and comprehensive test suites without tripping on procedures and functional complexities. I love Test Run, and I’m planning on burning a copy to a CD so I will have a physical representation of it with which to express myself physically.”

I do quite appreciate Test Run.

This is pretty incredible. It's a standard that we've developed to allow other content sites to plug in to Vox. Do you have some new photo site that specializes in cute kitty photos? Well, all you have to do is write an extremely simple API (probably built on stuff you've already got if you have any kind of search on your site), implementing it according to these established an open standards, and you've got something that can plug right in to Vox. Essentially, at that point we'd add the "cutekitties.com" conduit to Vox and that would be one more source you could pull in content from.

I'd love to see Rhapsody get on the stick immediately. Most people don't realize that about 8 months ago, Rhapsody implemented a really simple no muss no fuss web player that will allow you to listen to up to 25 full tracks a month, for free, without even having to register or anything. You simply click on a link to listen to something, and the player pops up (if it's the first time it will have to install a Firefox extension or IE control). It'll ask you to login, but you can just click the link that says "I don't want an account". After that, the music just starts playing. Actually, here, try it out: Listen to "Rudie Can't Fail" by the Clash. Now, granted, their interface needs a little work, but still... That's a really easy way to listen to music for free. Now wouldn't it be awesome if they implemented the Open Media Profile for Open Search standard so that Vox users could pull in links to songs from their site? You could be writing about a band you like and easily make some songs of theirs available to your readers for free and without you having to upload an mp3 or link people off to somewhere else. Powerful.

What I'm interested in seeing is how we (Vox) handle developers going forward. Are we going to create some way that developers can automatically add conduits to Vox without having to go through some human process? That seems hella cool, but also dangerous. It wouldn't take much for the porn sites to overload the poor photos tab with their sites. I don't see a way that these conduits could be added without some sort of review/approval process from within Six Apart. So then the question becomes what is the criteria to become a Vox conduit. We've given you a spec and you've developed an API to that spec, but if we think your content is dumb do we turn you away? I don't know what the rules are. I guess I should ask these questions somewhere other than my blog. Der.