überthings, inc.

Day 1 - Friday: Chaos at the airport. Power failures and jetlag.

Day 2 - Saturday: More power failures, this time in Sandton City (one of the biggest mall complexes in Joburg). Wandering through the shops feels like the dimly lit opening scenes from a post-apocalyptic epic where only the large chains have managed to [...]

[Read more →]

Google’s new App Engine looks like an all-in-one version of Amazon’s cloud computing stack with a few differences. Here’s how things stack up:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) vs Google’s App Engine

EC2 virtual server, use any language.
Dynamic webserving, using Python

S3 persistent storage
Google File System (GFS) - data storage

SimpleDB - database
BigTable - database with queries, sorting, [...]

[Read more →]

I’m helping to organize a Barcamp-style iPhone Development hackathon at Brooklyn Polytechnic later this month. Our official blurb describes the event as follows:
iPhoneDevCampNYC will bring together iPhone developers, explorers, professionals, and owners, to share the current state and their visions for the future direction of development on the iPhone. Topics may include - but [...]

[Read more →]

Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody on the Colbert Report. Clay has a fantastic way of taking complex concepts and transmogrifying them into simple ideas which make them much easier to grasp. He’s also one of the most animated professors I’ve ever had. Highly recommended.

addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fuberthings.com%2F2008%2F04%2F04%2Fshirky-on-the-colbert-report%2F’;
addthis_title [...]

[Read more →]

Silicon Alley Insider has a story with a we’re-really-not-trying-that-hard-but-sensationalism-just-comes-naturally-to-us headline boldly proclaiming that they can teach you How To Hack Facebook In 51 Seconds. Take a look a the video below and see what you think.

Wrong! Yeah, that’s what I thought too. That’s not Facebook. That’s a Facebook app. A custom application, written by [...]

[Read more →]