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  $40 million per year to keep Wikipedia running

Wikipedia is an incredibly frugal and efficient nonprofit organization. It serves half a billion visits per month. But do you know how much it costs to keep this huge website running? According to 2012-13 Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan, the expected spending is around $40 million. Some may argue that Wikipedia is just a site with "just text", why does it cost so much? Oliver Emberton shared his view. To keep Wikipedia running and serve 500 million visits per month. First, you're going to need ...

   Wikipedia,Spending,Cost     2013-09-24 23:05:10

  RAM is the new disk...

Jim Gray, a man who has contributed greatly to technology over the past 40 years, is credited with saying that memory is the new disk and disk is the new tape. With the proliferation of "real-time" web applications and systems that require massive scalability, how are hardware and software relating to this meme? Tim Bray, in his discussions about grid computing before it became such a hot topic, pointed out how advances in hardware around RAM and networking were allowing for the creation...

   RAM,Flash,Memory,,Future,Disk     2011-08-12 07:34:27

  Create successful Python projects

The ecosystem for open source Python projects is both rich and diverse. This enables you to stand on the shoulders of giants in the production of your next open source project. In addition, it means that there's a set of community norms and best practices. By adhering to these conventions and applying the practices in your project, you may gain wider adoption for your software. This article covers practi...

   Python,Project,Open Source,Team Management     2012-02-03 08:09:27

  Games don’t need to be social

Social games have been a big trend in recent years. Zynga struck it big and now everyone else is trying to emulate them. Unfortunately, the first thing that pops into anyones head when a Zynga game is mentioned is Facebook. Facebook is the platform upon which their success stories like FarmVille were built, but it’s not the reason for their success.Zyngas games work because they are fun. The social connectivity is merely a mechanism to share your enjoyment of the game with other...

   Game,Social,No need,Game design     2011-10-29 07:15:34

  The Disruptor In The Valley

Justin Kan and Emmett Shear watched their first startup, an online calendar called Kiko, implode when Google decided to do the same thing in 2006. They sold Kiko's scraps on eBay for $258,000 and wondered what to do with their lives. So the pair did the only thing they could think of: They went to see Paul Graham at his house in Cambridge, Mass., near Harvard Square. Graham sat them down and helped bang out a plan to create Justin.tv, now the Web's biggest portal for live video, with 31 million ...

   Paul Graham,Creative,Programmer,Investme     2011-08-28 04:13:43

  Is Facebook becoming Tencent like?

Recently there is news that Facebook is developing a Reader application which is to compete with Flipboard and Pulse. This reminds me a few movements of Facebook in the past few months. First they built a copy of Snapchat named Poke which failed badly at last. Then they launched a new feature on Instagram named Video on Instagram which allows users to shoot and share short videos up to 15 seconds. This feature is to compete with Vine from Twitter. It seems Instagram wins over Vine on this. You c...

   Facebook,Tencent,Copy     2013-06-24 01:17:27

  Why PHP is (so much) better than Ruby?

I attended this weekend my first Ruby conference, Ruby Lugdunum in Lyon. Besides cool talks and the fun of meeting people like Nick, Blake, or Laetitia, my friend Camille & I did a surprise lightning talk about how PHP is better than Ruby. Here are the slides and a more detailed transcript: A lot of free hosts: it’s easy to find a PHP host, you just have to google “free php host” and you find a ton of free PHP/MySQL hostsBigger community: The PHP community is really huge,...

   PHP,Ruby,Comparism,Difference,Advantage     2011-06-29 08:34:12

  Why are ugly websites so successful?

“Techmeme has redesigned,” Gabe Rivera founder of the popular technology news site wrote in January 2012. “Drudge Report is now indisputably the web’s ugliest news site.” I use Techmeme all the time. I find it an excellent news website. It’s a collection of well-selected links to important issues in the technology industry. It doesn’t look pretty but it works fine for me. Asides from the quality of its stories it also has black text on white bac...

   Website design,Ugly,Success,Analysis     2012-02-13 05:27:56

  The world's first HTML5 SIP client

This is the world's first open source HTML5 SIP client (May 12, 2012) entirely written in javascript for integration in social networks (FaceBook, Twitter, Google+), online games, e-commerce sites... No extension, plugin or gateway is needed. The media stack rely on WebRTC. The client can be used to connect to any SIP or IMS network from your preferred browser to make and receive audio/video calls and instant messages. The protocol parsers (SIP, SDP...) are highly optimized using Ragel loo...

   HTML5,SIP,CLient,Google     2012-05-21 06:18:34

  Are You a Zen Coder or Distraction-Junkie?

What you do when compiling can ruin your life. And not just when compiling, but when waiting for any short computer operation to finish. That time is ridiculously tiny compared to the rest of your workday, yet it can have a huge impact on your productivity and well-being overall. Yes, that’s a big fat claim. And by the way, this article is not just about coders or programmers. It’s about any smart people working with computers. And there will be pictures! Let’s rock and ro...

   Programming.Net,ASP.NET,Platform     2012-02-23 07:14:11

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