DPL Reading List – April 15, 2016
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week.
Google’s Parent Company Turns Up The Heat On Its Moonshots: Make Money Or Else (Thanks to Nate Lowry for recommending this article) – “Amid a cooling funding environment in Silicon Valley, even Google is entering a new age of “fiscal discipline,” putting pressure on some of its more enterprising projects. The latest sign of belt-tightening at the $511 billion company is illustrated in a new report from The Information, published this week, which reveals a number of complications at Nest, the smart-home company Google purchased in 2014 for $3.2 billion.”
The Future Is Without Apps (Thanks to Brian Zimmer for recommending this article) – “With Google streaming apps to your phone and Apple nudging developers to store parts of their apps in the cloud, we may have just entered the beginning of a future where installation becomes obsolete and the border between “website” and “native app” is blurred. This is a future without apps. And it’s wonderful.”
How To Work With SVG Icons (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “There are many ways to use SVG icons in HTML and CSS, and I haven’t tried them all. This is how we do it in our small front-end team at Kaliop.”
D’Oh My Zsh (Thanks to Cassey Lottman for recommending this article) – “This wouldn’t be my first foray into open source software; nor my last. It was the summer of 2009. I found myself helping a coworker debug something in their terminal. As I attempted to type in a few command lines, I noticed that the prompt wasn’t responding to the shortcuts that my brain had grown accustomed to. Frustrated, I exclaimed, ‘when are you finally going to switch over to Zsh?!’”
Designing Smart Notifications – “It’s obvious, notifications can’t stay the way they are for much longer. They are disengaging. They are intrusive. Nobody loves them. At the same time, all the data required for the creation of smarter notifications already exists. There are products trying to use that data properly and which suggest a path for how notifications can start to provide value and be truly helpful. I only hope that the next time I pull out my dying phone while lost in the wilderness, it’s because my little robotic sidekick is rushing to provide me with directions.”
Your Open Source Project Is Considered Harmful (Thanks to Matt Babcock for recommending this article) – “I’ve been an advocate of open source for much of my career and even built a successful open source project many years ago (within the context of the ColdFusion community for which it was built anyway). I also depend on open source projects on a daily basis – many from large companies or organizations, but also many maintained by individuals or small groups of individuals, most of whom donate their time. Anyway, as I said – it’s mostly love. So where’s the hate come from? Documentation. Or a lack thereof.”
MVPM: Minimum Viable Product Manager (Thanks to Brian Zimmer for recommending this article) – “I write this for my younger self, for new product managers, and for more experienced PMs still looking to level up. To maintain some symmetry with the diagram, skills are divided into sections for each discipline. I cover three key concepts/skills to focus on, and one that you really shouldn’t focus on. As much as possible, it’s in plain language and is written for someone who’s approaching any of the subjects cold.”
