Personal and Software development: Paid model vs Open Source model

My last try to write about something related to OS’s was somehow a flamer on digg. Myabe I haven’t stated enough during the article that I was only interested in listening to opinions from the guys that actually switched from one OS to another, and that I didn’t try make any comparison between those two OS’s. So, if I would like to talk about something far more inflamable thant that, meaning paid model development vs open source model development, I thought I’d better put up first a

Disclaimer

This article represents my personal opinions only and is not endorsed by any company or foundation. Also, my intentions is, foremost, to just express my ideas about the values that each model could have, and not to accuse, adhere to or specifically endorse any of them.

Wow, it’s cool to be relaxed, so let’s start our little walk on the park of the personal and software development.

First of all, yest, it’s an odd pair: personal and software development. But I told you from the beginning: you wouldn’t find usual stuff here. Not because usual is not good, but because new connections and standpoints can always shed some new light and reveal new thinking paths on any topic you can imagine.

When and why I broke up with… linux

Linux is a great thing. It had one of the longest hype period on the digital media, and still gather evangelists all over the world. It was the beginning of a new era. It was the sign of the liberty of software rising against the chains of proprieatry model and corporate giants. It was a chance for millions of programmers to make a decent living.

But all of that doesn’t necessarily make Linux a great choice for desktop productivity. Also, for the middle to top managers, I don’t really think it will make his entry. In my series of “When and why I broke up with…” posts, I will try to outline below my reasons for switching from Linux to Mac OS on my day to day work.

First of all, for all of you that are asking: “but why Mac OS, and not Windows?”, I will simply answer: because I needed something that actually works. Period.

Second, I will tell you what I think about Linux as a day to day OS from a manager standpoint:

MAC OS X – Quicksilver: instantly create text files and prepend or append text to them

Suppose you are in the middle of something, reading a post on a blog, or writing a fine article in your editor of choice, or even writing some code for your ground breaking web 2.0 application. And ka-boum: you have an idea! Something so interesting, so juicy and fun to think about crosses your mind, than you feel you can’t live anymore until you actually write down that piece of thought. Somewhere, somehow. So there you go:

1. leave your current activity/application
2. open Finder (or some other program menu containing an outliner application shortcut, for instance)
3. open that outliner application
4. open a new file in it
5. start writing the marvelous idea
6. hit save as menu item
7. chose location and save
8. close the outliner application
9. return to your current activity/application

But here’s how it would look like, if you would use Quicksilver:

1. type CTRL + spacebar to invoke Quicksilver window (while having the current activity/application still in front of you)
2. type “.” and start writing your marvelous idea
3. hit TAB and type “cre..” meaning the first letters of your “Create file” action of Quicksilver, and then enter (this really counts like a single action)
4. chose location and save
5. hit escape to hide Quicksilver window

Huh! We are four steps shorter than the original approach. That counts for less physical work, and less time, almost half, right? Nice, isn’t it? But that’s not the only advantage: you actually remain in the flow, while your thoughts are free to fly. Isn’t that really nice?

So, how we actually do that?

Kumiko’s quest for cash

Her name is Kumiko Suzuki, she’s living in Tokyo, Japan, which must be exactly under my chair, since I am living in Bucharest, Romania, on the other side of the Earth. She’s on a quest for cash on the Internet, and started her own blog several weeks after I started this blog. Pretty close in [...]

7th edition of the Carnival of Entrepreneurs…

…which you may find at startupspark.com, is one of the finest editions so far. I recommend you to go there and see for yourself. Through several categories, such as “Entrepreneurial Deep Thoughts“, “Getting Down To Business” or “Online, E-marketing Tips and Tricks for Entrepreneurs“, the author of the startupsparks.com, Benjamin Yoskovits, presents in a very [...]

Astrology and personal development

Admit it: you are intrigued. You’re not using it, nor give any credit to it at all, and still some strange voices are telling you from time to time to take astrology seriously. You don’t take it, to be honest, and this is more than OK. After all, everything in our lives it’s a matter of choice. But that doesn’t necessarily means that astrology is useless. My own experience with astrology proved even the opposite, as a matter of fact.

Yes, good idea, let’s talk about the facts. I used astrology in its lowest form and level of perception, in the form of daily horoscopes, when I worked in the FM radio stations as a fulltime DJ. I had to fill my program with some informations, and horoscopes were – and still are – one of the most used. And abused, I will say, because there is nothing more wrong about the astrology than the daily horoscopes.

But I found out that the hard way, years later. When I engaged a more conscious way of living my life, I decided to try it out for real. It must be something beyond daily horoscopes and stupid predictions, I said at some point. So I started to study by myself. I read several books and subscribed to several popular astrology websites. I learned to use astrology software and use it on a daily basis. I studied the planet movements, the transgressions, the planetary hours and the cycles of days, weeks, months and astrological signs. Things has started to progress nicely. Not only I began to realise that my image about astrology was completely wrong, but I also learned to use it in a systematic way. I even followed the official course from an astrology school in Romania, called Fidelia.

To make a long story short, after two years of constantly experiencing it I becomed an intermediate to advanced astrologer. Now I master enough of that science for actually getting something out of it. And the term “science” is a little bit exagerated, I admit. Astrology is not a science in “normal” way. It involves a lot of emotional and spiritual participation, things that traditional science has avoided constantly. But I was not interested in its legitimity – I can make my own decision about things and not wait for other to tell me if this thing is legit or not – what I was really interested in, was its use. How can I use astrology for personal development?

And, first of wll, why use it?

When and why I broke up with… smoking

Yes, you broke up with something too. Broke up with your drinking coffee habit, with your operating system or your old computer. Broke up with an old friend of partner…I think about making this like a serie of posts, all related to the interruption of something I used for a long time. A habit, a software application, a person. It’s very interesting to see when you actually stopped to do something, and why.
It will be pretty interesting also to see how others have broke up with the same pattern or habit.

I will start this serie with an easy one: when an why I broke up with smoking. It was on 17h November 2005. After a party at my company, Mirabilis Media, I felt so miserably the next day, that I instantly decided to quit smoking. And I did. It was an instant decision, fueled by the insanely bad consequences this habit has generated.

WordPress 2.1 Ella is out

It’s official, the fellows at wordpress made their move and launched the 2.1 version, which seems to be a very interesting and feature loaded release. From the official announcement on the developer blog here is a bulleted list: Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again. Our new tabbed editor allows you to switch [...]

“Blending branding” advertising in the blogosphere

I don’t know if the term was used before in this context, chances are that it already was, and I only imagine that I just coined it yesterday. If so, apologies to the savviest blogger here. If not, well, here’s my 2 cents about what “blending branding” advertising in the blogosphere should be. Or, to be more precise, what already is.

“Blending branding” advertising is basically promoting your image using another, friendly, brand that you use. You make a banner in which you say: “I just love this guy! His blog, his work”. And you sign yourself on that banner: “This is me at http://www.mysite.com”. And then you make your banner public on the site that you just appreciated. Of course, the link will go to your site. Simple, isn’t it?

So simple that we may start to ask what are the advantages here.

WordPress 2.1 is closer than you think

The long waited version of the popular blogging software WordPress – which also powers dragosroua.com – is closer than we think. In the tradition of the “10 something thing” lists that spreaded over the blogosphere lately, Aaron Brazell from technosailor puts together the latest functionality that you would expect from wordpress 2.1. And it seems [...]

What is procrastination?

I’m sure everybody has its own definition on that. My MAC OS Dictionary tells me this: “procrastination: delay or postpone action; put off doing something : it won’t be this price for long, so don’t procrastinate.”. You certainly have a different definition, I’m sure. This diversitiy comes from a wide spread of the activity itself: everybody procrastinates, this is why a name had to be found for this activity, a name that each would define differently, but everybody would understand the same.

For me, procrastinations is the ability of someone to change his attitude and perception about what he wants to do.

At some point you made a decision about what you want to do. You wanted to buy a book, to eat lunch, to meet friends. Or you wanted to start a business. To write a book. To travel to Japan. But after a while – and this timespan might be a micro-second or weeks – you change your attitude about that. When you first decided you wanted that, your intention was to manifest your energy in doing that activity. But somehow, you changed that intention into something different: manifesting your energy in thinking about that activity.

Procrastination, in my optinion, is something that you learn. You use it constantly and develop it like a skill. You train yourself into it. You define mental patterns. And you start using those mental patterns over and over, until they become part of you.