When you've been running a business for a while it's sometimes easy for people to settle down and merge into the general day-to-day routine of dealing with email and plodding through the task list. The problem is that some people (me included) have the tendency to become too comfortable with this routine, we settle in and slow down. These sorts of clockwork routines will eventually only lead to something dull and uninspiring. No matter how much you love your job, if you sit and do the same thing day-in day-out for months (or even years) your not challenging yourself. You have basically become a glorified production line worker, forever doomed to undertake the same tasks.

I'm writing this post because I had a shocking realization that I've begun to slide into this. It's been nearly two years since I took on running Developer City full-time and although I love the work I'm doing there, I realized that there's nothing all that challenging anymore. I've definitely settled in and I've started to slow down.

The realization that I have started to settle in to a routine that could quite easily consume many years of my life has unsettled me. I have always been one to try and push the boundaries and to learn new things, and in a way I am still like that, but I feel that I have been poorly managing my most valuable resource, my time. There's a lot I want to accomplish before my time is up and unfortunately it's not going to happen in my current environment.

I think that money has been a big factor in the equation too. I don't care much for financial wealth and I'm not rich, but as my company has grown the financial constraints that you deal with in the first months and years as a founder has dissipated. In the early days of starting a company money is always the primary concern. I started out with about £500, and out of that I had to furnish an office, pay the first months rent and bills, pay for some hosting and keep my car on the road so that I could get to meetings. I used my TV from home as a monitor so that I wouldn't have to buy one. Turns out unplugging yourself from TV does wonders, you don't have to hear the media moaning all the time. It's sometimes surprising how far you can stretch something when it is a sparse resource. When it is scarce, money has a different value.

This reminds me of when I was in school and me and my friends would buy our lunch from the canteen each day. When I first started the canteen was reasonably subsidized, to the point that you could pick up a warm meal for about a pound or a filled roll for around 60p. When I would go to school money would take on a new value, in the real world 60p would barely buy you a packet of crisps but in the canteen that would be a hearty ham and salad roll or 3 big cookies. All of a sudden the value of the change in my pocket increased as I walked through those school gates. This taught me that the true value of money depends on the context in which it is used, and in some ways the amount that you have.

When a resource is scarce you hustle to make it stretch further. I only ever used to drink coffee at the office because I drink it black and it meant that I didn't have to buy the milk and sugar that I would have if I drank tea. Thinking about this now seems ludicrous, but the extra couple of pounds a week I would save made a real difference. As money starts to become less of an issue your ability (and I guess willingness) to hustle decreases. After all, you've worked hard to get where you are, why not buy that nice coffee machine or that new monitor you've been looking at. I fell into this trap and I wish I hadn't. When I look around my office now it saddens me to see just how much I've lost the hustle. Now it's not like I've got solid gold figurines lying around or anything but over time I got that coffee machine, and the monitor. Subscription services are the best for catching you off guard, over time they build up and before you know it the services that you have come to rely on are costing you a considerable amount of money each month. Losing the hustle doesn't happen overnight, it creeps up on you until one day you realise that you've settled in and slowed down.

If I'm honest this article is more for me than it is for anyone else, but maybe it will help someone out there to realise that the level on their hustle meter has been on the slide too. I miss the hustle, it's my fault it's gone and I'm sure as hell going to bring it back. For those of you out there that are still hustling away, be wary of the little temptations that will cause you to lose it. Losing the hustle is by no means the end, but it will take you off the express track.

Moral of the story - keep focused and don't lose your hustle. Peace :)

Yesterday I got up early and headed down to London for State of The Browser 2012. The event was really great and I thought I would just summarise some of the thoughts from the main talks here.

Web vs Native: it ain't over 'til it's over

Michael Mahemoff (@mahemoff)

Michael gave a great talk about how native apps still dominate their HTML5 counterparts. Despite the great work being done by some browser vendors to open up more native services to HTML5 apps (Chrome Canary now has a Battery API) web is still way behind native and that is limiting the scope of what web developers can achieve.

The talk also focused on the challenges surrounding UI, offline and background processing that arise when building HTML5 apps. These issues need to be resolved quickly if HTML5 is going to be a real competitor to native apps.

The slides can be found here: http://prez.mahemoff.com/state-native/#/

No App is an Island

Paul Kinlan (@paul_kinlan)

Paul's presentation ran with the theme that web apps should be able to talk to each other without the need for developers to write loads of code. This follows on from the work that Paul is doing on Web Intents.

Android developers don't have to worry about creating integrations to share content, they simply fire a share intent and the OS takes care of the rest. Browsers should be doing this and later on in the Q&A all of the other browser representatives admitted that they recognize this as a problem and are working on solutions.

I personally follow Paul's vision of an interconnected app ecosystem and really hope that Web Intents (or an equivalent) makes it's way into browsers soon.

The Web as it Should Be

Martin Beeby (@thebeebs)

Unfortunately Martin's presentation was plagued with all sorts of technical problems but hats off to the guy as he still managed to power through. I was interested to see what Microsoft is doing in the web space so it was a shame the demos didn't work.

Martin spoke about Microsoft's vision for the web and how they are pulling web technologies into the development environment of native app developers in Windows 8. This means that web developers will be able to use their existing skills in HTML, CSS and JS to create 'native' apps for Windows 8. The Microsoft engineers have created a JavaScript library for interacting with native APIs, which is awesome! I think Google are working on something similar for Android.

Overall the fact that Microsoft seem to have stepped up their game within the web space is very encouraging. But sorry folks, still no plans for WebGL :(

Broken HTML5 Promises - Are we 'appy?

Chris Heilmann (@codepo8)

Chris' talk focussed on were HTML5 is today and what we have got left to do in order to really give native apps a run for their money. He spoke about his experiences at the recent Mobile Web Congress in Barcelona and how many of the execs he spoke to were more concerned about getting short term wins than building meaningful apps.

It's sometimes easy to forget that there is still a lot of work to be done on HTML5 and a lot of this work is convincing decision makers in businesses that HTML5 is a viable option when it comes to building apps.

Chris also mentioned the Boot to Gecko project were Mozilla are creating a phone OS that consists of a browser running directly on top of a Linux kernel (+ drivers of course). I hadn't heard about this before but it looks really awesome, I can't wait to get my hands on a demo device.

Summary

All round it was a rather good day out. I'm interested to see what will be happening with web technologies in Windows 8 going forward and how the web vs native battle will play out over the next year or so.

After hearing news of Posterous' recent acquisition by Twitter I've decided to move my blog. For the past few months I've been pondering the idea of building a blog framework with GO and figured this would be a good excuse to finally get around to building it. So here it is!

I'll post more about the framework I created (GO-blog) soon but basically it is really simple and hacker friendly. All of the templates (pages and posts) are stored in memory which makes generating pages really fast. There's no database I just use a JSON dictionary to store information about posts and pages. I'm still working on getting tags up and running.

I've got go-blog running behind nginx and I'm just using a simple proxy_pass to route requests to the go app.

All of the code is up on github here: https://github.com/matt-west/go-blog.

Society has always felt the need to categorize people, usually by a person’s occupation, social ‘status’ (man I hate that crap) or their hobbies. We are no different in the web industry, we seem to have done a pretty good job of siloing people into specific roles.

“Are you a designer or a developer?”

This is a question that we all get asked on a fairly regular basis and we usually give a nervous either/or answer. But why? Surely we are capable of being both; we are; we are hybrids.

Now sure not everyone is a hybrid but there are many of us out there that are equally skilled as both designers and developers.

This is a topic that I have been thinking about for quite a while, the insecurities within me prodding at me to chose a single silo. It wasn’t until I watched Daniel Mall’s talk at NA Conf in January that I obtained the validation that I was subconsciously seeking in order to choose both. Dan also put a name to this group of multi-skilled wunderkind, ‘Hybrid People’.

I like the word ‘hybrid’. It almost has a superhero vibe about it, like we should all wear capes and save unsuspecting visitors from bad design and broken contact forms.

The common argument in support of siloing is that you should specialise because you “can’t be good at everything”. This is absolutely fantastically correct. We can’t know everything, but hybrids don’t know everything, we are just prepared to learn anything. Our lust for cross-domain superhero powers is what makes us hybrids and it’s what makes us different.

Next time someone asks me if I’m a designer or developer I will answer “I’m a hybrid”. Truth be told we are all hybrids, some of us just don’t own the cape.

The difference between sustaining and disruptive innovation is commonly misunderstood by many in business. The main differentiation that I make is that sustaining innovation comes from listening to the needs of customers in the existing market and creating products that satisfy their predicted needs for the future. Disruptive innovation creates new markets separate to the mainstream; markets that are unknowable at the time of the technologies conception.

Established market leaders are extremely good at dealing with and exploiting sustaining innovations in order to fuel the short-term growth of their companies. Disruptive innovations however, pose a challenge to market leaders that many fail to overcome. Why is this?

Disruptive innovations create markets that are initially too small to 'be interesting' to large established firms. These firms have a responsibility to their shareholders to maintain continued growth rates which cannot be satisfied by the small initial returns obtained through pursuing emerging markets.

The inability of large firms to enter these markets early gives smaller firms and start-ups the advantage of time. The dominant firms will, inevitably, enter these emerging markets when they become 'interesting enough' however the time between the markets conception and the entrance of these firms is a valuable resource for smaller firms which can use this period to build up knowledge of both the market and technology and establish a niche brand.

"All predictions about markets that disruptive technologies will create have only one thing in common, they are all wrong."

It is impossible to accurately predict the markets created by disruptive technologies because they do not exist. This sounds obvious but so many companies pursue the identification of a single path for a disruptive technology. Only by doing this can they formulate an exact plan for their company when entering the market and justify investments of resources and capital. This pursuit is futile. Instead of trying to pursue an absolute path these companies should be preparing a plan that allows for multiple failures before identifying the true market for the technology. This iterative process has been well adopted by many internet companies over the past decade however companies in many other industries are still struggling with this concept.

I am fascinated by disruptive innovation and the factors that determine whether a particular innovation will succeed or fail. Clayton Christensen's book 'The Innovators Dilemma' explores these thoughts in depth. I would definitely recommend reading it (if you haven't already).

I just read this really awesome article on TechCrunch by James Altucher about how you can filter out negative thoughts so that you are more productive. The article is tailored towards entreprenuers with startups but I think that the 'nine filters' that James talks about are absolutely suited to life in general.

"Live each day as if it is your first"

One of my favourite bits of the article is the idea that you should live each day as if it is your first. When I read this I first thought about the Buddhist idea of having a beginner's mind. The theory is that having a clear mind allows you to look at a situation with out any pre-conceptions and therefore produce an action that is truly your own. When you think about it this is pretty powerful.

Being a web designer it's easy to get bogged bown into the 'standard' layouts of a website and this can really put a downer on your creativity. If you asked someone to design a web page that had never seen one before I bet that it would look nothing like the sorts of web pages out there today. Having a mind free of any knowledge or pre-conceptions about a subject can help you to be really innovative, without even knowing it.

Anyway you should check out the article it makes a really interesting read, you can find it here.

Since Treehouse was launched earlier this week I have been watching a lot of the videos and working my way through the badges. I often have the videos playing in the background whilst I'm working and the only problem is that you have to manually move on to the next video all the time.

So I decided to build a little chrome extension to automatically play through all of the videos in a badge. The extension looks at the current video and reads the video list to determine the next video in the playlist. Once the current video has finished playing it will automatically load the new one and start the video playing. Unfortunatly it doesn't support fullscreen viewing yet but I will try and get it sorted soon.

The extension injects some javascript into the page to handle the auto play feature and also has a background page which is responsible for switching the toolbar icon between the active and inactive states. There are instructions on how to install the extension in the code repo. I will release the extension in the chrome webstore to make it easier to install if the guys at treehouse are happy for me to do so.

You can get the code on github.

https://github.com/matt-west/treehouse-autoplay

 

UPDATE:

You can now install the extension directly from the Chrome Web Store.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/epcbdbkjnonaliagdjccjnoejpgdnjkm?hl=en-US

The online 'webucation' site Treehouse was launched today at FOWD New York. I've been eagerly anticipating the launch for the last few months ever since I heard Ryan Carson speaking about it on Think Vitamin Radio. This afternoon I finaly got to explore treehouse and boy is it good. The first time I logged in I got that feeling of excitement that you get when you power up your Mac for the first time.

It is very obvious that the team has spent a lot of time perfecting the way that the site is structured. It took me about 30 seconds to get from sign up to viewing my first video. All the interfaces are very intuitive and incredibly pleasing on the eye, just what you would expect from a Mike Kus design. I especially like the MailChimp style 'tidbits' from the little mascot in the corner.

You can earn 'badges' to prove that you know your stuff when it comes to various topics. When I first heard about this I was a little sceptical as I thought that it would probably be pretty easy to just breeze through the questions without watching the videos. This is not the case. The quiz questions are pretty in depth and get technical which is great as it means that the 'badges' system actually works, unlike in so many other websites where badges are pretty meaningless.

Of course there are a few minor bugs here and there as can be expected with any new site but these will be resolved in time.

A job well done for all Treehouse team!

Now I'm off to learn about iOS development. Would you care to join me?

It's that time of year again when flocks of nervous 17 and 18 year olds open up an envelope that will define the next 3 years of their life. I am of course talking about A-Level results. I'm glad to say that many of my friends managed to get the results they needed and come september they will be dispursing throughout the country to a variety of different universities. For me university never seemed like it would be a great fit and from my newly furnished office, I declined my place at Nottingham Trent two weeks before results day last year. I have always seen university as much more than just a place you go to learn. It's about having a great social life, finding yourself, meeting new people and meeting people who will inspire you to do great things. When I gave up my place I knew that some of these things would be harder to find but I knew they were achievable.

In my case some of the most inspirational people in my life at the moment are people that I have never met and probably never will. However technology and the internet has enabled these people to become a lot more visible to a wider audience. Through websites such as YouTube I have been able to watch talks given by these people, blogs have given me the ability to read their written material and ideals and the transparency of many of the companies they work for (or own) has shown me the great things that these people achieve every single day. So here is a list of just a few of the people that have had an impact on my life in the last year and that have inspired me to try new things and follow my dreams.

 

Brian Fitzpatrick

Brian Fitzpatrick is an Engineering Manager at Google Chicago and is probably the person that has inspired me the most. After watching the talk he did with Ben Collins-Sussman at Google I/O a few years ago I was inspired to get involved in Open-Source software. Something that is now a major part of my work and personal life.

The work that Brian and the Data Liberation Front team have done to open up the data that you store on Google has totaly changed the way that I think when building products.

 

Eric Schmidt

Eric Schmidt is executive chairman at Google. I've watched many of Eric's talks on youtube and he is probably one of the best speakers I have ever seen. The passion and vision that he has for the future of the internet and technology as a whole is truly inspirational. His focus on making the world a better place for everyone and putting the user's interests above the company's profits has showed me that you don't have to be ruthless to be successful.

I really hope that Eric's vision of a more open world comes to fruition as the years pass by as I think that it is the best way of ensuring that our future is fair and prosperous.

 

Ryan Carson

Ryan Carson is the co-founder of Carsonified. He has a technical background but is also a very successful businessman. Ryan has a pretty unique approach to business, for example carsonified employees only work a four day week and yet they still manage to produce incredible products and events. This says a lot about the culture of the company that Ryan and his wife have built up.

I think that Ryan inspires me so much because he is the person that I can relate to the most, even in my very short life as a programmer and businessman. He successfully made the switch from a service based business to a product based one, a challenge that I am currently just starting to tackle. By reading the articles that he has written and listening to the think vitamin podcast I am starting to understand the 'secret recipe' to successfully making this transition.

 

Tony Hsieh

Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos. I recently read Tony's book 'Delivering Happiness' (if you haven't aleady, give it a read) and it really opened my eyes to a lot of things. One of the main things that impresses me so much about Tony is his dedication to the Zappos culture and how he focusses so much on ensuring that all of the Zappos employees are happy in their lives. 

After releasing his book Tony set-up the Delivering Happiness movement which aims to inspire people and help them become happier in their lives. This is one of the main reasons that Tony inspires me. He was not content on just making sure that his employees were happy but he geniunely wants to change the world to make it a better place.

 

I've been meaning to write this post for a long time as I wanted to spread the word about these people in the hope that they might inspire more people to pursue their dreams and do really great things. I will probably never meet any of the people I've mentioned in this post and that's fine because with technology how it is today you no longer have to meet someone to hear their messge.

I very much doubt that any of these people will ever read this post but just in case they do find a spare 5 minutes I would like to say thank you for inspiring me to be a better person and to always aim high.

I have, unfortunately, seriously neglected this blog recently as I’ve been busy with work and all sorts of other exciting things.

I’ve recently been asked to take over the management of the open source project Simple Invoices which was a great surprise. I’m pretty excited about this though and I’ve got loads of ideas about how we can make the project even more awesome than it already is. The project is now about six years old and so taking charge at this point is pretty challenging, but then again I’ve always loved a good challenge.

As well as spending a lot of time working on Simple Invoices I’m also experimenting with WebSockets and GO (my new favourite programming language). I’ve managed to create a real-time chat as an example of what can be done, this was achieved with a lot of help from Gary Burd’s “WebSockets and GO” tutorial.

I’ll try and update this blog a lot more frequently in the future but for now peace out.