I’m Sticking With GoDaddy For The Right Reasons, Even If They’ve Done Wrong
Call the headline to this article overwrought, if you like, and you’ll be correct. But the way I view business is, you have partners, and the relationships you have with those partners are a balance.
If you’re a freelance coder and you’re not putting the same kind of thought and consideration you use in personal relationships into your business partners, you’re going to get burned. Because as it is with friends and lovers, you get out of customers and vendors alike exactly what you give.
I’ve put a lot into GoDaddy, and they’ve given me a lot back. That’s why, even though GoDaddy initially supported the Stop Online Piracy Act and only recanted under threat of boycott, I’m going to keep doing business with them.
For those in the dark and the benefits of post-event context, SOPA is a bill, before Congress at this writing, that would give broad censorship powers to the Department of Justice, ostensibly to block incorrigible copyright violators. It’s envisioned as a way to get the repeat scofflaws who are largely undeterred by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which clearly has been almost completely ineffective at stopping brazen file sharing.
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Review: Free: The Future of a Radical Price
Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Reading Free: The Future of a Radical Price reminded me, in many ways, of The Grand Design.
To understand the universe on the quantum level, you have to embrace understandings and facts that seem ludicrous at human scales. That is, that we have free will; that things cannot be in the same place at the same time; that time progresses at one speed and forward only, are all convenient and explicit truths for our day-to-day existence. But at the subatomic level, that’s not how things work; not at all.
Anderson’s arguments about Free — that is, gratis and libre — are presented in the same sense, if not quite as well or explicitly.
Free does a fine job of explaining the mechanics of how things can be free on the Web: namely, per-unit / per-user costs are so low, they might as well be considered nothing.
He also does a good job of explaining the obvious money-making models applied successfully so far: advertising, freemium (basic service is free; premium service costs money) and non-monetary / indirect recompense, such as an increase in reputation / marketing of ancillary products, such as concerts and merchandise for musicians or speaking engagements and consultations for professionals.
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Good Contracts Make Good Business. Or, ‘F*ck You, Pay Me’
When I talk to new free-lance programmers about running a business, there are two core pieces of advice I offer. The first is that it‘s almost always better to have a little high-paying work than a lot of low-paying jobs. The other is the importance of a lawyer-reviewed contract that clearly defines the work to be produced, the date by which it will be completed and the cost of that work.
So I was very pleased to come across a Creative Mornings talk, given by Mike Monteiro of Mule Design and his attorney, Gabriel Levine, which reinforces and expands upon those basic ideas.
(via zeldman.com and Google Reader Play)
This is a long video (40 minutes) but worth every moment. But for the tl;dw crowd, here’s a synopsis of the salient points:
- Contracts protect both parties – you and your client.
- Don’t start work without a contract.
- Don’t blindly accept your client’s terms.
- Anticipate negotiation but don’t back down on important stuff – payment, deadlines and your intellectual property rights in the work until final payment is received.
- Lawyers talk to lawyers. If your client is talking to you in the presence of, or through, his lawyer, get yours or don’t talk.
- Be specific and confident about money. Ask for the rate you deserve and don’t back down on terms.
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The Danger Of API Development: Making Something Too Good
On CNET, via slashdot: Lendle, a Web site that had helped facilitate the loaning of ebooks among Kindle users, was effectively destroyed when Amazon shut down Lendle’s access to its Kindle API.
Lendle first reported the news via Twitter: “Amazon has revoked Lendle’s API access. This is why the site is down. It’s sad and unfortunate that Amazon is shutting down lending sites…According to Amazon, Lendle does not ‘serve the principal purpose of driving sales of products and services on the Amazon site.’”
According to Lendle co-founder Jeff Croft, “at least two other Kindle lending services” have been terminated from the API.
The problem with Lendle and its cousins is simple: It was too good at what it did.
Amazon does allow one-time loans of an ebook for up to 14 days, but they expect such trading to be among intimates. Lendle greatly expanded the ability for one person to trade with a complete stranger, and as a result posed a serious threat to potential Kindle edition sales.
After all, if I can’t find someone to lend me an ebook, I probably have to buy it. Put me in big enough a room of Kindle owners, however, and I’m likely to find what I am after for free.
I don’t care to get into copyright, the nature of modern publishing, or the like. I’m far more interested in pointing out the problem with using third-party APIs that this illustrates: If you make something too good, there’s usually nothing stopping the API service from cutting you off and stealing your work.
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A Completely Awesome 2600 Cover
Check out the cover on the Summer 2010 edition of 2600, The Hacker Quarterly:
Cover, Summer 2010 issue, 2600 magazine
I saw it at my local Barnes & Noble bookstore and had to buy it for its complete awesomeness. The one thing 2600 has, every issue, is cool cover art.
I don’t know the exact system to which these tape cartridges belong, but I remember seeing very similar ones back in the late 1980s at the University of Maine’s computer lab.
The labels are what make this cover so great:
- The coordinates on the top cartridge’s white label mark the epicenter of the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The “KH-5″ label on the side refers, I assume, to a series of early 1960s mapping / spy satellites. There may be a more significant connection between the two labels that I don’t get.
- I like the implicit message in the third tape’s label, that the Library of Congress is retaining tweets.
- I love the fifth tape’s label: If only such a tape existed, it would eliminate quite a bit of annoying political sideshow. Then again, no; it probably wouldn’t.
- The tapes from the seventh down are also quite amusing.
And taken in context with the “DESTROY” label on the box in the background, and the placement of the entire stack atop tabloid personals ads, really adds to the entire presentation.
