[javascript-9] Unique opportunity to write code for 18m users and counting!

Interesting to see people actually using JavaScript as a primary iPhone development platform. 

Gerad


Begin forwarded message:

From: Andrew Lacy <andrew@tapulous.com>
Date: November 24, 2009 8:10:38 PM PST
To: javascript-9@meetup.com
Subject: [javascript-9] Unique opportunity to write code for 18m users and counting!
Reply-To: javascript-9@meetup.com

I am looking for an experienced JavaScript/jQuery/css dev to help us with a unique opportunity. We make Tap Tap Revenge, the hit iPhone game, downloaded by over 18 million people. Here is why the opportunity is unique - we serve tightly optimized, compressed, cached, web content (including storefronts, and many social features such as avatar editors, chat, feeds) to millions of our users in webviews inside our native application. We pride ourselves in creating as native an experience as possible - which means fast code and an attention to detail. 

The code is primarily JavaScript, jQuery & webkit and only targeted at mobile Safari (no cross-browser compatibility boredom, yah!). You'll be implementing new features and improving old ones. You'll spend a significant amount of time "off the reservation" writing custom and non-standards compliant code so you need to have a hacker DNA and proficient well beyond cut-and-paste code.

At the end of the day we are looking for a fulltime person to join the team (its a fun environment and a hot company ... check out our press at tapulous.com/press) , but will also work with a contractor in the short term. You can read the job description at https://www.jobscore.com/jobs/tapulous/frontendengineerjavascripthacker/cYJ7aS0x8r3QVReJe4aGWH.

Cheers,
Andrew (one of the co-founders, not a recruiter)


Why I Read Science Fiction


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Why I Read Science Fiction

Yesterday morning I spent the day at my semi-annual MIT Sloan Executive Advisory Board meeting.  During breaks, I got into two separate conversations about a book I read last week called Breakpoint by Richard A Clarke.  Clarke was chief counter-terrorism adviser for Clinton and Bush and – among other things – has become a superb science fiction writer. Breakpoint – like Daemon – is an absolute must read in the cyber-thriller category (BTW – thanks Kwin for the recommendation.)


The conversations started out around the book, but quickly evolved in the work that I do and how I think about investing.  As part of that, I explained that I learn an enormous amount by both thinking about the future, but also reading science fiction from the past that maps to the present time.


For example, I decided this would be “the summer of Dick.”  I bought all of Philip K. Dick’s books (about 60 of them), put them on a shelf in my Keystone house, and have been systematically working my way through them whenever I’m in Keystone (I’ve read about 15 of them).  I’m completely fascinated by how Dick – in the 1960’s – thinks about computers and travel in the early part of the 21st century.  Some of his projections of what computers will be like completely miss (Auxtape, Magtape, or some other variation of “tape” is the storage device", computers have sexy voices) while others are a lot closer (computers have evolved into learning machines that are self-correcting).  Travel, on the other hand, is a complete miss – you can get from Europe to the US in five minutes in Dick’s worlds.


When Kurt Vonnegut died, I did the same thing as tribute to him – I bought all the Vonnegut books and read them in order (I still have a few left).  As I read Dick, I recalled that I felt Vonnegut sometimes got computers right and sometimes got them wrong, but also completely missed it on travel.


After seeing the latest Star Trek in the theater, Amy and I Netflixed Star Trek Season 1 and started watching it fr...

Gerad

The Dirty Little Secret About the "Wisdom of the Crowds" - There is No Crowd


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The Dirty Little Secret About the "Wisdom of the Crowds" - There is No Crowd

Recent research by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) professor Vassilis Kostakos pokes a big hole in the prevailing wisdom that the "wisdom of crowds" is a trustworthy force on today's web. His research focused on studying the voting patterns across several sites featuring user-generated reviews including Amazon, IMDb, and BookCrossing. The findings showed that a small group of users accounted for a large number of ratings. In other words, as many have already begun to suspect, small but powerful groups can easily distort what the "crowd" really thinks, leading online reviews to often end up appearing extremely positive or extremely negative.


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Small Groups, Big Impact

To conduct the research, Kostakos worked with a large sample of online ratings. As MIT's Technology Review reports, the researcher and his team studied hundreds of thousands of items and millions of votes across all three sites. In each and every case, they discovered that small numbers of users accounted for the largest number of ratings. For example, on Amazon, only 5% of active Amazon users ever cast votes on more than 10 products but a small handful of users voted on hundreds of items. Said Kostakos, "if you have two or three people voting 500 times, the results may not be representative of the community overall."

This is hardly the first time that the so-called "wisdom of the crowds" has been called into question. The term, which implies that a diverse collection of individuals makes more accurate decisions and predications than individuals or even experts, has been used in the past to describe how everything from Wikipedia to user-generated news sites like Digg.com offer better services than anything created by a smaller group could do.

Of course, we now know that simply isn't true. For one thing, Wikipedia isn't written and edited by the "crowd" at all. In fact, 1% of Wikipedia users are responsible for half of the site's edits. Even Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, has been quoted as saying that the site is really written by a community, "a dedicated group of a few ...

Gerad

A quick update

I've been swamped lately, and outside of the bare essentials (family, work, exercise, sleep), I've let my life fall to shambles. I'm going to try to get back on top of things starting this weekend.  So wanted to update the blog briefly.
  1. A completely rebuilt Swivel Business launched last week.  I'm proud of the work the team has put into it.  It has not been easy, and there is still a long way to go, but I believe this product is a solid stake in the ground.
  2. I've been training for a triathlon.  I'm not sure which one, but I have been swimming, biking and running 6 days a week.
  3. I'm running The Relay in early May.
  4. I was recently at P-Camp '09, and unconference for Product Managers.
  5. Visnu, Brent, Huned and I participated in Rails Rumble in October.  We built Gentrifire, which came in 29th, but got good press.
  6. I've consolidated the best blog posts from Attemptry into this blog.  It was too hard to maintain two blogs.
As part of the blog consolidation, I reviewed a number of old posts.  It's amazing how much reading and thinking I was doing last year.  Especially in relation to how little I am doing right now.  I just haven't seemed to have had time. Hopefully, I can get my life to balance a bit better and begin to write more interesting posts again.

How to Launch Web Software

I keep coming back to Aaron Swartz's thought piece about how to launch Web software. The dialog in the comments below the post contains as much valid insight as the post itself. The general, logical, consensus from the discussion is:
  1. Invitation only soft launches are good from an engineering perspective. They let you test your product in a friendly environment and help you ensure that it's stable and ready for the big time.
  2. When your product is ready for the big time, then you can do a Hollywood style launch that builds up a bunch of buzz and gets people excited.