I’m watching Gandhi, the movie (again). Very inspiring (again). “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” which is similar to “Two wrongs don’t make a right” and “Turn the other cheek”. Most people understand the long term benefits of this idea, yet find it so hard to follow. Those who are able to live up to this idea sacrifice their health and sometimes their lives not only for for their conscience, but for their society, which is elevated to a higher form of itself as a result.
In the movie, when the British shoot peaceful protesters, Ghandi encourages more peaceful protests instead of revenge killings. Revenge is satisfying in the moment, but damaging to the cause in the long term. Or as Gandhi puts it: “Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.”
Not only did he ask his people to exercise incredible restraint, but to stand still and knowingly receive beatings and sometimes even death. Gandhi said that the nonviolent activist, like any soldier, had to be ready to die for their cause. In fact, during India’s struggle for independence, 100′s of Indians were killed by the British. The difference was that the nonviolent activists, while willing to die, were never willing to kill.
Gandhi pointed out three possible responses to oppression and injustice. One he described as the coward’s way: to accept the wrong or run away from it. The second was to stand and fight violence with violence force. Gandhi said this was better than acceptance or running away. But the third way, he said, was best of all and required the most courage: to stand and fight solely by nonviolent means.
Impressive … Gandhi was an incredible visionary and not only an effective leader of his people, but an inspiration to us all.
Filed under: Philosophy | Leave a Comment
Tags: ghandi
Plays Nice with Others
Here’s an excellent example of a Developer Community that knows how to “Play Nice with Others”.
No community manager wants to send its members away from its forums, but in some cases it just makes sense. In this case Stack Overflow is doing a great job of handling entry level questions about Google Android. And the Google Community managers realize that they are helping, not harming their cause. It takes an experienced community manager to understand that your own forums aren’t what matters most. What matters is that developers are getting answers from places and ways that they prefer and find most convenient. Plus, the Google managers must realize that they will get some additional visibility by encouraging the Stack Overflow to discuss Android.
There might be a back story that I’m not aware of, but on the surface, this makes sense. Kudos to the Google Android crew.
Filed under: Community | Leave a Comment
I’ve been consulting for NorthScale. They’re using their experience with memcached and other open source projects to solve some of those ’scale-out’ problems that websites have. Steve, Dustin, Matt, Rod, Patrick & Sally are super smart. I learn something new every day. My role is to help get feedback from the developer community – something I thoroughly enjoy.
We’re also having a lot of fun. The other day while having lunch at a sushi restaurant, I explained why I think the most well-known Japanese phrase in America is … “domo arigato Mr. Roboto”. Of course it was immortalized by the band Styx in the early 80’s. But I used Kunio Kato’s Acadamy Award acceptance speech as an example of how popular it is even today (the end of the video is priceless). The next day, we get an email from Steve announcing that “mr roboto” will be the codename for the NorthScale “instrumented” memcached AMI.
I wonder how many other code names come from jokin’ around during lunch.
Filed under: Community | Leave a Comment
Tags: ami, memcached, northscale, roboto
CloudCamp SF tonite
CloudCamp SF starts tonite at 5 pm. We’ll have food, drink and hopefully some lively discussions about the emerging Cloud Computing industry. I’ll be MC’ing the evening, but since this is an unconference, the really interesting stuff will happen in the sessions, which the attendees will lead themselves.
After the sessions, we’re throwing a party, during which we’ll have Lightning Talks on subjects loosely related to Cloud Computing from the likes of Jeff Barr and others.
With over 300 people registered on Upcoming, I don’t think I missed anyone. But if I did, please excuse me and show up anyway!
Filed under: Cloud Computing, Unconference | Leave a Comment
Tags: cloud computing, cloudcamp, unconference
Marketing to Web 2.0 Developers
Tonight I’m giving a presentation at SDForum on “Marketing to Web 2.0 Developers“. This will be a modified version of my “New Generation of Platform Developers” presentation I gave at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference in April.
Filed under: Marketing, Programming | Leave a Comment
Tags: developer, marketing, platform, sdforum
The much anticipated Beta 2 of the PayPal-enabled Commerce Starter Kit is about to launch. Just in time for the eBay/PayPal Developer Conference on June 10th in Las Vegas. Version 2 has many new selling features as well as some extensibility for providers such as State Sales Tax and Customer Address Verification.
Filed under: PayPal, Programming | Leave a Comment
Tags: eBay Developer Conference
Paul Kimmel finished his two-part DevSource article by explaining how to use the PayPal Web Controls for ASP.NET to create a Storefront. The first article gives a great Intro to the PayPal Developer Sandbox.
Filed under: PayPal | Leave a Comment
Indexed by Google Print
While doing a Google search for ‘PayPal Hacks’, I found that the book has been indexed by the Google Print service. So now anyone can search some of the text of PayPal Hacks online.
For example, doing a search for “will you marry me” returns the page in the Acknowledgements section where I proposed to my fiance! You can try it here yourself, here … Search PayPal Hacks.
Filed under: Marketing, PayPal | Leave a Comment
Tags: google
I’ll be on a panel tonite where I’ll give away two copies of PayPal Hacks. On the panel will be Jim Lanzone – SVP of Ask Jeeves, Maheesh Jain – Co-Founder of CafePress, Janine Popick – CEO of Vertical Response, Fran Maier – Executive Director of TRUSTe and moderators Andreas Ramos & Nick Hurd. If you’re in the East Bay, come on by and perhaps you’ll get a free copy.
Filed under: PayPal | Leave a Comment
Recent Entries
- 23 Web Development Tools for the Mac
- An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind
- Plays Nice with Others
- Sushi leads to codename Mr. Roboto
- CloudCamp SF tonite
- Marketing to Web 2.0 Developers
- PayPal-enabled Commerce Starter Kit v2 Beta
- PayPal Web Controls for ASP.NET: Part 2
- Indexed by Google Print
- eBig.org eCommerce Workshop & Panel
- Chat Interview with Wholesale411
Categories
- Cloud Computing (1)
- Community (2)
- Marketing (3)
- PayPal (7)
- Philosophy (1)
- Programming (5)
- Unconference (1)
