http://www.whirlycott.com/phil Philip Jacob's web page Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:51:41 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en if you feel compelled to comment, please try to think of something interesting to say. youtube needs remarks like "awesome song" and "this video sucks" like it needs another shaky, blurry, garbled & distorted, 27-second camera-phone clip of Feist performing 1234 in [YOUR TOWN HERE]. thank you. http://www.whirlycott.com/phil/2008/07/05/feist-youtube/ Ben Adida is a super nice guy until you start misusing message digests. He once gave me a smackdown (I like to think of it as a learning experience) that was very helpful and now he's done the same thing in public: don’t Hash Secrets. Don't make the cryptographers cry. ... http://www.whirlycott.com/phil/2008/06/20/the-ben-adida-hmac-smackdown/ How to scale « François Schiettecatte’s Blog It not about the language, it is about the architecture. Nearly: good algorithms and proper caching are also part of the picture.  Sure, caching is part of good architecture, but it makes such a difference that it's worth calling it out separately. (This should really be ... http://www.whirlycott.com/phil/2008/05/21/algorithms-architecture-and-caching/ I've enjoyed using YottaMusic ever since Jake told me about it last year. I signed on and became a paying Rhapsody customer but I used the YottaMusic frontend for streaming my music. I was wondering why YottaMusic shut down over Christmas and now I know.  If anybody knows ... http://www.whirlycott.com/phil/2008/02/08/so-long-yottamusic/ http://www.whirlycott.com/phil/2008/01/31/never-forget/ I have an opinion piece in the the E-Commerce Times today about the need for openness as a critical factor in the way that retailers market their products. Rather, the way that retailers provide tools and content to their customers to help them market their products. In unrelated news, we ... http://www.whirlycott.com/phil/2007/11/30/the-key-to-shopping-20-success-empowering-customers/ Radiohead’s Warm Glow - New York Times Today, music lovers are left but two options: pay list price for an album, or perform what a fan might call a free download and a record company would call theft. Radiohead’s experiment suggests a third way out: let fans pay what they want ... http://www.whirlycott.com/phil/2007/10/14/radiohead%e2%80%99s-warm-glow-new-york-times/ This week, I am guest blogging on the popular Dutch blog IN10.nl and I just put up my first post where I attempt a silly experiment to get in touch with the band Soko.   I guess I am living in Holland this week, mentally, anyway. http://www.whirlycott.com/phil/2007/10/14/guest-blogging-in-dot-nl/ I just put a post on the StyleFeeder tech blog about my new favorite webserver: Nginx. http://www.whirlycott.com/phil/2007/10/05/singing-the-praises-of-nginx/ François writes about east coast startups and Bijan writes some more, all in response to Scott Kirsner's article in this past Sunday's Boston Globe (shameless plug: StyleFeeder is mentioned briefly). There seems to be a dimension of the conversation missing here, though. My view is that there is a veritable ... http://www.whirlycott.com/phil/2007/09/11/east-coast-startups-redux/