The piece comes across a little “woe is me.” Which I find strange. The tech industry that I know and love isn’t hurting at all. However, as the article states, the mediocre development jobs and the grunt work is being shipped overseas. That’s good for America and American developers.

This particular paragraph in the article kind of sums it up (I think):

Ms. Mann said, that an employer has sent her job abroad since she received her master’s in computer science more than two decades ago; the last time was in 2001. This week she starts a yearlong program to upgrade her programming skills, paid for by a federal program that assists workers who have been displaced by international trade.

The tech industry is so wide open for positions right now. Companies are scrambling to find the best talent and it’s incredibly difficult to find excellent developers. Software development also has vastly greater resources available to the self starter than many other industries.

All it takes to become an excellent developer is to decide on something to learn, and go learn it. You probably don’t even have to buy a book. In general, the communities are very supportive of “newbs” and there are tons of open source projects that you could work on to provide you with “something real.”

In any industry, if you “show up for your job, work a little, and then leave” you will probably be out of a job. There are hungry, passionate people all over the world that want your job. The good news is that if you care about what you do, constantly learn, and adapt then it will be impossible to ship your job overseas.

All it takes is to love your job. Do that – and I bet you keep it.

Also: read Linchpin

I did have one problem that after reading several articles I would keep getting a white screen. I have hundreds of feeds with thousands of articles and interrupted a sync – so maybe that was the cause.

The app is so good I missed two subway stops on the way to work. Woops! But I recommend anyone who has an iPhone and a Google Reader account to get this app.

I am in no way affiliated with the Byline team.

http://croonmytune.com

or read about it here: http://jumpcanopy.com/?p=21

Being able to make the necessary tradeoffs between conflicting constraints takes skill. I’ve always viewed constraints as my friends. They make me more creative. By thoroughly understanding the limitations that constrain a design solution, I can make the right tradeoffs and come up with the best design solution possible under those constraints. Plus, balancing different constraints often forces me to think outside the box, so inspires innovative design solutions.

Excellent and long article talking about various user-time-wasting or user-annoying things to avoid in your UI.

I think these are perhaps the tenth and eleventh questions you should ask, not the first two. Here’s my list of difficult and important questions you have to answer before you spend a nickel:

People are saying this was a twitter rival. I think their product
could have been great with a slight twist on marketing – making it for
“small group file and links sharing” rather than micro-blogging…
they already had the features – but didn’t push it in that direction.

I think the big problem with OpenID right now is that we’re all thinking about it like geeks. The main benefit to the user is that he/she doesn’t have to sign up for yet another account – or give out a potentially sensitive password (considering most users only use 1 password everywhere).

I don’t know what the percentage is, but I would bet nearly all (US) users have accounts at one of yahoo, aol, google (and maybe a handful of other openID providers – google is only supported through an AppEngine app).

I think the UI below would make openID more understandable to more users. You have any thoughts?

• :nth-child or :nth-child-of-type
• CSS gradients
• CSS animations or transitions

T.G.I. Friday’s launched their loyalty program, “Give Me More Stripes” on July 14, and the numbers are astounding: more than 380,000 members signed up, which evens out to more than 600 members per U.S. restaurant.

That, my friends, is what is wrong with America. It’s strange living in a city like New York where everyone is trying to be ultra-individual is sometimes frustrating, but then I read a story like this and think: “Who the hell are these people and why are they eating at TGI Fridays?”

It really says something about psychology though. People feel comfortable in what they know. It’s hard to switch them out of the things they know. Safety (in mind and experience) is really important to *a lot* of people.

It’s hard to remember that sometimes being the more adventurous-eater type myself.

He pointed to the success of Amazon’s checkout page. His thought is that their checkout page is so well received because it allows users total control of the experience rather than the locked-in Step 1, Step 2, Step 3 process.

It’s an interesting idea: allow your users to “play” in your software. The “lipstick” becomes much less important.