Category: web development

All about building a website but the administrative/business stuff: that goes in “business and economics.”

A PHP and a RoR job in the city (San Francisco)

Here are two jobs in the city. If you are interested contact Debra: datandassoc [at] this site or call 415 246 1979.

  • Senior Software Engineer [PHP]
  • Senior Interface Designer / Developer [Ruby on Rails, Ajax]

My blog is becoming a job board in this bubble, and that’s bothering me. I’m barely posting a fraction of the e-mails I get as it is. I’m only posting a job that isn’t PHP or Ajax-related jobs and I’m only if I’m asked (since I’ve achieved whore status.

You’ve been spared. 🙂

[Descriptions after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 0

Avoiding a repeat

Just got back from crashing the Xobni party.

Xobni is a Y Combinator company which has managed to reach the point of external funding. I have no clue what Xobni does other than make a Facebook app that tells people to e-mail you instead of send a message—I installed it in my profile just before heading out so I could not be totally full of shit.

Basically what Y Combinator does is give people a tiny amount of seed money to create a company, because WTF, it’s super cheap to create a Web 2.0 company. That’s a pretty good low risk, high beta idea, I suppose, but you’d have to be pretty young to be a Y Combinator company since anyone old can just jet over to the ATM and withdraw that amount.

(As you can imagine, I was one of the oldest people there. My bank statement I picked up as I staggered up to my apartment says I could start two Y Combinators from my checking account alone and I’m pretty much the poorest, most financially irresponsible techie in the Bay Area.)

[My party observations after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 6

Bunchball looking for peeps

Rajat from my LinkedIn…

There’s really exciting things happening here, and we’re staffing up the team! If you know anyone who might be a good fit for one of these positions, I’d greatly appreciate pointers and introductions.

We’re also looking for a few consultants to help us optimize our systems: a DBA with MySQL experience and an IT Consultant who can help us harden our network infrastructure (DNS, failover, etc.). Recommendations much appreciated.

[Director of Engineering & Senior Server Architect positions after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 0

Zivity nears launch

Zivity is social networking meets photo sharing meets erotica (or maybe just fine art and fashion). And they’re nearing launch.

The reason I like them (besides the fact that they sometimes invite this wallflower to their parties) is that they share royalties based on popularity with both their models and the photographers to take the pictures. That’s how it should be.

Interested in being a sweetheart or photographer?

Today I received an e-mail confirmation to their mailing list.

Zivity confirm page: Thanks for signing up, yo.

You’re welcome.

Rawr! 😀

Posted on by tychay 5

The double switch

*iPhone rings*

“What’s up?”

“You called me earlier.”

“I’m at work now.”

“What’s that noise in the background.”

“I’m watching the latest BubCast. There is something about Spock. They’re hosting a Lunch 2.0 soon and I need some fodder for our announcement. All I found so far was that shit TED posted.”

“TED?”

“You know…from Uncov? I met him last week. Someone on the website said he looks like Steve Jobs and John Lennon’s love child.”

TED drinks the blood of Web 2.0 startups

TED drinks the blood of Web 2.0 startups
Mars Bar and Restaurant, SOMA, San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX, built-in flash
1/60sec @ f/3.2, iso800, 17mm (25mm)

“Bub.blicio.us is everywhere. I was talking to some guy the other day saying how bub.blicio.us is everywhere and he says, ‘I write for bub.blicio.us.’”

“Who was it? Alex Ho?”

“I don’t know.”

“Asian dude, carries a Canon, takes event photos.”

IMG_6082

“Founders of Lunch 2.0” by genereationexe1

“Yeah, I think that was him.”

*watching video* “Geez, what’s up with this cute-girls-reading-geek-news thing anyway?”

Alison McNeill does BubCast

“I suppose that’s the new booth babe. That reminds me of the double-switch. Did I ever tell you about the double switch?”

“No.”

[The double-switch, t-shirts, and Lunch 2.0 after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 8

Socializr is looking for kick-ass-coders

Jonathan Abrams, the junior programmer at Socializr, sent me this. He is looking to double the size at the Socializr World Headquarters!

They have put together #1, #2, and #3, but they need #4, #5 and #6 to complete Socialzr.

Jonathan needs you to complete (his company)

Jonathan needs you to complete (his company)
Socializr World Headquarters, SOMA, San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX
1/80sec @ f/2.8, iso250, 16mm (24mm)

Jonathan sez: “Form feet and legs; form arms and body; and I’ll form the head…FORM BLAZING SWORD!

I’m behind on my Lunch 2.0 postings so I’ll post it here first.

Socializr is looking for Kick-Ass Coders — Employees #4, #5, and #6!

Socializr is a new Internet startup founded by Jonathan Abrams, the award-winning serial entrepreneur who created Friendster, and the co-owner of San Francisco nightclub Slide. Socializr is a free web service for sharing event and party information with your friends. It is our mission to be the best site on the web for online event invitations, event promotion, social planning, and event photo sharing. Socializr’s offices are located in the South of Market area in San Francisco.

Socializr is a very unique new company offering a dynamic and fun work environment. The company is currently only three people, and we plan to stay lean and mean. We are looking for our first additions to our software development team. The ideal candidates will be able to quickly contribute and create results. We need energetic and fun people who are passionate about building a great consumer web application with large traffic and growth.

If your idea of a fun afternoon is rapidly prototyping a cool new feature, creating an API, integrating with 3 other web services, AJAX-ifying something by hand with tight code instead of bulky libraries, and tuning a SQL query to be 100 times faster, all in one day, this may be the job for you. On the other hand, if your idea of fun is sitting around in meetings or working on code that doesn’t scale or products that no one will ever use, Socializr is probably not the right place for you.

[Mad skillz after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 4

My Plaxo Spam

Now that Pulse is officially out, I decided to “spam” my Plaxo members. I don’t know if it’s really spam since these are only the people already on Plaxo and I had to add them each individually (I wish there was a bulk function.)

A peek at Plaxo Pulse

[About Plaxo and Lunch 2.0 after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 9

Updating the college application for the MySpace generation

At dinner after the Facebook Lunch 2.0, a bunch of us at the table were trying to guess people’s ethnicity. Being in California, the correct answer might be like “part Paraguayan, part Uzbek” and shit like that. Half the people I know probably fucked up the scantrons when they applied to college and had to fill in the ethnicity bubbles.

Which got me thinking that colleges should just ask the same questions they do on your social networking profile. That way, when you get accepted, you can save yourself the work of making a Facebook profile.

Ethnicity? How many times did you looked at it and said to yourself: What!? The have a box for Eskimo and not for _____? Relationship status is a hell lot more useful in the real world. It’s going to tell me if I’m going to get a message from my friend that reads, “Are the food and drinks free?” (In a Relationship, Looking for Friendship) or “Are there any girls there?” (Single, Looking for Women). (Married? When was the last time you got a text from a married person? BTW, they should add a “With children” box to the Married profile to increase its utility.)

And with all the strange grade inflation going on, really, you can find a lot more about a person from the music they listen to, the books they rea… “Hello? Hey man. Are they hot? Hold on for a minute.”

And hotness can cross any ethnic line.

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 4

Bribe Your Siteops Day

Mariano tells me that it is important to keep your siteops well fed, because they are the ones that make us software programmers look good. SiteOps keeps your machines running and when you’re as big as Tagged, that means five people on call 24-7 maintaining hundreds of machines for you.

Things went ugly on Wednesday when us and half the Web 2.0 world went down because 365Main failed—“World’s Finest Data Centers”? Give me the second tier then—at least they won’t have three backup generators failing at once on the same day they issue a press release bragging about their two years of continuous uptime. Fuckers.

And even though our SiteOps was first on the scene, they couldn’t get in because the power outage locked the doors as they watched helplessly as the co-location decided to play five-year-old with the power on our server tier—machines never designed to be powered off at all. As the folks at uncov said:

“The only real victims of yesterday’s outage are the poor sysadmins who had to line up outside the datacenter to make sure their machines came up correctly. I really feel for these guys, they’re the only people in Web 2.0 who are doing honorable work.”

True dat.

Recovering from that hell, plus a scheduled power upgrade this weekend, and prep work for a massive site-wide software upgrade means that our poor SiteOps is going to be very busy this week in order to make me look good. So when I heard that it is System Administrator Appreciation Day, I thought it’d be apropos if I gifted them some clearly addictive substances in order to get SiteOps on my side—in this case a dozen cookies from Specialty’s.

Specialty’s

Specialty’s
Financial District, San Francisco, California

Apple iPhone

Keep your sysadmins happy!

Now don’t you wish you worked at Tagged? 😀

Posted on by tychay 3