Period Three Blog » 2008

Apr282008

Rackspace files IPO

Posted by Gene in Business

Looks like Rackspace has filed with the SEC for an IPO. They are going to do an auction round just like Google originally did when they went public. I don’t normally care too much about this kind of thing but this one peeks my interest both because we use them as one of our hosting providers and that they’ve already tried to go public a few years back. Good luck Rackspace!

Link for more info here.

With the filing we also get a clearer picture of Rackspace’s business and financials. Its revenues grew 62 percent last year to $362 million, but it posted net profits of $17.8 million, which were down 10 percent from the year before. Cash flows from operations, though, remained healthy at $105 million last year, up from $61 million in 2006.

Another interesting tidbit: that truck accident that took down one of its data centers in Texas last November cost the company $3.4 million in credits to customers.

Comments (0)
Apr242008

Shutdown Day

Posted by Gene in Random Stuff

May 3, 2008 is Shutdown Day, you can do it. C’mon it’s on a Saturday too!

It is obvious that without computers we would find our life extremely difficult, maybe even impossible. If they disappeared for just one day, would we be able to cope?

Be part of one of the biggest global experiments ever to take place on the Internet. The idea behind Shutdown Day is to find out how many people can go without a computer for one whole day, and what will happen if we all participate!

Shutdown your computer on 03 May 2008 and find out!

What will you do instead of user your computer that day? If you are like me, your brain could use the rest.

Comments (0)
Apr182008

MIT prof Edward Lorenz, father of chaos theory, dies at 90

Posted by Gene in Random Stuff

Given that our Name is “Period Three”, which if you are a true geek understand it has “something” to do with Chaos Theory. Noticed the loss of Edward Lorenz, widely held accountable for creating Chaos Theory and from which comes the Period Three concept.

Edward Lorenz, an MIT meteorologist who tried to explain why it is so hard to make good weather forecasts and wound up unleashing a scientific revolution called chaos theory, died April 16 of cancer at his home in Cambridge. He was 90.

His MIT bio
NY Times article about his death
Wired article

What Period Three in the mathematical sense is about. Here’s another.

Comments (0)
Apr152008

Cabel Sasser and the epic development back-story behind Coda

Posted by Gene in Business, Software

This is a really great presentation given by Panic’s Cabel Sasser about the epic development back-story behind their recent product Coda. He reviews design decisions, development roadblocks, how they overcame their biggest issues and the ins-and-outs of product development. It is specific to developing a Mac application but the lessons really transcend the platform I think.

In style and substance, Panic is arguably the canonical indie Mac dev house. A day after their tenth anniversary they shipped Coda: an app that history will record as changing the face of website development software.

The always-entertaining Cabel recites Coda’s epic development back-story along with tangential takes on software design, usability and what it’s like to be resolution-independent.

View the entire presentation on Viddler here.

Comments (0)
Apr092008

Another reason why you should NEVER use NetworkSolutions for your domain registrations

Posted by Gene in Uncategorized, Business

TechCrunch has reported that NetworkSolutions is now hijacking subdomains when you use their domain registration (specifically their DNS) services. This is most reprehensible. I’m sure this is copyright infringement too. If you haven’t already, you should move any domains that you have registered with them to another registrar, who knows what they will do next…

Subdomain - Generally known as a “Domain within a Domain”, subdomains are web addresses built upon an existing domain name. For example, “subdomain.domain.com” is built upon “domain.com”.

Comments (0)
Apr032008

Findability

Posted by Gene in Design, Usability

A List Apart has a great article/story on Findability. I’ve been a student of this for a while now ever since attending one of Jared Spool’s talks a few years ago, where he discusses designing for the “scent” of findability.

The fundamental goal of findability is to persistently connect your audience with the stuff you write, design, and build. When you create relevant and valuable content, present it in a machine readable format, and provide tools that facilitate content exchange and portability, you’ll help ensure that the folks you’re trying to reach get your message.

Comments (0)