JJinuxLand

I just finished listening to What Would Google Do? It was okay. I think the book was really about what Jeff Jarvis would do. For instance, he argued very strongly for some things that he admitted Google doesn't do. In general, I think he gets a lot of stuff right, but he also overstates some things, and he even gets some things wrong. If you really want to understand Google's ethos, I think In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives is more on target.

The other tutorial that I created for Google I/O this year just went live. In "Using Ruby on Rails and YouTube for Education", I explain that Ruby on Rails, YouTube, education, and TDD are like a peanut butter, honey, and banana sandwich! I'm particularly proud of the section that teaches you how to do test-driven development with RESTful web services, including a "live" (for some definition of live) coding session. Enjoy!

I did two tutorials for Google I/O this year. The first one, "YouTube for Your Business", just went live. It's amazing that it took weeks of effort and 8.5 hours of filming to produce these two videos, but they're less than 45 minutes long combined! Anyway, if you're interested in learning about all the different ways you can use YouTube for your business, including both technical and non-technical examples, check it out!

I just finished listening to In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. I liked it. While it may not be as good as Steve Jobs' biography or Steven Levy's other book, Hackers, I still really enjoyed it. It really helped me put my experiences at Google into context. It's amazing how little Google has changed, how much it continues to work on, and how much Steven Levy was allowed to get an inside look at Google.

I listened to Steve Jobs' biography while commuting to and from work. It was incredibly interesting, and extremely well written. I highly recommend it.