A brilliant management two-for-one

There are two excellent ideas in this posting on ZDnet, aside from the observation that you can scale Ruby on Rails if you avoid hitting the disk farm for static content:

1) Have a team devoted to rapid scalable prototyping.  (LinkedIn Light Engineering Development)

2) Use free apps for both proof of concept testing and marketing.

Read and enjoy.

Ruby on Rails: scaling to 1 billion page views per month by ZDNet’s Dennis Howlett — While a lot of attention has been focused on Twitter with questions about whether Ruby on Rails scales, LinkedIn has been quietly running a RoR application on Facebook that is beating down around 1 billion page view per month. Bumpersticker, a relatively trivial Facebook application that allows you to create a cartoon that you can [...]

Best,

Dak

‘Free’ is always good for business

Now that I’ve got your attention, the next best thing to FREE is painless and predictable. Flat rate, as we know from telephony and other similar business models, reduces ambivalence about using a service, and increases the rate at which people BUY.

I received this in email today, and frankly, WOW.

Canada has, relative to the US, a low adoption of mail-order and therefore internet-order business models.

This is a pretty innovative way to get people over that hump. Good work, Ebay and Canada Post

Dak

SubVersion (SVN) for fun and profit

Lifehacker had a reference to a really excellent posting on “Using SubVersion for Writers.”

This is a really good overview, with examples, of how to use SubVersion for writing, web projects, etc.

The Free Economy and Your Business

I recently had a conversation with Nathon Gunn (CEO of Bitcasters) and this article came up. Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business.

Why you should read it: Not everything is going to be free, and at least 80% of the readers of this blog haven’t thought of all the business models that Chris Anderson (Editor of Wired, author of The Long Tail) lists in this article…and frankly, it’s the best and fastest overview you are going to see on the topic. If you think that every free business model is the same as Google, Yahoo! or broadcast TV, you are missing something.

Definitely worth a read. Why you should listen to me: for you old-timers on the web, remember HoTMetaL PRO and HoTMetaL Free? That was SoftQuad, and I was there. And, frankly, your competitors ARE thinking about this, if you aren’t, and they’ll eat your free lunch.

Best,
Dak