David McCreery Blog

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You won’t believe BuzzFeed’s pragmatic approach to open records

In a post published by Poynter, Buzzfeed shares seven practical tips to using open records laws to get records and databases.

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Not interested in this trivial alert.

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You should meet... some common sense networking etiquette

Christian Thurston shares a few ideas for suggested networking norms in Silicon Valley that could also be applied more frequently in NYC.

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Data science meetups for NYC

A colleague asked me to make a list of data science meetups worth following. I subscribe to mailing lists for the groups below even though I don’t always have time for their events.

Data & Society http://www.datasociety.net Data Driven NYC http://www.meetup.com/NYC-Data-Business-Meetup/ Beta NYC (civic technology/open data) http://www.meetup.com/betanyc/ Civic Hall (civic technology) http://civichall.org/events/ Columbia University Columbia University Data Science Institute https://lists.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/datascience-newsletter Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) https://sipa.columbia.edu/experience-sipa/events/month

New York University NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service http://wagner.nyu.edu/events/subscriptions NYU Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management (Part of Wagner) http://wagner.nyu.edu/rudincenter/events/ NYU Govlab Digest (Tandon School of Engineering) http://thegovlab.org/category/govlab-digest/

New America (public policy) https://www.newamerica.org/nyc/ Metis New York Data Science http://www.meetup.com/Metis-New-York-Data-Science/ NYC Open Data http://www.meetup.com/NYC-Open-Data/ Data Visualization NYC (Hosted by McKinsey & Co) http://www.meetup.com/DataVisualization/

Geospatial data Geo NYC http://www.meetup.com/geonyc/ GeoDev Northeast (ESRI) http://www.meetup.com/DevMeetUpNortheast/ Maptime NYC http://www.meetup.com/Maptime-NYC/

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Adobe releases new UX tool

Every time someone tells me they want to mockup an webpage using Photoshop, I try to talk them out of it. The program was never meant to be used for graphic design and forcing it to handle a multitude of design elements quickly becomes a hot mess.

InDesign, a program built for magazine and newspaper designers, has traditionally been my favorite Adobe product for prototyping webpages. It turns out that grids and content blocks are also essential to wire framing. Or laying out real content.

However, InDesign has not been perfect. For all its sophisticated alignment and formatting tools, it’s always taken me a little time to translate them into pixels and Bootstrap components. There is not a drag-and-drop widget library for those wanting to simulate iOS or Android user interface elements like dropdowns or buttons.

Adobe’s new Experience Design CC purports to solve many of these problems. It has just been released, so time will tell whether it represents a step forward in digital design or an effort by Adobe to lock customers into its monthly software licenses and proprietary cloud storage system.

Perhaps in six months, it may make a showing on Khoi Vinh's regular surveys of design tools.

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How May We Hate You: THE BOOK

Big news: 

We started this blog in 2013, back when “uber” was just something your roommate’s boyfriend would say before adjectives. Thanks to your love, support, codependence, and exhausted commiseration, we grew big enough to justify putting other people’s salaries on the line and write a book of 90% new material, including games, trivia, longer stories, full-color photos, hilarious illustrations, and short guest interaction scripts in the style of the blog. It was hard work–we briefly considered starting another blog to complain about how hard it is to write a book, but we didn’t. And now, it’s available for preorder.

How May We Hate You?: Notes from the Concierge Desk by Anna Drezen and Todd Dakotah Briscoe Potter Style (May 17th, 2016)

Illustrations by: Branson Reese

Photography by: Mindy Tucker

The book is so much more than the blog. There are longer passages about insane hotel moments that wouldn’t fit on the blog, extremely informative trivia, fun games, challenging quizzes, photo hunts, industry gossip, and a full-page picture of a puppy dressed like a tourist. If you travel at all, this book also has helpful, real-world advice you won’t find anywhere else (we were forced into being helpful by our editor. FORCED). Also, it’s beautiful. It will look perfect on your sad Ikea coffee table.

Buy a copy for yourself, your new boyfriend, and your aunt who travels for work.

And thank you for making this all possible. This book is for you.

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Putting this on my wishlist now.

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SQL Server goes Linux

I’m impressed by today’s news that Microsoft is preparing to release SQL Server for Linux. As a database platform I’ve used since my computer science studies (along with MySQL and Postgres), I’ve always considered it to be well designed and one of the crown jewels of the Microsoft server/developer platform.

Microsoft has resisted for years releasing any database product on a non-Windows operating system. The most glaring is the absence of Access in the Macintosh version of Office.

However, databases are increasingly important for anyone that has lists or data to store. Excel and it’s sad pivot tables are often made to work as a poor man’s database. Furthermore, data analysis apps need a place to retrieve and store the items they process.

In a highly competitive database market that also includes MongoDB and SQLite, it’s worth watching Microsoft as they embrace Linux.

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Tumblr valued at 0

Fortune reports that Yahoo has now written off the billion-dollar acquisition of Tumblr. Yahoo failed to integrate the sales team and also fend off other upstarts like Medium.

Full disclosure: Tumblr powers this blog. I also interviewed with Tumblr shortly after its purchase by Yahoo. Maybe it’s for the best that I did not join them.

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It doesn't bode well for @twitter to see them on the verge of shutting down the meetup group devoted to their engineering.

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Although I promise that I selected an appropriate gift for Karli based on her customer service performance, I swear that I did not judge her based on her photo or lifestyle of “getting tattooed and eating too much.”

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Someone at Tumblr watches a little too much Netflix.

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Apple’s charged design for a battery case

Although I own a range of Apple products, I can’t say that I’m rushing to add their new battery case to my iPhone 6s. It looks like the phone is a few weeks away from giving birth to an iPhone 7.

The Verge speculates that patents held by casemaker Mophie limit the most obvious and appealing design options. The argument is novel, but leads to the question of whether the patents are valid. The US Patent Office guidelines suggest that design patents are not applicable when function dictates design; furthermore, the design must be original, the Morphie cases hew closely to Apple’s design of the phone’s silhouette:

A design for an article of manufacture that is dictated primarily by the function of the article lacks ornamentality and is not proper statutory subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 171. Specifically, if at the time the design was created, there was no unique or distinctive shape or appearance to the article not dictated by the function that it performs, the design lacks ornamentality and is not proper subject matter. In addition, 35 U.S.C. 171 requires that a design to be patentable must be "original." Clearly a design that simulates a well-known or naturally occurring object or person is not original as required by the statute.

And presuming the patents are enforceable, what’s to stop Apple from licensing them or just buying Morphie outright? News reports estimate the company has around $200 billion in cash. With all that money, I wish the company would have tried a little harder.

I actually wish Apple would release a battery brick that I could keep in my backpack and use to top up my battery only when it’s failing. This would let me keep the phone in my pocket without the additional bulk and weight. If Apple used the same materials as the actual phones, having a coordinated power brick could be a functional yet more pleasing objet d’art.

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#AT&Twireless contract vs apartment contract

I have a cell phone under a 24-month contract from AT&T. I have an apartment under a 12-month contract from a local management company. I previously thought that the financial implications of both contracts would remain fixed over their lifetimes, but I was wrong.

Until my lease expires, the monthly rent for my apartment stays the same regardless of what expenses the building owner incurs. The rate includes water, heat and a live-in super. Even if NYC has a severe winter, the building owner can’t pass a heating oil surcharge on top of my rent. The rent I pay is the price I accepted when I signed the lease.

I had the same mindset when I recently renewed my AT&T contract for another 24 months. By getting a lower up-front price for my iPhone 6s, I agreed to stay for the next two years as a customer. I also agreed to pay a large penalty if I found a better deal elsewhere.

I was happy to make the commitment because I thought the costs would stay fixed over time. If AT&T could raise rates at will, wouldn’t it make more sense to buy a full-price unlocked phone and get with month-to-month service from whomever’s cheapest?

It turns out that AT&T can indeed raise my monthly rate at any time for any amount and any reason. And it’s doing so next year. 

The AT&T Wireless Customer Agreement helpfully explains:

We may change any terms, conditions, rates, fees, expenses, or charges regarding your Services at any time. We will provide you with notice of material changes (other than changes to governmental fees, proportional charges for governmental mandates, roaming rates or administrative charges) either in your monthly bill or separately.

If the customer finds this objectionable, there’s only a brief 30-day period to reject the new rate and leave the contract:

[You] may terminate this agreement without paying an early termination fee or returning or paying for any promotional items, provided your notice of termination is delivered to us within thirty (30) days after the first bill reflecting the change.

After that, you’re stuck with the new rate and the heavy cancellation fees of the contract. The current increase is only $5 a month, but it’s still annoying since I already over-pay for a super-sized service level because the cost of exceeding my monthly quota is even more unpleasant to consider.

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Amazon now supports two-factor authentication

Finally, Amazon supports two-factor authentication for its consumer accounts: a one time code generated by a phone app or text message. The security feature has been available for a relatively long time for commercial Amazon Web Services users. However, I was always more concerned about security of my consumer account, since I often end up with giftcard balances from places like Coinstar (where I can empty my piggy bank without commission for credit).

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Since Amazon is based in Seattle and not a place I would go to seek out French goods, I find their memorial to be a little strange and unexpected even if their heart is in the right place.

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#Paris #Facebook detox

As much as I cherish my friends in Paris and the time I spent there working for Orange, there was a point when I wished that Facebook would allow me to block all references to the tragedy there. In processing the events, I wanted to connect with my friends but quickly reached my limit with the grim news coverage that took over my feed.

Facebook provides a variety of tools to filter out friends whose sharing habits make them insufferable. It also has a remarkable content clustering algorithm, so every time someone posts a new story, it suggests several related ones.

Given both of those features, I wish there as a way to filter out events or topics that are upsetting. After all, the customer premise of Facebook is to curate a update stream that gives users the content they want so that they stay engaged with the site for as long as possible.

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No time for subway time

While the MTA has not wasted any time merchandising its campaign against “showtime”, it’s taking a more leisurely approach to implementing up-to-date subway arrival times. Until that happens, any estimation of train arrivals, including on iPhone apps, is just an estimate. These times are drawn from a fixed time table and don’t reflect actual track conditions.

So when will we know for sure whether the next train is coming in 5 minutes or 30? Not for at least 5 years.