Ralph Shao
Short & Spontaneous Ramblings
Devote yourself to an idea. Go make it happen. Struggle on it. Overcome your fears. Smile. Don’t you forget: This is your dream.
Holy shit! Amazon noticed I wasn’t interested in their solicitations and automagically unsubscribed me!
It’s this sort of intelligent bacn’ing that will keep me a loyal customer of a company that does so much of its user outreach via email. Let’s hope other email-based companies start to follow suit.
Necessary evil, but I freaking hate Comcast
I let the cable guy use my computer to set up the internet yesterday and returned to find no less than 30 bookmarks for Comcast shit that I will never use. If I had any other options, I wouldn’t have gotten Comcast again. They are the scum of the earth in terms of their stance on net neutrality.
Now, as a web developer, I have no less than 4 (you could even consider it to be 5) different browsers installed on my computer: Firefox, Safari, Chrome, RockMelt, and Aurora (which is technically Firefox again).
Comcast (or Xfinity; stupid name) decided that it would install a folder into every single one of my bookmark toolbars with 10 sites each. Luckily, they are stupid and don’t recognize all browsers, so I just got hit with Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. My RockMelt was left delightfully untouched.
However, I am now wondering what other malicious shit Comcast has piggybacked onto my system…
Zynga To Delay IPO Because of Market Conditions
I can’t say I fully understand this. Can the market not bear a correctly priced Zynga? With Zynga’s amazing 4.4 cent ARPDAU, what does it matter if the market is rocky? At the end of the day, if Zynga’s revenues can be sustained, then it’s a great company to invest in.
There’s this huge and false misconception that if a company’s stock jumps after an IPO that it’s a good thing, but it’s not. It’s just hysteria! If a company cannot justify the financial performance of its stock price, then it deserves to have a dip. If Zynga isn’t prepared to deliver performance that warrants an IPO of $15-20 billion, then it’s not a good company to invest in regardless of market conditions. But if they can, then they should be poised to outperform.
Steve’s magnum opus isn’t Apple; it’s the people he’s impacted
My good friend Mark Bao posted his thoughts on Steve Jobs’ magnum opus — his life’s great work, which got me thinking…
Once every few months, someone creates something pretty cool that millions use.
Then once every few years, someone creates something adds value to the lives of millions and makes us all better off.
And then once every few decades, someone inspires millions to achieve things they wouldn’t have otherwise thought possible.
While Steve’s most renowned magnum opus will certainly be Apple, his more secluded legacy will be the innumerable people who no longer believe their crazy ideas are so crazy, the ones who challenge the status quo because they envision a greater future, the individuals who have been inspired to achieve something great because Steve has.
iPhone Mockup Frame (PDF)
We’ve had to do lots of paper prototypes and mockups at The Tap Lab and I thought I’d share the PDF I whipped up that we draw all over.
If you make sure to print at 100% (let it clip, there’s just white around the edges), it’s 2 actual-sized iPhones per page with considerable margin for notes.
"I had two Cokes today. Time spent with Ralph and Coke consumed are perfectly correlated."
"Players are just going to expect that when you play games, there’s a social component."
About Me
2011 © Ralph Shao
