In Paul Graham’s newest essay, (Cities and Ambition) he talks about how different cities have different ambitions and that great cities attract different people.

Fist of all I need to say, that I absolutely love his essay’s. I have acutally sat down and read each one of them intently and have gained so much from each one. Each one is packed with passion and intelligence, and they’re each spoken which such clarity and aptitude, and adore that. So definitely look forward to me ranting much more about the essay’s to come and possibly even past essays.

Anyways, in the most recent essay, he speaks about how each different city sends you a different message. For example, in New York, you get the message of fashion and wealth, and how there, everything is based around money and materials, and trying to be better than the person next to you. In Boston you get the message of intelligence, so you’re trying to be smarter than the person next to you. In San Francisco you get the message of trying to live a better life as well as a little bit of wealth and fashion. Each city you go to usually sends you a clear message about it self after awhile. And this essay kind kind of hits me, because within the next few years I’m going to be moving out of my parents house and will be on my own. Just something I need to start thinking about, and which city’s ambition will fit my personality. Until next time, have a good one.

Part 1 (the best)

Part 2

Well I’ve known about del.icio.us for some time now but have just started using it for a few days now. I follow a blog by Ben Casnocha and he uses his del.icio.us account quite frequently and I’ve followed all of links that he’s posts and have finally decided to create an account for myself. My account is del.icio.us/zingwat. Add me to your network!

2 reads that I’ve found interesting this week? They’re linked on my del.icio.us account as well, but I’ll tell you about them here just because they’re so damn interesting. 1 is this blog called Engineering @ Facebook. I found this on my daily visit to Hacker News. Here’s a little bio:

We are going to use this space to tell you a little about the code and systems that power Facebook. We thought it would be fun to share what goes on behind the scenes to ensure that the site scales smoothly and that we continue to provide the best overall user experience. Expect to see technical details, architecture discussions and maybe even some code samples. You should also stay tuned to find out about ripstiks, daft punk and a lot of other small things that make Facebook Engineering tick.

The second interesting read I’ve found this week is Johann Hari’s experiment with smart drugs. I found this on reddit this morning and basically it covers an experiment he did with Provigil calling it, “Viagra for the brain”. He goes on to explain what it did for him and truly, one of the most fascinating stories. Here’s an excerpt:

It was in March, in the drizzle, that I realized my brain was burned out. Like a rusty engine, I could hear it chug-chug and splutter – but it would never quite start running at top speed. That’s when I stumbled across a small story in an American scientific magazine. It said there was a spiky debate across America’s universities about the increasing use by students of a drug called Provigil. It was, they said, Viagra for the brain. It was originally designed for narcoleptics in the seventies, but clinical trials had stumbled across something odd: if you give it to non-narcoleptics, they just become smarter. Their memory and concentration improves considerably, and so does their IQ.

Link your del.icio.us accounts and post links to your favorite 2 articles that you found this week in the comment section. Have a good weekend!

Okay, so I just need to rant for a little bit about this, and I don’t like to complain/rant, nor do I like people who do, but I want to so, just think of this as like a disappointment.

Over the weekend Twitter has been having some serious cach problems according to their blog. Ever since I’ve been on the Twitter network it has been a pretty reliable platform and I’ve only had minor problems with it.

One of the reasons people are getting so irritated is that the Pennsylvania primary is tomorrow and people go onto Twitter to get the latest stories and polls; those stories can’t be put out because of the Twitter platform being bugged up. Our main communication platform is down and it’s rather irritating.

I guess this problem started late on Friday and Twitter JUST NOW put something up on their blog stating the problem and that they’re working to fix it.

Pownce, and even Friedfeed is not comparable to Twitter. I, along with many people on Twitter believe that we need a secondary source exactly like Twitter so when one goes down, we have another!

Twitter has been quite a reliable platform, and I love that, but damn, when it goes down, we feel it.</endrant>

UPDATE: Everything is back to normal!

As a huge and active member on Digg, I thought this was pretty cool.

Just a few weeks back Google announced that they will be acquiring Automattic, a company that offers open source and social media technology to Web publishers. Why is that HUGE? Well, “with Automattic, Google now has the leading content management system and blogging platform, which will enable us to rapidly bring to market advances in technology and infrastructure that will dramatically improve the effectiveness, measurability and performance of digital media for publishers, while improving the relevance of advertising for users.” And as an avid user of many of the services that Automattic has to offer this is a big deal. It’s really a good way to scale how much power Google really has.

As part of the deal, the Automattic team will be relocating to Hangar One at Moffett Field, once it has been made fit for occupation, which is estimated to cost around $54.2 million. They plan to set up bungee cords and climbing walls to provide the ultimate best development environment. Matt, an Automattic founder said that he asked for a full size replica of the USS Macon, but settled on access to the Google plane on weekends. “Automattic employees will be given the option to live in San Francisco or any other Silicon Valley city, and Google will pay up to $1 million per Automattic employee for housing. Google will be extending its shuttle service to include a fleet of helicopters, in an attempt to reduce travel time for employees.”

Sergey Brin said that Google has been looking for the “killer best way to advertise and monetize the social networks” and I think that they’ve definitely found it.

VS

In this post I’m not here to rag on each one or refer either but I do have to say that Facebook is my preferable choice over MySpace. That being said, lets now rant. So it is my conspiracy that MySpace is just a crappier wanna-be, ad filled version of Facebook. I know their sole purpose is exactly the same idea but every so often MySpace pushes out a new cluster/feature and it’s exactly what Facebook already has. 2 examples are: mood, and now MySpace just adopted the app idea, although its currently in beta. I have huge respect for both, currently use both, but MySpace common now, adopt your own ideas and don’t make me slap Bush for a free ringtone or ask me if I’m a ninja or a pirate, because I’m a ninja and you already know that.