I read an interesting article today about JC Penney gaming Google. How did Google find out? They had to be told by a journalist. So who looks worse, JC Penney or Google? In my opinion Google does. JC Penney did what many business do–they exploited a loophole. And what they did wasn’t illegal. They just [...]
It seems really obvious: You get a free education and that is great. Stanford offers some of their Computer Science courses free–I’ve worked through the first and discussed this on my blog. It has been fun for about two weeks, but now I’m realizing a few things: 1. As the class gets harder there is [...]
Lecture three ends with the entire Karel book and Lecture four jumps right into Java programming with “The Art of Java”. I just got done reading Chapter 3 and will watch the video for that lecture tonight. I have to admit, its a big jump from Karel and the first two chapters to chapter three. [...]
Lecture 2 was great. If you do all the readings (chapter 1-3 of Karel) you will be way ahead of the game. So far I have attempted the first assignment and got Karel to actually work. This is the one issue with doing this for no credits and on your own–no feedback from a professor. [...]
Mehran Sahami gives introductory information and housekeeping, but he keeps it interesting regardless. The reality is that you could skip the first lecture altogether if you are just taking the class like I am.
Why Stanford over MIT? Stanford’s course seems to be the most accessible to anyone. In fact its a course that most students take at Stanford regardless of their major. MIT’s intro course jumps right into coding with Python and is probably a bit more advanced and not where most people would want to start. Here [...]
Having worked online for thirteen or so years and having some development skills, it occurred to me that it has become increasingly important to get a hardcore computer science background. I have a business degree and a nearly completed masters in journalism however–the world is becoming a place of haves and have nots. Haves are [...]
The Google Chrome Web Store is pretty cool. But the most amazing thing is the Huffington Post and New York Times web site apps. It’s a great way to view a website. New York Times is more conducive to reading articles than HuffPo, but HuffPo has a cool interface and galleries. There is nothing cooler [...]
I passed a store today where it has a banner hanging out front that said 50% off sale every day. Is it really a sale if it happens every day and everything is always 50% off?
Lots of people hate numbers, but they would love them if only it was obvious how much they could help. If you have a website and don’t have some analytics program on it then why do you have a website? If it only servers to send photos to your family or its a closed blog [...]
