Michael Torrez

I'm not a lawyer and my understanding of fair use seems to be about as poor as everyone's. What Scrollkit did, though, was tacky, plain and simple. They built an impressive product but are using someone else's work to try to promote it[1]. Is that illegal? I doubt it. But it's tasteless. And the smarmy "we did this in an hour" attitude is not only off-putting, it stretches the truth to the point of breaking. Anyone who's followed a "build a blog in five minutes" demo knows there's more to building something than just scaffolding -- Andre Torrez probably [said it best](http://notes.torrez.org/2010/12/learn-to-program-in-24-hours.html). There are plenty of ways they could have demonstrated their product without resorting to this kind of shallow mimicry. "Have you been blown away by the incredible work like the New York Times' 'Snowfall' or Pitchfork's cover stories? Want to build something similar yourself? We'd like to show you scrollkit." And then do a demo video with your own photography and reporting. Tells the same story without the shiteating grin. As it stands right now, though, they just look like they're jumping on a trend using someone else's work. [1] Disclaimer: I have friends who work at the Times, including ones that worked on Snowfall.

Reminds me of "put a burger in your shell". http://notes.torrez.org/2013/04/put-a-burger-in-your-shell.html

I think I agree with the Torrez/Gruber take that "If you see the computer, they blew it" http://notes.torrez.org/2013/02/if-you-see-the-computer-they-blew-it.h… That doesn't mean that a wearable device embedded in your glasses cannot eventually become a 'bicycle for the mind' but I think the fact that the computer is so noticeable and strange looking means that this version 1.0 will not be too successful. Google is positioning itself well to be the one who figures it out first, but I don't think Glass will take off as a mass-consumer device on a smartphone scale for a while. First, the computer will need to become 'invisible'. Until then, Glass will be highly useful to a few professions (and a toy for nerds), while Google will gain invaluable data and continue to iterate.

Reminds me of this blog post, "How to clone Delicious in 48 hours"[1]. It's cool that these people took their existing work and put a mockup of Siri's UI over it, but getting it to work smoothly and be useful is going to take a lot longer than 8 hours. Besides, Android doesn't even need this, right? I thought it already had a Siri equivalent, and Siri represents Apple yet again playing catchup. Right? On the other hand, Siri has supposedly one of the largest engineering teams at Apple. If a small shop can beat that team at their own game, that would be pretty neat to see. But, I am not holding my breath. [1] http://notes.torrez.org/2010/12/learn-to-program-in-24-hours.html

I think he does just like to whine, but I remember Gruber linking to this piece a while ago that mentions twidroid: http://notes.torrez.org/2009/08/android-software-day-3.html Summary: a bit clunky, options that should be disabled/omitted are enabled, slightly buggy. Lots of little cuts, rather than missing features. Things may well have improved since then; I don't use twidroid.

I don't have any first hand knowledge, but I generally stick with the conventional frameworks for any significant projects (programming language agnostic) especially when user data or authentication is concerned. Here's a few potentially helpful links: SO Community wiki on PHP Frameworks: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2648/what-php-framework-would-you-c… SO discussion thread on custom php frameworks:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2885384/custom-php-framework-feedba… SO discussion on using custom frameworks vs. Zend:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4368316/looking-for-custom-built-ba… Creating a Secure Login System the Right Way:http://tinsology.net/2009/06/creating-a-secure-login-system-the-right-… I think the biggest reason to use a framework is because of all of the unknown unknowns about web security. You certainly don't need a huge framework to handle the basics of web development, but once you get into anything past that it's better to have a framework. Andre Torrez wrote a memorable piece on just some of the unknown-unknowns [1]. There are a million little pieces that are non-trivial to the success and safety of web apps that need to be addressed. [1] http://notes.torrez.org/2010/12/learn-to-program-in-24-hours.html