In the latest essay on his Posterous, I Have a Bad Feeling About This, Reg “raganwald” Braithwaite, posts his contribution to Uncensored: A Charitable Project to Support the Open Internet. In it, he writes:

My perspective is a little like that of C3PO in Star Wars, a minor character throwing his hands up in dismay at calamity and providing others with an interesting viewpoint on the great events of the last forty years.

Like any space opera, the story of information technology is a very simple one. It is played out in a myriad of different ways by a revolving cast of characters, but it always has its loveable heroes, its predictably nefarious villains, innocent civilians to be saved, and bumbling bureaucrats that aren’t inherently evil, but begin every story aiding the forces of darkness out of a misplaced belief they are preserving law and order in their corner of the galaxy.

In it, he encourages us – the rebels – to resist the collective empire of the MPAA, RIAA, Intellectual Ventures and those who would impose things like SOPA and PIPA and stifle technological progress in the name of preserving outdated business models. It’s a good read – go there now!

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

Shopify’s going to SxSWi – the South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas! It runs from Friday, March 9th through Tuesday, March 13th and if you’re going to be there, we’d like to catch up with you! Among the Shopifolks who’ll be there will be:

• CEO and co-founder Tobias Lütke
• CPO (Chief Platform Officer) Harley Finkelstein
• Developer Advocate Edward Ocampo-Gooding
• Yours Truly, Platform Evangelist Joey deVilla

I’ll be speaking on the panel at the session titled 5 Brands Travel the US Inspiring Entrepreneurship. It’s a talk about the what, how and why behind the BarCamp Tour and the companies who were behind it (Batchbook, Grasshopper, Mailchimp, Shopify and Wufoo). Here’s the abstract for this talk:

Grasshopper, Mailchimp, Wufoo, Shopify, and Batchbook all joined forces in 2011 to create and execute the Barcamp Tour. We journeyed across the country together to work with 10 different entrepreneurial cities and help them put on a barcamp that would inspire / energize their communities. We shared our passions, listened to other peoples, and took in the unique character of each city we visited. Boy did we learn a lot. We would love to share those observations & experiences with you in hopes that you might take that passion back to your own community. We also wanted to explain why our 5 brands so strongly believe in free beer and hugs versus banner ads and trade shows. These word of mouth branding tactics have been a major part of all 5 of our company’s growth, and we are ready to share our secrets!

The session takes place on Sunday, March 11th. Usually, the Sunday slot is the kiss of death, but our talk takes place in the hangover-friendly timeslot: 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.. We’ll be presenting at the Omni Downtown Hotel (700 San Jacinto, at 8th Street) in the Lone Star room.

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

Straightforward actions trump mealy-mouthed PR, sorry beats sophistry. Nicely done.

For the backstory, see this article: Led Down the Garden Path.

The Shopify Fund is a one million dollar pool of money that we’re using to encourage the development of apps built on Shopify’s ecommerce platform. We’ve funded the first four apps, which I’ve summarized in this article, and we’re on the lookout for more! The video above (4 minutes, 11 seconds) explains both Shopify apps and the Shopify Fund.

If you’re an app developer and want to get in on some of this Shopify Fund action, take a look at the Shopify Fund page and use the form to tell us about your app idea! We might fund it.

If you’ve already applied for the Shopify Fund but aren’t one of the first four to get funded, keep working on your app idea and submit it to the Shopify App Store! The fund isn’t just about getting new apps built, but also enabling developers to work on improvements to their apps. Submit your app, go to the Shopify Fund page and tell us about it! We might fund that development.

If you’ve got an app in the Shopify App Store already and you have ideas for a revision, go to the Shopify Fund page and let us know what they are – we might fund that revision!

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

Update: Path’s CEO has apologized and promised to delete any collected data. See this entry.

It’s the top story on Techmeme at this moment: the socially-networked “lifestreaming” iPhone app known as Path uploads your entire address book to its servers.

This fact was discovered by Denso developer Arun Thampi when he decided that he’d build a Mac OS X client for Path at his company’s hackathon. To do this, he decided to observe the API calls that Path made to its servers only to discover that the data for his Contacts app – names, email addresses, phone numbers – was getting HTTP POSTed to https://api.path.com/contacts/add. To see the the full story, be sure to read Arun’s blog entry on the matter.

Path CEO Dave Morin sent a reply to Arun, explaining that the data is used only to help users connect to their friends and family and nothing more. He also said that they “proactively rolled out an opt-in for this” on their Android client a few weeks ago and will include the same opt-in feature on the next version of the iOS client. For anyone who has the current version on their iPhone, that feature came a little too late. This is bad, and the fact that Path has recently been working on “proactive” fixes suggests that they know it.

I have Path on my phone because it’s a gorgeous app and a number of my friends and coworkers were on the network and encouraging me to take it for a spin. That means that my contact info resides on Path’s servers. A good chunk of my life is public by my own choice, so I can live with Path having my own address and phone number, but nobody else on my contacts list signed up for that. Furthermore, inclusion in my contacts list doesn’t necessarily imply that they’re someone I want in my social network graph. But Path can’t discern between my friends and family and others like my ex-wife, my local cab company or that client in Australia who just had a couple of questions. You’d think that Path would’ve learned the lessons of “Fuck You Google”, in which a woman wrote about how Gmail overshared her info with her abusive ex-husband.

It’s an even bigger problem in the case of celebrities, who presumably have other celebs’ numbers in their on-phone Rolodexes. Take a look at this tweet from Alyssa Milano:

. @Path .. Is there an OPT OUT of you having my ENTIRE iphone address book on your server ?bit.ly/zKsLky /via @heykim

— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) February 8, 2012

The response, by the way:

@Alyssa_Milano shoot me a note at dave at path dot com.

— Dave Morin (@davemorin) February 8, 2012

And did it also upload my notes about people? (Yes, I’m one of those people who actually uses the “Notes” field in Contacts. For business contacts, it’s all part of the schmooze; for friends and family, it’s so I remember things like their likes, dislikes, birthdays, anniversaries and other little things.)

In the comments to Arun’s article, iOS developer Matt Gemmell suggests the following to Dave Morin:

Why are you uploading the actual address book data, rather than (say) generating hashes of the user’s email addresses locally, then uploading just those hashes? You’d be able to do friend-finding that way, and similarly if you uploaded hashes of all email addresses in the user’s address book, you’d be able to do your notifications of when a friend joins. At no point would your servers ever need to see the actual email addresses or phone numbers from our contacts.

He also points out that sending the entire Contacts database to their servers may be a violation of the App Store’s terms and conditions. In fact, section 17.1 of that T&C states:

17.1: Apps cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining the user’s prior permission and providing the user with access to information about how and where the data will be used.

Dave Morin’s been firefighting ever since the news about Path got out. He’s stayed on message with the “we’re not trying to be evil here” line, but with the faith in Google’s “Don’t be evil” mantra pretty much gone, it’s not very reassuring. On the bright side, he has made it clear that if you want your address book and even your Path account deleted from their servers, you have but to send an email to service@path.com.

Update (February 8, 2012): Mike Arrington has put online what I’d been thinking (but didn’t think Path would ever do without a lot of pressure): they should simply delete all the address book data they pulled. It would be an excellent goodwill gesture; let’s see if they take up his suggestion.

(Little hint, Dave: if you keep overusing “proactive” and “proactively” the way you have in your responses and tweets, it becomes a filler word, like “um” and “uh”. Especially when such “proactivity” seems limited to stating that you’re not doing anything wrong.)

There’s been some freaking out over Path in the comments for Arun’s blog entry as well as in other venues online, but it’s time to let cooler heads prevail. Let’s see what Path does in the next 48 hours – as Arun himself puts it, “I hope we can keep calm and continue to discuss this sensibly”.

If you’re developing software that makes use of people’s personal info, let this be a lesson!

Does the diagram below pique your interest?

How about this shell session?

If both of these images have made you think “tell me more!”, you’ll want to:

• Take a quick peek at this page
• Drop Doug Tetzner a line or give him a ring at 613-742-3205.

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

Me interviewing Jeff at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference in October 2008.

Jeff Atwood made the web better when he co-founded Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. These high-signal, low-noise questions-and-answers online places have grown from a single site whose audience was software developers to a network of 80 or so that cover an increasing number of topics and interests.

Yesterday, he announced that effective March 1st, 2012, he will no longer be part of the day-to-day operations of Stack Exchange. It’s a startup, and startup life and family life, especially with young children, can be very incompatible. Jeff has a young boy and two twin girls whose age can still be measured in days. He’s decided to take more time to be with his family, and I can’t help but approve.

Thanks for everything, Jeff, and we’ll see you out there!

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

Update: Newsy have put together a piece summarizing the tech news’ reaction to the Samsung Galaxy Note ad. It’s at the end of this article – check it out!

Even if you missed the big game, you can still catch the Superbowl ad for the Samsung Galaxy Note. Directed by Bobby Farrelly (one of the Farrelly Brothers, creators of high-larious films like Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary, and unfortunately, the upcoming Three Stooges Movie), it’s a continuation of the series of ads that poke fun at Apple fandom. It opens with a scenes from lineups outside Apple stores. The bored Apple fanatics are tethered to their white earbuds and awaiting their next gift from the gods when one of them sees a passer-by with a Samsung Galaxy Note.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa – what is that?” he asks.

“Here,” says the passer-by, walking towards soon-to-be-ex-Apple-worshipper. “It’s the new Samsung Galaxy Note.”

Then comes the kicker: “It’s got a pen?” That’s right: it’s bringing back the stylus, the very thing that iOS devices put out of style.

After that, the Apple fans break free of their self-imposed imprisonment in line – a line that Samsung probably wishes they had – and partying, powered by The Darkness’ hit I Believe in a Thing Called Love – ensues.

It’s a little hard to tell from the ad, but the Galaxy Note is bigger than your standard phone; in fact, it’s bigger than even the biggest of the notoriously oversized Samsung phones. Size-wise, it’s in Newton territory: smaller than a tablet, a tad too big to fit into most pockets. Perhaps they’re also trying to bring cargo pants back:

Photo from TechInferno.

I’m reminded of this promotional photo, where Sony tried to convince you of how portable their smallest VAIO was:

It sits somewhere in the “Zone of Suck” from my 2009 article, Fast Food Apple Pies and Why Netbooks Suck (I’m going to have to revise the graphic to include tablets as well as the Galaxy Note):

As for what it’s like to use the device, consider this review in TechInferno. The reviewer loves the Galaxy Note and says he’s never going back to an iOS device, but he damns it with his faint praise:

• “Is the Galaxy Note as smooth as an iOS device? Not really, it still has the android signature stuttering when you scroll and the occasional semi-freeze here and there.”
• “Is the Galaxy Note built as good as the latest iPhone? No, it is not, I think that a fair comparison would be to equal it to the build quality of the 3G/3Gs versions of the iPhone.”
• “Sure you can expect some hiccups here and there, not everything is so custom tailored to the device and to bring it to full functionality you need to invest some effort but in my personal opinion this phone is worth it.”
• “Who I would NOT recommend this device to:
  • People expect the device to “just work”
  • Women or men with small hands
  • People who like to operate the phone with one hand only.”

You know what they say about guys with big phones…

• “Build quality is very good and the device feels solid in the hand although iPhone 4 build feels better.”
• “Out of the box with all options at their defaults the device will eat through the 2500mA/h battery in less than 10 hours of normal usage.”
• “The stylus needs a fair amount of pressure to operate, otherwise it doesn’t work.”
• “I still haven’t found a keyboard that matches the precision of the iPhone, i can’t type as fast but maybe it’s a matter of getting used to it?”
• “I keep accidentally pushing the Back or the Menu buttons especially in landscape mode when trying to type/interact with the screen – a big design flaw.”
• “Expect surprised looks from people around when you put it to your ear to talk. It really does look a bit ridiculous, almost like holding an iPad to your ear.”

• “The text to speech compared to Siri is awful.”
• “Keep in mind that Ice Cream Sandwich update for the Note is around the corner and is expected to fix a lot of issues listed here and introduce lots of neat features.” That, and the Lord Jesus Christ is due back any day now, so look busy!

I think I’ll be sticking with my iPhone 4S and iPad 2 a little while longer, thanks.

Update

Newsy’s got a good piece summarizing the tech press’ and pundits’ reaction to the Galaxy Note ad. Check it out!

Ruby Job Fair 2012: This Friday, February 10th

The Ruby Job Fair isn’t your father’s (or mother’s) job fair. And why would it be? After all, it’s an event put on by Meghann and the other fine folks at Unspace, the development shop that gave the world the mind-blowingly amazing RubyFringe and FutureRuby conferences.

You may have heard or learned from painful experience that job fairs are like this:

Unspace’s gatherings are a little more like this:

The two photos above were taken at an event that they threw called Technologic, which took the typical evening tech seminar on its ear. You can read more about it in my blog entry about that event.

If you’re looking for work that involves Ruby programming and you’re going to be in downtown Toronto on Friday, you should register to attend the Ruby Job Fair. It’ll be your chance to meet prospective Ruby employers and their representatives, which will include me – I’ll be there as the Shopify Guy. You won’t be able to miss me: I’ll be the one with the accordion…

The quick details about Ruby Job Fair:

• Date: Friday, February 10, 2012
• Time: 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.. Do not show up early. They’ve got work to do.
• Place: Unspace HQ, 342 Queen Street West, just a bit east of Spadina, beside the Lululemon store.
• Registration fee: $5 for job-seekers, $15 for employers seeking job-seekers. You need to register to attend.
• Other details: See the registration site and read the notes carefully!

Why Work at Shopify: The Hard-Nosed, Pragmatic Business Reasons

Normally, I’d start with a description of Shopify’s hacker ethic, how it’s a great-yet-casual work environment, that everyone gets a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air as their work machine, that  and how fun and rewarding it is to work there. That’s all true, but I’m sure every software development shop has a spiel along the same lines. So I’ll give you that spiel later. How ‘bout I answer the question that might be lingering somewhere in your mind: “Are you guys still going to be around a year from now, or are you going to crash and burn and leave me looking for work again?”

For starters, we’re in the ecommerce business, and business is good. How good? In the second quarter of 2011 – remember, that’s only April, May and June – ecommerce sales in the U.S. were $48 billion. And impressive as that figure may be, ecommerce is still less than 5% of all retail.

Ecommerce is growing too, and it’s becoming a bigger and bigger part of how people buy and sell things; in fact, ecommerce sales are growing at over twice the rate of all retail.

Going from ecommerce in general to Shopify in particular, things are looking great there too. We went from 11,000 to 18,000 shops in 2011, and as of this writing, we’ve crossed the 20,000 mark. The 2010 total sales from all our shops was $125 million, and we more than doubled that last year, moving $275 million in products.

On top of being a profitable business, we also have had two rounds of funding, which gave us a grand total of $22 million invested in us. That money’s being used to grow the company in all sorts of ways, from the Shopify Fund to things like our recent acquisition of Select Start Studios, a mobile dev company.

Why Work at Shopify: The “I Want to Work Someplace Cool” Reasons

Here’s what was waiting for me at my desk on my first day at Shopify. I felt like a kid in a candy store:

We want to do good work, and good work needs good tools.

Good work needs a good physical environment, and we’ve got that in spades. Check out our brand-new office. Here’s the reception desk, which is occupied by Laura, our gets-stuff-done-so-we-can-get-stuff-done person:

We believe that small, agile teams work best, so we’ve broken our space into offices just like the one below, and each team is free to set up and decorate their space as they see fit. They’re not normally this crowded; the photo below is from the party we had on Friday:

I’m in the developer advocate/evangelism group, and we went with this pop art wall covering in our zone:

Others on our team have some great illustration talents and put them to good use:

Sure, we’ve got your standard meeting rooms (and they’re pretty nice for what they are):

…but one of them’s equipped with an Xbox and Kinect:

And then there are little gems like this room:

It’s the 8-bit paradise. I spent an afternoon working on API docs in the room, a nice quiet space where you can concentrate, after which you can reward yourself with classic 1980s console action!

This poster was created by our design team, a very talented bunch:

We’ve got a fine collection of vintage cartridges:

Ah, the Atari 2600. It takes me back to my wonderfully misspent youth:

Why Work at Shopify: The “I Want to Draw the Owl” Reasons

One of the reasons that Shopify is successful is that we’ve worked out some ways of doing things. We’re all about “drawing the owl”, and the way we do things is an in the service of drawing that owl. (Don’t worry, you’ll soon know what “drawing the owl means”.)

Shopifolks – that’s what I like to call people at Shopify – are self-starters. Once given a goal, they use their skills, knowledge and good judgement to do the work necessary to hit that goal. They get stuff done. They’re what Y Combinator’s Paul Graham calls “resourceful”.

I recently wrote about how my team (and pretty much every other team at Shopify) gets things done, but it’s worth repeating:

• Act like an owner. You don’t "just work here", you own a piece of a company and have a stake in its success. Work as if your livelihood, career and reputation were riding on it, because as an owner, it is! Be entrepreneurial and own your domain: if you have an idea and it lines up with the company’s goals, make that idea happen.
• Know what to work on and what things to ship. While owners have the freedom to work on and ship whatever they like, they also work in the real world. 80% of what makes the company go is often achieved by doing the most important work first, which typically makes up 20% of the available tasks. Sometimes these tasks can be tedious and feel like drudgery, but if they’re what makes things happen for our customers and their customers, they’ve got to be done, and with the highest priority.
• Done is better than perfect, or "the best" is the enemy of "the good".Perfectionism is a form of procrastination. It assumes that time is an infinite resource, that other tasks can wait while you add "just one more touch" and that "perfect" is attainable. You have to be able to make the call and say "done" at some point. A good feature that our customers use and enjoy is infinitely better than a perfect one that "will be available soon". As they say at Apple, "Real artists ship".
• Have high standards. While done is better than perfect, good still remains better than bad.
• It’s okay to fail; just fail gracefully. The only sure-fire way to not fail is to not do anything. Since we can’t do that and remain in business, never mind take the company to the heights we want to, we have to accept failure as part and parcel of trying. Sometimes we’ll make mistakes, other times we’ll do things right and still our best-laid plans won’t work because of circumstances outside our control. The trick is to learn from failure and make sure our failures aren’t fatal. As our CEO Tobi likes to say: "If I’m not failing every now and again, I’m not trying hard enough."
• Communicate good news quickly, communicate bad news ever more so. The first part is easy: it takes no effort to tell the team your project is a success. It’s a good thing to do so; good news bolsters the team and success often breeds more success. However, a combination of pride and fear (and in some companies, a "cover your ass" culture) makes it difficult to tell the team that you’re having trouble or that something’s not working out. It’s best to tackle problems as soon as possible, while they’re still small and manageable, and the best way to do this is to communicate bad news as quickly as possible — remember, it’s okay to fail.
• Understand and respect the makers’ and managers’ schedules. As Paul Graham wrote in his essay, Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule, makers and managers operate by different schedules. Managers’ days are determined by their appointment calendars, which divide the days into hours and even half-hours, and things like meetings fit into the manager’s schedule easily. Makers, on the other hand, do things in half-day or even full-days blocks, and things like meetings are disruptive. Some of the team operate on a maker’s schedule, other operate on a manager’s schedule, and many of us switch between the two, depending on what day it is and what tasks they have on that day. Know who operates on which schedule (and when), and understand and respect those schedules.
• Operate lean and mean. We’re made up of multi-talented, capable, autonomous, ambitious go-getters, and that means we don’t have to operate like a big, lumbering beast. Unless the circumstances are unusual, there really should be 2 people maximum per deal or project. Meetings and calls should be kept to 30 minutes or less, not counting brainstorming or design pow-wows. And full-on meetings aren’t always necessary: you should be able to "just pop by" anyone’s office or desk or call them up on Skype.
• Update often. Because we operate lean, means and independently, communication is vital. Keep your teammates apprised of your progress! 
• Draw the owl. In the end, that’s what you’re trying to do…

Think You Can Work at Shopify? See Me at Ruby Job Fair.

If Shopify looks like the sort of place where you’d like to work, and if you think you’ve got the skills, enthusiasm and passion to work with us, come see at Ruby Job Fair. I’d be happy to answer all your questions and hook you up!

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

Dan Martell has serious startup cred. He founded two companies that got acquired (Spheric in 2008, Flowtown last year), is working on Clarity.fm, mentors at 500Startups and GrowLab, is an angel investor and answers questions of the startup helper organization Sprouter and blogs at Maple Butter. If you’re in a startup or thinking about starting or joining one, you’d do well to follow him on Twitter and check in on his writings from time to time.

If you’ve got questions about startups, you’re in luck: Dan has posted 189 answers to the most popular questions from Sprouter on Maple Butter. He answers such questions as:

• I’ve heard that people need to move to a ‘Valley’ to succeed. Is that true?
• What % of available time should I put into these: 1. Building Product, 2. Building Metrics/Usage Reports/KPI and 3. Raising Angel Investment?
• What’s the best way to find a co-founder for your startup?
• What are 3 things that make a startup team successful?
• How should I approach an angel investor?
• What is the best way to approach another startup for a potential partnership?
• What is your advice for dealing with criticism when starting/launching a new business or coming up with an idea? Should the idea or business be kept secret?
• How can we reward our top users without money and without appearing too big brotherish?
• What advice can you give us to avoid the fear of start our own company and not stay working for someone else?
• What’s the best startup advice you’ve ever received?

Important questions; interesting answers. Dan’s article is worth checking out.

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

In Shopify shops, a product can have multiple photos and multiple variants (variants are slightly different versions of a product, such as different sizes and colors). Tetsuro Takara, one of the guys on Shopify’s Guru team, has written an article showing how you can rig up your shop’s template to show a matching photo for the currently-selected variant (for example, showing a picture of the orange version of the t-shirt when the customer has selected “orange”). It’s a clever, subtle trick, but I think it’s one that your customers will like.

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

The most recent report released by Pew Internet Research, The Rise of In-Store Mobile Commerce, revealed that 50 percent of shoppers used their smartphones to research purchase decisions over the holidays. Of note were the following statistics:

• 38% of those surveyed used their smartphones to make a voice call while shopping in a store to ask about a product.
• 25% used their smartphones to do price comparisons; they were comparing the price of an item in stores to prices for the same item in online shops.
• 24% used their smartphones to research the products they were shopping for online. I do this all the time at shops. It’s how I picked out my current camera, the Canon ELPH 300HS.

“You can’t win the web without winning mobile,” I told my manager’s manager back when I was at Microsoft (and that’s how I became the Windows Phone Guy on Microsoft Canada’s Developer and Platform Evangelism team). Now that I’m at Shopify, I’m still waving the mobile flag: you can’t win at ecommerce without winning at mobile. And as of today, we’re a good deal closer to winning.

Shopify has just announced that it has acquired Select Start Studios, an award-winning mobile development company based in Ottawa with over 35 apps in Apple’s App Store and the Android Market. This acquisition brings over 20 new people and a helluva lot of mobile app skills and brainpower into the Shopifold.

[Update: Here’s TechCrunch’s coverage, and here’s Mashable’s.]

Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke has this to say: “The S3 acquisition brings in top talent that will rapidly deliver on our mobile strategy, and produce several new mobile product offerings this year.”

Tariq Zaid, Select Start’s cofounder and CEO, says “We’re thrilled to be joining Shopify to execute on the company’s mobile initiative. Their focus on mobile, deep understanding of technology, and overall culture make this a natural fit. We’re already cooking up some really exciting innovations that show just how game changing mcommerce will be.”

Welcome aboard, Select Start! I’m looking forward to working with you guys.

Select Start were in the process of building a mobile app for our friends at Toronto-based startup FreshBooks, so technically, they’re now clients of ours. In response they sent us this lovely “horse head in the bed cake” inspired by that classic scene from The Godfather. The message that came with the cake reads: “Nice selection for the start of 2012…you bastard!”

Here’s an interesting observation made by Adam McNamara: Shopify was once based at 185 Rideau Street in Ottawa, and that’s where Select Start were based until they joined us. That’s an office with killer startup karma. The question Adam asks is: “Who’s next"?”

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

At Twitter, The Future is You! is a funny recruiting video. It reminds me of Microsoft’s internal training videos.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

After Shit Silicon Valley Says comes Shit Programmers Say. There’s a swear word at the end, so if you’re at an office that doesn’t tolerate salty language, make like the programmers in the video and switch to headphones!

Thanks to Andy Baio at Waxy.org for the find!

This article also appears in the Shopify Developer Blog.

If you watched the WAT video that I pointed to in this earlier post, you saw some really counterintuitive behaviour from JavaScript and probably laughed and facepalmed at the same time.

A Stack Overflow user going by the handle of Ventero has taken it upon himself/herself to explain each of those JavaScript oddities, by way of pointing to the ECMA-262 standard. If you were scratching your head trying to figure out why those JavaScript statements were full of WAT, your answers are there!

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

I guess this is a lesson to people who make long-form ads with only music and no voice-over: someone’s going to take your ad and add their own, just like the YouTube user known as “Raboneable”, who did just that with the ad for Asus Eee Pad Transformer. Watch the video above and enjoy the lulz.

In case you never saw the original, here it is:

The Urban Dictionary definition of "wat" is "the only proper response to something that makes absolutely no sense". The concept of wat is covered a little more completely on its page in Know Your Meme.

"Wat" is also the title of a funny demo of Ruby and JavaScript oddities presented by Gary Bernhardt at CodeMash 2012, a rather unlikely tech conference — it takes place in Sandusky, Ohio, in Ohio’s largest indoor waterpark. (If you just said "wat" right now, you’ve used the word correctly.)

In the video, you see this classic wat bit about undefined variables and assignment in Ruby:

You’ll also marvel at the way JavaScript treats (array + array) vs. (array + object) vs. (object + array) vs. (object + object):

Watch the video, and wait for that final slide, which is pure, hilarious wat!

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

Creative Commons photo by paul (dex). Click to see the original.

HackDays — the gatherings that bring together Canada’s brightest geeks to build projects in a single day — kicks off 2012 with a session in Toronto on Saturday, February 12th. This one’s an interesting one, as it’s a part of the extended Social Media Week, the global multi-city conference taking place from February 13th through 17th. Here’s a quick explanation of what Social Media Week, and this year’s theme, Empowering Change Through Collaboration, are all about:

In keeping with the idea behind Social Media Week and HackDays’ spirit of building stuff with readily-available APIs, the theme of this Toronto HackDay is “Apps for Good”. Take the APIs — including Shopify’s ecommerce API — to build applications that can change the world around us for the better. You’ll have a day to do it, and the best apps, as determined by a panel of judges, will be awarded prizes (the prizes are usually pretty sweet: we’ve handed out MacBook Airs and iPads to the winners).

Shopify will be there! More specifically, I’ll be there, representing Shopify, along with some other Shopifolks, to help run the event, help participants with the Shopify API and generally provide moral support to everyone there. We’ll also be sponsoring the event and providing a prize for the best use of our API.

If you’re looking to take on a hacking challenge and put your skills to the test, meet your fellow geeks and build an app for the greater good, HackDays Toronto is for you! Sign up here (registration is free for hackers building apps), and do it soon — space is limited!

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

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Let’s see what we can do to make sure this never happens, okay?

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

There’s a lot of work involved with running a shop. Inventory comes and goes as products come in from suppliers and go out to customers, orders come and go as customers make them and they get fulfilled, and there’s also the matter of picking, packing, labelling and shipping.

Bizelo eRetail Centralized Inventory Management (or CIM for short) is an app that helps you get on top of all this work. With it, it’s a lot simpler to stay informed about your inventory, know when you’re low on stock and what your packing costs are and pack, label and ship orders. It’s available in the Shopify App Store right now.

We chatted with the people at Bizelo about their eRetail CIM app and asked them some questions. Read on to find out more about their app, in their own words.

What does Bizelo eRetail Centralized Inventory Management (CIM) app do?

One of the constant struggles for online retailers is managing their inventory, keeping track of orders, and handling the various steps between the time an order is received and it goes out the door. This is made especially more complicated when you are dealing with inventory that appears in many places and is constantly going in and out of stock.

The Bizelo Centralized Inventory Management (CIM) app is specially built for online retailers (we call them "etailers") sellers to manage their inventory. It pulls all Shopify items and inventory into a central inventory dashboard as well as all recent orders. New orders are automatically pushed to the Bizelo eRetail CIM app, and we sync quantities of items in both directions with Shopify and other Shopify or non-Shopify stores. The system keeps track of both what’s available in your online store(s) as well as what you have in your warehouse. The system also allows you to create kits and bundles of items as well as import and replenish your stock in one go.

In addition, we also simplify the pick and pack process. Bizelo CIM provides a quick and easy way to create optimized packing lists to make sure you include the right items from the right shelves in your packages. The app also provides deep insight into the movement history of your inventory, telling you which items are selling the quickest, and providing insight into your profitability. The app also integrates with a number of other online services including Magento, Etsy, and Cartkeeper, with other platforms being announced soon!

What are Bizelo eRetail Centralized Inventory Management’s key features?

Pictured above: Bizelo eRetail CIM’s dashboard.

Bizelo eRetail CIM is packed with features that make it easy to…

• Centrally manage your inventory, keeping track of warehouse as well as store quantities
• Keep your inventory in sync across multiple Shopify as well as non-Shopify stores
• Manage bill of materials and kit items
• Create pick and pack lists very easily
  

• Know when you’re low on stock with low quantity notifications
• Centrally track orders and order notes
• Get insight into inventory movement and history

Why should shopowners use Bizelo eRetail Centralized Inventory Management?

If you sell lots of things online, get a lot of orders, and/or have multiple shops, keeping accurate track of inventory is a difficult task! Our customers frequently tell us that our app saves them hours, if not days, across their month’s worth of orders and inventory. If you’re spending time adjusting inventory quantities in your stores or tearing your hair out when items sell out when you least expect it, our Bizelo eRetail CIM app is for you!

Tell us a little about yourself.

Pictured above: Ron and James from Bizelo.

Bizelo, the creators of the eRetail CIM app is a growing startup company focused on filling the gaps that small businesses need with online apps that are cost-effective (most just $25 a month), work simply, and simply work. Our company was started in 2010 by experienced Internet entrepreneurs that have started and sold a number of successful online business. In the midst of all that, one of the founders tried (unsuccessfully) to start a new apparel brand. That’s when he realized that a) he’s better at software than retail and b) the retail industry still has a ton of gaps that make being a small business in the industry tough. For this reason, he partnered up with his colleagues and started Bizelo. We’ve been growing quickly ever since! We’re so far a handful of employees with hundreds of customers, soon growing to thousands of subscribers!

You can find us at http://www.bizelo.com, where you’ll see a growing array of web-based apps built for small businesses. We’re very active on Twitter (@bizelo), and you can also find us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bizelo.

Where did you get the idea for Bizelo eRetail Centralized Inventory Management?

The company grew out of Ron’s frustration with existing small business apps, especially stemming from his experience trying to grow an apparel company. After identifying no credible solutions for dealing with multiple-storefront inventory management and syncing, Ron developed the first app in conjunction with James that launched the Bizelo company. Since then, the company has been growing leaps and bounds and is about to release a whole slew of new apps for Shopify customers including a new Accounting Sync app, Pack and Ship, Returns Management, and Supply Management apps.

Where can I find out more about Bizelo eRetail CIM?

As with all Shopify apps, you can find Bizelo eRetail CIM on its page at the Shopify App Store. It’s price is $19.95 – $29.95 per month, and it comes with a 30-day free trial.

This article also appears in the Shopify Blog.