I am a programmer therefore I am lazy. You see programmers are a peculiar bunch. We will spend hours trying to figure out how to save 5 minutes. That’s not wasteful at all. It’s called converging on a pure solution. What is wasteful is wading through hundreds of pages of documentation trying to find that thing that does the thing. You know, that thing which you can never find.

This is a list of really handy, time-saving cheat sheets:

• Prototype (the link to the PDF is after all the images)
• Ruby on Rails
• JavaScript
• Regular Expressions
• MySQL
• CSS

I especially like the Prototype cheat sheet. Prototype is vast and I always find myself re-implementing some part of it because I don’t know that it’s already been done. This cheat sheet organises the various parts of Prototype into logical units making it easy to find related information.

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ProjectX is participating in the “Creative HQ – Summer of code 2006”. We are offering talented students the opportunity to work for a startup company this summer. Students will have the chance to gain experience in the latest internet technologies by helping to build the next generation of internet web applications. You’ll be working with companies based at Creative HQ, the premiere business incubator in Wellington.

So, if you’re a 2nd year student or above and want to work in a dynamic learning environment, apply for the “Creative HQ Summer of Code 2006”

For more details on how to apply, check out our flyer.

Want to work for the next Trade Me?

Creative HQ invites Victoria University B.IT and B.Sc computer science students to take part in the Creative HQ Summer of Code 2006. This is designed to help students
gain real world experience with innovative companies developing new technologies, products, and services.

You could get to work with these funky IT companies resident at the Creative HQ Business Incubator:

 

· ProjectX Technology - Online mapping and local search

· Let Use It – Online marketplace

· Silverstripe - Content management solutions

· BrowserCRM - Customer relationship management solutions

 

These companies work with the latest technology

Web 2.0 Ruby on Rails SQL Databases OO programming Desktop Apps

HTML/XHTML Java Net Delphi Web services

AJAX / Javascript PHP Linux & Windows CSS XML

We have space for 5-7 students for the summer, so places are limited

 

SIGN UP NOW AT:

<u>EMAIL:</u> summerofcode@projectx.co.nz

 

or send your CV and cover letter to:

Creative HQ Summer of Code

PO Box 6746, Marion Square, Wellington 6141

 

<u>Applications close Monday October 16th 2006</u>

 

Paul Allen (who runs an US internet incuvator called Provo Labs) has posted about a TV show on serial entrepreneur Mark Cuban – Mark Cuban on Becoming a Billionaire. (Mark Cuban is one the dot com era winners with Broadcast.com )

Paul highlighted the following insights from the show:

“He reads like crazy and uses email like crazy…” – I think every entrepreneur reads like crazy. I am always on the look out for new ideas, inspiration and different business models. I am a big believer in cross pollenation of ideas from different segments of the business world. Sometimes inspiration is found in strange places! eg. I got an idea for a new auction component from reading the introduction of customers.com! For some strange reason the introductory pitch of the book ampifilied the ideas that were bubbling under the surface.

“He is willing to do the blocking and tackling to build a business…” ie. He’s willing to do the hard yards to build the business. Taking the time to get the little details right can make the difference in creating a unique user experience. Small things do make a difference and you can really build something substancial when you add up everything. At the end of the day, you can’t say that you gave it your best shot if you didn’t give it 120%. A start-up isn’t a 9-5 job, you need to live and breathe it,if you want to be a success.

“Being an investor made him a better business man, and being a business man made him a better investor…” – Absolutely, you need to understand investing to be a better business. You need to understand about investing, if you want to get into the mindspace of a VC.

What do VC’s want in companies? More on that later…

Here are some javascript related links that we’ve looking at over the last week.

• Javascript Optimisation – A nice article on javascript optimisation.
• Make javascript run fast – Cal Henderson of Flickr talks about his experiences in speeding up javascript.
• O’Reilly RJS templates pdf and RJS template article – Different articles on Rails Javascript.
• Firebug – The excellent Firefox javascript debugger.