Simon Willison’s Weblog

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Tuesday, 30th July 2013

Presentations, when’s the best time to give your personal background?

It’s rarely a good idea to include this—usually it adds nothing to the audience’s understanding of presentation, unless you are speaking on a topic that really needs that additional authority (security presentations sometimes benefit from this)—in which case keep it to a couple of sentences, don’t share your entire professional history.

[... 90 words]

Would you pay for a service that allowed you to shadow people in your profession of interest?

As a high school student I would not have paid for this. It’s a big gamble (what if I spend money only to find out that the career doesn’t interest me), it relies on me having a good idea about what I want to do first (which I didn’t), it’s something I can get for free elsewhere by taking to friends of family, and I didn’t have any money to spend anyway.

[... 95 words]

What has Google given out at I/O in the past years?

I/O 2013 was a Chromebook Pixel (with or without LTE) and 1 terabyte of Google Drive space for three years.

[... 37 words]

Is it difficult to make a dating site? My budget is small. Any suggestion?

Yes, it’s hard. Technologically, dating sites are not that complicated. The difficulty is keeping them populated enough that they remain useful for your users.

[... 159 words]

What Javascript tools are there for cleansing input?

Don’t cleanse. Escape instead.

[... 18 words]

What are some JavaScript concepts that took you the longest to understand?

Closures, prototype inheritance, and the “this” keyword.

[... 60 words]

What is the best way to notify participants of a planned meeting?

Google Calendar invites work really well—they’re sent via email and are reasonably usable even by people who don’t themselves use Google Calendar.

[... 42 words]

2013 » July

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