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New York Times 50 Most Challenging Words (defined and used)

jheitzeb — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:57:57 +0000

The New York Times recently published a list of 50 fancy words that most frequently stump their readership. They are able to measure this data thanks to a nifty in-page lookup mechanism, which you can try here. Try double-clicking the word “epicenter”.

Since the NYT didn’t include definitions of these words, I decided to post a job to MediaPiston to produce an article defining and using each word in the list. Voila! Just a few hours later, here it is. So avoid coming across as jejune and laconic in your speech. Dive in to this list with alacrity!

photo credit: GViciano

The New York Times 50 Fancy Words (defined and used)

1. Inchoate: just begun and so not fully formed or developed; I am glad your inchoate proposals for integrating the company were not accepted this time, thus saving us face.

2. Profligacy: recklessly wasteful; wildly extravagant, profligate behavior; Anderson’s profligacy cost him his job and its better you tighten up your belt before you go the same way.

3. Sui Generis: being the only example of its kind, unique; Mr. Bill Tandy generated his sui generis theory based on little research and more hypothesis, thus finding no takers for his pet project.

4. Austerity: severe and morally strict; the quality of being austere, having no pleasures or comforts; Every major war on this planet were followed by many years of austerity.

5. Profligate: using money, resources, etc., in a way that wastes them; The firm’s profligate spending only hastened its downfall.

6. Baldenfreude: Satisfaction derived from the misfortune of bald or balding individuals (coined by NYT columnist Maureen Dowd); Humpty Dumpty’s antics remain a constant source of baldenfreude for children and adults alike.

7. Opprobrium: harsh criticism, contempt; His ludicrous attempts at mimicry in the office only earned him the opprobrium of his colleagues.

8. Apostates: pl; a person who abandons a belief or principle; The millionaire technocrat and his cronies were publicly derided for being apostates, after they were exposed of polluting the environment while purporting to have spent large sums for water conservation.

9. Solipsistic: the theory that the self is all that can be known to exist; His solipsistic view about life ensured that he lived in social isolation.

10. Obduracy: refusing to change in any way; Anthony’s obduracy in his legal case expedited his impeachment.

11. Internecine: causing destruction to both sides; The African states’ internecine conflict continues to extract a terrible toll on innocent human lives.

12. Soporific: adj; causing sleep; The soporific drug caused Tony to fall asleep in the board meeting.

13. Kristallnacht: German, night of (broken) glass : Kristall, crystal (from Middle High German, from Old High German cristalla, from Latin crystallus, crystallum; see crystal) + Nacht, night (from Middle High German naht, from Old High German; see nekw-t- in Indo-European roots); The Kristallnacht remains an infamous event in the German history.

14. Peripatetic: going from place to place; The peripatetic bards of yore propagated the words of the Holy Prophet.

15. Nascent: beginning to exist, not fully developed; In its initial stage, the nascent film industry faced harsh opposition from moral groups.

16. Desultory: going from one thing to another, without a definite plan or purpose; Garcia’s desultory conversation got everybody yawning.

17. Redoubtable: deserving to be feared and respected; Mike’s redoubtable instincts as a prize-fighter kept his opponents at arm’s distance.

18. Hubris: excessive pride; The Empire’s vanity and hubris in its exaggerated military were the reason for its downfall.

19. Mirabile Dictu: wonderful to relate; Randy’s winning putt remained mirabile dictu in the golf club gossip for many years.

20. Crèches: a place where babies are looked after while their parents work, shop, etc.; Go down the Green Avenue and you will find a string of crèches and day-care centres.

21. Apoplectic: sudden loss of the ability to feel or move; adj: suffering from apoplexy; easily made angry; His son’s antics on the playground left him apoplectic with rage.

22. Overhaul: to examine carefully and thoroughly and make any necessary changes or repairs; to come from behind and pass them; Michael’s faster car easily overhauled the leading drivers in the F1 championship.

23. Ersatz: used as a poor-quality substitute for something else, inferior to an original item; The DJ’s ersatz musical numbers were a poor rendition of Celina’s work.

24. Obstreperous: very noisy or difficult to control; Andy’s obstreperous behavior just after a few drinks generally caused his early exit from most parties.

25. Jejune: too simple, naïve; dull, lacking nourishment; Horrified by the senator’s jejune responses to their problems, the voters guild decided to withdraw their support to him in the forthcoming elections.

26. Omertà: rule or code that prohibits speaking or revealing information, generally relates to activities of organized crime; sub; the Mafia; Henry was vowed to the code of Omertà and sealed his lips during the police interrogation.

27. Putative: generally supposed to be the thing specified; Mr Brown is referred to as the putative father in the document.

28. Manichean: A believer in Manichaeism – an ancient Iranian Gnostic religion; Roberta’s Manichean beliefs found little approval in the stoic theology group discussion.

29. Canard: a false report or rumour, aerofoil designs on certain airplanes; The disturbing canard about my company’s finances left me in despair.

30. Ubiquitous: seeming to be everywhere or in several places at the same time; The ubiquitous internet is both a blessing, as well as, a curse.

31. Atavistic: relating to the behavior of one’s ancestors in the distant past; The chieftain urged his tribe to curb their atavistic urges and refrain from unnecessary violence.

32. Renminbi: another name for the Chinese Yuan, official currency of People’s Republic of China; Chinese renmin people + bi currency; Around 1950, the Chinese government officially released the Renminbi notes for circulation.

33. Sanguine: hopeful, optimistic; She remained sanguine about our chances of success in the raffle draw.

34. Antediluvian: very old-fashioned; His antediluvian ideas are preposterous!

35. Cynosure: object or someone who serves as a focal point of attention and admiration, something that serves to guide; His wife, Catherine, remained the cynosure of all eyes throughout the evening gala.

36. Alacrity: eagerness or enthusiasm; Richard accepted her offer of marriage with alacrity.

37. Epistemic: cognitive, relating to learning, or involving knowledge; The monk’s epistemic dissertation was an engaging study of New Testament beliefs.

38. Egregious: exceptional, outstanding; The NBA referee’s decision was the most egregious error of judgment.

39. Incendiary: designed to set something on fire, tending to create public disturbances or violence; Amanda’s incendiary remarks alienated her from the whole campus.

40. Chimera: an imaginary creäture composed of the parts of several different animals, wild or impossible idea; Harry gazed awestruck at the monstrous chimera, a gigantic beast with the head of a lion and the body of a winged horse.

41. Laconic: using few words; Jerry’s laconic sense of humor endeared him to the crowd.

42. Polemicist: person skilled in art of writing or speech, arguing cases forcefully; Mr. Trimble stands little chance in the public debate against the Republican polemicist candidate, Mr. Burns.

43. Comity: mutual civility; amity, an atmosphere of social harmony, the policy whereby one religious sect refrains from proselytizing the members of another sect; The Shias and Sunnis lived in perfect comity in their remote mountain hamlet.

44. Provenance: the place that something originally came from; He deals in antique furniture of doubtful provenance.

45. Sclerotic: condition in which soft tissue in the body becomes abnormally hard; Doctors were at a loss in explaining the child’s unusual sclerotic condition.

46. Prescient: knowing or appearing to know about things before they happen; His prescient instincts saved him a small fortune when he sold his shares before the stock market crash.

47. Hegemony: control and leadership, by one country over others; The United States’ military hegemony in the region was a source of great distress to Iqbal.

48. Verisimilitude: the appearance of being true or real; To add verisimilitude to the play, the stage is covered with snow for the winter scene.

49. Feckless: not able to manage things properly or look after oneself, not responsible enough; The McCarthy’s are feckless parents with more children than they could support.

50. Demarche: step or manoeuvre in political or diplomatic affairs; Thierry’s political demarche with the liberals saved the government a great deal of face in the senate hearings.

If you want to ship, cut, cut, cut!

Adding a Facebook like button to your WordPress blog

jheitzeb — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 18:52:05 +0000

Facebook launched their new Social plugins including the new “like” button, and in case you’re wondering how to add them to your WordPress blog, I found a great post by @ruhanirabin. Here’s what I did to get it working on my blog.

First, I’m using the Evidens Theme theme, so these instructions might not work if you’re using other themes. Also, if your blog is hosted on WordPress.com, this won’t work because they don’t let you hack your themes. I recommend installing WordPress on Dreamhost or another hosting provider.

single.php – this page renders individual blog post pages. Facebook offers some customization and I decided to add the compact version of the button on the top right next to my existing TweetMeme button, and the larger inline version that shows photos at the bottom of each post.

For the small button, I added this code just after the

line:







ID)); ?>&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&width=65&action=like&colorscheme=light" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:65px; height:61px">

This wraps the Facebook button in a div with float set to right so it renders next to the TweetMeme button and doesn’t get in the way of the post’s text. The param show_faces is set to false and layout is set to button_count.

For the large inline button at the bottom, I added the following code as the last thing inside the same p-con div:ID)); ?>&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=65&action=like&colorscheme=light" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:465px; height:61px">

This is pretty much the vanilla Facebook Like button with show_faces set to true and layout set to standard.

index.php – this page controls the front page of your blog. I wanted the small like button on the top of each post, so I added the following code after the

line:







ID)); ?>&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&width=65&action=like&colorscheme=light" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:65px; height:61px">

Again we have the div with float right and the param settings on the Facebook button.

If you want to ship, cut, cut, cut!

jheitzeb — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 23:50:02 +0000

I’m helping a startup founder who is outsourcing the development of a project. Tensions are running high on both sides as the project slips. The CEO is getting about two updates a week, mostly just “it’s ready to test now, the bugs are 80% fixed” and there’s no regular meeting. During the course of the project, “we’ve changed some features along the way.” They continue, “we are 50% done with bugs, putting us at about a month late. I feel like I should, as the CEO, do something about it to ensure it’s not a month late, what should I do.”

Here is my reply:

I would ask for better updates, like if you have a list of work items, get a list of which were done. Are they using lighthouse or similar ticketing system to track work items on their side? Do you have access? The work item list is a key tool you need to track progress and make decisions from.

First, from the tone, i’d get on the phone and clear the air. Don’t let emotions get the best of either of you. If he reaches the point of “fuck it” then you are the one that is fucked. The best thing is to be reasonable, professional and do the best you can given where you are today.

Keep in mind, most software projects are late or go unexpected places during their schedule…especially when feature requests change along the way, which is the case here.

One important thing you can do now is to eliminate features. I’m sure all the features seem important, but they are not. Trust me, most of your features can wait. Cut them out. Ask the developer which ones, if cut, would most get the schedule back on track, then you be the one to pick a subset of those — eliminate anything that isn’t absolutely critical. You are going for minimally viable release, and that means a skinny, starving puppy, not Lassie.

Bugs too. Decide which need to be fixed and which don’t.

Also, don’t sweat the look and feel. User friendly means “is useful” not “is usable”. If something is possible to get the job done, but just hard to use, consider leaving it as is for now and shipping. You can fix later.

Cut. Cut. Cut. You can fix later.

Avoid This Startup Mistake: Losing Customer Focus

jheitzeb — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 20:16:24 +0000

In 2006 when we launched Snapvine’s first viral widget and phone app for teens, it went viral overnight. We were overwhelmed with success within 3 weeks: our servers were swamped with signups – 1 million of them within the first 7 weeks. This was one of those “good problems to have” — so “good” in fact we had to turn off sign ups 25% of the time over those first few weeks. The problem was, our entire team turned into a band of maniacal database tuning, code-optimizing, high scale server junkies.

So my dilemma became: How do you take a team that’s swamped with work and make them become incredibly customer focused overnight?

Our solution? every day, print out a few hundred new user photo thumbnails and post them on the walls. As the days passed, the number of photo pages grew, and even if you were an engineer consumed with debugging some MySql indexes, you became intensely curious about the users: real people with faces, smiles. Who were they? Why were they signing up? What did they want to see next?

As a result, everyone pushed for more focus on user stories and learning more about our users and what they wanted to see next. We instituted a weekly standing focus group, sourced from Craigslist by our do-it-all office admin, and watched them use the product and listened to their reactions to our new feature ideas.

Print out your user’s photos and line the walls with them. I think any startup can use this simple technique to make everyone on the team more user focused. If you don’t capture photos as part of your product, pick some new users every day, email them and ask them to send some in. I promise, it will pay off.

Thanks to Pete Warden, Mark Maunder, Tony Wright, Dave Schappell, Bryan Starbuck, Scott Porad, Galen Ward and Fai Leong for editorial input on this post.

Crowdsourcing Meetup Notes

jheitzeb — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 23:18:22 +0000

Last Wednesday I hosted a video-link at WhitePages to the Crowdsourcing Meetup that Dolores Labs put on in the Bay Area at the Samasource offices. Check Justin.tv/crowdflower for a video of the event (coming soon).

First off, THANKS to Michael Toomim for tipping me off to the event and to Lukas and Zack of Dolores Labs for setting up the microphones, webcams and screen sharing on their end.

Secondly, to everyone in Seattle who couldn’t make it but expressed interest — and there were a lot of you — I promise to arrange and host these in the future and to provide more than 12 hours of advanced notice

Here are my notes…

Aaron Koblin is a well known artist who has used crowdsourcing to create works of art. You may have seen The Sheep Market, a project that used thousands(?) of workers to create 10,000 sheep cartoons. It was interesting to hear how some of the contributors became angry when he put the sheep for sale, and to think about the IP implications of crowdsourced art. Check out his other projects.

Panos Ipeirotis of NYU gave a talk about his research into bias detection and correction in mTurk worker output. In short, Panos’ work can help you eliminated work spam in your mTurk systems — very useful. He has even packaged up his findings into a code lib so others can benefit. Be certain to check out his blog!

Leila Janah, a social entrepreneur who runs Samasource gave an inspiring talk about their work bringing work from the 1st world to the 3rd via crowdsourcing. Microwork done in the 3rd world over basic computing infrastructure and SMS can be done well for $1 to $3 per hour, which is 10x what the workers would be making in those areas (and for many can be an alternative to unemployment). A great quote: “clearly if you someone can orchestrate a sophisticated Nigerian email scam, then they can do mTurk tasks.”

Sharon Chiarella, who runs the mTurk group at Amazon talked about some of the trends the are seeing on mTurk. 1) more workers coming online from countries around the world. Currently just under 50% of all workers are based in the US. They are seeing more growth from countries outside the US. 2) mTurk being used for business critical applications such as data cleansing, UGC content management, blog sentiment analysis and translation. I found it interesting to hear her say that companies using mTurk often keep it secret because it has become a competitive advantage for them. 3) More sophisticated workflows (iterative flows with turkers checking the work of other turkers, or processing along a series of steps). I have a feeling that the majority of tasks are single-step, but I’m a huge believer in the advantages of iterative turking. Check out the work being done with TurkIt out of MIT for a sense of what is possible.

It was a great night overall.

Stay tuned! I’m going to take take action to put together a Seattle-hosted Courdsourcing meet up and invite some of the folks in this area who are doing great work with mTurk to present, for example: Nathan McFarland of CastingWords, Dan Weld, professor of Computer Science at UW, Brent Frei from SmartSheet and any one of the many folks here at WhitePages who are doing interesting work with mTurk. Please contact me if you’re interested or have ideas for speakers or topics.

The positive follow-up to complaints, failures and ideas.

jheitzeb — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:38:25 +0000

Complaints can be annoying, but when paired with solution ideas are valuable. Failure by itself is a negative but when it comes with honest learning is the foundation of innovation. Ideas by themselves can be worthless but when accompanied by follow-through can be worth millions.

Therefore, next time someone brings you any of these things alone, see if you can get the person excited to come up with the positive follow-up.

Does Seattle shun startup failure?

jheitzeb — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:00:16 +0000

Tonight I attended the UW CSE Annual Industrial Affiliates Meeting.

As I walked around, I bumped into familiar faces close to the UW CSE and Startup communities. I asked people “how are we doing on entrepreneurship coming out of the department?” Surprisingly, feedback from 3 people very close to the issue was “we’re not doing too well.” Common themes:

Infrequent interaction between entrepreneurs, venture capital and the university
UW CSE department seems to measure itself on students who progress into academia (vs. go off and start successful companies)
Sense that Seattle’s community shuns failure

Wow, that’s depressing! But, if true, how can we overcome it?

At dinner in front of everyone, I had the chance to ask a panel of local VCs, “What are things we can do to advance entrepreneurship between the UW CSE and the Seattle community?”

Here’s a summary of responses (note: I’m paraphrasing very briefly from my limited iPhone notes)

Cameron Myrvold, Ignition - the problem is cultural; compared to the silicon valley, historically the best people went to big companies vs. starting companies, and failure is still shunned.
Bill McAleer, Voyager Capital - we need to do things that increase the risk tolerance. Things like the UW business plan competition helps
Ron Howell, WRF Capital – everyone in the community needs to show up at events and actively participate
Mark Ashida, OVP – agreed that the problem is cultural. In the silicon valley (where he worked for years) it is considered a positive career step to venture out of big companies and okay to fail vs. here where it is perceived as a negative. We need to work to change that perception
Greg Gottesman, Madrona - we need to catalyze entrepreneurship, and he and Madrona are working on that, via a Y Combinator or Tech Stars type program currently under discussion, which will be sponsored by area VCs and involve industry veterans.
Ed Lazowska, UW CSE – over the last 12 years, there has been positive change and progress and we need to continue that. The notion of an organization like Y Combinator here in Seattle is an excellent one that people should support

What do you think? Does Seattle have a cultural intolerance of failure that stifles entrepreneurship? And what are some concrete things the community can do to encourage entrepreneurship coming out of UW CSE?

FiReGlobal West Notes

jheitzeb — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:05:10 +0000

Last week I attended FiReGlobal West as a guest speaker on a CTO Challenge Panel discussing how technology can help increase civic engagement at all levels of government.

Here are a few rough notes I took (and my opinions interwoven) throughout the day

Education

The internet is disruptive to the traditional model of education. The role of teacher has (or must) change from leading a classroom step-wise through a lesson plan, to that of learning coach. Classrooms should not march forward in lock-step, but rather each student should have full access to the tools and knowledge that is the internet and be given the coaching needed to learn at their own individualized pace.

Currently policies like “no child left behind” serve to ensure that every child learns at the pace of the slowest child. This is backwards. Instead, the super-learners and laggards should each get the appropriate coaching and move at their own pace.

Naturally, teachers feel threatened by these changes. Forward-thinkers say “we’ve got to get the adults out of the way of technology”.

FiReStars

I jotted down notes about/from some of the local technology companies that were highlighted.

Serious Materials – creating drywall and 2-pane window components that compete with traditional materials but which are far more energy-efficient. Traditional drywall and 2-pane windows were inventions of 100+ years ago and have not innovated since. 52% of CO2 comes from buildings and building construction vs. only 9% from cars (worldwide). Key lesson learned: to make this a business, they’ve had to sell these not with a green message, but with an economic argument; they must be better, cheaper or both to sell.

InTouch Health – robot for hospital rooms allowing remote doctors to move around, talk to patient and view monitoring devices from anywhere in the world. This was one impressive demo!

Oceans

“The world seems to ignore predictions — even well substantiated ones — and does not act until a severe, shocking event leads to some tipping point”

Current threats to our oceans: warming leading to extinctions, pollution leading to slow death of species, dams, dead zones, disease in fish farms, inbreeding in fish farms, species hunted to extinction, invasive species trans-location, acidification via C02, reef destruction, etc.

How do we foster the leadership to overcome these? put a price on carbon emissions so that the commercial world will engage in a market sense. Engage the tech community with a challenge, modify the politics to be more aligned with societal interests.

Michael Dell

On China: “Visiting there, you just wouldn’t think there’s an economic crises at all”

On IT Budgets during the Recession: “First there is cost control, then people’s minds turn towards productivity, then towards tools”

On the Future of IT: completely mobile-oriented workforces, devices are connected via cellular (instead of local ethernet and wifi), the corporate network is virtualized and IT support is purchases as a service

Trends: “ethernet over ethernet” simplification of data centers, servers and network architectures for internet companies getting dramatically simpler, virtualization driving storage needs (snapshotting, provisioning, etc)

One of DELL’s mantras: “Standardize \ Simplify \ Automate”

See Also…

Check out this post from xconomy which gives a 1000ft summary of the day’s discussions.