CQL, the Cassandra Query Language

cqlsh> CREATE KEYSPACE test with strategy_class = 'SimpleStrategy' and strategy_options:replication_factor=1;
cqlsh> USE test;

cqlsh> CREATE COLUMNFAMILY users (
   ...     key varchar PRIMARY KEY,
   ...     full_name varchar,
   ...     birth_date int,
   ...     state varchar
   ... );

cqlsh> CREATE INDEX ON users (birth_date);
cqlsh> CREATE INDEX ON users (state);

cqlsh> INSERT INTO users (key, full_name, birth_date, state) VALUES ('bsanderson', 'Brandon Sanderson', 1975, 'UT');
cqlsh> INSERT INTO users (key, full_name, birth_date, state) VALUES ('prothfuss', 'Patrick Rothfuss', 1973, 'WI');
cqlsh> INSERT INTO users (key, full_name, birth_date, state) VALUES ('htayler', 'Howard Tayler', 1968, 'UT');

cqlsh> SELECT key, state FROM users;
        key | state |
 bsanderson |    UT |
  prothfuss |    WI |
    htayler |    UT |

cqlsh> SELECT * FROM users WHERE state='UT' AND birth_date > 1970;
        KEY | birth_date |         full_name | state |
 bsanderson |       1975 | Brandon Sanderson |    UT |

via datastax.com

HBase has PigLatin, now Cassandra has CQL. It's a natural evolve step for distributed databases that depend of Map-Reduce to query and processing data.

Posted via email from Alex Nguyen

Steve Blank on Startups & The New Bubble

Steve Blank Gigaom Interview

via steveblank.com

Key points: Entrepreneurs are artists. New bubble is good. Today, total available market is exponential. VC $$$ should be used for scaling and visibility. Entrepreneurs should study psychology.

Find out more by watching the whole video. It's great.

Posted via email from Alex Nguyen

RoR Win: “Getting Things Done” with MongoDB

We high five each other and claim “Rails Win!” when someone finds a gem that solves a really big problem in a few lines of code. In this post I’ll list a few interesting addons to the RoR Mongoid ORM that are slowly adding up to a feature-rich ecosystem of plug-and-play modules that work with Mongoid. This list should convince you that you should at least try MongoDB. You can get a ton of functionality “for free”.

via code.dblock.org

Vinova is proud to be author of voteable_mongo gem and contributor of mongoid-slug gem.

Posted via email from Alex Nguyen

Running a Flat Company | Jason Fried of 37signals

At 37signals, however, we have a different position on ambition. We're not big fans of what I consider "vertical" ambition—that is, the usual career-path trajectory, in which a newbie moves up the ladder from associate to manager to vice president over a number of years of service. On the other hand, we revere "horizontal" ambition—in which employees who love what they do are encouraged to dig deeper, expand their knowledge, and become better at it. We always try to hire people who yearn to be master craftspeople, that is, designers who want to be great designers, not managers of designers; developers who want to master the art of programming, not management.

via inc.com

At Vinova, we are doing the same by building a skillful, passionate and inter-dependent team. Team members wear many hats and work in harmony toward a common goal. Each member should be the boss of his own.

Posted via email from Alex Nguyen

You Need to Win the Battle for Share of Mind (by solving a real problem)

The challenge that many startups face today is: Are you really providing enough value? Will you get the TechCrunch bump, the tier-1 VC anointment, followed by great PR firm support and then the NY Times or WSJ story that follows? Will that be enough or will high churn rates creep in, new toys be introduced into the market, new time sucks pulling user attention away?  This year’s Tamagotchi?

If you’re building a startup today I would encourage you to think harder about how you’re going to win the battle for share of mind. That’s much tougher than getting people to play with your hot product for 6 months. To do so you must truly provide value that changes the way that end-consumers do something in their lives that will persist.

via bothsidesofthetable.com

Posted via email from Alex Nguyen

Silicon Valley Guru Steve Blank Welcomes The New Bubble And Says Microsoft Is Doomed

• The LinkedIn IPO "absolutely" marks the beginning of a bubble -- and he thinks it's going to be great. He likens it to the Netscape IPO in August 1995 that kicked off four years of boom times, but notes that this time VCs actually know how to build real companies with real revenue and profit.

• Crazy investors -- not geeks -- are what makes Silicon Valley unique. Without the "crazy" financiers willing to take big risks in hopes of chasing "obscene" returns, the valley would just be "a bunch of smart scientists and entrepreneurs sitting in their labs and their garages."

• Microsoft will start to fail within six quarters. Blank put a timeline on Microsoft suffering the kind of huge loss that drove IBM to restructure itself back in 1993: six quarters from now. He thinks Steve Ballmer is a "miserable failure" and that the board should be blamed for not replacing him. He also suggests that buying Nokia and installing Stephen Elop as CEO might be a solution.

• But Larry Page is doing the right thing at Google. By letting the geeks run the show, Page is following in the footsteps of one of the earliest Silicon Valley pioneers: Fairchild Semiconductor in the 1950s.

via businessinsider.com

Posted via email from Alex Nguyen

Ethics, customers, profit. Don't forget that priority order.

The most common mistake is to put profits first. That opens the door for bad things to happen. Numbers become all-important, and almost any behavior is justified in the name of profit. Cheating sets in.

Instead, a company's priority should be to protect and enhance its reputation through ethical behavior. Within the confines of that behavior, its next most important goal should be to attract and keep customers. Third is figuring out how to make money.

via blogs.hbr.org

It reminds me of http://www.itsnotwhatyousell.com/pdf/ch1-spence.pdf

Posted via email from Alex Nguyen