Two weeks ago I took part in Startup Weekend, a 54-hour business hackathon. Participants pitch their ideas in under 60 seconds to an audience of developers, designers and "bizdev" guys. The best ideas are voted up and teams form to build them out over the weekend. The winning team, Cable & Grain, presented an upmarket retail curio-accessory straight out of Africa: mobile speakers embedded inside a wooden warthog sculpture. Their presentation deserved to win...but nothing scales like software. Synopsis Do things that don't scale Pivot early Presentation over prototype VC-ship is not (necessarily) entrepreneurship Real developers ship What I Learned Lesson 1: Do things that don't scale As the elected developer, I spent the Saturday completely over-architecting a prototype. I am used to building large, scalable systems I will have to maintain and wasted precious time on scale and extensibility when I should have been writing the simplest code that could possibly work. That night I went home and overhauled my bloated project to be as simple as possible. Lesson 2: Pivot early Software needs to solve a problem, but our initial idea did not. You can take any idea and add some abstract business model to it, but that doesn't mean it will be profitable. Don't be afraid to change direction if your first idea sucks. Lesson 3: Presentation or prototype Even though the audience was awed by our prototype and our main speaker, Roger, was fluent in communicating our solution, the judges cared more about our lacking market research and business plan. Impressively, our team was one of two with an actual software prototype, but the focus was on a compelling presentation. Instead of coding for 25 hours, I should have been making the presentation awesome. Code is costly; mock-up what you can. Lesson 4: Venture Capital != Entrepreneurship After questioning a few investors at the event, I realised that many VCs are not entrepreneurs and have never risked their own money. Don't take marriage advice from your divorced uncle. Don't take financial advice from poor drinking buddies. Don't listen to employees about entrepreneurship. Lesson 5: Real developers ship The world is overrun by accountants who want to help you write a business plan. You need them to balance your books, but they need developers more. The best people are out there building something, but pitching at a startup weekend with free beer is fun too and a great learning experience.

Mankind is on the cusp of a learning revolution: thoughts on universal education. [More]

Don't get me wrong, but if you write this, you're wrong. [More]

What I learned from hosting 5 developer dinners. [More]

Whaddya mean you can't get a job? Part 2 [More]

If you're smart and talented, but you can't get hired, then You're Doing It Wrong. [More]

I cringe when I hear a pensioner erase text with a ringing barrage of backspaces. I cringe the way you might cringe at the sound of a small child screaming on an airplane while frothing at the mouth, with sharp nails digging into a blackboard. That's what backspaces sound like. Short of learning to touch type, you need to master five keyboard cowboy skills to look passably competent at typing: Ctrl+Click or Middle Click Links This opens hyperlinks in a new browser tab so you can keep your work in the current tab. This will change your life. Seriously. Try it on a link to Life Hacker, which is filled with useful hacks. Home and End Trivial as it may seem, few pre-90s computer users seem to know they can skip to the start or end of a line by pressing the Home or End keys, respectively. Try it in your browser's address bar. Pretty neat, eh? This is useful in and of itself, but more mysterious advances await those who combine these navigational keys with other simple key modifiers... The Shift Key Holding Shift while moving the caret will universally select text. Want to select a whole sentence? Press Home or End while holding the Shift key. Boom! You have just selected all the text in your browser bar. Start typing over the selection to erase it immediately - no need for Backspace first! Yes, you just saved the world from a screaming infant. Tip: You can also click on text while holding Shift to select the text inbetween. Ctrl+Right and Ctrl+Left When editing text, this key combination will move your caret (the text cursor) to the next or previous word boundary, respectively. No more tapping the left and right arrow keys to move between words in sentences. After learning to touch type, this skill improved my text editing speed the most. Ctrl+Shift+Left & Ctrl+Shift+Right This is The Mortal Kombat Fatality of Keyboard hacks. It will blow onlookers' minds with its elegance of form and function. By combining Ctrl+Right or Ctrl+Left with the Shift key, you can select whole words and even entire sentences with just a few key presses! Try it in your address bar to silence screeching infants the world over. Conclusion It only takes four keys to keep your hands off the mouse and on the keyboard: Ctrl, Shift, Home and End. The next step is remapping Caps Lock to Backspace. Once you've mastered these skills, I would strongly recommend getting a better keyboard. The Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 is the greatest piece of hardware I own and will seriously improve your typing.

Beautiful readability with the Golden Ratio: Perfect line-spacing and reading width [More]

Designing a better to do list. That doesn't kill bunnies. [More]

Portable executable to remap Caps Lock key to Backspace without rebooting. Useful for Colemak enthusiasts when roaming on QWERTY. [More]