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How to rent a cheap apartment in New York City

Just like this guy wrote - paying $2450 for a 500 sq. ft 1 bedroom in New York City is a fact. A fact that sucks, because being a New Yorker means living in the city, not some Spanish-speaking Queens borough or commuter-hell Staten Island. And by city, people mean area from downtown up to the 90's.

New York rental market is a pool of sharks when it comes to rental agencies. They are aggressive and greedy, posting new LUXURIOUS properties every day, which are in fact knock-offs. There are never real pictures, because they would make you cry. For most of the "midwest transplants" and "other creative types" something we call apartment causes a shock. Prepare to shed out $1800-$2500 for something that comes with a very limited living area, tiny bedroom and "kitchen corner".

But my story is not about greed of rental agents or stupidity of the "artist teens", it is about looking into the future of the city and especially the future of Chinatown. › Continue reading

Tags: chinatown, craigslist, nyc, rent

Killing inner creativity with full time job

I had a conversation yesterday with a friend of mine about all sorts of things and one in particular - his job. Somehow we have slipped into the issue of his boss being incompetent and at the same time insecure, controlling every step my fellow makes.

I have raised this topic once already, speaking about people slowing down company growth by taking positions they are not qualified for. This time it's rather about this and something else i realized while listening to this story.

Quite often we are limited in our creativity by the corporate culture. Process of approvals and many other factors make changes hard, if not impossible. Being a developer myself i contributed a number of times to process and many times my voice was not heard. However, when the project was launched all the flaws i talked about surfaced. As i am always striving for perfection in the code i write and solutions i deliver, i like to think about all the possible drawbacks before i actually start to work on the project.

Due to some circumstances i have had  experience of freelancing for some time and must say it is a best "job" i had. Freelancers / consultants have better (read higher) pay and are given challenging tasks. Solving client's problems gives you two things - recognition and a feeling of accomplishment. Best job is not the one which pays well, but the one giving you more satisfaction - and speaking about corporate cubicle culture i can only think of how many people are out there being unhappy with what they do, but afraid to take a step towards creating their own startup or a small biz.

Tags: freelance, job

Intermedia hosting outsources technical support to Russia

It has come as a surprise, when instead of an Indian person a girl with a russian accent answered my call to Intermedia tech support Tuesday morning. When i asked where they based, she said - St. Petersburg, Russia. Since i speak the language we quickly sorted out my problem and i was done, but a thought kept my attention this day. So after all outsourcing battles with selfish indians, lazy philipino and other countries, i won't name here tech companies have considered smart russians to do the job?

A few words about Intermedia hosting and my particular experience - don't buy it. For the shared hosting pricing they ask, you can get yourself a VPS with Linode and rule your own world on it, vs. being stuck with limitations of the shared box platform. In my case client's account had a limitation of MaxxClientsAllowed = 10 on his account. This is pathetic for a shared hosting for a $20 a month. Thus a sudden traffic spike of 6000 visitors from Groupon made the website non-responsive.

Olga from russian tech support team made a favor of upping this limit to a 100, which helped a bit. However after conversation with a client this account is now scheduled for the move to Linode's VPS. As to Intermedia's decision to have support team in Russia - the question about efficiency remains open.

Tags: intermedia, outsourcing, shared hosting

Thoughts about cloud hosting for Grails applications

A few years ago nobody probably heard about "cloud computing" term. Except maybe for engineers building customer access portals, people involved in design of sites like Facebook and Twitter and their alikes. But as more and more people get connected to the internet with high-speed access, traffic figures are going up for everyone no matter what you host - a small online store or a mainstream blog.

I feel sorry for some of my clients, who chose to have their websites hosted on shared hosting with providers known for their infamous overselling - Godaddy, 1and1 and others. As they put about 100-150 accounts on one server with web traffic increasing for one of the clients it negatively reflects for the rest and your website visitors start experiencing slower load and response times. Eventually users simply hit back button in their browser tired of waiting for the website to answer and web page to load. And this is how you lose your customers.

So what should you do to avoid this? What should you do, if you are a developer who designs an application and expects an overwhelming response to it? › Continue reading

Tags: amazon, cloudfoundry, grails, springsource

iPhone 4 pre-orders, Apple game and T-Mobile availability

This changes everything. Yet again.

Lines to get the phone, just like a year and two years ago. Out of stock stores. Media hype and hysteria. Let's forget about all this for a moment and concentrate on blurry things which starting to emerge in this picture.

› Continue reading

Tags: AT&T, iphone, iphone 4, t-mobile, t-mobile iphone

Psychological aspects of workplace productivity

Something triggered my attention today as I was reviewing a newsletter draft for one of my clients - doctor Kalitenko. In one of the passages he writes about hormonally imbalanced woman, a business owner who is struggling with her business' failure. The reason for it is her going through the menopause. All adequate, no questions asked - but how often do we have a situation like this in a corporate world where your workplace productivity is affected by such a "problem".

› Continue reading

Tags: productivity, psychology, workplace