The Cost of Working In a Digital World
The Cost of Working In a Digital World
photo credit: misterbisson Just wanted to share a little food for thought this Sunday evening. A very important article has been written by the New York Times showing the hazards of being a web worker. Without boundaries and carefult attention to our Internet usage, we can quickly find our health declining. Prolific blogger Om Malik, who suffered […]
photo credit: misterbisson
Just wanted to share a little food for thought this Sunday evening. A very important article has been written by the New York Times showing the hazards of being a web worker. Without boundaries and carefult attention to our Internet usage, we can quickly find our health declining. Prolific blogger Om Malik, who suffered some life-threatening health problems late last year, shares some insights his doctor gave as to why web workers have health problems.
Why my doctors told me that if you are going to spend inordinate amount of time in front of a computer screen at night, you might have tough time going to sleep. The screen-flicker makes your eyes and your mind think it is day time, hence you have trouble sleeping. If you drink too much coffee, you are going to have trouble sleeping. If you don’t sleep your heart works longer hours and has to pump more blood and is under stress. Problems get compounded when you are a smoker, are overweigh, lead a sedentary life (phone/computer) and/or are on a plane constantly.
These are problems ALL web workers are faced with. Sitting and staring for hours is never going to be good on our health, so it’s imperative we find ways to take care of our bodies.I love the creative approach Jonathan Fields has taken with his own working environment. He literally turned his treadmill into a desk and walks while he works. Brilliant.
If you’re looking for other ways to keep a healthy and manageable online work routine, we’ve got you covered. I’ve compiled some previous posts below that all deal with healthy web working.Remember: it’s definitely possible to be a productive, creative AND healthy web worker as long as we don’t let the work control us.
- Avoid Entreprenuer Burnout: Fill Your Tank
- Avoid Entrepreneur Burnout: Understand the Balance in Life
- Let Your Mind Unwind
- Diversify Your Activities to Avoid Burnout
- How to Work 8 Hours Straight Without Hating Yourself
- Unschedule Your Work
- Easy Renewal Tips for the Freelancer
- Ding! The Urgent vs. the Important In Our Lives
Google Reveals App Engine
From their secret techno-lairs the Google developers have revealed a preview of their latest creation: App Engine: Google App Engine lets you run your web applications on Google’s infrastructure. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow. With App Engine, there are […]
From their secret techno-lairs the Google developers have revealed a preview of their latest creation: App Engine:
Google App Engine lets you run your web applications on Google’s infrastructure. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow. With App Engine, there are no servers to maintain: You just upload your application, and it’s ready to serve your users.
The features include:
- dynamic web serving, with full support for common web technologies
- persistent storage with queries, sorting and transactions
- automatic scaling and load balancing
- APIs for authenticating users and sending email using Google Accounts
- a fully featured local development environment that simulates Google App Engine on your computer
App Engine currently supports Python, but apparently other languages are coming. The free account (the only one offered during the preview) is limited to “500MB of storage, 200M megacycles of CPU per day, and 10GB bandwidth per day”.
The App Engine blog is also up and running.
These certainly are interesting times! Thanks to @lachlanhardy for the news!
This article provided by sitepoint.com.
Microsoft To Follow Apple’s Lead on Backwards Compatibility
Via the SitePoint Industry News forum, Microsoft are planning on following Apple’s lead on backwards compatibility with the next version of their Windows operating system, referred to as Windows 7, to be launched as early as next year. According to Dev Corvin: Windows 7 takes a different approach to the componentization and backwards compatibility issues; in short, […]
Via the SitePoint Industry News forum, Microsoft are planning on following Apple’s lead on backwards compatibility with the next version of their Windows operating system, referred to as Windows 7, to be launched as early as next year.
According to Dev Corvin:
Windows 7 takes a different approach to the componentization and backwards compatibility issues; in short, it doesn’t think about them at all. Windows 7 will be a from-the-ground-up packaging of the Windows codebase; partially source, but not binary compatible with previous versions of Windows.
Corvin suggests that this approach will allow for performance improvements to be made to Windows by not having to support monolithic libraries for backwards compatibility. Applications compiled for Vista and XP would run in a virtual machine, in a similar way that Apple’s Mac OS X runs Classic apps — an approach that was risky at the time but has paid off for Apple given OS X’s success.
If true, this is a marked departure from Microsoft’s traditional policy on backwards compatibility. In everything from the desktop to the web, the standard Redmond philosophy has been backwards compatibility at all cost. When Microsoft succumbed to the web development community last month to make IE8 standards-compliant by default, the reason given was that it was “best for the Web”. Now, it seems that Microsoft are realizing that a more forward-looking approach on the desktop might actually be beneficial for their bottom line — and for the regulators.
This also allows Microsoft to neatly sidestep the DoJ and EU anti-trust rulings … While the anti-Microsoft naysayers out there will claim that this is unethical business practice, however, technical users will appreciate that this is an excellent way of providing new features while maintaining backwards compatibility with legacy applications.
Bill Gates recently let slip that Windows 7 could be available as early as next year.
This article provided by sitepoint.com.