Skip to content

Author archive for: Tom

Here’s my biggest mistake; what’s yours?

What’s the biggest professional mistake that you’ve ever made? I’ve had a good few mistakes that a) have been very expensive and b) I’ve learned a great deal from. In fact, one of my favourite interview questions was to ask candidates to tell me about their biggest mistake; the results could be quite revealing. More to the point: I’d much rather hire someone who’s made a big mistake or two than someone who’s still waiting for their first time.

Just a few minutes ago, I found what is possibly my biggest personal mistake to date. And ouch, is it painful! Continue reading Here’s my biggest mistake; what’s yours?

Creating a new web app: the first steps you should take

I have a new idea that I’m going to turn into a web app, and this is the first post that documents the process I’ll be taking. You can expect more updates as I complete each step, and in a couple of months the app itself will be live!

When it comes to my web apps, I’ve been feeling a bit restless as of late; I’d like to create a web app that involves slightly more than adding to social media. So, I went through my ideas file (note: keep a stream-of-consciousness file on your computer where you record any and every idea that pops into your head), and started to map out what I want to get developed for the rest of the year.

One freshly-added idea came from reading My Email Canary on John Graham-Cumming’s blog, and the subsequent discussion on Hacker News. These posts talk about how to find out if an unauthorised person is reading your email, albeit tailored somewhat towards GMail. I read that it might be possible to write a gadget that sends out notifications when suspicious activity is detected. I like this idea – it sounds interesting to investigate at least – and there’s a chance people might like to pay for the service.

Continue reading Creating a new web app: the first steps you should take

Choosing Technology For Your Web App

You’ve had your great idea, completed market research, have your marketing plan in place… and now you need to build it. But what technology should you use?

Here I’ll briefly discuss the choices I made for TweetingMachine.

Note: This is a lightening-quick post, and my last for a few weeks; I get married on Saturday, and will be out of contact on my honeymoon after that until hallway through June.

Continue reading Choosing Technology For Your Web App