What cats dream of…
…if they live on the desk of a web developer.
(Left: Bugsy, right, Ninja)
This is a great book for learning about MongoDB which we are using to build some features of the website, www.socialnetwork.com.
We’ve selected MongoDB because:
- It’s awesome
- Developing for MongoDB using C# is faster than developing against MS SQL server
- MongDB is super fast
- It includes auto-sharding and master / slave and auto-fail safe modes, so it’s great for horizontal scalability
We’re now using MongoDB to power caching systems and high performance queries, and we’re building out a lot of new functionality on top of MongoDB, which we’ll talk about more as we continue to roll out updates.
Dave
Website update coming before end of July
A big website update is coming this week. The update speeds up a lot of things.
- Browsing the website is much faster
- Photos load faster and the caching system is greatly improved for speed
- The site layout was completely redone using CSS layout instead of tables, so it takes less bandwidth and its easier to made additional enhancements
- Lots of bugs were fixed
- The site layout was trimmed a lot to make things cleaner looking and easier to use
- Styles were updated making the site look better
Gay Marriage Legalized in New York
(Picture credit: The Huffington Post via Associated Press)
This week New York begins issuing marriage licenses for same-sex marriage and performing gay and lesbian weddings in New York City and throughout New York State.
What took so long? SocialNetwork.com has been providing online dating services to same sex (as well as to heterosexual) couples for over 10 years. We also provide dating services for interracial marriage, and even provide dating services for people with physical disabilities to find love. We endeavor to treat all people equally and with an equal right to live, liberty and love.
At SocialNetwork.com we do not take a position on if gay marriage is “ok” or not. That is a moral question and it should be made by your temple or church. We do however believe in liberty and proudly support the United States Constitution.
It’s easy to get confused with all the talk about “Gay rights” but really that’s the wrong message because groups don’t have rights, individuals do.
Some people like to argue that the issue involves redefining what marriage means. Senator Ron Paul’s book Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom explains it well. Government should not be defining what marriage means or telling people who they can or cannot spend their lives with. Government should not tell you who you can choose to make a life or death decision on your behalf if you are injured, or who can visit you in the hospital, or who you can be your beneficiary of your insurance, or who you can leave your money to when you die. These are individual liberties.
Government’s role on the issue should be limited to the legal issues of creating a joint entity for financial and tax purposes.
We congratulate the people of New York for having the goodness of heart and the bravery to choose Freedom for all of its residents.
Congratulations to Google on launch of Google +
First, I’d like to congratulate Google on the launch of Google +. I am sure that many, many engineers there worked very hard on it, and I have to say, I think they’ve done a wonderful job.
Some people are asking me, as CEO of SocialNetwork.com, how do I feel about it? Did Google just eat my lunch?
Maybe, its a little too early to tell. I think some of the things we’re rolling out are better. I also think their work validates a lot of ideas we had. For example, a big part of the new system is the Social Circles feature. As you may have noticed, our logo on the site has been social circles for many years now:
These circles, as shown on our home page, represent your friendships, romantic relationships, and business relationships, that all come together to define your life experience.
I think its great that people will be more aware of this concept.
On the one hand, its bad for SocialNetwork.com to have another major social network competitor. But, lets face it, we were already way behind Facebook in terms of numbers of enrolled users so not that much has changed there.
There may also be many positives for us.
1. It makes people aware that there are many good alternatives to Facebook. Opening people’s minds to more possibilities is good for us.
2. Google lets people export your data. That means that its going to reduce the barriers for users who want to migrate off of Facebook, and even off of Google +. For those who want to use SocialNetwork.com instead, or IN ADDITION TO Google +, it will be easier for them.
3. It makes people ask the question, WHY use something other than Facebook. What’s really interesting, is that the big answer to that right now seems to be BECAUSE it’s not Facebook. I think to a large extent Facebook users have felt hostage. Now they’re really going to have to decide to use Facebook, and explaining why to use Facebook instead of Google + or SNDC is even harder than explaining why you should use SNDC or Google + instead (or in addition to).
Finally, I think that since “Because it’s not Facebook”, as a reason to migrate, is also a compelling reason to go to SNDC…. “Because SNDC is not Facebook or Google.”.
