Author Archives: alankent
Visualizing Magento 2 Module Dependencies
Magento 2 is working on improving the module dependencies problem from Magento 1. If you look in app/code/*/*/etc/module.xml you will notice there are now dependency declarations in these files. Knowing full well WORK IN THIS AREA IS NO WHERE NEAR FINISHED and the current files were probably generated automatically by grep commands or similar (so any […]
ImageMagick PHP Windows installation pain
I am not a PHP expert, but I was having a play with the latest Magento 2 code drop on GitHub. I thought I would share some little experiences in case helpful to anyone else. I have Windows 7 on my laptop, so I am running XAMPP for my stack. I had an older installation with […]
Cassini — we have a launch!
“This month, the company has quietly rolled out to U.S. users its new search engine, known inside the company as Cassini.” Today, after much blood sweat and tears, we finally got to tell the world that Cassini has launched. Why the quiet launch? Well it was always interesting to see the occasional article where someone would […]
How Great Leaders Communicate
This article on “How Great Leaders Communicate” I thought interesting. Towards the end it says “what shapes morale the most is employees’ conviction that they are working for the best company in their field”. How true this is! One of my challenges in coming from Australia to Silicon Valley is the difficulty of recruiting top […]
New eBay and eBay Inc logos
After 17 years, eBay has decided to change its logo. In fact there are two logo changes going on. First is the “eBay marketplaces” logo (ebay.com). And then there is the eBay Inc logo (ebayinc.com), which is the parent company to the eBay family which includes PayPal, GSI Commerce, X.commerce, Red laser, Milo, and so […]
eBay tech blog post on Akka
I just wanted to highlight a recent eBay tech blob on how Akka and Zookeeper were used on one of the eBay projects. I personally like the Actor model of concurrency (I did a short post on it once before) so just wanted to highlight the article. http://www.ebaytechblog.com/2012/09/13/grid-computing-with-fault-tolerant-actors-and-zookeeper/
Same Day Delivery beta – Ebay Now
Ebay combined with bricks and mortar stores in San Francisco have just launched a beta called “eBay Now” in San Francisco, described here by Techcrunch. Its a clear example of eBay trying to support businesses solve challenges with the blurring of online and offline. It will be interesting to see how popular it is for […]
eBay turnaround article on NYTimes
I am always careful about commercial in confidence stuff, which is why I like pointing to other articles. This one was a nice one on the eBay turnaround from the New York Times. And yes I do work for eBay and am probably biased as a result. Full steam ahead!
My View of the Microsoft Stack Ranking article doing the rounds
The article on Microsoft stack ranking certainly made its rounds around the office. I am no HR expert, but some of the content was not consistent with my understanding and VERY limited experience with stack ranking. So I thought I would go out on a limb and comment in public. Eichenwald’s conversations reveal that a […]
How I use my Digital Capturx Pen
I have a particular way I work with a standard pen and notebook. With my work I meet with lots of people. I frequently have questions I need answers for, and want to collect them for the next meeting. I also have my own action items, as well as notes I keep for important meetings. […]
Alan Kent's Blog 