Greg Leib on Software

I recently received this marketing communication from LinkedIn, featuring a YouTube video . The video shows children talking about what they want to be when they grow up, and they are juxtaposed against images of successful professionals doing those things. The message is that you can follow your dreams and succeed. It's cute. LinkedIn marketing communication promoting http://imagine.linkedin.com The website accompanying the campaign goes on to explain how some of the professionals featured in the video use LinkedIn to do their current jobs. For example, a chief merchandising officer uses it to discover vendors for unique items. And that's it: end of communication. What I find interesting is that LinkedIn isn't set up very well for people trying to "follow their dreams". I've worked hard to grow my capabilities. I average two hours per day studying work-related topics to expand my reach. For my career, the signal-to-noise ratio on LinkedIn is mostly

I was among the thousands of attendees of yesterday's Amazon AWS Summit in New York. One of the key services announced was Zocalo , a file storage and sharing service for the enterprise. One aspect of the Zocalo service that wasn't clear is whether it will have an API. Part of the system I am currently working on provides a workflow for analysts to work with small sets of files. An API for Zocalo would allow automated process and analysts to jointly curate the files. Other AWS services have great API's: I've especially enjoyed working with the Java libraries for AWS services. Amazon usually takes API development very seriously and produces solid interfaces. Interoperating Zocalo with other AWS services would be the killer feature for my current use case, and an API with good libraries would facilitate this. Here are some ideas for what could be done combining Zocalo and other AWS services: Analyze file access and update logs using EMR or Kinesis. This could rev