Michal Migurski

"In software development, we are essentially working on the same car or widget continuously, often for years. We are in the same soup, the same codebase. We can't expect a model based on independence of pieces in manufacturing to be accurate when we are working continuously on a single thing (a codebase) that shows wear over time and needs constant attention. No, to me, code is inventory. It is stuff lying around and it has substantial cost of ownership. It might do us good to consider what we can do to minimize it. I think that the future belongs to organizations that learn how to strategically delete code. Many companies are getting better at cutting unprofitable features in their products, but the next step is to pull those features out by the root: the code. Carrying costs are larger than we think. There's competitive advantage for companies that recognize this." - Michal Migurski

"Wikipedia articles can be tagged with latitude/longitude coordinates. I was recently curious to know: which areas have the most coverage? It's important not to read too much into the answer, because the density of coordinates is due to a mixture of: how active different Wikipedia language projects are, how active at geo-tagging they are, which regions have had lots of short articles mechanically imported (e.g. on small towns, or metro stations), and finally, the actual landmark density (e.g. dense urban cores versus sprawling suburbs). But nonetheless it might be interesting to know. So, here are the most densely Wikipedia-article-populated parts of the world, at several scales." - Michal Migurski

"What we failed to ask was, 'Who cares?' Blippy raised almost $13 million in funding and at some point its valuation was at $46.2 million, with enviable investor David Hornik posting his $8 million dollar purchase of Blippy stock on Blippy itself. ... Things eventually quieted down as they are wont to do in media hype land. And then we kind of stopped writing about it, caught up in the hockey stick growth of Groupon and Facebook and Quora. We stopped writing about it so much so that we missed the fact that it pivoted from a purchase sharing site to a user reviews site, starting with the introduction of user reviews on July 23rd 2010 and then moving of the platform fully on to reviews by October of the same year." - Michal Migurski

"The USA TODAY Census API allows developers to easily and programmatically access United States Census information. Data concerning ethnicity, housing, population and race is available from both the 2000 and 2010 census, as well as basic population numbers dating back to the original 1790 census. All data returned in JSON formatting. Please refer to our documentation below which describes in detail how data can be requested and returned. We welcome your feedback, so please contribute to our forum or contact us at api@usatoday.com." - Michal Migurski

"As we watch this machine, this engine that runs on memories and identity and watch it sell every last bit of us to anyone who will pay, as it mulches under our self and our dreams and our ideas and turns them into a grey miserable paste suitable for a side dish or the full entree of the human online experience, I am sure many of us will say it's no big deal. ... I can only hope that all the projects and processes and memories and history that I am focusing on will make me happy in the face of the colorless, null-void cloud of pre-collapsed galaxy that is the Facebook Nebula. Thanks for your question!" - Michal Migurski

"The page fails on a fundamental level - it's supposed to be where you find out what's happened on Flickr while you were away. The current design, unfortunately, encourages random clicking, not informed exploration. The page isn't just outdated, it's actively hurting Flickr, as members' social graphs on the site become increasingly out of sync with real life. Old users forget to visit the site, new sign ups are never roped in, and Flickr, who increased member sign-ups substantially in 2010, will forego months of solid work when new members don't come back." - Michal Migurski

"building=yes is a searchable and linkable index of every single way tagged building=yes in OpenStreetMap (OSM). A web page for every building in OpenStreetMap! You can link to buildings using their 64-bit building=yes identifier or their OSM way ID. Each building has been tagged with one or more Where On Earth (WOE) IDs so you can also search for buildings by place." - Michal Migurski

"The present study examines ways of creating analytical hill-shaded images by applying more than one light sources, in order to eliminate, at a certain degree, two deficiencies present in single lighted hill-shaded images. ... This methodology aims to achieve a more balanced result of hill-shading, in such a way that the perception of the initial optimal lighting is preserved, as well as, the major relief forms in all directions are revealed or even sharper local details are enhanced." - Michal Migurski

"The aerial perspective effect is an essential design component of traditional shaded relief, which is based on natural observation. The concept is familiar to anyone who has hiked up a mountain--the veiling effects of atmospheric haze cause topographic features in the distance to look fainter than features in the foreground. When aerial perspective is applied to map shaded relief, higher topographic features should be shown with slightly more contrast than lowland features because they appear closer to readers who, theoretically, view the map from above. ... Fortunately, there is a simple procedure for introducing aerial perspective to digital shaded relief." - Michal Migurski

"The idea behind resolution bumping is simple: by merging low-resolution and high-resolution GTOPO30 data of the same area, hybrid data are produced that combine the best characteristics and minimize the problems found in the originals. The technique uses GTOPO30 data in 16-bit grayscale format in Photoshop. Two copies of a GTOPO30 file are used, one high resolution and the other downsampled to a lower resolution, these can then be blended together by a proportional amount controlled by the user. This yields a new grayscale "DEM" that, if merged in the right proportions, combines the readability of the downsampled data with all the detail one expects to find in mountainous terrain - without the graphical noise. Resolution bumping in effect "bumps" or etches a suggestion of topographical detail onto generalized topographic surfaces." - Michal Migurski

"Leaflet - a new open source JavaScript library for interactive maps for both mobile and desktop browsers, developed by CloudMade to form the core of its next generation Web Maps API. Leaflet is built from the ground up to work efficiently and smoothly on both platforms. It's very fast, lightweight while still having a strong browser support, and really easy to use. It also has a clean, simple and readable OOP-based code, and it's hosted on the world's best open source collaboration platform GitHub, so contributing is a snap. - Michal Migurski

"There is innovation occurring at many big companies. The thing that big companies really struggle to do is to ship. How to launch a new product within the context of an existing brand, an existing economic structure, how to not impute a strategy tax on a new product, an existing organizational structure, etc. These are the challenges that usually cause the breakdown and where big company innovation, in my experience, so often comes apart." - Michal Migurski

"Being opposed to technology is profoundly at odds with the book business because what is the book but technology, technology that has been smoothed and sanded by repeated contact with human society into the most comfortable technology we have, as taken for granted as our clothes, product of the looms. ... We cannot know how much magnificent culture went unpublished by the white men in tweed jackets who ran publishing for the past century but just because they did publish some great books doesn’t mean they didn’t ignore a great many more." - Michal Migurski

"This is a tough question here, in Novosibirsk, where almost all PC users know 2gis, the desktop city map/yellow pages with a huge business database and public transport routing. It's free to get and to list your business, but completely closed source, both data and the software. ... This model was invented in 1998 and is pretty outdated, but all together still manages to satisfy the users. ... So, Novosibirsk is their native city. Everyone knows 2gis. When someone needs to go somewhere, they open 2gis and search the address. I find few areas and people who could be interested in using and contributing to OSM. It's a tough question. That's why last several months I have been drawing rural areas and small towns, the places in which 2gis will never be interested, or will have not enough resources to map." - Michal Migurski