I second this - Find a small problem that you are in fact facing in your day to day life, and write code that would solve it.
Over the years, I've a directory tree full of little scripts I wrote. Examples: * I can never find a random password generator to my liking, write one yourself. * Write a script to curl to retrieve the torrent file & auto submit to your rtorrent * Pull down maxmind geoip database & massage it into a format suitable for ipset * Hate (short 1-paragraph) RSS given out by sites? Write script to ingess RSS, fetch the full articles (w/ pix), & egress to rss-tt * Write a script to poll your VOIP prepaid balance and pushover notifications to your iPhone, if it gets low.....
Taobao has a 64GB SSD @ RMB200 (US$32.47) before shipping.
That's 50 cents per GiB for you, with a SM2246EN Silicon Motion controller and Intel 25m IMFT NAND flash.
According to Tom's review on this controller, this can hold its own against Samsung 840 EVO.
The idea is this: you want to link everyones' databases together. But linking databases is a sensitive (security-wise for one) issue and you have to have agreements on a one-by-one basis.
The breakthru is that you notice almost everyone (those significant enough) have a web frontend to their database. Now if you can just go via that web front, you don't have to go direct to the database and can bypass all the above issue!
The first company that I know of that does this is an Israelic company: Orsus.com. Since then, OnePage.com also does it.
What they (at least Orsus) did was build a language (based on XML) that instructs a web spidering engine that has the ability to parse HTML and Javascript. A GUI IDE (no less) is used by the lay person to write the XML-based code.
Slashdot Mirror
I second this - Find a small problem that you are in fact facing in your day to day life, and write code that would solve it.
Over the years, I've a directory tree full of little scripts I wrote. Examples: ....
* I can never find a random password generator to my liking, write one yourself.
* Write a script to curl to retrieve the torrent file & auto submit to your rtorrent
* Pull down maxmind geoip database & massage it into a format suitable for ipset
* Hate (short 1-paragraph) RSS given out by sites? Write script to ingess RSS, fetch the full articles (w/ pix), & egress to rss-tt
* Write a script to poll your VOIP prepaid balance and pushover notifications to your iPhone, if it gets low.
Taobao has a 64GB SSD @ RMB200 (US$32.47) before shipping. That's 50 cents per GiB for you, with a SM2246EN Silicon Motion controller and Intel 25m IMFT NAND flash. According to Tom's review on this controller, this can hold its own against Samsung 840 EVO.
Singapore
Cigarettes are even more expensive here. A pack of 20 is, effective a few days ago, SGD 8.60 or JPY 580 or USD 4.90!
Cinema tickets are SGD 8.50 (USD 4.85 / JPY 572) during weekend 'peak hours', or SGD 7.00 (USD 4.00 / JPY 472) during weekday 'off-peak'.
Postage rates are here - a 'standard' letter less than 20 grams is SGD 0.22 (USD 0.13 / JPY 15).
The breakthru is that you notice almost everyone (those significant enough) have a web frontend to their database. Now if you can just go via that web front, you don't have to go direct to the database and can bypass all the above issue!
The first company that I know of that does this is an Israelic company: Orsus.com. Since then, OnePage.com also does it.
What they (at least Orsus) did was build a language (based on XML) that instructs a web spidering engine that has the ability to parse HTML and Javascript. A GUI IDE (no less) is used by the lay person to write the XML-based code.