A perspective from Tim Bray on Google Android, and tips for the blogger

Tim Bray made the switch to the Google Android team a year ago and writes two interesting posts.

One is his one year on the Google Android Team and share what is good and a problem.

What’s Good · Android, more than anything. A year spent in intimate contact with its coalface hasn’t shaken my feeling that most things about the system are mostly right. As I’ve already said in this space, I’ve never met a more accomplished engineering group; it’s a privilege to be associated with them.

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What’s a Problem · Being a remote worker, mostly. It’s just not a part of Google culture, and the Android project is particularly centralized. If you’re not spending a lot of time in that building with the dessert sculptures in front, it’s extra-difficult to be in the loops that matter; they’re not unwelcoming, they’re just super-busy.

What was even more interesting was Tim’s “things about blogging.”  Here are three tips.  Visit his post to see the complete list.  Good stuff to think about.

In preparation for the event, I thought I’d jot down some helpful tips and tricks, and in no time at all I had more than twenty. I ran through them real fast in the hope of provoking some conversation — it worked — and got a laugh by saying “I guess I should write these up in a blog post”. Well, then.

For those who don’t know, I’ve been blogging since February 2003 and have written over a million words in this space, it’s been a boost for my career and my life, and I flatter myself that I’ve been involved in some conversations that mattered.

  1. Blogging is Healthy · It’s no longer the white-hot center of controversy it was in 2005; now it’s part of the establishment, and if you look at the numbers from the popular platform providers like WordPress and Blogger, still growing quite nicely thank you.
  2. Freshness Matters · When you don’t update a blog, it gets stale fast. The natural tendency of the human mind to favor what’s fresh is reinforced by search engines leaning the same way.
  3. Write For Yourself · Don’t try to guess what people want to read; you’re the only person whose interests you really understand. In particular, don’t thrash around trying to appeal to a larger audience; the only surefire way is pictures of celebrity breasts, and the world already has enough.