Raphael 👋

As each year goes by, October is a month that I truly look forward to as a developer. For the past five years, DigitalOcean has been involved in running a month-long celebration of open source software along with other companies in technology. Developers from all around the world contribute to open source projects on Github ranging from new features, bug fixes, and yes even fixing up spelling typos. More importantly, upon completing 5 pull requests, DigitalOcean has an incentive for participants who make 5 pull requests – you receive a free t-shirt along with stickers to add to your shiny laptop! It’s a form of validation for all the work that you’ve contributed to the community and maybe some street cred as well. ...

Crowdfunding seems to be the buzz word being used these days. Ideas are becoming reality in a shorter amount of time, compared to traditional methods thanks to crowdfunding. For the past year, I’ve decided to jump on the bandwagon and fund projects from Kickstarter that I felt could be of use personally. I thought I’d share some of my experiences for those looking to fund projects. Kickstarter is not a store, expect hiccups along the way. Kickstarter does a great job at summarizing this on their blog: https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store Most projects aren’t delivered in the expected time listed – This is especially true for technology projects. Although some projects have “early bird” rewards, don’t be surprised if the reward doesn’t come early as expected or there are many delays in delivering the project to you. Always ask questions before funding a project, whether it comes down to system requirements, quality and etc. Most creators are great at replying to messages and care about the project backers. More importantly, read the project page before backing any project! Remember that you’re taking a risk backing projects. Some projects will see the day of light, while others are shelved. When funding a project, make sure you check your emails, especially for updates. Some project creators will use 3rd party services such as BackerKit to handle the logistics of delivering rewards to backers and they may end up in your SPAM folder.

If you’re anything like me, keeping up with the latest news from multiple news sources can be a hassle. Sure there are Google Reader replacements, but what if you want to have all your new articles in one place under one feed on the go? Pocket is a great application that lets you easily read articles in the same format and more importantly without any ads. Today we’ll show you how you can setup automatic RSS feeds using Pocket and IFTTT. ...

The ability to signup/login with a website using your Facebook, Twitter or other supported account are popping up everywhere and for good reasons – to make signing up for yet another site easier. Many of these give you the social account option, or create an account by entering your email address and etc. The opposite of that registration flow is restricting users to only one social account option such as Facebook. Users that blindly authorize their account might not realize that they’re really offering more of their personal information than intended. ...