Vanessa Harris – Technology Poet

Quitting the WP Engine Habit for Good

August 5, 2018December 27, 2015 by Vanessa Harris

There are much better Wordpress hosts out there, here’s a story of finding an amazingly fast Wordpress host.

Leaving WP Engine for the First Time

March 21, 2019November 24, 2015 by Vanessa Harris

Woman riding motorcycle with big grin on face

It started innocently enough. A little hiccup in one of the more popular sites I run. As page load time spiked to more than 15s I reached out to the WP Engine Support team to get it fixed. Page views had remained stable, and nothing significant had changed in my WordPress configuration. For weeks I …

Android is Awful

December 30, 2015September 19, 2015 by Vanessa Harris

Android is awful. The Nexus 6 unboxing experience as enduring by an iPhone user.

Leaving Chrome Behind

November 24, 2015June 3, 2015 by Vanessa Harris

Chrome was once the quintessential browser, yet many years of bloat have lead to it’s slow decline.

The difference between compromise and mediocrity

December 30, 2015June 1, 2015 by Vanessa Harris

Excellent products have compromises. So do mediocre ones. How do you tell which compromises will lead you to greatness?

It’s More Than an Engineering Problem – Why Apple Pay will succeed

December 30, 2015September 15, 2014 by Vanessa Harris

To an engineer, any problem is an engineering problem. Unfortunately for Android NFC payments aren’t an engineering problem.

Google is freaking me out

December 30, 2015August 25, 2014 by Vanessa Harris

Last week Google acquired Skybox, a satellite imaging company. This is hot on the heels of acquiring Titan Aerospace – a drone company, Boston Dynamics – a robot company that had military contracts at the time of acquisition, and Deepmind – an artificial intelligence company with technology so powerful they forced Google to setup an ethics board …

Tesla wraps shrewdness in altruism

December 30, 2015June 16, 2014 by Vanessa Harris

I have a little more cynical take on Tesla’s announcement. I think it’s a play to get other auto makers reliant on Tesla’s infrastructure as a way to:
1. Give them scale to build charging stations and batteries
2. Make electric cars more compatible so they can grow the pie of electric cars vs gas cars (rising tide lifts all boats)

The car business is a scrappy zero sum fight. Tesla is in the gas station business. Or the electric car equivalent: batteries and charging stations

A shrewd move, not an altruistic one.

9 reasons your web browser is holding back the Internet

November 24, 2015July 17, 2012 by Vanessa Harris

9 Reasons your browser is holding back the internet

As far as modern browsers have come, there is still much that keeps the web from fulfilling it’s true potential. Here’s 9 ways in which the web browser is holding back the Internet.

The three eras of iPad apps

November 24, 2015July 13, 2012 by Vanessa Harris

If you’re designing an iPad app, don’t stop at the guidelines that Apple provides you. Delightful is possible, and magical within reach. Stretch the touch metaphors. Create an engaging experience that is only possible on a touch device.