underlap

Social networks, and websites with a social element, are starting to migrate from being walled gardens towards interoperation and open standards. This is comparable to the adoption of email standards by companies such as AOL in the 1990's.

In an interoperable world, users want to be able to move between providers with minimal friction to avoid "lock-in". Switching email providers easily is taken for granted. Switching social networks should be just as easy.

This article gives an overview of account portability and the current state of play.

I gave a talk on monads to some friends yesterday and recorded it for anyone who's interested. They are current and retired programmers, so the talk may suit others in that line of work.

I was encouraged to put this together after they heard about my functional programming lectures at Winchester University (UK). This video gathers together the material on monads and presents it at a faster pace, so it may be more suitable for experienced programmers than absolute beginners.

Thanks to those who joined in this video, for their questions, observations, and general patience.

A PDF file of the slides can be downloaded here.

I welcome questions, corrections, improvements etc..