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    1. How to pun

      Puns have been around for as long as we’ve had language. They’re a form of double speak, which exploits multiple meanings of a word or phrase. Like other forms of word play, puns rely on their delivery mechanism (i.e. the…

    1. Building a Conversational Interface

      I recently came across this post, “My chat bot found my wallet”, and was inspired to build my own chat bot (copied shamelessly—thanks Adrian!). Here’s what I learned about designing conversational interfaces throughout…

    1. Managing Slack Managing You

      I remember the first time I heard of Slack at the start of 2014. I had never used Hipchat, so the aspect of a collaborative team chat tool didn’t resonate with me. However, I was immediately drawn to the playful aesthetic…

    1. How to Ship Side Projects

      Working on side projects helps me learn new technologies, improve as an engineer and designer, and exercise my creativity. Through building side projects (which range from the mildly useful to the completely inane), I’ve…

    1. Everyone is a Designer

      Yes, even you. Yes, you. This past week, I had the pleasure of working with one of the designers on our team. Apparently, design is less about your Sketch skills or how particular you are about your Espresso (though also not…

    2. Introduction to Metalsmith

      When I first encountered Metalsmith, I thought that it was similar to Jekyll. It wasn't until I had worked on two to three projects using Metalsmith that I fully realized its flexibility and power. This post is an…

    3. Reading Position Horizontal Progress Bar

      I've seen this in some of the articles on the Internet—a subtle, horizontal bar at the top of the window that fills up as you scroll down, indicating how far you've read. I came across this solution that uses jQuery, but…

    1. How to Make a Random Text Snippet Generator in atext

      If you've ever written into support at Segment, you've probably received an email from one of us with a whimsical "inspirational" quote appended to the end. But how do we keep the footer quotes different each time? We use a…

    2. Segment Notifications in Slack via Zapier

      Yes, we all know that Slack is currently taking over the world. Those wise enough will understand that it is better to embrace our soon to be Overlords, instead of putting up futile resistance. This step-by-step post will…

    3. Ladder: Redefining Ping Pong at Segment

      We take things very seriously here at Segment. But nothing is taken more seriously than our ping pong, which explains why we play on a non-Olympic regulation sized table (that sits snuggly above our junior-sized pool table),…

    6. GitHub Social Slack: Posting GitHub User Events in Slack

      Slack is awesome. So is GitHub. Also, GitHub's integration with Slack is neat, but only sends events on a given repo or organization. How cool would it be if we could send updates based on other users (when someone watches a…

    7. Chipper: Tweet Money Live

      Periscope and Meerkat have brought live streaming to the masses. Mukbang stars in Korea and karaoke stars in China are already making a living via financial transactions over live streaming services (such as Afreeca), but…

    1. Blink: Speed Reading on the Go

      We've all heard about Squirt—a tool that allows you to speed read with a technique that minimizes eye scanning, thereby effectively helping you reach WPMs of 1000 (allegedly). Blink is the mobile version of Squirt.

    1. Thunkify Non-idiomatic NodeJS Functions

      Yes, thunks are great. But what if the Object or Function that you're trying to thunkify doesn't fulfill the idiomatic node.js callback expression `function(err, res)`?

    2. Pepper Botts: Simplify Your Calendar Events

      A friend recently got in touch with me with a pain that he knew technology could solve. We use Google calendars to schedule meetings, but how great would it be for something to automatically conference us in on our cell…

    3. Intermediate Cron Jobs with Heroku

      We all know that Heroku has made app deployment as easy as git push heroku master (and, indirectly, educating the vast majority of junior junior devs a tiny sliver of git). Heroku even went ahead and built out an ecosystem…

    1. Tech Startup Definitions

      It is easy to get confused with the jargon that is emerging from the rapidly growing startup scene. This post attempts to clarify some terms.

    1. SutterBus: Your Personalized Muni Bus Tracker

      If you take the muni on a daily basis, it can be a hassle checking bus prediction web sites/apps for your various routes and stops to get an estimation of when your next bus will arrive. This app requires one time setup,…

    2. Welcome to the A-List

      Recently, a conversation over dinner about personal life hacks without the direct intention of blatant commercialism spawned a neat idea that scratches an itch that us west coast jet setters face occasionally—not only just…

    1. Tips to Become a Winning Financial Analyst

      Like everything in life, navigating the confusing intertwining branches and brambles of the financial analyst jungle is a game. Winning requires steady focus, a strong stomach and disposition, and the expectation that you…

    1. The Economy

      We are almost there. Teetering on the edge, straddling the days of our sheltered suburban public education on one side and a world clouded with uncertainty, hope, and discovery on the other. Great, now is the time to finally…