I'm Ryan Waggoner. I build things. I blog about how to work harder and smarter to build the life you want. You should subscribe.

Review: SwiMP3 Waterproof MP3 Player

10.08.10 Posted in Posts, Reviews, Technology by

I recently reviewed the Aquacube waterproof MP3 player and headphones, but they had a major flaw: the headphones were almost impossible to hear underwater, especially when making the amount of noise I do when thrashing my way through the water. So i decided i’d try a different approach and get a FINIS SwiMP3 waterproof MP3 [...]


Review: AquaCube Waterproof MP3 Player

10.01.10 Posted in Posts, Reviews, Technology by

I grew up in Florida and learned to swim at a young age. It’s one of my favorite activities, and though I’ve never done it competitively, I’m a decent swimmer. I’ve been working my way up to 1-mile swims every day, but the biggest problem I have is that it gets extremely dull and monotonous. [...]


I’m done building Facebook apps for clients

09.27.10 Posted in Development, Entrepreneurship, Personal, Posts, Reviews, Social Media, Technology by

I started building Facebook apps about three years ago, when I first started doing web development consulting full-time. My first apps were simple affairs, but over time they grew more complex and I leveraged the platform features more and more. Over the last three years, I’ve spent an increasing amount of time on the Facebook [...]


How to live on 24 hours a day

09.22.10 Posted in Goals, Inspiration, Personal, Posts, Reviews by

The last few months have been very challenging ones for me, as I’ve been experimenting with new goals and daily habits, attempting to make the most of the time that I’ve been given. I’ve made some progress, and I’ve also managed to avoid burnout, which is an ever-present danger when attempting large changes in relatively [...]


Some things I love about Hacker News (and a few I don’t)

09.08.10 Posted in Education, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Misc, Personal, Posts, Reviews, Social Media, Technology by

About two years, I stumbled across this small social news site called Hacker News (HN), started by Paul Graham (PG…read his essays!) of Y Combinator (YC). For those of you not in the Silicon Valley bubble, PG is a really interesting guy who is helping to shift the balance of power in the valley from [...]


Book review – The New Elite: Inside the Minds of the Truly Wealthy

09.07.10 Posted in Entrepreneurship, Finances, Inspiration, Posts, Reviews by

I find wealth very interesting, and I’m particularly interested in the culture and lifestyles of the wealthy. Not necessarily the lifestyles of the “rich and famous”, but more the lifestyles of the truly wealthy, who often fly below the radar to a certain degree. At any rate, I found The New Elite last year but [...]


Magento Ecommerce: Impressions

09.01.10 Posted in Development, Entrepreneurship, Posts, Reviews, Technology by

I’ve been working with Magento Ecommerce lately, an ecommerce platform that is becoming more popular, and I thought I’d share a few random impressions in case someone else out there is considering using it. Here they are: 1. Magento is much better than most of the alternatives. The popular PHP open-source competitors are OSCommerce, ZenCart, [...]


Brush up on your ABCs

08.18.10 Posted in Development, Education, News, Personal, Posts, Reviews, Technology by

Just a quick congratulations to my friend Ben Lew, who just launched his first iPad app: Interactive Alphabet. It’s designed more for kids, but if you have trouble with some of your letters, you might like it as well I don’t have kids, but after playing with the app, I think it would be something [...]


Why Google Wave failed

08.16.10 Posted in Posts, Reviews, Social Media, Technology by

A little over a week ago, Google announced that they’re shutting down Wave, their innovative web-based product that allows users to chat, share files, annotate documents, and collaborate in real-time. If you’ve never heard of it, don’t worry, you’re not alone. It didn’t really catch on, just like a lot of Google’s social efforts (Buzz, [...]


CakePHP vs. CodeIgniter

08.03.10 Posted in Development, Entrepreneurship, Posts, Reviews, Technology by

Clients often ask me to recommend a PHP-based MVC framework, so I’ve spent some time evaluating some of the more popular ones. There are dozens now, but two of the early ones are still very popular: CakePHP and CodeIgniter. This isn’t meant to be a super in-depth review, just a quick comparison of some of [...]


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