Catalin Avram – The Business of Coding

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The 3 Different Tribes of Programmers

March 4, 2018 admin Comments 0 Comment

Computer Science is a very interesting area of study, because it has nothing to do with computers. And it’s not a science. There are countless ways to call yourself: a programmer, a developer, software engineer, IT specialist, architect, hacker, data scientist, machine learning engineer, technology “fellow” and even ninja. Although there are some (not so) subtle differences between these terms, in general, they all represent someone who writes some sort of code which runs on some sort of a computer…

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Playing Starcraft Taught Me a lot About Running a Business

August 18, 2016 admin Comments 0 Comment

Playing video games and running a business is probably the last thing that comes to mind to most MBAs. One cannot possibly understand how a game, created for entertainment purposes, can potentially be helpful in managing a business. In reality though, there are a lot of similarities between a game of Starcraft and running a business. And when the capitalist competition is fierce, finding inspiration in the odd places can make the big difference sometimes! A little bit of intro…

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Hololens Tutorial: Let it snow!

December 12, 2016 admin Comments 0 Comment

With the spirit of holidays fast approaching, I decided to write a short tutorial on how to add snow to your apartment. In Hololens of course 🙂 This tutorial assumes you have a Hololens and it’s ready for development. If you haven’t paired your device yet, please follow these instructions on how to do so here. 1. Getting started with HoloToolkit First, let’s Open Unity and create a new 3D project. Please be aware that you need at least Unity 5.4…

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Hololens – what can it do?

September 26, 2016 admin Comments 0 Comment

So I took the plunge and purchased my Hololens dev kit back in June. I started playing with it and immediately saw the following facts: The Field of View is very small The quality of the camera is low It only works really well in not too bright and not too dark rooms It’s very expensive ($3,000) So it sucks, right? Wrong. This is the coolest piece of technology that has hit the consumers since the transistor radio. Hololens is…

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The hidden competitive advantage of Virtual Reality products

July 17, 2016 admin Comments 0 Comment

A secret gem and endless source of information about investment and management can be found by reading Warren Buffett’s annual shareholder’s letters. And what better way to spend a Sunday afternoon but to read through these old publications? So in one particular case, Warren (yeah, first name basis!) explains a very simple, yet extremely important aspect of an emerging technology which people completely disregard: the competitive advantage. So what does this mean? People tend to overvalue every company and product that is visible…

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360° Video vs 3D Video vs Virtual Reality

July 11, 2016 admin Comments 0 Comment

Many people use 360° video, 3D Video and Virtual Reality interchangeably. This is wrong and leads to a lot of confusion. So here is a quick overview of what each is, and where I believe the technology is heading. 360° Video 360° video is video that’s filmed in 360 degrees, but with no depth of field. This is the most common type of “VR” videos at the moment. Facebook just launched support for these videos on their timeline, so anyone…

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Dealing with China book review by Catalin Avram

Dealing with China: An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower Book Review

May 2, 2016 admin Comments 0 Comment

Author: Henry M. Paulson First Published: January 28th 2014 ISBN: 1455545333 (ISBN13: 9781455545339) Review by Catalin Avram You might have noticed that lately pretty much everything is made in China. You might have also noticed how Chinese influence around the world is growing really fast. This book offers an amazing insider view of how China managed to go from dirt-poor to world super power in less than a generation. China managed to move 440 million people from farms to the cities in…

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Disrupted – My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble Book Review

April 23, 2016 admin Comments 0 Comment

Author: Dan Lyons First Published: April 5, 2016 ISBN: Review by Catalin Avram This book is a must read for anyone currently working in a Silicon Valley type of startup. At first it sounded like a lame series of excuses coming from older man who can’t adapt to the startup trend, but if you stick to the book you realize Dan Lyons has some serious points. Being a journalist and a satirist (he used to ran the famous Fake Steve Jobs blog), and…

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A Brief History of Time Book Review

April 17, 2016 admin Comments 0 Comment

Author: Stephen Hawking First Published: 1987 ISBN: 0553380168 (ISBN13: 9780553380163) Review by Catalin Avram Stephen Hawking is one of the greatest physicist of all time. His contributions to the world of science is phenomenal, some say on the same level as Newton or Einstein. He published this book 1987. It is a description of the Big Bang written in plain English, with no equations. It is an amazing summary of one of the newest and deepest fields in science today. I…

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Cold Fire Trilogy Book Review By Catalin Avram

The Cold Fire Trilogy Book Review

April 17, 2016 admin Comments 0 Comment

Author: C.S. Friedman First Published: 1991 ISBN: 0756403146 (ISBN13: 9780756403140) Review by Catalin Avram The Cold Fire Trilogy is an epic Fantasy / Sci-Fi saga based on the fictional world of Erna. In this distant world, an unlikely group sets foot to combat the world’s most evil. The narration is most awesome and the character build is superb. This page turner will keep you hooked until the end, until the final battle. One of the best Fantasy / Sci-Fi books; extremely underrated….

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