JADAKISS: “T5DOA” - Pre-Order Today!!!

vitalgroundz: An album release from Jadakiss is like waiting on the next STAR WARS movie: “EPIC” to Day 1’s and for everyone else, usually worth the wait 100%. Top 5 Dead or Alive the 4th studio album, is set for Official Release November 20th. But today marked the start of Pre-orders, a perfect way to set off the weekend. “Pre-order T5DOA and on line waiting for Black Ops III. Then on the 20th merk everything moving“ with JASON on REPEAT. But you ain’t here it from me… 19 Tracks Strong & Heavy Hitters on deck, Check out the full tracklist below: 1. “Intro” – First 48? 2. “Shop Talk” (Skit) 3. “You Don’t Eat” (Feat. Puff Daddy) 4. “You Can See” (Feat. Future) 5. “Y.O. (Youthful Offenders)” (Feat. Akon) 6. “Jason” (Feat. Swizz Beatz) 7. “Kill” (Feat. Lil’ Wayne) 8. “Man In The Mirror” 9. “Synergy” (Feat. Styles P) 10. “Ain’t Nothin New” (Feat. Ne-Yo & Nipsey Hussle) 11. “So High” (Feat. Wiz Khalifa) 12. “Ahaa Interview” (Skit) 13. “Critical” (Feat. Jeezy) 14. “Confetti” (Skit) 15. “Cutlass” 16. “Realest In The Game” (Feat. Sheek Louch & Young Buck) 17. “Rain” (Feat. Nas & Styles P) 18. “One More Mile To Go” (Feat. Chayse) 19. “Baby” (Feat. Dyce Payne) PRE-ORDER NOW FOLLOW JADAKISS: Twitter: @Therealkiss | Instagram: therealkiss

via Tumblr http://ift.tt/20DxF1N vitalgroundz: An album release from Jadakiss is like waiting on the next STAR WARS movie: “EPIC” to Day 1’s and for everyone else, usually worth the wait 100%. Top 5 Dead or Alive the 4th studio album, is set for Official Release November 20th. But today marked the start of Pre-orders, a perfect way to set off the weekend. “Pre-order T5DOA and on line waiting for Black Ops III. Then on the 20th merk everything moving“ with JASON on REPEAT. But you ain’t here it from me… 19 Tracks Strong & Heavy Hitters on deck, Check out the full tracklist below: 1. “Intro” – First 48? 2. “Shop Talk” (Skit) 3. “You Don’t Eat” (Feat. Puff Daddy) 4. “You Can See” (Feat. Future) 5. “Y.O. (Youthful Offenders)” (Feat. Akon) 6. “Jason” (Feat. Swizz Beatz) 7. “Kill” (Feat. Lil’ Wayne) 8. “Man In The Mirror” 9. “Synergy” (Feat. Styles P) 10. “Ain’t Nothin New” (Feat. Ne-Yo & Nipsey Hussle) 11. “So High” (Feat. Wiz Khalifa) 12. “Ahaa Interview” (Skit) 13. “Critical” (Feat. Jeezy) 14. “Confetti” (Skit) 15. “Cutlass” 16. “Realest In The Game” (Feat. Sheek Louch & Young Buck) 17. “Rain” (Feat. Nas & Styles P) 18. “One More Mile To Go” (Feat. Chayse) 19. “Baby” (Feat. Dyce Payne) PRE-ORDER NOW FOLLOW JADAKISS: Twitter: @Therealkiss | Instagram: therealkiss

Random Influence...

vitalgroundz: We Rep #OLDSCHOOL | #NEWSCHOOL & Everything in Between! @VitalGroundz is officially killing the derogatory phrase #OLDSCHOOL & preserving the title #ROOTZ while the New Breed will rise as #SEEDZ Respect for All Generationz

via Tumblr http://ift.tt/1MEk7Zv vitalgroundz: We Rep #OLDSCHOOL | #NEWSCHOOL & Everything in Between! @VitalGroundz is officially killing the derogatory phrase #OLDSCHOOL & preserving the title #ROOTZ while the New Breed will rise as #SEEDZ Respect for All Generationz

Options for MySQL Database

jpstream: Almost all the websites on internet are built using the server-side scripting, hence, it is very much predicted for dedicated servers to have some form of database management system, either it can be a database server or a set of database libraries. MySQL is one of the world’s most popular open source Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS). It is a most important part of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) family. Customers opting for cheap web hosting services, will possibly expect the latest version of MySQL installed on the server. However, if you have your own server, you might want to take a look at the following choices for MySQL database. MySQL Database Alternatives MariaDB is a database software created by the MySQL founder, Michael Widenius (often called Monty), by bifurcating the MySQL software after the Oracle acquired Sun. MariaDB is a completely free and open source version which includes some unique features and functionality. PostgreSQL is one of the rivals of MySQL. It is an object relational database management system (ORDBMS) providing various appealing features and high-level performance. SQLite is a kind of relational database libraries, which doesn’t need a database server. These libraries are completely portable and simple to use, even in those situations where full database servers are not possible. Cassandra is an open source Apache project originally designed and developed by Facebook Inc. It is also known as a NoSQL solution, that offers greater scalability and several appealing features that makes it ideal for high traffic and high content websites, which is being used by sites like Digg. If you search you will find plenty of alternatives to MySQL database with many appealing features and functions. Though MySQL is known as one of the most popular database in the Japanese web hosting market, but it is surely not the only one.

via Tumblr http://ift.tt/1XiZBoY jpstream: Almost all the websites on internet are built using the server-side scripting, hence, it is very much predicted for dedicated servers to have some form of database management system, either it can be a database server or a set of database libraries. MySQL is one of the world’s most popular open source Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS). It is a most important part of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) family. Customers opting for cheap web hosting services, will possibly expect the latest version of MySQL installed on the server. However, if you have your own server, you might want to take a look at the following choices for MySQL database. MySQL Database Alternatives MariaDB is a database software created by the MySQL founder, Michael Widenius (often called Monty), by bifurcating the MySQL software after the Oracle acquired Sun. MariaDB is a completely free and open source version which includes some unique features and functionality. PostgreSQL is one of the rivals of MySQL. It is an object relational database management system (ORDBMS) providing various appealing features and high-level performance. SQLite is a kind of relational database libraries, which doesn’t need a database server. These libraries are completely portable and simple to use, even in those situations where full database servers are not possible. Cassandra is an open source Apache project originally designed and developed by Facebook Inc. It is also known as a NoSQL solution, that offers greater scalability and several appealing features that makes it ideal for high traffic and high content websites, which is being used by sites like Digg. If you search you will find plenty of alternatives to MySQL database with many appealing features and functions. Though MySQL is known as one of the most popular database in the Japanese web hosting market, but it is surely not the only one.

me watching Narcos on netflix

56blogscrazy: The look on my face during every episode of “Narcos” on Netflix

via Tumblr http://ift.tt/1OyN4Zw 56blogscrazy: The look on my face during every episode of “Narcos” on Netflix

VitalGroundz Salute

vitalgroundz: Hip Hop is you, its me – its Now Generationz (Grandmothers & Grandfathers grew up under this). It’s an evolution of the Soul, from those who have not… From the Beginning we have always lived by Rhythm and created Tempos in everyday Life: from Folklore, Hymns, Jazz to Soul Dub and R&B. Hip Hop is simply the title of the child created from all the above. It’s our Purist and most Powerful form, a Proud combination of its for Fathers. We have infiltrated All Genres of Music as well as spread Globally like No other culture before it. We aren’t going anywhere… They thought it was gonna be a silly phase, composed of stolen parts of real music (Breaks) created on hand-me-down equipment (Two Turntables & a Mic). Who would, truly respect these Non Professional, untrained Orchestrator s? Creating what was considered a mishap (The Scratch) a primary operation when spinning and selecting Tunes. We Came… We Conquered!!! Now we’re the Main Vein & Bloodline to the Future of Music. Nothing moves without Hip Hop… So acknowledge your Lineage and Forever Reflect Your Culture – The Groundz we walk are Vital… Hip Hop Salute alldefdigital alldefmusic rosenbergradio hot97 power105

via Tumblr http://ift.tt/1DQjmPs vitalgroundz: Hip Hop is you, its me – its Now Generationz (Grandmothers & Grandfathers grew up under this). It’s an evolution of the Soul, from those who have not… From the Beginning we have always lived by Rhythm and created Tempos in everyday Life: from Folklore, Hymns, Jazz to Soul Dub and R&B. Hip Hop is simply the title of the child created from all the above. It’s our Purist and most Powerful form, a Proud combination of its for Fathers. We have infiltrated All Genres of Music as well as spread Globally like No other culture before it. We aren’t going anywhere… They thought it was gonna be a silly phase, composed of stolen parts of real music (Breaks) created on hand-me-down equipment (Two Turntables & a Mic). Who would, truly respect these Non Professional, untrained Orchestrator s? Creating what was considered a mishap (The Scratch) a primary operation when spinning and selecting Tunes. We Came… We Conquered!!! Now we’re the Main Vein & Bloodline to the Future of Music. Nothing moves without Hip Hop… So acknowledge your Lineage and Forever Reflect Your Culture – The Groundz we walk are Vital… Hip Hop Salute alldefdigital alldefmusic rosenbergradio hot97 power105

Preserving a Respectful Title

vitalgroundz: Rep #OLDSCHOOL - Speaking of which #VitalGroundz is Officially killing the phrase & Preserving the Title #ROOTZ https://t.co/LOe0ZnTgMu — Vital Groundz (@VitalGroundz) July 31, 2015 I’m officially an entrepreneur.

via Tumblr http://ift.tt/1KILxzk vitalgroundz: Rep #OLDSCHOOL - Speaking of which #VitalGroundz is Officially killing the phrase & Preserving the Title #ROOTZ https://t.co/LOe0ZnTgMu — Vital Groundz (@VitalGroundz) July 31, 2015 I’m officially an entrepreneur.

We Fresh On Tumblr:

vitalgroundz: VitalGroundz is officially on Tumblr - Our vision is to high-light Hip Hop’s Origins while enhancing the Perception/Regard for the Culture. We will be asking for feedback and your involvement in building something Monumental…

via Tumblr http://ift.tt/1Iwxqcl vitalgroundz: VitalGroundz is officially on Tumblr - Our vision is to high-light Hip Hop’s Origins while enhancing the Perception/Regard for the Culture. We will be asking for feedback and your involvement in building something Monumental…

kingofhispaniola: aarontreble: When you say something bad about your self and your friends agree Y'all can’t even be fake nice 😂

via Tumblr http://ift.tt/1RaxHfd kingofhispaniola: aarontreble: When you say something bad about your self and your friends agree Y'all can’t even be fake nice 😂

Twenty rules for writing detective stories

stevechatterton: Originally published in the American Magazine (1928) The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described. No willful tricks or deceptions may be placed on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself. There must be no love interest. The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar. The detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit. This is bald trickery, on a par with offering some one a bright penny for a five-dollar gold piece. It’s false pretenses. The culprit must be determined by logical deductions — not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession. To solve a criminal problem in this latter fashion is like sending the reader on a deliberate wild-goose chase, and then telling him, after he has failed, that you had the object of his search up your sleeve all the time. Such an author is no better than a practical joker. The detective novel must have a detective in it; and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. His function is to gather clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter; and if the detective does not reach his conclusions through an analysis of those clues, he has no more solved his problem than the schoolboy who gets his answer out of the back of the arithmetic. There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much pother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader’s trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded. The problem of the crime must he solved by strictly naturalistic means. Such methods for learning the truth as slate-writing, ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic se'ances, crystal-gazing, and the like, are taboo. A reader has a chance when matching his wits with a rationalistic detective, but if he must compete with the world of spirits and go chasing about the fourth dimension of metaphysics, he is defeated ab initio. There must be but one detective — that is, but one protagonist of deduction — one deus ex machina. To bring the minds of three or four, or sometimes a gang of detectives to bear on a problem, is not only to disperse the interest and break the direct thread of logic, but to take an unfair advantage of the reader. If there is more than one detective the reader doesn’t know who his codeductor is. It’s like making the reader run a race with a relay team. The culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent part in the story — that is, a person with whom the reader is familiar and in whom he takes an interest. A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person — one that wouldn’t ordinarily come under suspicion. There must be but one culprit, no matter how many murders are committed. The culprit may, of course, have a minor helper or co-plotter; but the entire onus must rest on one pair of shoulders: the entire indignation of the reader must be permitted to concentrate on a single black nature. Secret societies, camorras, mafias, et al., have no place in a detective story. A fascinating and truly beautiful murder is irremediably spoiled by any such wholesale culpability. To be sure, the murderer in a detective novel should be given a sporting chance; but it is going too far to grant him a secret society to fall back on. No high-class, self-respecting murderer would want such odds. The method of murder, and the means of detecting it, must be be rational and scientific. That is to say, pseudo-science and purely imaginative and speculative devices are not to be tolerated in the roman policier. Once an author soars into the realm of fantasy, in the Jules Verne manner, he is outside the bounds of detective fiction, cavorting in the uncharted reaches of adventure. The truth of the problem must at all times be apparent — provided the reader is shrewd enough to see it. By this I mean that if the reader, after learning the explanation for the crime, should reread the book, he would see that the solution had, in a sense, been staring him in the face-that all the clues really pointed to the culprit — and that, if he had been as clever as the detective, he could have solved the mystery himself without going on to the final chapter. That the clever reader does often thus solve the problem goes without saying. A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no “atmospheric” preoccupations. such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude. A professional criminal must never be shouldered with the guilt of a crime in a detective story. Crimes by housebreakers and bandits are the province of the police departments — not of authors and brilliant amateur detectives. A really fascinating crime is one committed by a pillar of a church, or a spinster noted for her charities. A crime in a detective story must never turn out to be an accident or a suicide. To end an odyssey of sleuthing with such an anti-climax is to hoodwink the trusting and kind-hearted reader. The motives for all crimes in detective stories should be personal. International plottings and war politics belong in a different category of fiction — in secret-service tales, for instance. But a murder story must be kept gemütlich, so to speak. It must reflect the reader’s everyday experiences, and give him a certain outlet for his own repressed desires and emotions. And (to give my Credo an even score of items) I herewith list a few of the devices which no self-respecting detective story writer will now avail himself of. They have been employed too often, and are familiar to all true lovers of literary crime. To use them is a confession of the author’s ineptitude and lack of originality. (a) Determining the identity of the culprit by comparing the butt of a cigarette left at the scene of the crime with the brand smoked by a suspect. (b) The bogus spiritualistic se'ance to frighten the culprit into giving himself away. © Forged fingerprints. (d) The dummy-figure alibi. (e) The dog that does not bark and thereby reveals the fact that the intruder is familiar. (f)The final pinning of the crime on a twin, or a relative who looks exactly like the suspected, but innocent, person. (g) The hypodermic syringe and the knockout drops. (h) The commission of the murder in a locked room after the police have actually broken in. (i) The word association test for guilt. (j) The cipher, or code letter, which is eventually unraveled by the sleuth.

via Tumblr http://ift.tt/1LwFdKX stevechatterton: Originally published in the American Magazine (1928) The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described. No willful tricks or deceptions may be placed on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself. There must be no love interest. The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar. The detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit. This is bald trickery, on a par with offering some one a bright penny for a five-dollar gold piece. It’s false pretenses. The culprit must be determined by logical deductions — not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession. To solve a criminal problem in this latter fashion is like sending the reader on a deliberate wild-goose chase, and then telling him, after he has failed, that you had the object of his search up your sleeve all the time. Such an author is no better than a practical joker. The detective novel must have a detective in it; and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. His function is to gather clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter; and if the detective does not reach his conclusions through an analysis of those clues, he has no more solved his problem than the schoolboy who gets his answer out of the back of the arithmetic. There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much pother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader’s trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded. The problem of the crime must he solved by strictly naturalistic means. Such methods for learning the truth as slate-writing, ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic se'ances, crystal-gazing, and the like, are taboo. A reader has a chance when matching his wits with a rationalistic detective, but if he must compete with the world of spirits and go chasing about the fourth dimension of metaphysics, he is defeated ab initio. There must be but one detective — that is, but one protagonist of deduction — one deus ex machina. To bring the minds of three or four, or sometimes a gang of detectives to bear on a problem, is not only to disperse the interest and break the direct thread of logic, but to take an unfair advantage of the reader. If there is more than one detective the reader doesn’t know who his codeductor is. It’s like making the reader run a race with a relay team. The culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent part in the story — that is, a person with whom the reader is familiar and in whom he takes an interest. A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person — one that wouldn’t ordinarily come under suspicion. There must be but one culprit, no matter how many murders are committed. The culprit may, of course, have a minor helper or co-plotter; but the entire onus must rest on one pair of shoulders: the entire indignation of the reader must be permitted to concentrate on a single black nature. Secret societies, camorras, mafias, et al., have no place in a detective story. A fascinating and truly beautiful murder is irremediably spoiled by any such wholesale culpability. To be sure, the murderer in a detective novel should be given a sporting chance; but it is going too far to grant him a secret society to fall back on. No high-class, self-respecting murderer would want such odds. The method of murder, and the means of detecting it, must be be rational and scientific. That is to say, pseudo-science and purely imaginative and speculative devices are not to be tolerated in the roman policier. Once an author soars into the realm of fantasy, in the Jules Verne manner, he is outside the bounds of detective fiction, cavorting in the uncharted reaches of adventure. The truth of the problem must at all times be apparent — provided the reader is shrewd enough to see it. By this I mean that if the reader, after learning the explanation for the crime, should reread the book, he would see that the solution had, in a sense, been staring him in the face-that all the clues really pointed to the culprit — and that, if he had been as clever as the detective, he could have solved the mystery himself without going on to the final chapter. That the clever reader does often thus solve the problem goes without saying. A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no “atmospheric” preoccupations. such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude. A professional criminal must never be shouldered with the guilt of a crime in a detective story. Crimes by housebreakers and bandits are the province of the police departments — not of authors and brilliant amateur detectives. A really fascinating crime is one committed by a pillar of a church, or a spinster noted for her charities. A crime in a detective story must never turn out to be an accident or a suicide. To end an odyssey of sleuthing with such an anti-climax is to hoodwink the trusting and kind-hearted reader. The motives for all crimes in detective stories should be personal. International plottings and war politics belong in a different category of fiction — in secret-service tales, for instance. But a murder story must be kept gemütlich, so to speak. It must reflect the reader’s everyday experiences, and give him a certain outlet for his own repressed desires and emotions. And (to give my Credo an even score of items) I herewith list a few of the devices which no self-respecting detective story writer will now avail himself of. They have been employed too often, and are familiar to all true lovers of literary crime. To use them is a confession of the author’s ineptitude and lack of originality. (a) Determining the identity of the culprit by comparing the butt of a cigarette left at the scene of the crime with the brand smoked by a suspect. (b) The bogus spiritualistic se'ance to frighten the culprit into giving himself away. © Forged fingerprints. (d) The dummy-figure alibi. (e) The dog that does not bark and thereby reveals the fact that the intruder is familiar. (f)The final pinning of the crime on a twin, or a relative who looks exactly like the suspected, but innocent, person. (g) The hypodermic syringe and the knockout drops. (h) The commission of the murder in a locked room after the police have actually broken in. (i) The word association test for guilt. (j) The cipher, or code letter, which is eventually unraveled by the sleuth.

#BITTechTalk ep. 37 w/ Charles Tendell (made with Spreaker)

Late reggae icon Peter Tosh receives Jamaica honor

You couldn't have grown up in any Jamaican household withouth hearing something from this guy at least once during a BBQ/Family get together.

Late reggae icon Peter Tosh receives Jamaica honor:
KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Jamaica’s government is honoring firebrand reggae star Peter Tosh 25 years after his murder.

Tosh’s daughter Niambe received the posthumous “order of merit” on Monday for her father’s musical contributions during a national awards ceremony. It’s Jamaica’s third-highest honor.
Tosh is one of Jamaica’s musical giants. He was a founding member of the Wailers, forming the three-man core of the group with Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer. Tosh left the band in 1973.
His solo albums and his work with the Wailers helped make reggae known internationally.
The outspoken Tosh was known for denouncing apartheid and calling for the legalization of marijuana. Fans say the lanky, baritone singer and guitarist was a mesmerizing performer.
Tosh was killed in 1987 by robbers. He was 42.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

How to: easily build a backup system for your Mac or PC

How to: easily build a backup system for your Mac or PC:






Setting up a backup is probably on your to-do list. So why haven’t you done it yet? Maybe it’s because you’ve got a million other things to do, or maybe the technical aspects are a little daunting. A backup may seem like just another mundane task in your long list of to-dos, but a day will inevitably come when your hard drive dies, when your laptop is stolen, or when your accounts get brutally hacked. Like death and taxes, there are no exceptions to this rule — it’s only a matter of time. This doesn’t mean you should live in fear of a digital catastrophe; instead, take this opportunity to create the backup that your future self so rightly deserves. It’s easier than you might think.

So, where to begin? The first thing...
Continue reading…

Learn To Code, Get A Job: Treehouse Offers Free Courses To 2,500 College Students

Learn To Code, Get A Job: Treehouse Offers Free Courses To 2,500 College Students:
Treehouse launched last November with an admirable (or terrifying) goal: To teach the world how to design and develop for the Web, iOS, and now Android. Essentially the lovechild of Lynda.com and Codeacademy, Treehouse is building an educational platform that employs video, quizzes, and a little gamification to help aspiring programmers and app developers learn the trade — whether or not they have any prior experience.
More than 12,000 people (between the ages of 7 to 50) are paying for access to the startup’s platform, and Treehouse has been quick to generate revenue as a result. So now the Portland-based company is looking to give back to its community of learners — and help inspire the next generation of web and mobile developers — announcing today that it’s giving $3 million worth of free tech education to 2,500 college students.
What does that mean? Treehouse wants to be an affordable destination to learn how to build websites and mobile apps — from the very noobiest of noobs to veterans looking to brush up. Like Lynda.com, it offers expert-created-and-curated videos and content on a variety of topics, like HTML, CSS Foundations, and Introduction to Programming, to name a few. Yet, unlike Lynda, Treehouse is project-based. Users learn to code by building a simplified version of Facebook, for example, and by practicing what they learn in realtime in their browsers.
To access these tools, users pay a monthly subscription for one of two plans: $24 for Silver, which gives them access to Treehouse’s 550+ videos and the real-time practice engine, or $49 for Gold, which is Silver plus feedback on your projects, as well as in-depth interviews with experts, workshops, etc.
The “scholarship program” Treehouse announced today offers 2,500 free “Gold” accounts to college students in the U.S. — for a full two years. (You have to be able to prove you’re a college student and have a valid “.edu” email address to take advantage.) At $50/month, this means $3 million worth of free Treehouse for 2,500 aspiring collegiate coders — the equivalent of what they’d have to pay out of pocket.
Why is Treehouse doing this? After all, promotional benefits aside, this is a lot of money for a young company to eat. Most students (even the most non-technical) can progress through Treehouse’s Beginner and Intermediate lessons comfortably in less than a year — even if they’re only working for 30 minutes/day. So, in that sense, offering two years of their premium plan doesn’t really qualify as a veiled freemium up-sell technique.
Instead, Treehouse Founder and CEO Ryan Carson said that the team understands that the cost of higher education is absurdly high and only continues to rise, so he wants to offer students a comparable quality of education that doesn’t involve student loans. (If this sounds crazy, you might want to check out Minerva.)
Channeling Peter Thiel, Carson said that he believes education — and specifically the way institutions teach programming — is broken. Many coders learn applicable skills and techniques without going through a degree program. So, even though the establishment might lead you to believe that a university degree is required for success in the job market, the founder thinks that smart, interactive education online can be just as effective — if not more so.
Obviously, the startup has a lot left to prove, as it has to be able to demonstrate that it can teach the totally non-technical not just to program but to program at a level of proficiency that will actually get them hired. Carson says by way of example that one of Treehouse’s subscribers completed his education in less than a year and is now making $4,000+ per month developing iPhone apps.
That’s just one example, but to really be “disruptive” (I know, I know), the platform has to be able to do this at scale and place those students looking for work in paying jobs. To do this, Treehouse has hired an Employment Team of teachers and experts, which focuses solely on placement. As of now, Treehouse relies on an assessment/reward system, which has students complete various projects — which become more and more difficult as they learn — unlocking badges as they go.
The team works with students (who request placement assistance) to find the best match among employers, evaluating the candidates (and match) based on the badges they earned, feedback from experts, how they did on quizzes, etc. The process is totally manual at this point and, naturally, employers can be a bit skeptical when it comes to these non-traditional methods of assessment, so Treehouse is building an algorithm-based employment matching system to help its Jobs Team find better matches more easily.
Meanwhile, Carson also says they’re considering implementing some kind of student certificate program to standardize evaluation for prospective employers — something they may also use for teachers. Another feature being considered is a Q&A tool, which would basically let students ask questions, to which experts and others in the community could respond.
Users could up-vote the best answers, which would mean points for responders and would privilege the most helpful content — a la Quora or the education-focused mobile Q&A service, Answer Underground. This could obviously be good both as a resource for trustworthy, topic-based information (and incentive for community involvement), as well as a helpful reputation/assessment system for recruiters.
While there’s a lot more work to be done in this area, the team has already created a workable recruitment process and one that, for students and employers, has the benefit (and appeal) of being free. Long-term, Treehouse may begin to charge companies if they hire students, but Carson says he’s still not sure if that’s a precedent they want to set or not.
The other factor that will determine whether or not Treehouse hits the mainstream is breadth of content. So far, the platform has just offered topics and education based on the web and iOS, but today, the platform added its first Android course — an area they’re obviously looking to beef up significantly going forward.
Carson also said that the team is looking to popular, video-based education startups like Khan Academy for inspiration as it builds out its platform. For example, the team is set to release a Khan-esque feature that presents its curriculum in map-form, allowing users to conquer territories as they progress — game-style.
Of course, a big complaint among educators is that platforms like Treehouse (or Udacity, Khan, Coursera, etc.) is that in some way they intend to (or result) replace teachers with technology and part-time “experts” without real pedagogical training. It’s an accusation commonly hurled at Sal Khan. But the Treehouse founder says that they actually want to empower teachers — and that they’re already seeing teachers subscribe to Treehouse to use it for homework assignments.
“Eventually, we plan to go out to schools and teachers more officially and systematically, asking them how we can help them teach programming and engineering more effectively,” Carson says. It may be awhile before the startup can do this at scale, but it could have some serious appeal to teachers and companies — and make money — when it does. After all, it’s part of the same formula that allowed Lynda.com to hit $70 million in revenue this year without a penny from outside investors.
College students can apply for free Treehouse courses here.