The Ubbin Labs journal
Writing
Architecture decisions, failure reports and lessons from building real products. Written by the people who did the work.
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How we built a music recommendation engine in 2007 – before Spotify existed in Portugal
Palco Principal. 70,000 tracks, three engineers, no library worth using. The algorithm, the A/B test numbers, and how the 2008 financial crisis ended it.
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Three platforms, one team: shipping for Heathrow Airport
iPhone, BlackBerry, Nokia QT — simultaneously. January 2012. What cross-platform mobile development actually cost before any of the frameworks existed.
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What breaks when 20,000 artists depend on your ranking algorithm
Palco Principal had 20,000 artists, 350,000 monthly visitors, and a ranking algorithm none of them could see. Then the 2008 crisis hit. A failure story.