I’ve been reading Paul Lamere’s recent postings on music recommendation, especially his SXSW presentation, and I’m starting to catch on to examples of Online Monoculture and the End of the Niche.
As a new WordPress user, I’m still looking for plugins to enhance my weblog (without overcluttering it, of course). To pare them down, I look for ones with the largest amount of downloads. The problem with this method is that any plugin posted on the web in the last three days could be exactly what I’m looking for and I’d probably overlook it. Likewise, a plugin that’s been on the web for a few years could easily accumulate 10,000+ downloads, yet it could be completely useless to me.
I’m not aware of a WordPress plugin recommender, but even without one, it’s easy to see how popularity of an already popular plugin will steadily increase if users look for plugins with large numbers of downloads. I find it interesting that this case of ‘The End of the Niche’ isn’t even an intended recommendation system, yet it encourages making the popular even more popular.
Today I was comparing some connections on a schematic to a reference design and I noticed the reference was using a net name ‘Vdd’ for a power rail that I had named ‘Vcc’. In most of my work, I use Vcc because I seem to have encountered it more in datasheets and references, or so it seems. For some designs, I’ve applied a Vcc prefix to all of my power rails, so when my net names are alphebetized, they all appear in a group, making it easier to select this group of nets in the PCB layout.
Today I questioned what is the implied difference when a rail is named Vcc or Vdd. The historical difference is that Vcc was used in BJT circuits for connections to the transistor’s collector. Vdd came about when FET technology entered the world, and indicates a connection to a FET’s drain. On a similar note, “Vee” comes from BJT technology and indicates a connection to the collector while “Vss” comes from FET technology and indicates a connection to a FET’s source. (Reference: Vcc on Wikipedia)
Really either convention will suffice, but as the hardware design field continues moving forward, it never hurts to know the history behind a naming convention.
