After Webstock 2008
February 16, 2008
- Tags and Taxonomy. Free tags are like leaves. A gazillion of them, but eventually they all fall off the tree, rot, and end up feeding the tree’s structure (the taxonomy). Tags are for quick learning. Taxonomy is long term. A great session from Peter Morville.
- Continuous Integration, Release and Ops Management at Flickr. It was great to hear from Cal about how the Flickr team run their shop. Talking to him post conference, I found out Flickr has about 2,500 servers!! Yikes! In short, they do everything to make their lives easier, make them more agile, and to reduce risk. You know, things like continuous integration, continuous deployment to “pre-production” servers, release flags (i.e. flags in the app to turn functionality on/off - to reduce branching), running tests on their software every hour, and building a whole plethora of “one-click” tools to manage all this stuff.
- Achieving Flow. There was one diagram that Kelly Goto put up, which really hit the nail on the head as to why people get in the flow. See my (keynote) scribbling below:
- Primal Software Development and Managing Design. I really enjoyed Michael Lopp’s presentations. Fascinating to hear that at Apple, they start their product process with 10 pixel perfect mockups, which they then reduce to 3, then to 1. Also - a key take away I got from his sessions was that you can build software many times, but you only build culture once. Go check out his blog, particularly this post - which captures nicely his first presentation.
- How good design helps tell the story. Jason Santa Maria showed a great example as to how design helps to augment the story, and how the transition from print to web often loses this. In short, give your site some “context” sensitive design. If that kinda makes sense?
- Blending the real world with network data. Tom Coates gave a great presentation which really opened up my thought processes. In short, the web is not so much of a collection of web pages, but more a massive collection of data that manifests themselves as web pages (of which is only one form)! Your product is not your site! (it’s the platform). And once your size of data gets too large, forget hierarchies - they will collapse under the weight.
- Eloi vs Morlocks. Remember that our users are Morlocks and that we, the Eloi, must make their lives as miserable as possible. Seriously, though, this was a great presentation by Damian Conway, who rightly advocates that we must remember that most internet users are just like Grandma. So design for them, not us.
- Feel their Pain. The brilliant Kathy Sierra says that we need to actually experience the pain our users feel so that we can “mind read” them. Seriously. There’s theory that it will more effectively trigger our “mirror neurons”. When you’re usability testing, look at peoples faces. It’s the feelings that you’re after! Another great tip when building your help. Document exactly the questions your users ask in the usability sessions. Exactly how they ask them.
At Webstock 2008
February 14, 2008
Bits of Fun
February 11, 2008
OK. A couple of goodies here.
#1 X-Moto
Brilliant timewaster stress-reliever reminiscent of that old UK gem-of-a-series otherwise known as Kickstart.
#2 Bin Laden at the APEC Summit
Unbelievable that this happened. Got to make you laugh.
Busy Boy…
February 9, 2008
Hello All.I am, indeed, still alive. But have been a very busy boy lately. But a happy busy boy.We’re working on a large-scale project, built on Rails, due for a bug kahuna release some time this side of winter.It’s been a fantastic eye-opening experience for me, as we’re truly doing the continuous integration thing, and reaping the “long term” benefits - even at this relatively early stage. I’d heard all the theories from a multitude of people before, but never really seen it executed well in practice. Until now (big kudos to the guys, especially Will).So what’s this continuous integration all about?:
- Every time some one checks code into the source code “trunk”, all (automated) tests are executed to validate the build - in other words, the build is “validated”
- Everyone gets visibility of the (mostly) successful builds. Good build = kudos. We’re doing about 5-10 check-ins per day.
- If a build fails, the project team is notified!! Bad kudos for the developer. Bad Kudos = Incentive to improve
- Quality of code is maintained. Bugs are reduced
- More test coverage = more confidence = faster release cycles = agile business = keep ahead of others
- Eventually leads to a test driven development (TDD) mentality
Blackberry and Google Calendar. At Last.
December 14, 2007
At last, at last, at last. No more syncing via cable. No more missed appointments. We’re back in the 21st century! Google Sync for Mobile is finally here.
Me happy.
Personal vs Corporate Blogging
December 7, 2007
Now that we have our corporate blog (I wouldn’t call ourselves corporate), I’m constantly faced with the dilemma as to where to post.
This blog is about technology, YouDo is about technology.
Hmmm.I’m sure many others face this issue, but here’s how I’m gonna divvy up and differentiate where to post:
- Topics very specific to YouDo will be posted on the YouDo blog. i.e. Rails, Ruby, Oracle, Agile, Life as a Startup. But we’re keen to avoid the corporate cheese element.
- More personal things such as opinions, tech observations, commentary, bad taste jokes, postings from the bus, etc, will be posted here. I might post up the odd non tech thing as well (i.e recommendations from my bad taste in music).
Because my work is so entwined with my day to day life (is it ever anything other for us entrepreneurs) I’m sure there’ll be some crossover or semi-duplication, but if this blog just changes tack slightly then that’s the reason why.
BTW - Barcamp Agile today. Looking forward to it.
Xero goes Mobile
December 4, 2007
Shopping at the supermarket tonight and I realised that Xero have now gone mobile!!
Great branding - really eyecatching. I particularly like the top of the car!! Almost looks iPhone’esque’.
Surfing the Bus
November 29, 2007
These Blackberry Curve gadgets are pretty cool. I’m on the bus checking my email, surfing the interweb, seeing where I am (and which way I’m going!). on google maps, and instant messaging using google talk. And blogging too.This IS the mobile internet.(and truck loads worth of GPRS charges!! I’m dreading my first bill - anyone know how you can keep tabs on GPRS usage?)Sent using Blackberry
We Like Curves
November 19, 2007
Howdy Strangers!!It’s been a while, and I’ve been a busy boy, so apologies for the lack of recent posts. I’m finding out the hard way the effort it takes running your own business.
Anyway, after a month of faffing around, I finally decided to opt for a Blackberry Curve. Being the stingy northern git that I am, it was the cost that did it for me. We got a great deal on the Curves (<$500 all up, with Voda providing a very handsome discount), whereas the cost for me to have iPhone lurve would have been well over $1,100 (and that for an unsupported device!) I was a Telecom customer and they wanted to ping me a whopping $250+ for switching to Voda. So much for number portability.
Anyway, the Curve is going really well - I was initially very disappointed but am now very impressed.
Here’s why:
- Push Email. You fully appreciate why Blackberries are now called Crackberries. Having true push email from MULTIPLE accounts (i.e. exchange, gmail, yahoo, etc) is awesome. Care does need to be taken with the missus!!
- Google Talk. Yes! Google Talk. I was on the bus home tonight catching up with one of our developers. How good is that?
- Keyboard. The keys are miniscule but, once you get used to it, you can tap out reasonably lengthy emails in no time at all.
- Phone! It’s actually a very good phone. The sound quality is great. I was coming from an HTC Apache - and that just suck suck sucked as a phone.
- Holster Lock. I’ve set the Curve so that when it goes into the holster it automatically switches to the “silent” profile, and locks the keypad!! Brilliant.
- The Feel. It actually feels like a nice phone. But I guess anything feels nicer than the Apache!
Overall I like the device. It allows me to be always on, and connected to my customers, friends and colleagues. And the keyboard really does allow you to tap out good responses in no time.
The GPS is total pants, but to be honest I see it as a gimmick at the moment until you start getting some good location based services. Maps, great!! But, come on, we live in New Zealand. You don’t need maps here!!
It’s not as sexy as the iPhone - there’s no doubt about that. But the sheer amount of work I’ve achieved on the device on my trip home has been quite impressive. It’ll at least keep my technolust at bay until the iPhone makes its official debut here. Whenever that may be.
Next toy? - the Blackberry Helmet.
Adidas - Kings of Marketing
November 5, 2007
Couldn’t resist. This is classic.
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