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Really like this blog so far! Highly recommend you follow. And the thing I find most interesting is that Dan doesn’t make it available via RSS, or at least I can’t find it, it seems if you want to follow him then Twitter is your only option. Interesting…
“The Russians Used a Pencil is a blog about simplicity. If you have any suggestions for blog entries please don’t hesitate to contact me here. Additionally, don’t forget to follow @RussianPencil on Twitter!”
HTML5 and The Future of the Web – Smashing Magazine
Great overview of HTML5 for the lay person – namely me!
Definitely helped me understand the leverage that HTML5 will bring to digital signage. Very exciting. Despite spotty browser support for HTML5 today it is pretty clear that it is strategic to Google and if it enables their apps it is pretty safe to say that Chrome and Chrome OS can be your preferred browser target of your HTML5 applications tomorrow.
Getting agile with an acoustical guitar.
Getting Real (the musical way) with Rodrigo and Gabriela – (37signals).
One year ago it costs us about $5,000 per year per developer for the software operating system, development environment, tools, MSDN subscriptions, etc. etc.
We then changed our viewpoint and focused on leveraging cloud computing and the open source community.
Our costs today per developer for software are $0. Zero dollars for a developer software environment per year.
Combine this with the elimination of server hardware and software, IT infrastructure support and maintenance, moving from a large office environment to a virtual work place with a drop in as-you-need-it office, and leveraging free video conferencing and the savings are off the chart.
The creation of intellectual capital is becoming cheaper and cheaper.
YouTube just posted on their blog support for 1080p HD.
Is there any reason left to want to store, manage and stream your own video’s to digital signage or for that matter any other type of display? If you can offload video management to the cloud in full glorious 1080p for free, why not do it?
I exchanged some great email with Alex Deaconu as part of a regular quarterly review we do and his insights into our adoption of a truly agile development methodology really struck me. First, true confessions, we have been proclaiming to be an agile shop for years. We lied. Or at least we fooled ourselves really well. I think we are just starting to understand the power of short burst iterations. Alex summed up what this means perfectly:
We’re hunting bigger game while expending less energy, at this point a miss doesn’t hurt as much.
In the end, it’s obvious the only enemy is time; keeping ahead of the curve.
More steps forward than steps back; more calculated lunges towards our intended target; more agile.
To keep stepping forward, and a step back to not hurt as much:
- build fast
- build well
- reduce
- reuse
- recycle
Calculate lunges:
- no shortcuts
- no excuses
- bounce off obstacles while recovering cleanly
More agile:
- no shortcuts
- no excuses
Well said Alex! Thank you!
Google Open Source Blog: Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!.
“Want to write a server with thousands of communicating threads? Want to spend less time reading blogs while waiting for builds? Feel like whipping up a prototype of your latest idea? Go is the way to go! Check out the video for more information or visit golang.org.”
I have been alive for over 17,000 days. Generally speaking I have used a washroom in one form or another let’s say at least 5 times per day. That means that I have had a washroom experience at least 85,000 times in my life. I’m going to renovate my bathroom. When meeting with the contractor I have experienced so many washrooms that I can easily describe what I want, and guess what, so has she and if I picked the right person she not only uses them but has also built many, many as well. Very easy to describe the entire project, get a quote and easy to evaluate progress. Doesn’t always go perfect but at least there isn’t allot of debate about the fact that the room should have a toilet.
Why then do we take this same approach to building software? To building something that we likely haven’t experienced before, can’t describe well, and we’re not too sure how it should work. And then we need to have someone build it who probably has had the same or least experience and on top of that they have to try and decipher what we want. Why also does our fear of not getting what we want drive us to get greedy and ask for everything? Dumb. If you have 10 things your software should do, use an 80/20 rule. Build 2, evaluate deliverables daily, when done, use the software and experience it fully, revisit the remaining 8 items and I think you will be surprised to find that they no longer apply, you now have a new list of 10 things you want to add. Don’t get dumb and go for all 10, do 2, repeat, enjoy. Stay regular. Couldn’t help the pun.
Very interesting video. Highly recommend watching the whole thing. What struck me:
If the above is an inevitable trend, how do you surf it (it pushes you) rather than fall off the back of the wave?
