By Rip Rowan on
11/6/2009 12:30 PM
This is pretty much self-explanatory, right?
Which LinkedIn button should I click?
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By Rip Rowan on
10/29/2009 1:21 PM
So I'm writing this with my new $350 Hackintosh netbook.
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By Rip Rowan on
10/3/2009 12:50 PM
In case there was any doubt that there can be too much of a good thing, here's a set of social networking buttons I recently stumbled upon (pun intended):
Besides the confusing layout of buttons, there's just way too much going on here.
Somehow, there must be a way of simplifying this stuff.
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By Rip Rowan on
8/31/2009 5:42 PM
Joel Spolsky is a big fan of SSDs. Even when he's wrong, I like reading his stuff. But when he's right, he's oh-so-right.
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By Rip Rowan on
7/31/2009 10:17 AM
Robert Scoble has an interesting (if dated) post called "Why Facebook has never listened and why it definitely won’t start now". It's a good article with many great points.
He writes:
Zuckerberg is a real leader because he doesn’t care what anyone thinks. He’s going to do what he thinks is best for his business. I wish Silicon Valley had more like him.
I get his point. To run a business effectively, it's not so important to know what your customer thinks as it is to anticipate what they're going to think. And it's clear that Zuckerberg has a vision and is running with it.
Here's where I disagree with that vision.
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By Rip Rowan on
4/3/2009 9:33 PM
Jeff Atwood couldn't be more right when he says
I have not found in practice that programmers need to be mathematically inclined to become great software developers. Quite the opposite, in fact. This does depend heavily on what kind of code you're writing, but the vast bulk of code that I've seen consists mostly of the "balancing your checkbook" sort of math, nothing remotely like what you'd find in the average college calculus textbook, even.
Exactly. Programming - especially GUI-based web-centric software development of the sort that most people are up to these days - is much more a "right-brained" than "left-brained" activity.
Question for the group: is logic - especially set theory - more right- or left-brained? Modern software development may not be highly mathematical, but it often requires heavy database design and optimization, where a strong aptitude in set theory is a big plus.
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By Rip Rowan on
12/7/2008 7:09 AM
There was a bit of debate on the issue of bugs versus features I raised in Coding Horror-ibly. I tried my best to keep it concise, but apparently, didn’t explain myself well. It seems worthwhile to clarify, Mythbusters-style.
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By Rip Rowan on
11/25/2008 11:04 AM
So I’m deleting this really big folder from my USB hard drive, and I get the message from Windows:
which is odd, because I know there’s over 35,000 files totaling over 370 GB of data in that folder.
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By Rip Rowan on
11/25/2008 5:44 AM
I love Jeff Atwood’s blog. But sometimes, I think he’s smoking crack.
His latest post, “That’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature Request” gets it way wrong. Regarding Bugs versus Feature Requests, Jeff writes:
There's no difference between a bug and a feature request from the user's perspective.
I almost burst out laughing when I read that.
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By Rip Rowan on
11/22/2008 5:11 AM
- That can’t happen.
- That doesn’t happen on my machine.
- That shouldn’t happen.
- Why is that happening?
- Oh, I see.
- How did that ever work?
Hat Tip: Brian Shaler.
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By Rip Rowan on
11/14/2008 3:56 AM
I was looking for a power antenna replacement for my car today, and the top site returned for my search was Installer.com.
The web site is so horrific I refuse to shop there. I opened it and immediately closed my browser like I’d accidentally clicked a pr0n link. It’s like walking into a store with ultra-bright lights playing loud death metal, with salesmen shouting at me – I’d walk right out.
SEO is good, but someone needs to seriously reconsider this web site.
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By Rip Rowan on
10/31/2008 1:21 AM
 Well, that didn’t take long.
HP is already rolling out its new line of multi-touch enabled PCs. Take a look at the advertisement and see what you think.
Here’s what I foresee: the thing is cool looking, and multi-touch is certainly popular. So they’ll sell. HP includes a touch-enabled application suite, which I’m guessing will suck generally compared with the applications it’s designed to replace. Some people will use the suite, others won’t. People who use a personal computer as a toy will like it, people who use it for work, not so much.
Here’s what they don’t show. You have to put the thing close – in easy reach – so it won’t “sit right” for some people. You’re always reaching for the screen, then back to the keyboard. And really, most of the time, you’re using the mouse and keyboard.
I’m betting that the allure will fade. But, then again, a lot of people thought that the mouse was a fad.
I’m interested in your opinions. Check out the PC and post a comment. Let me know what you think!
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By Rip Rowan on
10/21/2008 12:56 AM
Just read a great article about the future of Flash on the iPhone. At its core the article is dead-on: the issue with running Flash apps on an iPhone isn’t technical, it’s business. Apple wants to own the multi-touch UI paradigm and is fiercely guarding it. Flash apps, written for the WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu, Pointer) UI metaphor, will break the seamlessness of the multi-touch experience on the iPhone and dilute the value proposition. I think that’s a fair and true assessment.
About a year ago I wrote about the JazzMutant Dexter: a brilliant multi-touch mixing device for use with most popular DAW software. On publishing it, I realized that there are a great many people who don’t understand the fact that multi-touch isn’t a technical issue, it’s a UI issue. A lot of the comments on the Dexter review heralded the imminent arrival of multi-touch displays for the PC, at which time anyone could just “mix with their fingers” on a multi-touch screen using their current software. The notion is absurd, unless one happens to have needle-sized fingers.
There is a notion out there in the Big World that one day, multi-touch screens are going to replace keyboards and mice. It’s true that iPhones – and their multi-touch user interface - are compelling. But if you think that multi-touch displays are going to replace the WIMP metaphor, you’re gravely mistaken. They can’t.
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By Rip Rowan on
10/16/2008 5:56 AM
Daniel Miller turned me on to ZuiPrezi, a nonlinear presentation environment built using Adobe Flex.
It’s really cool, but not just because it knocks PowerPoint back on its butt. It’s cool because of what it suggests about the future of content presentation.
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By Rip Rowan on
7/6/2008 12:03 AM
I really like Windows Live Writer. But what's up with the installer? 
Why should it take long to determine which Windows Live applications are installed? Hey, Microsoft developers, I've got a new word for you: manifest. Would it be too hard to just have a file that contains the Windows Live applications and their versions? I'm sure it would take a lot less time to "Search". 
Oh, yeah. A loooong time. Just under 15 minutes. Seriously, folks. If you can't write better apps than that, I have grave concerns for the future of your company.
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By Rip Rowan on
6/23/2008 3:39 PM
I needed to do a quick screen-sharing session with a couple of folks today.
In the past, I've always reached for MSN Messenger. At my last client, Messenger was the default chat client, and since it has built-in application sharing, we used it daily for all kinds of tasks from troubleshooting code to figuring out where to eat.
For some reason, however, I got stuck in an infinite loop when I tried to use Messenger to share a web page. Selecting "Application Sharing" from the "Start an Activity" menu, I was presented with this disturbing message:
Your invitation was not sent because you need the latest version of Messenger to use the Application Sharing feature. Please go to the Windows Live Messenger update site to install the latest version.
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By Rip Rowan on
6/1/2008 7:44 AM
Vista sucks.
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By Rip Rowan on
2/27/2008 5:55 AM
Jeff Atwood writes about the "The Years of Experience Myth" in his usual, dead-on style:
Imagine how many brilliant software engineers companies are missing out on because they are completely obsessed with finding people who match-- exactly and to the letter-- some highly specific laundry list of skills.
Somehow, they've forgetten that what software developers do best is learn. Employers should be loooking for passionate, driven, flexible self-educators who have a proven ability to code in whatever language -- and serving them up interesting projects they can engage with.
Jeff goes on to make the point that you can use job requirements like "3-5 years of experience in such-and-such" as a baseline for determining the quality of the hiring company. If they hire based on irrelevant (or counterproductive) measures of skill, chances are good that "the rest of the team will be stooges picked for the wrong reasons."
Let's take this a few steps further.
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By Rip Rowan on
2/19/2008 7:16 AM
If you aren't yet familiar with DynDNS.org, you should be.
For several years now, DynDNS has offered a free (yes, ma, free) DNS service for people with dynamic IP addresses. This allowed people with a highspeed always-on internet connection to get a domain name.
See, if you have cable modem or DSL, you really have enough bandwidth to run a light-volume internet host from your home. The problem is, you can't register a domain name, because your IP address changes from time to time. Enter DynDNS. They have software that detects when your IP changes, and it updates their routing table.
Unfortunately, the only domain names you can use are extensions to their preset names (names like myserver.dynalias.net). For many uses this is enough. I've been using webculture.dynalias.net for years as a domain name for my company's backoffice server. It really works, and it's free.
Free. The word seductively rolls from my tongue. MMMmmmmm freeeeeee.
But now, DynDNS offers another service that may change everything for me.
For about $25 per year, they'll run a dynamic DNS service for any domain name. You register the name with the registrar of your choice (say, GoDaddy) and point the domain to DynDNS' nameservers. That's it.
What you'll find is that if you have a reasonably reliable high speed internet service, you can easily run a web site on your personal machine (or, if you're like me, on your own server at home). In case you're wondering, Dell sells servers perfect for this sort of light-duty use starting around $350.
If this works well enough, I may even decide to host ProRec.com at home.
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