Saturday, January 18, 2003

Mouth Wide Shut. Joel Spolsky has a new article out entitled Mouth Wide Shut where he expounds on the good the bad and the ugly of publicly talking about what features and products your company is working on . At one end he has Apple with their absolute secrecy policy completely astounding people with the release of their new products. At the other end you have Microsoft and the oh-so-hyped .NET (even Microsoft is backpedaling now) and of course the OSAF and their to-be-developed Chandler. A quote: Look at the poor Chandler guys; they started talking about their product before any design was done and immediately got buried under such a deluge of feedback just managing it all was impossible. Now everybody thinks Chandler is going to be All Things to Everybody. If you haven't already, I suggest taking a look at Spaces. It did its design before announcing itself, it is available in alpha form now (so close to beta you can taste it) and the turnover time for fixes, new features, and general communication through the mailing list is incredible. [W a r m b r a i n] 9:19:27 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

The Newest Breed of Gamers               I’m really having a hard time understanding something.  The natural appeal of the over-priced video games.  Yes, I’m talking about the ever popular GameCube, X-Box and Playstations.  These are the new generation video games that cost a whopping $200.00!!             My children were blissfully ignorant of the gaming hole that these systems suck you into until this past Christmas.  My ex, in his infinite wisdom (if you didn’t get that sarcasm, let me run and grab a sledgehammer), bought my son a Spyro game for him to play on his stepdaughter’s Playstation.  What do I have against that little purple dragon? Aside from images of Barney popping up, well, nothing.             In fact, being the opportunistic parent that I am, I plan on taking full advantage!  We are using my son’s obsession/addiction/infatuation for these video games to get what we want.  Based on his behaviors he is earning stickers and once he has enough, he can exchange them for money and buy his own game console.  Then he will have to earn time to play on the game.             I had been touting the “my child won’t fall into the video gaming trap” and “it’s only educational games for my children”.  And now I realize the most frightening prospect of them all.  I’ve turned into my parents!!!!             Oh yes, that one prospect that haunts every person especially after they’ve had kids.  I have adopted the same attitude toward video games that my mother had when I was a child.  I grew up with Pac Man, Galaga and Centipede.  Those high graphic challenging games.  My parents constantly told me not to play those “stupid video games” so much.  I wasn’t allowed the Atari or the Colleco games as a child.             So here I had been avoiding buying the video games for my children until I found a benefit to me.  Granted my children are both young and just on the cusp of working on video eye cramp.  But truth be told, the only reason my son has a chance at getting an X-Box or GameCube is because of the use it serves me in the form of incentive.  Isn’t life grand in the parenting by bribery world!!! [Michelle McBride's Radio Weblog] 9:18:00 PM    trackback []     Articulate []