The FuzzyBlog!
Marketing 101. Consulting 101. PHP Consulting. Random geeky stuff. I Blog Therefore I Am.

Tuesday, June 18, 2002

Software Quality Analyzed The first really honest article I've seen in a long time.  And, even thought it's MSnbc, they still take Microsoft to task.  Bravo.  Seriously, if you write code, this one makes you think.  http://msnbc.com/news/768401.asp?cp1=1 7:40:08 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Interesting Performance Stats on GenToo Linux My buddy Demitrious just ran a real world benchmark test on GenToo Linux.  Stats.  Bottom Line?  What RedHat does in 5 seconds, GenToo does in 0 seconds (i.e. too fast to measure accurately).  That's impressive.  www.gentoo.org.  Demitrious likes it a lot and that makes me think it's good since he's hard to please (and a better hard core *nix guy than I am). 7:13:40 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Slow Morning.  Hrmmm.  Miscellaneous Random Bits. I guess it's not such a slow morning.  Thank you slow FTP connections! Cool.  I just saw that Avi is a reader at least some of the time. She has a great site -- www.searchtools.com.  Recommended. An awesome resource: Free Linux Book.  That's Right Free.  And there is a PDF you can download.  Good Job Paul Scheer, thank you!  http://rute.sourceforge.net/.  I have no idea why this is free, etc, but I have already learned stuff from this book and what more can I ask? Adam just told me that K5 raised $10K already and is now a non-profit.  Very cool.  Good Job Rusty!  And, a comment to the all the nay sayers on K5, that had the unmitigated nerve to criticize what appears to be your salary (the $70K).  It doesn't seem like any of you have the right to make these commments without a lot more facts.  Like: Where does Rusty live?  What's his rent / mortgage? Does he have kids?  Is he supporting an ex-wife?  His folks?  Debts ? I'm not saying that Rusty is or isn't entitled to this amount of $.  Personally I think it's a cheap salary for his accomplishments.  Despite my issues with K5, it's an awesome site and he has done a fantastic job.  If he wants to make $70K per year, why shouldn't he? I just booked a trip to Italy.  More on that coming soon.  But the booking process was just plain bizarre.  Not only did I have prices just plain disappear within 5 minutes of each other but I saw that Expedia and Orbitz and Travelocity were all within .03 (that's 3 pennies) of each other for the same flights.  Competition?  Hello?  Come on here... If you are going to play pricing games, and I am not saying you are, then you should at least try to make it less obvious.  So, where did I buy tickets for this little jaunt to Venice, etc?  www.justfares.com.  Why?  At the email they sent me saying that my prices would be confirmed later, there was a real live human's name.  "Gina".  I called her and just plain booked it.  She was great.  It felt like an old fashioned travel agent and that's not all bad.  General comments on online booking sites: Overall they aren't all that good.  Fairly buggy. Interesting choice of date selection mechanisms. Expedia is one of the few with stateful urls so that the url is bookmarkable. Pricing models make no damn sense (but that's also the arcane airline industry) Priceline doesn't deliver all that much and is frustrating as heck. Pricing is too close to each other for my tastes.  Scary. The direct airline sites were more expensive in general. Alitalia's new site not only requires registration before you can even get a price but then has bugs so you can't finish (there is a validation routine that references a field that doesn't exist but is required).  www.alitalia.com I logged all my prices to a spreadsheet and if I have time to finish it, I'll blog it.  It was interesting... 7:48:45 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Cool.  The New WebSkylines Site is Up. My buddy Craig Bosko, the guy behind www.webskylines.com, has his new site up.  His previous site was very, very flash centric, so much so that Brent, when he saw it, commented to me that he didn't think Craig could do HTML at all.  That is just SO not true that I passed it on.  Craig took the feedback well and made his site much better.  He also has some screenshots now of a few of his HTML apps.  And, while I'm not a Flash advocate, even I have to admit that it looks good.  His site for his brother's? new CD is quite lovely. Craig used to work for me at the late, unlamented, Mascot Network.  He does beautiful look and feel stuff and does it fast and well (yes, this is kind of a plug, but his work is still good).  He and I collaborate on sites when he needs back end stuff.  In something that felt interestingly like the old dot com era, we just lost a bid to a big New York agency that took over all of this client's interactive stuff.  This really surprised us since not only did we have contacts at the company but they had to be substantially more expensive.  So, not to waste the UI prototypes that Craig did, I thought I'd link to them here: http://www.webskylines.com/outsidetheclassroom/1.htm http://www.webskylines.com/outsidetheclassroom/2.htm Comment to People Getting Sites Built: While I hate to potentially drive down my rates or Craig's rates, I would point out that there is a lot of need for all of us freelance folks to bring revenue in the door.  You'd be surprised at how cheaply sites can be now be developed.  Do not underestimate the power that you, the buyer, has.  All that technical talent that built dot coms (hey, it wasn't the tech guys fault that 99% of dot com management was clue free, proud of it, harvard educated and dumb as rocks) is now floating about and very available.  Disclaimer: There is no formal economic relationship between Craig and I.  It's more of a scratch my back if I scratch yours.  If there are real $$$ at stake, be honest about it.  And he's just been great about it.  Recommended. 6:33:32 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Cool New WebMail Tool For a new project, my partner and I just started using V-Webmail, a new webmail tool written in PHP.  It's very nice.  It pretty much just installed well and also just works (haven't hit a bug yet).  It's not free but it is open source so you can tweak it to be how you want it.  Recommended.  http://www.v-webmail.co.uk/ Disclaimer: This product is developed by a friend of a friend so, while I don't know them from adam, there is a small bit of bias.  However, I'm still using the product of my own choice.  It'll be a slow morning since I have some client deliverables to drive out the door. 5:32:17 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This