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

Saturday, August 03, 2002

Hot or Not A Blog! Very cool.  Lets you rate blogs just as if they were men or women (www.hotornot.com) http://blog.hotornot.com/?rand=   8:07:25 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Cool Microsoft Outlook / Palm Desktop Enhancement I was just talking to my friend Sooz and she told me about a cool product -- Anagram, www.getanagram.com. Anagram is a software app which makes getting random text from other sources into Outlook fast and easy.  Very cool idea.  Here's their description: anagram™ instantly and intelligently translates the meaningful text from any application into Outlook® Contact, Calendar, Task and Note items. Why enter a new address or appointment into Outlook® by hand when anagram™ can do it for you? Neat! 5:17:20 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Marketing 101: How Dr. Dobb's Technetcast Can Make Money from Web Content This is a little different from some of my Marketing 101 pieces.  It's essentially a case study of how a rich media content website can make money from their content.  They put out a call for suggestions and the FuzzyBlog was quite pleased to answer.  Note -- I've had a very good response to these case studies and they are actually very easy to write so you'll see more of them unless people email and say "NO !!!". To: Philippe Lourier From: Scott Johnson, a Technetcast Fan and Devoted Listener Date: 8/3/2002 Re: Options for Technetcast As I've blogged about before, I'm a total fan of Dr. Dobb's Journal Technetcast, a web site which provides streaming audio and video of high tech proceedings like conference keynotes and such. This is probably one of my top ten favorite content websites and one that I'd actually pay money for. You're probably not surprised to learn that this site is having financial troubles and may be considering discontinuing the service. Philippe, the lead interviewer / programmer for the site, has asked for suggestions as to what they should do and this essay is my response. If you have ideas as well then you should send them to: pl-AT-xmatrix.com. ==> Read Story <== 2:09:20 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Blog's the word at MSNBC.com Very cool: Web news site MSNBC.com will introduce a new Web logs section by the end of August, a move that will allow it more editorial control over the opinionated ramblings of its former online discussion boards. Web logs, commonly called "blogs," allow people to post commentaries and other written musings for Web audiences. Blog authors oftentimes include links to other blogs and to articles relating to a particular topic. But for a mainstream Web site such as MSNBC.com, blogs offer a stepped-up level of editorial control over the often raucous ramblings from readers in online discussion boards. The site closed the popular boards last December because of the high cost of monitoring discussions that often turned into obscene flame wars. The bright side is that Web logs create a different kind of community," said Joan Connell, executive producer for opinion and communities at MSNBC. "Like-minded people come together to talk about things...it's an issue-driven encounter." More: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-948211.html So when is Microsoft going to ship a "MsBlog" tool? 6:35:19 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

For Geeks Mainly: Thanks Eric!  Thank You Very Much for Analyzing the Software Development Issues Precisely and Well Wow.  Talk about the luck of the browse, I just happened on Eric Raymond's blog only to find this:  http://armedndangerous.blogspot.com/2002_07_28_armedndangerous_archive.html#79585067  which he wrote as a response to this: http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/07/OpenSourcepart1.shtml Eric's piece nicely addresses the issues with closed source development.  Here are two excerpts: My assertion is that software development has reached a scale at which (a) even large corporations can often no longer afford to field enough developers to be effective at today's project scales, and (b) traditional methods of software quality assurance (ranging from formal methods to internal walkthroughs) are no longer effective. The only development organizations that seem to thrive on today's complexity regime are open-source teams. Note that I am not claiming that open source is a silver bullet for the software-complexity problem. There are no silver bullets, no permanent solutions. What I am claiming is that at the leading edge of large-scale software, closed-source development doesn't work any more. The future belongs to open source plus whatever other practices and technologies we learn to use with it to develop at ever-higher scales of complexity. This is very similar to the points I made (although Eric does a better job of making them; thank you!).  I'd also recommend that you read the piece of U.S.S. Clueless because he does a damn good job as well. Note: Eric Raymond, a long time member of the Open Source and Unix community is NOT a zealot as noted here. 4:37:04 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This