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Friday, 20 September 2002 |
Jakob Nielsen on Offshore Usability: "To save costs, some companies are outsourcing Web projects to countries with cheap labor. Unfortunately, these countries lack strong usability traditions and their developers have limited access -- if any -- to good usability data from the target users."
Offshore usability is a specific case of the general "offshore design" problem. Put simply, software teams are not successful when design or management are done in a different physical location than programming. Once I actually had a job where I was in New York, my direct manager was in Singapore, his manager was in Hyderabad, and if I needed any management input I had literally no choice but to go to the CEO because at least he was awake during the same hours as I was. You can't get things done like this. A good project team relies on hundreds of small interactions a day. Here in the Fog Creek offices, we have 10 small conversations about FogBUGZ 3.0 development every day.
What I don't understand is people who think it's OK to move the developers ten time zones away from their managers and expect good results. Those same people would scream bloody murder if you told them that you were going to send the whole management team to Bangalore or Beijing.
[Joel on Software]
Interesting
1:09:18 AM 
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Philips Marketing: You Had Me At Hello.  Today I came across the web site for The Streamium, a boombox for listening to internet radio, CDs, and MP3s from your PC. Here's the description from the press release:
"...the world’s first micro hi-fi system capable of connecting to multiple online music services at the touch of a button."
But that doesn't come close to doing it justice. I'm thoroughly intrigued by it, which means the marketing folks did their job well. Some choice quotes from the site's home page:
You only have two ears: don't waste them on dumbed down music chosen by focus groups.
Plug into your DSL or cable modem and unplug from mass music.
Plays CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs or MP3 & mp3PRO CDs. And AM/FM radio if you must.
100 Watts total power. Share it with your neighbors.
wOOx technology = bass that doesn't bother knocking before it beats the door down.
Song title and artist displayed before you can say "Who is this?"
Now that's market research! Every one of these hits a home run with me. Over at the full Streamium page on the Philips site, we get new slogans such as "Don't dream it. Stream it!" and new nouns such as "streamies" (folks that own the Streamium). It should be available nationally any day now, and it looks like this sweet little puppy will retail for $399, which is very tempting. Tempting, indeed. Make it $299 and Streamium, I'm yours. [The Shifted Librarian]
Want one.
12:56:56 AM
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TTW WYSIWYG Editor Widgets. Web-based editing tools. Paul Browning maintains an excellent list of TTW WYSIWYG Editor Widgets. For the rest of us, TTW stands for "through... [Column Two] Useful list. It seems to me that if you're not using IE, you're screwed basically. [rebelutionary]
There is Xopus which apparently works on mozilla 1.0+. It's in the list. But, mainly, it is an all win32/ie5+ show. Not really all that surprising really.
12:44:46 AM
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Why haven't Microsoft bought Google?. I want to know.
[Curiouser and curiouser!]
I think the sight of microsoft buying a search engine that is powered by zillions of white box pcs running linux would make me laugh all the way to the pub. And back again. That, and the fact that almost all of the IP assets of Google would be useless after the enforced migration to win32. Oh, and think how much MSGoogle would owe MS in yearly licensing. Hehehahaha.
12:39:03 AM
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How You Know a Really, Really Good Product: Jira.
I just got the nicest email from Matt Mower of LiveTopics fame (well future fame?). Anyway, we were talking about a software development project and, out of the blue, he recommended Jira by www.Atlassian.com. Jira is a very cool "issue tracking" software product that is created by Mike the "Rebelutionary". It really is a next generation tool for issue tracking with such features as CVS-To-Jira and Email-To-Commit. Anyway, I know that Matt has no relationship to Mike and Mike's actually on a whole different continent; Australia. Matt's just a smart guy who has looked at these type of products and recognized that Jira is top notch.
That's how you know a really, really good product -- when people make unsolicited recommendations that don't benefit them at all. Very cool. Thanks Matt! Thanks Mike! [The FuzzyBlog!]
With that sort of buzz, you'd think that Mike is doing something right. It's kinda spooky, drinking with the guy one night, reading good reviews about his software the next. Trippy.
12:23:27 AM
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Rendezvous spreads: Apple's network discovery protocol for services like filesharing and printing continues to gain adherents. Their version of a zero-configuration protocol now has several more major adherents in addition to the original three (Epson, Lexmark, and HP): Xerox, Philips, Canon, Sybase, and... World Book? Ah, the product marks the first cool application-based benefit: sharing notes and research. [80211b News]
I'm confused. I thought Rendezvous was only for low level network stuff, not applications. Could Rendezvous be used for, say, JBoss servers finding each other?
12:17:41 AM
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Aspects and Intentional Programming Team Up.
Interesting news: Microsoft veteran launches tool start-up and Software Pioneer Takes On New Frontier. Even more they have a website www.intentionalsoftware.com .
Apparently Charles Simonyi researcher in Intentional Programming and I believe the guy who introduced the horrendous hungarian notation to Microsoft, has teamed up with Grego Kiczales of AspectJ fame.
What could they be cooking up?
I've always had an inkling that there was something very synergistic between Intentional Programming and Aspect programming. Matter of fact Czarnecki has a survey book "Generative Programming" ISBN: 0201309777 mentioning both technologies.
The attribute based programming that you do find in C# and its variants (i.e. VB.NET and J#) are an offshoot of Intentional Programming. What attribute based programming does is that it adds code at certain points of a program identified by the programmer. It's the same for AspectJ, however the difference is in how you specify the code location.
AspectJ uses a query mechanism on the structure of a java program. In C# the query mechanism is against attributes that are attached to the structure of the program. I would argue that AspectJ's mechanism is more general than C#.
Here are links to more info on Intentional Programming:
Microsoft IP Research
Charles Simonyi
More IP
Intentional Programming by Lutz Roeder
[::Manageability::]
I am so hanging out to see what comes of this. When I saw that Microsoft had killed Intentional Programming, I feared the worst. Oh, and Charles Simonyi has an interesting defence of Hungarian Notation. It was for documenting the intention of the programmer for a pointer in a typeless language (pointer heavy c code).
12:11:41 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Brett Morgan.
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