Spike Solutions
I am a huge fan of throwing together a few spike solutions at the start of a project. I get the biggest technical problems solved early, I gain understanding of any pitfalls I may encounter and I can estimate the time and work better. I highly recommend the practice. A few days spent spiking solutions saves weeks and months later.
Get your geek on, were diving in.
A spike solution is a software project to figure out a tough technical or design problem (note: singular). Use it to explore potential solutions, ignoring all other requirements and standards. Expect to throw it away. The goal is to see if and how a specific problem can be dealt with.
Adjusting the Cap
Alex Knight, writing in his own blog Zero Distraction in The Disparity between Smartphones And Mobile Carriers sets the scene exactly as I see it:
There’s a massive disparity between data sucking smartphones and data plans offered by carriers. Customers know this, and the carriers are fully cognizant of it. The problem is they make a ton of money from you already, and since you probably don’t have a lot of choice as far as competition is concerned, they can charge whatever they see fit.
And this is why
Life, communication, programming, it’s all about structuring a rational argument. But too many people are either unable to, or are unwilling to, rationalize.
“I hold this opinion because I’ve read the facts and thought it through” matters. “I hold this opinion, and that’s it” doesn’t. Ian Betteridge
Whether the argument is about creative design, system architecture, which restaurant to eat at or politics and religion, it’s critically important to express, clarify and declare the rationalization behind it. Failure to do so, or the inability to do so, changes the argument from a rational, reasonable one, to a waste of time, words, and emotions. Unfortunately, rational discourse has given way to spin, faith, linguistic traps, talking points, lies and misrepresentations that are treated with the respect they do not deserve.
I love debugging
Rob Galankis tongue-in-cheek writing in Why I hate Test Driven Development:
… So why do I hate TDD?
Because debugging is fun. There, I said it. I love debugging. I think lots of clever people like debugging. I love someone having a problem, coming to me, looking at it together, getting up to walk around, look at the ceiling, talk to myself, stand in front of a whiteboard, draw some lines that spark some idea, try it, manually test a fix out, slouch down in my chair staring at my computer lost in thought, and repeating this until I actually find and fix the problem.
Photoshop Etiquette for Web Designers
There is a brilliant list of things web designers should be doing when designing web apps in PhotoShop at the photoshop etiquette manifesto for web designers. Do these and we developers will have a much easier time implementing your designs.
Applies to iOS app designers, Mac App designers, in fact any app designers too.
From now on, all my designers will be asked to follow these rules.
Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule
Classic article by Paul Graham in 2009 called Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule.
One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they’re on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more.
There are two types of schedule, which I’ll call the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedule. The manager’s schedule is for bosses. It’s embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals.
The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades
Brilliant post by Wil Shipley on his blog called The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades, well worth a read:
Right now developers selling through the Mac App Store face a lose/lose choice: either provide all major upgrades to existing customers for free (thus losing a quarter of our revenue), or create a “new” product for each major version (creating customer confusion) and charge existing customers full price again (creating customer anger).
On Digital Hoarding
Melinda Beck writing in the WSJ in Drowning in Email, Photos, Files? Hoarding Goes Digital presents a fact-less and ridiculous claim that we are doing something wrong by storing all the emails and files that we do. In the article, she equates the rest of us, people and companies alike, with those crazy nutters who fill their houses with junk.
My take: We, especially businesses, need to keep all old emails under law in case of subpoena, just like individuals need to store tax records. We need all our old work files as they are referenced in later works. We need our music and photo files because we no longer have their physical equivalents (or have to buy them again and again in case of media). In short, we’re not hoarding, we’re filing, scrapbooking and holding on to our possessions that are no longer physical.
But let me respond to the article.
You're being stalked
In the same vein as an earlier article on my blog, Giving Yourself Away With a Facebook Login, Alexis Madrigal writing in the atlantic in I’m Being Followed: How Google—and 104 Other Companies—Are Tracking Me on the Web quotes Joe Turow saying:
If a company can follow your behavior in the digital environment – an environment that potentially includes your mobile phone and television set – its claim that you are “anonymous” is meaningless. That is particularly true when firms intermittently add off-line information such as shopping patterns and the value of your house to their online data and then simply strip the name and address to make it “anonymous.” It matters little if your name is John Smith, Yesh Mispar, or 3211466. The persistence of information about you will lead firms to act based on what they know, share, and care about you, whether you know it is happening or not.
iPad 4G Misleading
As reported in the Verge, Apple’s iPad ‘4G’ advertising labeled misleading by Australian watchdog, may be banned. The same can be said for the fictitious 4G on my iPhone 4S.
As a proud Aussie, I am a fan of the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) and Australia’s Trade Practices Act that supports them. In short, companies cannot lie or mislead customers in any way, or the ACCC can nail them and force them to make things right.