Archives for July 2006

Common sense is neither common nor sensical. Discuss!

July 18, 2006 by Kevin

One of my little Google Homepage widgets is for a blog by one James Bach, who knows more about testing than me. A lot more. He recently blogged about his dislike for the words ‘intuition’ and ‘common sense’ being used as explanations in arguments.

Bach has a very good point when it comes to using those two concepts as ways to explain away a problem.

The article also made me think about how often I run into issues of common sense or intuition while providing tech support. Keep reading for some examples, and a little discussion on how I think the common sense and intuition pitfalls can be avoided.

What is RSS? Here’s a short answer.

July 17, 2006 by Kevin

One thing I’ve noticed in terms of support is that people usually come to us wanting to make lists (ListPro), keep track of passwords and such (eWallet), keep track of financial transactions (Keep Track), but when it comes to NewsBreak, it’s a bit up in the air. It lets you… read news! Specifically, it’s an RSS feed aggregator, and if you know what RSS is, you understand the concept immediately.

If you don’t know what RSS is, wrapping your head around just what NewsBreak is good for, can do, can’t do, etc. can be a little tricky. If you don’t know what RSS is, this article will probably help: A non-technical explanation of RSS.

A Good Name is Hard to Find!

July 12, 2006 by Marc

With the recent announcement of the Microsoft Zune I just felt a need to talk about naming products. I’ll give Microsoft a little credit. It’s really hard to name a product these days. Most of the good names are already taken by something. That leaves new products stuck with either made up names or names that squish two words together and pretend that it is one word (yes…we’ve done this too…I know).

Now, some of the made up names end up being quirky cool, like WOOT! and Google. Unfortunately, it seems that this has led big corporations to think that a wacky new word for their product name is the smart way to go.

You got “Getting Things Done” in my ListPro!

July 10, 2006 by Kevin

Ten points to whoever recognizes the advertising throwback in the title. “Getting Things Done” is a methodology developed by one David Allen to help create a ‘trusted system’ for tracking what you need to.. get done.

GTD focuses on helping you dump your brain into this trusted system, so you don’t leave obligations looming in the black uncertainty raincloud over your head. If you don’t have time to read his book, you can probably get a good sense of how the core of GTD works by looking at this flowchart [PDF file, 30KB].

GTD is pretty popular with geeks, probably because it takes quite a bit of fiddling to get it done (geeks love to fiddle with things, in my experience), and because it’s a “Life Hack”, a way of optimizing your life to make things work better.

GTD is also something that is basically a bunch of lists. We make a product called ListPro that is very good at making bunches of lists. So inevitably, the two will collide. For the collision, keep reading after the cut thingy below.

Who’s Going to Denver?

July 10, 2006 by Ellen

By “who” here, I mean which electronics – I’ve picked up the developer habit of at least sometimes calling them “he” or “this guy” (yes, of course they’re male. Here’s the official joke).

Any trip of any kind gets at least a cellphone, 1 PDA (just in case I need a quick game while I’m stuck waiting for something) and my mp3 player. More and more, the pedometer comes along – not only do I like to “get credit” for how much I’m walking, it also has a built-in clock, and since I don’t wear a watch (or always carry the cellphone if I’m just walking around for exercise) that’s very handy. And of course if I’m on a business trip, I also bring a laptop for taking notes and checking email, and usually at least 2 PDAs, just because my business trips are PDA related.
[Read more…] about Who’s Going to Denver?

Meet (yet another one of) the staff!

July 6, 2006 by Lee

I’m Lee, part of the support team, and if you call or email for tech support you will probably get Kevin before you get me, unless you are a bulk-purchaser or one of a select bunch of resellers.

I have been doing tech support of one variety or another for about 15 years, nearly five of those here at Ilium Software. It truly is a great place to work; it’s nice to be around people who are caring and honest, and really believe in what they are doing.

I, too, am a big fan of our software, especially ListPro and eWallet. I use them every day, both at work and home, and wonder how I ever managed without them. Both travel everywhere with me on my Treo 650; it’s so nice to have my information at my fingertips! I save a ton of time by filtering my grocery list to only show the items I need, and then sort it by aisle. Then I print it out and check it off in the store (I really don’t have enough hands to wrangle two active kids, a grocery cart, *and* my Palm — and besides my kids will ask endlessly “Mom, can I play a game on your Palm now?” Out of sight, out of mind). One trip through the store and I’m done. No backtracking to a missed item (this is a really good thing — see previous statement about two active kids…).

Also, since I am calendar-challenged (write it on the calendar and promptly forget it), I use a running list of appointments, events, reminders, etc. in ListPro. Since I am constantly referring to it for one reason or another, I don’t miss appointments anymore. When an event is past, I check it off to make it hidden, but I can easily look back and say “When was that?”.

Did someone encourage me to write about our software? No. Do I recommend it to friends, and even people I don’t know? Yup. It’s good stuff, and it just works.

Archives for July 2006

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