by Marc
How important is appearance? Is it a vital part of any application design? Or just a nice thing to add if you have time for it?
There have been a couple of great posts about this subject today. One of them is at Just Another Mobile Monday and another at Treonauts. Both of these address the subject from the point of view of a user. I thought I’d take a second to discuss it from the developer end.
[Read more…] about Form & Function: A Developer’s Perspective
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.
[Read more…] about Common sense is neither common nor sensical. Discuss!
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.
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.
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.
[Read more…] about You got “Getting Things Done” in my ListPro!
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?
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