linkposter @ 3:05 pm October 1, 2008
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No more NDA!
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"But there was no use of it. I wasn't using any of the technologies for anything, except for things related to the technology itself. The Semantic Web is utterly inbred in that respect. The problem is in the model, that we create this metaformat, RDF, and then the use cases will come. But they haven't, and they won't. Even the genealogy use case turned out to be based on a fallacy. The very few use cases that there are, such as Dan Connolly's hAudio export process, don't justify hundreds of eminent computer scientists cranking out specification after specification and API after API."
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linkposter @ 3:03 pm September 30, 2008
linkposter @ 3:01 pm September 26, 2008
linkposter @ 3:02 pm September 25, 2008
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Alex highlights how librarians misuse xml in relation to marc. There's a deeper theme that applies to xml schemas outside the library world as well that I've struggled with. Codification with angle brackets doesn't get you much apart from a feature checkbox in the product marketing. Semantics in a codified manner are a very powerful thing that reduces development time and complexity. Schema's and xml developed like this fail the fundamental test when adopting a new technology, does it make things easier and simpler?
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linkposter @ 5:30 pm September 21, 2008
linkposter @ 8:30 pm September 18, 2008
linkposter @ 6:34 pm September 17, 2008
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"there's a far more insightful way to think about it. Apple had a monopoly on the graphical user interface for almost 10 years. That's a long time. And how are monopolies lost? Think about it. Some very good product people invent some very good products, and the company achieves a monopoly.
But after that, the product people aren't the ones that drive the company forward anymore. It's the marketing guys or the ones who expand the business into Latin America or whatever. Because what's the point of focusing on making the product even better when the only company you can take business from is yourself?
So a different group of people start to move up. And who usually ends up running the show? The sales guy. John Akers at IBM (IBM ) is the consummate example. Then one day, the monopoly expires for whatever reason. But by then the best product people have left, or they're no longer listened to. And so the company goes through this tumultuous time, and it either survives or it doesn't."
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Great article touching on the origin of the program manager and encapsulates nicely on what I agree is wrong with the PM role, management vs leadership, that said some PM's I've come across lead and lead well. At least IMHO the future is lean or agile style, self directing groups with leaders who do. The PM role for me seems like an old school hierarchical management artifact worried about a lack of control. The development process can be and is scary, solving problems by innovation from the outside is chaos/magic. If the team can't be trusted to think about the problems and you need a role to manage/think, then you'll get an emergent division; devs who think only technically and lose sight of the core problem and management that doesn't understand what's needed to actually deliver these things and lack of judgement ability. Organisations that make money from innovation need to embrace and direct the chaos rather than seeking to manage it and 'fractal' teams are a part of that.
linkposter @ 5:31 pm September 15, 2008
linkposter @ 6:30 pm September 7, 2008
danielh @ 5:16 pm August 30, 2008
I came across the Balsamiq Mockups product a while ago from a link off the Atlassian software blogs. I think it’s a really well thought out and executed product. My personal thoughts are when designing a product you can end up focusing too much on a specific design rather than the underlying concept and their mockups product is a great tool to avoid this. It has a crude-ish hand drawn view of mockups and doesn’t pretend to be pixel perfect layout and representation. It’s the perfect mockups tool and encourages the focus on the UX and concepts rather than any specific rendering. I think in product development you can get a chasm between people who have to implement the system, and the ui designed in a graphics tool. At least I’ve found this (in more than one organisation) can devolve into focusing on specific looks rather than critically examining the user experience of a system. I think you can use wireframes but then this often ends up going the other way with not enough intent conveyed. I think the mockups product is the perfect balance; not too specific, but built around designing, exploring and conveying intent and the user experience.
I was also dubious and highly skeptical of AIR and flash apps but i’ve been really impressed with the leveraging of flash into both a standalone desktop instance and integration into various enterprise wiki’s with a product that just nails it. We use mediawiki at my work and i’d love to see some support 
Anyway the blog is at http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/ and it’s definitely worth following both for software development and micro isv wisdom.