BloomBurst: Growing Software with Pop

Family Update for Those Interested

2007-03-03T01:03:00-07:00

One of the things that I hate most about bloggers is the inevitable 'Sorry I haven't posted in so long' post. Usually that line is closely followed by an overly personal reason, valid or not, that is neither on topic or appropriate.

However, I know that several people have been following this blog and are aware of the complications with my wife's second pregnancy. You have become friends and creating a post is, quite simply, the most efficient way of getting the word out. I do not mean to shock or dismay - just to relay a message to those who care.

Calla Faith Reinbold was born this evening around 7pm and died shortly thereafter in my arms. Mother is resting this evening - there are some distressing aspects that will require further observation but, at this point, those are secondary concerns.

I have turned comments off - if you email please understand if I don't reply in a timely fashion.

Update - Commenting Off

2007-03-02T13:07:22-07:00

Just an update - I've turned comments off on this blog since I will be in and out of hospitals for the next week with my wife. As much as I love deleting 'Viagra' ads that don't even link back to a site (SEO of the strangest sort - a campaign to build indifference?) I just can't babysit the site this week.

More updates as I have time.

Romanticizing Software

2007-02-26T23:10:00-07:00

Marcelo Calbucci, writing on the Jackson Fish Market blog, has some wonderful comments about software and creativity:

"I realized that making software is the modern medium for creativity. Books, music, tv, movies, painting, sculpture and all the rest are still as great as they always have been. But software is new and still forming. We have just scratched the surface of what software is capable of. Software is a canvas with incredible possibility. I believe software can tell a story. And coolest of all, software makes just about every other form of self-expression… better. It’s software that will make it possible for me to make a movie. And I feel fortunate that I get to make software at this moment in time."

Heart warming thoughts - but those toiling away in the obscurity of overblown-accounting-app version 27 may not share his same sense of romance. For those of us that are trying to build a destiny of our own design it is because we are pursuing these highfalutin, perhaps even naive, expectations of what software can be. We've left the safe harbor because we're searching for something more than toiling on the Spanish language adaptation of a Cobol based banking application. Somebody has got to do that. It's not sexy. Nobody writes flowery prose about that tedium. But those developers, the vast majority of code-slingers, are those that truly deserve praise.

Sure, Columbus got all the glory. But there were sure a heck of a lot more people left on the docks that made the voyage possible.

Web Startup Tips from Web Startups

2007-02-25T14:49:56-07:00

This week marks National Entrepreneurship Week (in the United States, at least). Along those lines I wanted to present an interesting video of Guy Kawasaki (an entrepreneur himself of arguable success) moderating a panel of several moderately successful social web sites (HotOrNot.com, Fark.com, Hi5 Networks, etc.).

I do encourage viewing of the hour long video - if for nothing else - the entertainment value (this is perhaps one of the most BS and self-aggrandizing free entrepreneur panels that I've seen - a little self-deprecation for laughs goes a long way to humanize a person). However, if leaving the video play in the background as you go about your day is too much there are two central points that struck me:

You must have passion for what you're doing. Often, the code behind these sites is easy to establish - perhaps even a commodity. There are a lot of people who see the re-emergence of online advertising and jump on any bandwagon that will lead to big money. Social sites, however, are about community and communities are extremely adept as detecting spurious intent. You must have a passion to bring to your offering because if you aren't thrilled with what you're doing who will be?
Marketing is an extremely tricky thing. Several founders talked about 'stunts' that they thought would be pure windfalls that didn't work out at all. Other times the littlest, most insignificant thing was what drove sign-ups for months. All, however, agreed that raising millions for a traditional TV, radio, and magazine campaign was not in their best interest. Creating features that would get people talking about the site to their friends was.

Obviously, talking about web businesses is much different than conventional business: compare the difficulty and capital in starting an entertainment news site verses launching a new type of steel-belted tire. The differences in mediums (digital verses physical) create a profoundly lowered hurdle for those looking to do web business to jump. Those same differences, if those in the video are to be believed, are also what takes conventional business training and skew it significantly.
Enough pontificating. The video:

Google Apps Premier: Sizzle or Fizzle?

2007-02-23T16:20:03-07:00

This is a rejected article from Web Worker Daily. I was late to the punch since Judi Sohn already posted an excellent overview of the service first thing yesterday. And the powers that be (quite correctly) didn't feel that there was enough uniqueness here to make it worth another post. Because my schedule is extremely crazy lately I took the leftovers, threw them in the formatting microwave, and present them here as a poor excuse for nutritious brain food. Bon appetit.

Yesterday Google announced Google Apps Premier Edition, a priced bundle of its productivity applications. However, if you read any coverage of the ‘event’ you’d think it was the tech equivalent of driving to Redmond and egging Microsoft’s house. Yes, Google has denied for years that it was going to compete directly with Office and yesterday did represent an about face. But are the sensationalistic and combative headlines just an easy angle for an otherwise boring story? Is this just marketing sizzle? Where’s the beef?

As announced, the Google Apps Premier Edition is a collection of email, instant messaging, calendar, word processing and spreadsheet functionality; in other words the bundle doesn’t include any new features that weren’t previously available. For the $50 per-user-per-year price tag there are a few bones thrown in: migration tools are nice and the bump from 2GB to 10GB for email is welcome. Also included is round the clock tech support and 99.9% email uptime. But when was the last time you looked at a Google application’s help file? And if your email was only available 98% instead of 99.9% of the time would you notice? Further, support for email gateway seems very much like what is already possible with some setting changes in the free version of Google Mail. I’m also disappointed by the biggest selling point: somehow “single sign-on”, something fundamental to any company with multiple web facing apps, has become a ‘business level’ feature.

Google has spoiled us. First with search, then email, maps, etc. the Mountain View based company has released a number of applications that have redefined the product category. They repeatedly reset the expectations of an online application’s usefulness. But yesterday’s announcement of Premier seems more like a marketing announcement than a productivity one. The merits of which, unfortunately and at this time, seem to benefit web workers little. The suite is aimed at small business comfortable with online applications - if that doesn’t describe most readers here I’m not sure what does.

What am I missing?

Feb CodeAway with XMission this Saturday

2007-02-19T12:33:58-07:00

This is just a quick note that the February CodeAway event will be this Saturday, the 24th from 1-5pm at the Sprague library. That address is:

Sprague Library - 2131 S 1100 E, Salt Lake City, UT

Google Map

Downstairs Conference Room

As part of the meeting we are very pleased to welcome Xmission. Not only are they providing free wifi for the event - they will also be talking about all the readily available free wifi in the Salt Lake area and how best to take advantage of it.

Following Xmission we'll have our usual unstructured time of conversation, code, and collaboration; this is your time to work on those ideas that may have been lingering. We look forward to seeing you there!

Scoble Brings the Shill Show to Utah

2007-02-16T03:31:00-07:00

I was originally going to post this on CodeAway but my true feelings about the event ran away with the post in a non-Constructive manner. Of course, lacking the better sense to keep my mouth shut, I'm posting it here to try and get some honest feedback about Scoble and his recent activities - is he a boon or bane to his craft? Is he just a pawn of market forces beyond his control? Or has he let his 'bloglebrity' status go to his head?

Robert Scoble is currently turing the US giving a variety of talks on social media. As announced on Chris Knudsen’s blog he’ll be in Utah on March 2 for "Podcast interviews with select executives, entrepreneurs, or technologists" and a talk entitled "Living in a Google World".

While Scoble’s star burned brightly in the nascent blogging pre-dawn he has been eclipsed on multiple sides. His superficial questioning with clunky follow-up (an aw-shucks ‘guy next door’ effect while at Microsoft) is exposed as high-school journalistic, at best, in the real world. After leaving Microsoft Scoble has tried to parlay his early adopter celebrity status into business built around video interviews with himself, with a number of miss steps. There were allusions to financial impropriety while covering John Edward’s announcement to run for President. Then there was the rant about how tech blogs weren’t linking to a recent video - a video which was discovered to be little more than paid product placement by Intel. He defended the act by saying that "Intel chips were more important than cancer". He then signed on to be the keynote for PostieCon, a convention put on by the loathed Pay Per Post company. He’s now out shaking hands at events like the one in Utah in desperate fashion presumably because PodTech, his handler, is in trouble.

Of course, this Utah event seems to be angling more toward the business/entrepreneur/starved attention seeking set rather than the geek set, so maybe the attendees and host were made for each other.

Personally, Scoble seems to be the average tech guy who got thrust into a limelight that was much bigger than he was prepared to handle. The question remains whether he'll survive the early growing pains of his craft (disclosure, business models). How he deals with those will determine whether his stint as bloglebrity has legs or if he becomes the digerati equivalent of Charo.

SysCon - Irony in Advertising

2007-02-15T23:23:00-07:00

I was cruising the Internets and saw a link for a potentially useful JavaScript logging technique. Of course, if I would have carefully viewed the url in the status bar before clicking I could have avoided this:

I hope the irony isn't lost on anyone - SysCon, the publishing company behind titles like the ColdFusion Developers Journal has completely destroyed any interest I may have had with their aggressive ads - the piece in question isn't even above the fold - what's under the pop-up ad is another ad, which itself is left to the streaming media 'ad player' which auto-plays for new visitors. That revenue certainly isn't going to the article writers - contributions to the relatively pricey magazine (no industry comps and $90 a year - 17% off the cover price) are on a volunteer basis. I pulled a submission I had for the mag in Q4 last year because of their practices then - somehow its gotten even worse.

Am I being oversensitive? I don't think so. I've seen effective, beautiful advertising that not only accentuates a brand but compels me to view more - compare the above screen cap to the one currently on my Pandora.com screen:

Is Pandora loosing out because they only have one advertiser at a time on their page? I'm not sure - I'd almost guess that because the ad envelops the entire page rather than a 200x400 block (or whatever) that the ad revenues wouldn't be that far off on an clicks-per-thousand-impressions scale. The point, however, is that advertising doesn't suck - piss poor execution does.

New Words: Web Worker Daily

2007-02-10T04:21:37-07:00

Some good news, I promise.

On BloomBurst, some of what I hope to expand on in the future is the evolution of the micro-enterprise. There are so many people doing exciting things because of cheap hosting, free code, and some enterprising execution. It's the domain of the knowledge worker - or someone that is a nodal point for ideas. Modus operandi is have wifi’d laptop, make a living.

Along those lines I'm pleased to announce a new side gig as contributing writer for Web Worker Daily. That’s a site from Om Malik, a favorite of mine for about as long as I've been reading blogs. Om is an award winning technology journalist and former senior writer for Business 2.0. He’s since struck out on his own and is building an ‘online media publisher’ (the mechanics of which I hope to also learn from this vantage point). Most importantly, he (so far) is a great guy. I was a little nervous about the time commitment and whether there would be article quotas. Om’s response on what to post?

"No expectations - just the posts which come from your heart and your brain, not from your wallet."

He’s got a interview with Robert Scoble, for those interested.

At the end of high school I had a decision to make: was I going to be a writer or was software my profession? Given my affinity for eating something more substantial than ketchup soup on a regular basis I chose software. With everything that's happen lately its crazy to stop and take stock of my professional life; somehow those two roads that diverged in a wood have rejoined again. It's not about taking the one less traveled - it's about being able to see what lies along both.

Cross-pollinated on mutednoise.com and CodeAway.org.

SLCFUG Meeting This Evening

2007-02-08T14:53:42-07:00

This evening we're having our first SLCFUG meeting of the new year (January got snowed out). Gilbert Lee, as he mentions on his blog, will be speaking on 'Interaction Design for Developers'. As he says:

"Most of these developers do not have designers in their teams. This is definitely not ideal but I understand it happens. My purpose is to teach key interaction design principles that they can use without a resident interaction designer. I'm excited to present."

The rough time line for this evening is
6:00-6:15 pizza, socializing
6:15-6:25 sponsors
6:25-6:35 News, Updates, Announcements
6:35-6:50 Solutions for multi-domain, single host
6:50-7:00 break
7:00-7:45 Interaction Design for Developers
7:45-7:55 Give Aways, Raffle

We meet at:

   * Intermountain Healthcare
   * 36 South State Street
   * Beneficial Life Tower
   * (inside ZCMI Center Mall - State Street side)
   * 16th Floor, South 1 & 2

For detailed instructions on getting to the venue after you've made it to the building go here:
http://slcfug.org/fusetalk/messageview.cfm?catid=5&threadid=499

Compartmentalization

2007-02-03T06:35:00-07:00

It's all ready February. I spent the greater part of January meaning to post what amounts to an apology. Despite rewrites squeezed in between here and there it just didn't 'click'.

We don't expect emotion from professionals - or at least emotion that's troubling. You'll never see a crack in the veneer from those that are truly great. They are consistently brilliant despite whatever may be assailing them in their personal life. You never hear them talk about how they're depressed, or sad, or having trouble getting out of bed in the morning because to admit weakness is to go against what we expect a professional to be. They come, they get crap done, and they go home to a family that, if not perfect, never purports to be but.

Writing has always been how I come to a comprehension on things. It's how I wrangle thoughts that diverge like herded cats into a coherent narrative. I've struggled with how to make sense of this in a professional context. However, considering there is a pain I can't name that keeps me awake at night perhaps its better to drop the pretense.

My wife and I are going to have our 2nd child. Having recently made the leap to working for myself the joyous news was tempered by all kinds of questions: what are we going to do for insurance -and- can I afford to take time off? In December, however, it seemed like I had hit my stride and I just might be able to make this work. There were jobs in the hopper, deductibles were large but looked to be manageable, and the holidays were the best in my memory.

At an ultrasound in the beginning of January several abnormalities were discovered. Things take on an out-of-body remoteness as you listen to a doctor describe the possibility of termination to the child that just the night before you felt kicking. You get advice, you go online and read long worded medical journals, and you try to gage conflicting percentages for survival. There are a flurry of emails about your unavailability.

Surprisingly, I find myself unable to cry. First it seems to be due to shock. And then I tell myself its because I'm putting on a brave face for our toddler; a kid old enough to know when there is something wrong but too young to understand why Dad can't get out of bed in the morning.

Meanwhile weeks go by and the clients that caused the euphoria in December are wondering where their work is. In between meeting with cardiologists and neonatologists you're checking email over the hospital wifi to see what fire you have to fight next. Nobody is sated and they're certainly not getting your best work. Clients that you personally lobbied to have the privilege of working with are wondering what anchor they've attached their ship to. Prospects for future work have become dim because there simply isn't time to contact and follow up. Finally, pillow talk becomes a series of painful conversations you never thought you'd have but need to happen right now: home equity loan or personal line of credit? Do we have somebody to watch our son for the next round of appointments? Do we bury her in Salt Lake or South Dakota? Is this our 'home'? What's a good price on an urn?

Striking out on one's own has all sorts of romantic connotations attached to it. One that comes to my mind is the flag draped individual in the power suit proudly declaring "I'm a small business owner". They forge ahead by pioneering a living in a wilderness of uncertainty. If Vox Pop is going to survive this - that is, if I am going to survive this - I am going to need a strength of character that I don't know if I have. Try putting that into client pitches.

In subsequent drafts the most useful thing that emerged seemed to be a list of principals that I have to adhere to if I'm going to move forward. As a software developer I am a steward of other people's dreams. I turn thought into reality. If I'm going to make things right I need to compartmentalize 'Vox Pop' from 'Matthew Reinbold'. For all my previous rhetoric I need to, at least temporarily, take the human element out of the software process.

Ugh.

Gwabs Mini-Game Released

2007-01-17T00:00:00-07:00

I just wanted to drop a quick note to let people know the Gwabs mini-game has been released. While not in a programming role I am a contributing member to the team (character development, technical writing, and general cheerleading). It's been a great outlet for all of that comic book minutia accumulated during high school. While you won't see any of my characters in the mini-game you will get a feeling for the madcap humor we're driving at.

Gwabs is a Cambrian House project which is interesting from a programming standpoint for a couple reason. Firstly, they're trying to create a viable 'Crowdsourced' software development environment. Second, being crowdsourced, the team is distributed around the world. We're using Google Docs and CampFire chat for collaboration.

Will it work? As with most things, time will tell. But until then you can bide your time with a certain minigame I heard about. ;)

Is Blinksale Slow Lately?

2007-01-15T19:11:10-07:00

Are there any other Blinksale users out there? I was initially attracted to the online invoice tool because of its simplicity, the 'access anywhere' web 2-point?-oh!-ness, and integration with other common micro-enterprise tools: PayPal, BaseCamp, etc. It's the browser-based equivalent (abliet less feature rich) of a 'traditional' desktop app like QuickBooks.

When it works its fantastic. I can be on a client site, log in to a borrowed machine, fill in a few fields, and print the invoice then and there. I can also email customers (the ones that support it) their payment requirements - bypassing snail mail completely. Given that banks do transactions with each other electronically all the time why can't I?

The problems with Blinksale for me have really started after their update in December. Page load times have been dreadfully slow. Performance has been completely random. Worse yet, simple things like totals are erroneous. If this was a desktop application my load times would be a non-issue and stable.

Are there any other Blinksale users in the audience? Is this a common experience for you too lately? Is Blinksale having trouble scaling or is this just my lucky month?

SLCFUG January Meeting Canceled

2007-01-11T15:28:45-07:00

Just a quick update - the SLCFUG January meeting is canceled due to weather - my apologies to any blog readers who were looking forward to braving the snow to come on down. I've arranged it with the speakers that they'll present their fine topics on February 8th, the next meeting.

Again, no meeting tonight (the 11th). The next SLCFUG meeting is February 8th.

SLCFUG Meeting Tonight - Design Interactions for Developers

2007-01-11T01:47:38-07:00

(also cross posted on the SLCFUG bboard)

It's that time to kick off a brand new year of great presentations, good get togethers, and book review mania known as the SLCFUG. At our Thursday, January 11th 6pm meeting we'll have the pizza, pop, and paperbacks that you've grown to expect. I also have a big box of Adobe schwag just waiting to go home with somebody that just might be given away. And speakers, speakers, speakers:

* Mel Williams of MasterControl and Clear Web Vision will present 'Multiple Domains on One Host Tricks'
* Gilbert Lee, Designer for the LDS Church and owner of Plain Simple Design, will have 'Interaction Design for Developers'
* And last and lost likely least, I'll be giving the annual 'State of the User Group'

Those details again:

Salt Lake ColdFusion Users Group (SLCFUG)
January 11, 2006
6:00 pm

Venue:
Intermountain Healthcare
36 South State Street
Beneficial Life Tower (inside ZCMI Center Mall - State Street side)
16th Floor, South 1 & 2

Directions for getting to the 16th floor of the downtown Beneficial Life Building can be found here:
http://slcfug.org/fusetalk/messageview.cfm?catid=5&threadid=499

Hope to see you there!

YOU Are the Critical Path

2007-01-10T04:19:09-07:00

There are many names for the new breed of workers who shun cubical life. Dubbed 'web workers' by GigaOm,they are able to create a living with little more than a laptop, wifi, and the ideas in their head. It's romantic to think of this movement (of which I consider myself a part) as a 21st-century Bohemian approach to employment. I even try to cover and create events catering to these individuals on CodeAway.org. However, there's nothing like a little personal tragedy to expose just how frail this livelihood is.

Among the cubical-ized workforce there are redundancies; overlaps. Job positions are often constructed to compartmentalize and replicate a function. The purpose is so that if a person is unable to fulfill their role - they get sick, go on maternity, or need a leave of absence - the organization continues to operate. At the lowest level people are just cogs in a machine driven by others.

As a web worker the success or failure at any given moment depends on me. If I'm not working I'm not getting paid. This reality makes it essential that assets are created that can generate revenue even when I'm not at the keyboard. I'm trying - the Militant Geek T-Shirt experiment last September is a great example - but I'm not there yet. It's an incredibly guilty/sick feeling to realize I've just been handed a tremendously sad situation to deal with and all I can think about is how the hell am I going to get client work done now? The risk that a web worker assumes is that they will be able to be productive day in, day out; they have to be automatic and industrious in a machine of their own choosing.

But people aren't are mechanical. The same human that feels dehumanized in a large company is also the same being that isn't always automatic on their own. Web workers set out with the idea that their relationship with work won't be one of compromise. But at this moment compromised is exactly what I'm feeling. Staffing up is the traditional solution but that threatens to create a similar organization to the one I left. What is a Bit Bohemian to do?

Google Reader Shows a Whole Lotta Nothing Going On

2007-01-04T23:23:00-07:00

With my laptop off for some warranty maintenance I pulled up Google Reader. Normally my RSS feeds are consumed within Mozilla Thunderbird; there was something about having email and site feeds in the same place that made a lot of sense to me back in 2004. A nice feature in Thunderbird is to export all feeds as an OPML file. Google, being the handy folks they are, allow importing of OPML files. With the laptop away I thought I'd give Google Reader some play. And then I saw my problem staring me stark naked in the face.

Reader has gotten a lot of neat features over the last several months. But when I when in to mange my feeds I was most shocked at the simple tally in the upper left: 275 feeds. With Mozilla, two years of compulsively adding RSS is politely hidden away. New posts come into the appropriate folders and obsolete feeds never make a peep. Badly formed feeds (which there are apparently quite a few) never show up (perhaps Thunderbird has a pretty strict parser??). I was able to skip merrily about the news of the day without a second thought to all the moved, malformed, or malevolent info within my midst.

So I went at my overgrown list with a cursored hacksaw. Along the way it also seemed to be a great opportunity to cut back on those batches of feeds that got added in a rash of free time over-optimism; no, I'm not going to go back to recording electoclash (or glitchcore) tracks anytime soon (though my tottler does beg for me to power up my synthesizers when he's in the office). Those Google Search Rss feeds really didn't return anything that the thought leaders weren't talking about anyway. And then there were the "C"-level bloggers: those that may have an interesting post every once and awhile but completely make subscription pointless with quarterly "I'm sorry I haven't been blogging - hope to do more soon posts".

After some work I refreshed the feed management screen... and was down to 207. Ugh. Even given my diverse interests that seems like a time sink and a half. I'll continue to whittle that list down. Until then, however, a new resolution is in order: I can't add another feed before first removing an existing one. I should be able to sprint though the news and opinuendo of the day; not endure a grueling marathon through the echosphere.

2006: Tying Up Odds 'n Ends

2007-01-03T00:00:00-07:00

Back in June as part of my ‘Hypocritical Guide to Productivity’ I wrote about the importance of getting enough sleep. Among developers pulling the all-nighter has a romantic stigma associated with it. We’re supposed to be console cowboys, right? Riding shotgun over an open range of code deep into the night has become part of the ethos. In reality, however, those late nights are a sure cow path to exhaustion. Losing only 90 minutes of sleep reduces next day effectiveness by 33%. The September 2006 issue of FastCompany had blub by David Lidsky on how to get the best sleep. His suggestions came from the book Good Night by Michael Breus:

Don’t drink anything caffeinated after 2:00pm
Get outside during the day for at least 15 minutes of sunlight to ‘set’ your internal clock
No ‘Tubes (TV, Internet, or otherwise) an hour before bed
Develop a rhythm

Also along those same lines Yahoo’s Jeremy Zawodny has a great list of tips for reducing mental distractions in 2007.

1. I will unsubscribe from every email list that I don’t consider essential to my work or hobbies. It’s so easy to get occasionally interesting information when I need it (via search) that I shouldn’t be spending mental energy reading a large stream of incoming hay on the off chance that a needle shows up.

2. I will end every day (both at work and at home) with no open tabs in my browser. I’ve been using tabs as a sort of ad-hoc todo list that has no obvious order or priority and often spirals out of control. No more of that.

3. While the echo chamber is fun, entertaining, seductive and often frustrating, I will check the various blog amplifiers and aggregators only once a day (barring unusual circumstances).

4. I will try harder to say no.

Personally, ending the day with zero open tabs will be extremely challenging. I love to leave interesting opinions dangling; if after a day or two (or seven) the ideas still seem exciting I know it would make for good blog post. However, that does lead to some days when I’m navigating across two-or-more dozen tabs. And Firefox’s new session restore fixes those accidental reboots that were the cosmos’s way of telling me to clean things up. *Gulp. This is going to be hard.

Next up is professional networking. I stashed away several drafts on this topic but could never quite find an angle worthy of posting. The brief is that I use LinkedIn for managing my contacts. I see those listed as 1^st degree connections as reflection of my personal character; these are my peeps, my posse. This is the company I keep. A quick scan through my list shows several connections that I either need to renew or delete. I do not believe that LinkedIn is the adult version of Pokemon (gotta get ‘em all). In fact, I doubt that I really have more than thirty meaningful professional relationships at any one time. In 2007 I want to make it a goal to make each and every connection between me and one of the thirty people as strong as possible – no more, no less.

In November I discussed how, in the dressing room, no one can hear your wallet scream. While the quest for professional, funky, affordable clothing does continue I have been learning the subtle differences that escape many of the geek kind. For example, suit jackets, blazers, and sport coats aren’t the same thing. With a few tips I headed off to my local D.I. (or Deseret Industries – like Salvation Army stores only much more prevalent in Utah). The diversity of jackets is incredible because of the extremely large church going population; pick the right store on the right day and you could be leaving with an Italian made, well-fitting, silk lined sport coat for $8. Throw it over a ringer T and your ready for Google acquisition (or at least you will look the part).

All in all 2006 was an exciting year for me. There were some good posts, better comments, and (hopefully) a deeper appreciation for the art we call ‘software development’. Thank you for reading and let’s get 2007 underway.

Returns Week: Logitech MX Revolution

2006-12-28T18:05:00-07:00

This is Day #3 in the BloomBurst series on what to get with those gift cards, cash, and eventual store credit you'll find yourself with after Christmas. Also available is part 1, a fantastic CSS reference, and part 2, an introduction to the geek box.

Quick fact: for those of us that make our living with computers the single most used tool – more than the cell phone, more than the Crackberry – is the ordinary mouse. Day in and day out for years on end that little lump of molded plastic turns subtle gestures into electrical action. But a mouse is a mouse right? Is there any reason not to use the freebie that Dell threw your way?

Absolutely. You wouldn’t record a top 40 album or shoot a feature film with the mike or webcam that comes free with a computer, would you? So why do you continue developing arthritis in your scrolling finger with the same mouse your grandmother uses ‘to run the Internets’? The Logitech MX Revolution promises a new way getting around those lengthy word docs, spreadsheets, lines of code, or voguish one page designs. From the ExtremeTech Ultimate Mouse Smackdown:

“Aside from its laser sensor, range of up to 30 feet, and longer battery time than most cordless mice, the MX has four distinct, new features that could very well change how we navigate through files and programs. At the top of the list of innovations is the huge upgrade to the scroll wheel, which has two modes of operation—line-by-line scrolling and free-spin scrolling. Free-spin scrolling allows the scroll wheel to become a flywheel capable of traversing thousands of spreadsheet rows or hundreds of word-processing pages with a single flick. Other advanced new features are the document quick flip wheel (or button), one-button search, and a zoom slider. All of these buttons could add up to an overload of options, but with Logitech's software, SetPoint, customizing them to fit your needs is a snap.

The MX also has a very unique and aggressive shape that allows your thumb to nestle inside the mouse, while your fingers comfortably grip the mouse. In this thumb groove you can access the document flip wheel, as well as access two buttons above.”

Gizmodo also praised the peripheral calling it ‘luscious’. It’s just another great quality product from Logitech that combines practical usefulness and great design. It is products like the MX Revolution that caused WallStrip, the vlog where stock culture meets pop culture, to make Logitech a show centerpiece.

As web workers we’re all looking to build that better mousetrap. Having the world beat a path to our door is probably pretty profitable. But maybe the first step to a better mousetrap is first getting a better mouse.

Returns Week: Build Your Own Geek Box

2006-12-27T18:56:00-07:00

This is Day #2 in the BloomBurst series on what to get with those gift cards, cash, and eventual store credit you'll find yourself with after Christmas. You can read part 1, a fantastic CSS reference, here.

Has this ever happened to you? You’re out about town, you pop over to a friend’s house, and they ask you how to install that computer-thingee they got for Christmas. You say, “Sure, as long as you have #1 non-magnetic Phillips and anti-static strap.” To which they just stare at you blankly (most likely because they graduated with a Bachelor of arts). You do have the tools – but they’re all at home. Your computer cred is on the line: what are you going to do?

How about using those gift cards and building yourself your very own geek box? A geek box is an ordinary toolbox that has been conscripted to serving bits, not bolts. Personally, I’m a fan of the Israeli made ZAG 20’’ toolbox (almost for entirely cosmetic reasons). I love the bright yellow sidewalls – it seems a bit zippier than the craftsman gray or red that I grew up with. In the US the Zag boxes are sold under the Stanley label at Kmart or Target.

On top pull out drawer I keep a variety of lighter arts and crafts stuff for paper prototyping (scissors, colored pencils, straight edges) along with other small tools (voltage checker, needle nose pliers, electrical tape, etc). The large compartment on the bottom has a number of CAT-5 cables, a power strip, an extra mouse, and a number of extra routers (old Vonage boxes from canceled services make great, cheap connections in a networking pinch).

Finally, I’ve covered the box with all those bumper stickers accumulated throughout the years. Because I often meet with clients I make sure to keep my laptop dogma free and inoffensive as possible. The geek box, however, makes a great place to show off whatever company sent me shwag this week.

The geek box has come in handy on numerous ColdFusion User Group and CodeAway meetings. Just like a winter survival kit while crossing Wyoming, don’t go to your next programmer related get together without it!

Have you made your own geek box? Let me know! Throw the pic online somewhere and link to it from the comments below!

(pictures of my geekbox to follow shortly)

Returns Week: Beginning CSS Web Development

2006-12-26T18:28:20-07:00

If you’re like me it’s December 26^th, you’re slowly waking from a holiday-sweet induced stupor, and you take stock. Surrounding you are a dazzling array of gifts every bit as personal as they are engrossing. No? Well then, this week on BloomBurst will be a treat. Gather up your returns and those gift cards. We’ve got some real tokens for your professional affection.

First this week is the excellent book Beginning CSS Web Development by Simon Collison (ISBN 1-59059-689-7). Don’t let the ‘Beginning’ throw you; this handy reference contains all that an aspiring web slinger needs to know about the separation between syntax and style. The tone is informative without being presumptuous, the pacing is excellent, and all techniques are applied directly to real world examples.

The book begins by reviewing attributes of common html elements. These include text, color, backgrounds, images, lists, links, etc. With this toolset firmly established Simon then moves on to combining them into a number of useful layouts. He truthfully acknowledges when certain hacks are in use and, if so, what the potential pitfalls are.

Beginning CSS Web Development has an honor that is rare for most of my technical references: a position right next to my monitor. Its information is so well laid out that it allows for quick spot checking of work; even well after the initial binding breaks have occurred. If you do any kind of work that outputs to a browser window you owe it to yourself to grab this book.

Twas the Geek Before Christmas

2006-12-25T02:33:34-07:00

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the shop,
The computers were whirring; they never did stop.
The power was on and the temperature right,
In hopes that AI would surface that night.

The system was ready, the program was coded,
The backups and files had been carefully loaded;
An inadvertent Christmasy glow to the scene,
The lights on the console, flashed red, white and green.

Out in the hall there arose such a clatter,
The coder ran to see what was the matter.
Away down the hallway he flew like a flash,
Forgetting his keyfob in his curious dash.
He stood in the hallway and looked all about,
When the door slammed behind him, and he was locked out.

In the computer room what should appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer;
A little old man, with scarcely a pause,
Chuckled: "My name is Santa...last name Claus."

The computer was whirred, scanning the name,
Then it bleeped as it heard the old fellow exclaim:
"This is Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen,
And Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen."

With all these odd names, it was searching anew;
It hummed and clicked; the sub-queries grew.
It spawned new threads, trying to "think";
Then the T1 connection went out on the blink.

Unable to parse electronic job,
It intoned in a voice most unlike a sob:
"Your eyes - how they twinkle - your dimples so merry,
Your cheeks so like roses, your nose like a cherry?

"Your smile - all these things, I've been programmed to know,
And at data-recall, I am more than so-so;
But your name and your address (computers can't lie),
Are things that I just cannot identify.

"You've a jolly old face and a little round belly,
That shakes when you laugh like a bowlful of jelly;
My cameras can see you, but still I insist,
Since you're not in my program, you cannot exist!"

Old Santa just chuckled a merry "ho, ho",
And sat down to type out a quick word or so.
The keyboard clack-clattered, its sound sharp and clean,
As Santa fed this reply to the machine:

"Kids everywhere know me; I come every year;
The presents I bring add to everyone's cheer;
But you won't get anything - that's plain to see;
Too bad your programmers forgot about me."

Then he faced the machine and said with a shrug,
"Merry Christmas to All," as he pulled out its plug!

Paraphrased from the piece found on the hotrod forums. Author unknown.

Merry Christmas everyone and thanks for reading!

Software for Starving Students: 2007 is Released

2006-12-22T14:49:37-07:00

Dave Turnbull and his crew at SoftwareFor.ORG have released their 2007 Software for Starving Students package. Finding great software for free is always a treat but always entails wading through a lot of half-baked collaborations and incomplete college final projects. What SoftwareFor.Org has done is evaluated much of what's out their and determined the 'best of breed' apps. It's an incredible time saver for any geek on your holiday list. From the press release:

Software for Starving Students is a free collection of programs organized for students (but available to anyone). We've gathered a list of best-in-class programs onto one CD (one disc for OS X, one for Windows), including a fully-featured office suite, a cutting-edge web browser, multi-media packages, academic tools, utilities and more.

More info:
* Project homepage: http://softwarefor.org/
* A complete list of included titles: http://softwarefor.org/faq.html#q5

Congrats to the team for a job well done! Finally, if you'd like to spread the message they'd really appreciate your vote on the social news website, Digg.

Programming without the Sauce

2006-12-20T13:26:00-07:00

Today is a sad day in the Intergalactic Headquarters of Vox Pop Design. We’ve long suspected that there has been a harmful influence in our midst. But how do you say goodbye to someone you’ve relied on for years? How do you part ways with a friendship that dates back to childhood? I’m just not sure. The thing I do know, however, is that it’s time to stop doing the Dew.

Like many programmers the sugary/caffeine drink is a staple (I can count three empties huddled around my monitor at this moment). In college cases of the stuff were practically handed out with the computer science finals assignments (unless, of course, you took to chewing raw coffee beans during that period; a process that produced the refined facial ticks of your favorite Arkum Asylum inmate). It was so ubiquitous that it became known as 'Engineering Green' on campus. While at Microsoft Game Studios, even with free coolers stocked with every conceivable carbonated confection, I would grab that lovely green can with red highlights. It was like a little cylindrical piece of Christmas. It was a present that could be opened when nothing else – the bugs, the management, the late nights – seemed to reward.

Sure, I’m not stupid (at least not as much as many suppose). Subconsciously I knew that what I was doing was about as healthy as snorting presweetened cereal. But given that I’m a man with very few vices it seemed like it was the one thing the cosmos owed me: “Hey world, time for a Mountain Dew – after all, I’m still not a puppy killer.” There were moments I even thought seeking sponsorship for this blog would be prudent. After all there’s Xtreme Programming, right? And XML, and Ajax – those sound like rebellious things with enough ‘X’s to warm a marketer’s heart, right?

Then came a blog post talking about what happens when a can of Coke is drunk. I know Moutain Dew has more of both caffeine and sugar (that inferior drink is what humanities folks would drink during finals. Bah!). There is something about seeing a soda’s biological effects in black and white to scare a person straight:

"· In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.

"· 20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get it’s hands on into fat. (There’s plenty of that at this particular moment)"

So it’s time to say goodbye. We’ve had a good run. So now I guess I’ll bring you code powered by… um… beet juice? *sob*

JSEclipse Preview Available!

2006-12-18T23:23:00-07:00

I’ve been using the Eclipse IDE on code development for some time. I love being able to jump from one software language to another. I treat the plugins something akin to pokemon – I gotta collect ‘em all. After all, I want to be ready when that six figure Haskell project comes calling.

The one glaring omission I’ve had from my toolkit was a solid JavaScript piece. I’ve tried a couple of plug-ins in the past but never found one that didn’t send me back to plain text editing within a week. That may all change with Adobe’s preview release of Interakt’s JSEclipse.

Interakt was a great bunch of hard-core coders out of Romania (we’ve had them present remotely at a SLCFUG meeting). In September they were acquired by Adobe. Several individuals (me included) wondered what would happen to all the great developer tools in their Bucharest stable. Releasing the Eclipse plug-in for free must be another in a series of moves by the new Adobe (which, ironically, is a lot like the ‘old’ Macromedia they purchased, but with money).

Pick up your plugin on Adobe’s Lab site. What do you think of it?

Utah: a Different Place

2006-12-14T12:32:00-07:00

So Bill Gates sat in a room with bloggers of various stripes. Eventually the question and answer session came around to whether Microsoft had any involvement with SCO and its Don Quixote charge on IBM’s Linux Windmills. During his answer Bill off handedly asked where SCO was located.

“They are in Utah now I think.” – Niall Kennedy

“Wow, that’s a different place.” – Bill Gates

Instead of remarking “Oh, that hotbed of innovation?” or “I hear there’s some solid development happening there” Bill called Utah different. I’ve only been able to read the transcripts so I have no idea what his inflections were like. I sincerely hope it’s not how my mother uses the word – a polite catch-all that lies somewhere between guarded response and implied revulsion:

“So you’ve decided to methodically carve runes in your arm while following the Trans-Siberian Orchestra around the country? That’s different.”

Heck, I would have taken a wisecrack about Utahans saying ‘Heck’ over “that’s a different place”.

What bothers me so much about the comment is that it suggests a negative perception about the area from even the highest (and most traveled) technology decision makers. In order to build the Wasatch front into a microcosm of investment and interwoven technology successes we need people from the outside. They bring a diversity of ideas, new sources of capital, and connections to an ever expanding circle of movers and shakers. “Wow, that’s a different place” isn’t exactly a rallying cry to hop on a flight and start pressing the flesh.

Hat tip: Shmula

Google ToolKit Now Open Source

2006-12-12T15:58:06-07:00

Earlier this year I mentioned Google's Web Toolkit, a unique project that allowed developers to code in Java and compile to JavaScript. Today comes word, via the Google Code Blog, that the Web Toolkit is a fully fledged open source project. From the announcement:

"But now they're taking a gigantic leap forward--not only by open-sourcing all of their code, but their entire development process. That includes development discussions, code reviews, future milestones, and the entire codebase. "

Impressive. Now if Santa would leave a 30-hour day underneath the tree I'd be all set to play around with it. (there's not much room between unlocking Salesforce goodies, XML parsing, and explorations in Flash remoting, the Apollo beta - all of which I hopefully [depending on the NDAs] will be able to share about soon).

Christmas\Holiday Gifts for Clients?

2006-12-05T11:04:21-07:00

Being a freelance web application developer has been an exhilarating experience. But fun times have a way of been much less so if there aren't paychecks attached. I owe a big thank you to all the clients, large and small, that I've worked with over the last several months. In the spirit of the season I'd like to send them a little something but I don't quite know what is appropriate.

Quick Question for the freelancer/consultant set: Do you get your favorite clients a gift for Christmas? If so, what? Do they all get the same thing or do you vary it based on the previous year's work?

Cameron Moll Returning to Utah

2006-12-05T01:36:00-07:00

After having Cameron give an 'Intro to Design for Developers' at the March SLCFUG meeting and then lamenting his out-of-state move over the summer I be remiss if I failed to mention that Cameron Moll is back.

He's announced that he's taking a new job in Salt Lake. Is it ridiculous to treat a single individual as such a spike on a state's skill barometer? Oh Of course. Do sane people reserve rock-star like pedestals for their favorite developer/designers? Unlikely.

But I do and Cameron is a rock star in my oddly aligned world. You could call it a mancrush, even (in the most platonic sense of the word, of course).

It's superstars like Cameron that have the opportunity to write, work, and speak at worldwide conferences. People may attend one of his talks and then associate Utah as something in addition to Mormon populated and ski slope blessed. Cameron has such a high profile in his industry that he positively reflects upon all those around him.

In the formation of any geographical cluster its important to have keystones upon which teams - working in close proximity - can build; those people are Utahan once again.

(updated 12/5 for minor grammar tweaks - Thanks Jason A.)

Mach-II goes 1.1.1

2006-12-04T02:07:30-07:00

Big kudos to the team behind the newest release of Mach-ii. It's good to see implicit invocation not just hanging around, but apparently thriving among developers who have, until a few years ago, only done thing in a procedural manner.

I usually try to write about programming at a more abstract level, leaving the nuts and bolts to brighter bulbs, but Mach-ii has a special place in my Geek Box of a heart. A while ago one of the first tasks that I was given on a new job was to evaluate MVC (model-view-controller) approaches for web based development. My research led me to pick Mach-ii; a decision I lived with fairly successfully for the next two years. It's those kind of decisions that can be difficult - will the community adopt this as a standard? Will I be able to get support for it? Will it continue to be honed and updated to stay current? In Mach-ii the answer has been a emphatic yes. Being able to identify trends and bet on a winner is a good feeling.

The project also serves as an excellent blueprint in how to build a developer community around an open source piece of code. Matt Woodward, a lead on the project, has a recap on his blog.

Mach-ii is a framework for both ColdFusion and PHP.

Is BBB Membership Worth It?

2006-11-29T14:06:00-07:00

Two days ago I got a call from a very nice woman from the local branch of the Better Business Bureau. She was calling to see if I wanted to become a member. I hate giving out my credit card for anything over the phone - I always want to do a little bit of poking around on the net so that I can shamelessly justify foolish purchases. I made an excuse to get off the sales call and headed for da Goog'.

The first thing I discovered was that the BBB isn't invitation only as I was told over the phone. There's a sign up form right on their website (pending consultation with one of their people). The next thing is that there are precious few development firms (web or otherwise) listed for the entire state of Utah, let alone Salt Lake - something that raised an eyebrow (if its such a valuable service, why aren't there more people here?). Then I took a long hard look at the list of benefits and it seems there is precious little of tangible use; perhaps a BBB logo on Vox Pop Design would be nice - but is it several hundred dollars nice? If only one client is swayed because of BBB membership then it pays for itself. But is it something that people seeking developers care about? It seems the money would be better used in a string of relationship building lunches with the area's cadre of interesting business types.

At my most cynical it seems like this is just another online directory with slightly better name recognition. What do you think? Are you a developer with the BBB? Has it been worth it? And those that employ freelance developers - would a BBB membership help make your decision? Why or why not?

White Hats Need not Apply

2006-11-28T12:15:00-07:00

Back in August I lamented a troublesome rash of news which cast Utah development in a bad ethical light. The times... they aren't a changing. Yesterday this gem of a classified came up on the Provo area Craigslist (link not provided on purpose):

"If you know how to program--I know how to work the system. I will admit what we will be doing together is unethical, but it is not illegal--no one will be breaking down our door(s) in the middle of the night and cuffing us.

"While I don't know how to code, I will help write the content the code will generate. We'll split the profits 50/50. I'm not kidding when I say the potential is there to make $10,000+ per day. Can you handle that? I hope so! Get a hold of me as soon as possible if this interests you. If you are a goodie two shoes don't bother contacting me--this won't be a good fit for either of us and I don't want to listen to your lectures on ethics."

Ugh. I have a hard time with that kind of plunderous greed. The poster then goes on to say 'sometimes you've got to go black hat to get ahead in the world today'.

I'd rather code an accounting app in Perl while listening to the collected works of John Tesh than do a job that I found ethically questionable. And I really believe that making money in a white hat way isn't that hard – it just requires an honesty, transparency, and a bit of legwork that can sometimes be uncomfortable. I was raised in a household where 'honest pay for honest work' was as much religion as church on Sunday; with that perspective I just can't fathom how the poster – and his future development partner – intend to sleep at night.

But, for the sake of discussion lets get into the hypotheticals. If it's not illegal is it ok to do? At what price? What if it was porn? A gambling site? What dollar amount would cause you to consider something like this?

Jerk Boss of the Year Contest

2006-11-27T14:42:24-07:00

Chris Knudsen, a notable Utah blogger and VP at Podango, is having a 'Jerk Boss of the Year Contest'. All entrants are to be kept anonymous. The winner receives $50 from the restaurant of their choice and a copy of 'Love is the Killer App' by Tim Sanders. Before you begin eschewing the bitter bile a couple of conditions:

1) You and the Jerk Boss must be in Utah

2) The trespasses against your person must have occurred in the past year.

Hmmm…. Is a hatchet as sharp after its been buried?

Web Developers: Creepy?

2006-11-27T05:00:00-07:00

After last week's developer/marketing glowering I am karma bound to post some self-deprecating material. It is marked safe for work unless you feel uncomfortable with the word 'masturbation' used for comedy's sake - actually, upon review its probably best to listen to this with headphones. Now, without further ado, Ze Frank on what to look for in a good web developer:

If Software Development was like Thanksgiving

2006-11-22T17:00:00-07:00

No, this isn’t another post railing on how conspicuous over-consumption has become the focus of a national holiday. This is, however, a strained analogy on how those trite complaints are relevant to software development.

It’s a cyclical thing – the holidays approach, we engorge ourselves as if preparing for winter hibernation on the sweets and meats of the season, start taking serious looks at gym memberships in January, and try to look good by summer.

The same cyclical pattern exists in software. A new technique or library emerges (AJAX, for example, or Flex, or Karibou). We become completely enamored with the ‘new shiny’ in our lives (“Look, I can make the signup form sections individually shrink away as they are filled out!”, “I’m going to use Aspect-orientated programming on my Mom’s vanity website!”). We load up on extras because they are so visually or programmatically tasty.

Then development’s January comes along and casts the application in its cold, hard light: the application is bloated, inconsistent, and overly complex to use. So we start exercising some common sense and making those sacrifices to get our software back into presentable shape.

This Thanksgiving, as you sit immobile in a tryptophanic hallucinatory state, think about the turkeys that you might be cooking up in your own application. Consider the calories behind those intellectual treats. Come back to your app hungry to make some great software.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody and I’ll see you (bright and early) on Black Friday.

Corporate Jobs: The New Kind of Normal

2006-11-21T13:45:02-07:00

If you're not reading Kathy Sierra on a regular basis you should. The former Sun employee turned 'Creating Passionate Users' guru regularly cuts to the quick of what ails the software industry. In her most recent post she (correctly) points out that staying off people's radars is no longer a reliable way to steady employment.

"while in the past the safest move was to keep your head down and stay off any radars... being a good little trooper... that's no longer any more likely to help you keep your job. If you're on nobody's radar, you've probably got nobody defending you like a tiger to their boss. In either case, the freedom to push for what you believe in, and to challenge the status quo is a lot more stimulating than deciding to just not care.
If everyone is a lot more expendable today, and we ALL are "short-timers" whether we know it or not, we might as well act like short-timers by taking the risks we were too afraid to make before. It probably won't make us any less at risk, and today... it might even make us safer."

Risk, and the level we're comfortable taking on, is something that varies widely. However, since forging an independent path with Vox Pop Design I've come to realize that the security provided with a 9-5 company cube isn't better than what I have now. And that's not whine made with bitter grapes; information is not trickled down on a 'need to know basis'. The lack of a formal office does wonders to eliminate inter-office politics. Finally, there is no intermediary that is telling me one thing and the customers another. I'm much more comfortable knowing the entire picture than I ever did while trying to glean meaning around the water cooler.

Risk - how do you handle it? How do you cope with the new normal?

What developers think about marketers.

2006-11-20T14:59:45-07:00

This morning’s Dilbert couldn’t have summarized the honest opinion that developers have of marketers any better.

Marketing does serve a useful purpose in any software organization. It’s just too many coders have been burned by a marketer that was ‘doing their job’. These common foibles include overselling the features and understating the caveats; two sources of considerable customer ire that become apparent during the tech support call (and ensuing tirade toward the developer about the product they thought they had). There is also something grating about an individual who is professionally committed to style over substance.

Are all marketers like this? Of course not. However, it’s a job where one exposure to an bad apple ruins the perception of the entire barrel for a good, long time..

Kuler Launch is Luke Warm

2006-11-17T02:52:00-07:00

On Thursday (the 16^th) Adobe launched Kuler. Other than being the butt of some really bad puns the online application is a neat way of making and sharing color themes – or, at least it should be, once one gets over the hurdles.

I first got a sneak peak of Kuler during Adobe’s community summit in July. The functionality hasn’t changed much since then: create a color from a wheel, sliders, or text input and a number of complimentary colors appear. While Adobe’s algorithms do create some very nice schemes Kuler also allows a user to jump off those rails and create that black on black on gray gothic theme you’ve always wanted.

Once a user has created a theme they can then share it with others. People can vote for their favorite themes, tag swatches they like, search other’s work, and just generally pick up some great ideas for beautiful layouts. Export options are limited to Adobe Creative Suite 2 apps (through the Adobe Swatch Exchange File). However, given all the color values are readily shown in HSV, RGB, CMYK, LAB, and HEX recreating the look in a different program isn’t too hard.

There were some kinks with the launch. For some odd reason the Flash based app doesn’t use the normal Express Install method – something that is sorely needed given almost everyone will have to update to the 9.0.28.0 Flash Player required. The way they’ve set it up requires completely exiting the browser and manually running an executable. Other than the dragging action of the color wheel there doesn’t really seem to be a need for Flash, which makes the initial hoop jumping doubly infuriating. A little DOM-CSS-AJAX love would have gone far along the same lines.

Also make sure that you’re running on a monitor with lots of room. Kuler takes up the entire browser and then some; on my 1024x768 laptop I had to turn off all my toolbars (including navigation and bookmarks) to get a workable presentation. There were some reports of broken color wheels and squirrelly slider performance but I couldn’t recreate.

<--Paragraph was removed at Adobe's Request - 2006-11-28-->

The introduction to Kuler, right now, is a bit rough. But get through that initial experience and underneath is a neat and surprisingly useful application. Kuler is available at http://kuler.adobe.com .

Disclaimer: A group of Adobe community members were invited to a sneak peak before launch and promised Kuler T-shirts if they blogged about the application – a fine setup for a viral marketing push. I was among those at pre-launch. However, I will be refusing any Kuler shwag for this post. Nobody likes a shill.

November CodeAway the 18th

2006-11-16T15:40:38-07:00

This is just a friendly reminder that the November CodeAway event is this Saturday, 1-5pm at the Sprague Library, 2131S 1100E, Salt Lake City, UT. This will be the last event this year and we’ve been having a great time so far. Bring your projects, a laptop, and let’s play at CodeAway.

Also, you can check out the new shiny CodeAway.org site. It includes RSS feeds so you can stay up to date on the latest in the geek co-working scene. It make happy color in smiling joy!

Iron Triangle, meet the Lavender Equilateral

2006-11-16T13:06:00-07:00

You may have heard of the iron triangle. In software circles it illustrates the balance between being on scope, on budget, and on time. The joke is that for most projects you can pick only two – you may be on scope and paying the price you want (on budget) but it won’t be on time. Or you may have the features you want (on scope) and have it delivered on time (on time) but the budget will be much more than you had expected. I’m here to report the same thing exists in fashion.

Normally I pretty fashion agnostic (in fact, I’m a bit embarrassed of what I’m wearing while I type this). However, the weather has finally changed in Utah. My closet of short sleeved collared shirts has become painfully post-seasonal. That is why I went shopping yesterday for professional clothing. I was hoping to find walk-a-wear that could simultaneously be upscale, youthful, and costing a responsible amount (i.e. cheap). Very quickly into my quests I discovered what I’m calling the lavender equilateral.

Similar to the iron triangle, the lavender equilateral relationship was created by the universe to remind us that we can’t have it all. The sides of the lavender equilateral are labeled professional, stylish, and affordable (i.e. cheap). The nature of their relationship means that we’ll only be able to find an article of clothing with two of the three features. I found:

something on sale worthy of a funeral (cheap and professional but not stylish)
a set of duds for busting a mad cap up in the hizzouse (cheap and stylish but not professional)
GQ incarnate (professional and stylish but not cheap).

As an independent consultant I am painfully aware of how important image is. I also seem to be having an increasing number of power lunches that make me feel conspicuous in my t-shirt and jeans. What is a wardrobe challenged fellow to do?

SPAM Protection... by Monkeys?

2006-11-15T15:21:32-07:00

I had posted a previous diatribe against Uplinkearth. Today I logged in my control panel to log a 'ticket' for another matter and saw this response to last week's email outage:

"At some time in the early morning of November 9th a set of two blacklists that are managed and operated by monkeys.com took it upon themselves to list every IP address on the Internet in their blacklists.

Their blacklists, along with several others, are used by our mail solution to identify and eliminate incoming spam. "

Took it upon themselves? Monkeys.com???

The gem, however, is the answer given to what is being done to prevent this in the future:

"As we cannot control the actions of independent, 3rd party unregulated blacklists we cannot guarantee you will not be affected by future events. However, this is an extremely rare occurrence and has never been experienced to date by anyone that we are aware of."

I too have had experience with monkeys - there's the one that shoves its thumbs in its ears, another that covers its eyes, and the third who claps his mouth shut. Oddly, they seem to resemble the Uplinkearth policy makers. There is also the vague smell of flung poo.

Engineers Make Piss Poor Photo-Journalists

2006-11-14T17:00:00-07:00

The South Dakota School of Mines & Technology is one of the premier technology universities of the upper Great Plains (and, by the way, where I met my wife). As a proud alumnus (CE00) I dutifully flip through the occasional newsletter and magazine that they send out my way. The Hardrock is the name for their semiannual news roundup. What should have a great issue, recapping May’s commencement, is inadvertently funny.

In not one but three separate pictures the commencement speakers are pictured against a bland cinder block wall with a bright red sign proclaiming “THIS IS NOT AN EXIT”. The mind reels at the Freudian slipperiness of it all. Ugh.

Disney to Open Video Game Dev Shop in Utah

2006-11-11T15:42:00-07:00

From the Bob Mims' story seen in Thursday's Salt Lake Tribune:

"Utah really has a surprisingly rich heritage in video game development," he said Wednesday. "That goes back to the time of WordPerfect, Novell and Evans & Sutherland, when a lot of sharp, technical people got into games and spawned a pretty healthy, deep bench of talent."

    How deep is that animation pool? Fall Line expects to hire 99 percent of its staff of 60 locally. So far, no Disney employees have had to relocate to Utah from California except one - Novis.

    "I just bought a house in Sugar House, and we're already ramping up for business," said Novis, who directed the Rainbow Studios team that developed the Disney-Pixar inspired game.

    Fall Line and its new vice president/general manager already are in the process of organizing on a borrowed third floor of Salt Lake City's Avalanche Software, the only other Disney studio in Utah. Avalanche contributed the bulk of the 15-employee core Novis is using to get under way.

Out of all software development gigs doing 9-5 (or 10am-11pm) on video games can be some of the most grueling work. But its good to see that Utah's unsung video game industry is still alive and kicking.

Top 10 Signs You're on a Crappy Web Host

2006-11-09T16:18:00-07:00

As someone who develops web based applications my success thrives or dives on the quality of my web host. I've had my share of service providers - good and bad. Since I'm in the throws of yet another disappointing service outage here are my top 10 signs you might be on a crappy web host.

10. They don't offer private domain name registration.

9. Worse yet, they don't provide any details to manage domain registration yourself.

8. There is no phone support - only a enigmatic 'ticketing' system which may (or may not) reach an actual person

7. Upgrades to the newest released version of your server technology can be done - for a price.

6. Said upgrades require onerous downtime while they move your website files to a 'different box'.

5. Site outages happen and you never receive any notice.

4. Or, worse, when pressed for a reason for ongoing outages the ticketing black hole never returns an answer.

3. You end up arguing about erratic ColdFusion (or PHP, or Python, or Ruby) behavior with the level 1 tech support who believes he's right because he is studying for his MCSE

2. Renewal fees happen automatically a month before the current site expires and without a heads-up email.

And now, the #1 Sign you may be on a crappy web host:

1. You're using Uplinkearth.

Site Redesign in Progress

2006-11-09T10:51:45-07:00

America has voted and the results are in! I spent some time yesterday afternoon playing with the BlogCFM stylesheets to come up with something easier to read. There's a lot of detail work that I'd like to do to spruce up all the boxes but hopefully the core updates are helpful.

Feedback welcome. Better? Worse? Want a kitty?

SLCFUG Meeting Tomorrow

2006-11-08T17:04:00-07:00

Tomorrow the good people at IHC will be hosting the final SLCFUG 2006 meeting. Topics on tap will include (1) the recent 2006 Max conference (hopefully not all that happened in Vegas will stay in Vegas), (2) Adobe's announcement of $100 million seed cash for Apollo startups, and (3) the partnership with the Mozilla foundation for Tamarin. We might even end the evening with a crazy round table on regular expressions because that's the way we roll.

The location is in the heart of beautiful downtown Salt Lake City:

Intermountain Healthcare
36 South State Street
Beneficial Life Tower (inside ZCMI Center Mall - State Street side)
16th Floor, South 1 & 2

Pizza and socializing starts at 6pm. See you there!

Testing Safari Rendering on Windows?

2006-11-08T14:21:00-07:00

I was wondering what Windows Web slingers out there use to debug their markup for Safari browsers?... A quick google search turned up surprisingly little. There are references to the Swift project. The site implies that the intent is to take WebKit, the rendering engine behind Safari, and port it to Microsoft boxes. However, trying to grab the 0.2 code just returns a 'Page Not Found' error. Considering that Adobe's upcoming Apollo project will use WebKit underneath the hood this isn't just an issue for the Apples among us.

Are there any tools that I should look into?

Quick Hint: Open Illustrator Files with Adobe Reader

2006-11-06T17:42:55-07:00

I recently came across this tip and it saved me so much headache that I had to share. I often get illustrator files with mock-ups from designers. It's usually a read-only situation; the illustrator files are just visual clues as what to implement in software. In the past I've installed the demo version of illustrator just to read the file. As I prepped my travel laptop to do some work I broke down and decided to look for a better way.

It turns out that people can use Adobe Reader to open up *.AI files. Considering I've almost always have Reader installed this is the way to go. It also provides a pinch of rationale behind Reader's tremendous file size and start up delay (still looking for more, however).

Is there a Place for the IEEE, ACM?

2006-11-02T01:17:15-07:00

Next to my desk are letters from two of the largest professional organizations a computer engineer would likely gain entry to: the IEEE Computer Society and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The pitch behind both is privileged access to information. Entrance to the country club does incur a green fee, however. IEEE is looking for $88 (numerous additional options would make GoDaddy's checkout process proud). ACM asks for $84 (or alternatively $168 for true professionals).

In the age of near ubiquitous information do the IEEE and ACM even have a place anymore? I don't have time for the data I already have access to. Further, when grasping for syntax I glom on to Google. Trying to sway my interest with a siren's call of more information overload just sounds wrong.

And this isn't just an outsider's perspective. I did that dance for many years for slightly different reasons. During college these types of organizations were touted as the inside track to a good job. I'm sure somewhere an interviewer got misty when seeing that resume filler. But it's not the norm. Bought credentials impress few. I would end each year of membership in a rash of reading done out a warped sense of duty – “I've gotta get my money back somehow”.

Anyone who knows me will vouch for my commitment to building communities. That process can take many forms: freewheeling knowledge transfer during SLCFUG meetings, fostering idea cross-pollination at CodeAway, or pimping milk and cookies during downtime to my peeps. A developer in a bubble is a developer in trouble. But the libraries of Alexandria are no longer reserved for a select few. Don't think you have to join a professional organization to have access to that rarefied air.

Anyone Using/Developed for SugarCRM?

2006-11-01T01:57:07-07:00

I'm currently in the research phase for an upcoming web integration with the Salesforce.com API. Salesforce is a hosted application that specializes in client relationship management, or CRM.

In the latest issue of Inc. they had a rather slapdash roundup of free software that was enterprise ready. For CRM needs they highlighted SugarCRM, a company that touts itself as 'Commercial Open Source'. It appears to be PHP and MySQL based and the recommended servers are IIS or Apache.

Has anyone used SugarCRM before? How difficult is it to program for? Does anyone have enough experience to compare and contrast it with SalesForce? Most importantly, how difficult is it to migrate data from one application to another?

Try Flex with No Download

2006-10-31T18:22:00-07:00

Flex is Adobe's response to a common problem. Web developers loved the end result Flash Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) gave them but hated having to think like animators. The Macromedia team (which would be later bought by Adobe) created MXML as a solution. It's an XML-like language that can be compiled down to Flash.

Now a new tool, called the Flexifier, lets people play around with MXML code without even having to download the compiler. It's a fantastic way to introduce developers to a new language.

Check it out at
http://try.flex.org/

Structured Markup Gets Support

2006-10-30T18:35:00-07:00

Like any good web solutions analyst (that's a trumped up title I just made up for myself – it's much better than 'I read a lot') I have to constantly delve deep into the waters of obscurity. There I scour the depths and try to become familiar with the next big thing before it surfaces. I've watched the microformat movement evolve over the course of the last year and I can comfortably state that its about to go big and here's why...

Microformats aren't a specific tool or language. It's an exact way of semantically labeling information that is machine friendly. The tweaks to the HTML (or XHTML, if you're nasty) are done in such as way that the human readable element is not obscured. Also, a machine can much more easily aggregate over or deduce meaning from the referenced items because of the application of a pattern.

Take, for example, event information. Throughout the web there is an unfathomable amount of calendar type information – when, where, what time, etc. This calendar based data has a simple markup specification called hcalendar. The web source for a date event might look like:


<div class="vevent">
	<h3 class="summary">CodeAway November Event</h3>
	<p class="description">Collaborate in Real Space</p>
	<p>On <abbr class="dtstart" title="2006-11-18T13:00:00-07:00">November 18^th from 1pm</abbr> 
until <abbr class="dtend" title="2006-11-18T17:00:00-07:00">5pm MST</abbr></p>
	<p><span class="location">Sprague Library, 2131 South 1100 East, Salt Lake City, UT</span></p>
</div>

There's a lot going on in that little snippet. We usually think of class names like 'vevent' as ways to associate style information to markup. Here, however, it also acts as a keyword to tell machines that the following encapsulated info relates to an event. ISO may have a preferred format for dates but they're not very nice to read. That's why they're pushed off into an <abbr> element's title attribute. What's seen by the reader is something much more human friendly:

CodeAway November Event
Collaborate in Real Space
On November 18^th from 1pm until 5pm MST
Sprague Library, 2131 South 1100 East, Salt Lake City, UT

So what use is this? Well, imagine being able to scan a community events page properly coded with microformats. Maybe you have installed a browser plugin that allows clicking anywhere in the event. Doing so adds the event to the calendar application (like Google Calendar) that you've previously specified (is there already something that does this? If so let me know in the comments). Without a known formatting scheme this would be very difficult (just thinking about the regular expression strings needed to accommodate all the possible ways of writing a date makes my head spin). Further, microformats aren't just for dates. There are drafts which outline resumes, content licenses, and reviews, among other things.

Technorati, the giant roving blog-based eye, looks for microformats to help it understand what its looking at. From Factory Joe comes word that the upcoming IE 8 (due in a year???) will have support for microformats, along with Firefox 3. Microformats are nifty data formatting schema who's spotlight is rapidly approaching. Will your data be ready?

Apollo Inches Closer

2006-10-28T12:14:00-07:00

Last week Adobe held their 2006 Max conference in convention mecca Las Vegas. It was a chance for Adobe software users (particularly those formerly of the Macromedia camp) to relax, share, and get a sneak peak of what Adobe has in store for them in the coming year. For me, 2007 will definately be the year of Apollo.

Apollo is an exciting opportunity for any web based developer. It will allow coders to leverage their already existing skillsets to write applications that can run independently of the web. Since ZDNet can do a better job of describing that process I'll ape from them for a quote:

"Developers can write Apollo applications using Flex Builder, Adobe’s development tool for writing Flash applications. Apollo also runs Web applications written in JavaScript and HTML. That means that AJAX-style applications, which are allow for an interactive user interface, will work with Apollo."

The exact HTML rendering is WebKit ~~still up in the air~~ ~~but I would be surprised if they used something other than the Firefox foundation's... um foundation~~ (update - see comment below).

Desktop features, as listed on the Ajaxian, include:

Cross-platform : Win, Mac, Linux

Packages for quick installation from web

Self-updating applications

Filesystem access

Close-maximize-minimize window operations

Drag-n-drop of files from OS into the app

Networking

HTML page effects (the secret is that they render html page as a bitmap pipe and stream it to modified Flash Player that is merget with xHTML renderer based on open source WebKit renderer). That is, html page can be blurred, rotated, etc but still be fully functional

ActionScript can call JS objects and vise versa

With the rash of web based productivity applications springing up on the web and the foreseeable lack of broadband ubiquity Apollo certainly has a role to fill. Possible competition includes WinForms. However, given the choice between creating an HTML/AJAX/XML app or firing up Visual Studio to code in Visual Basic .NET I'll go with the notepad every time.

Several years ago Joel Spolsky predicted that Microsoft had lost the API wars. The crux of the argument was that the browser was the new OS. Intriguing, but not quite. The trick for the next generation apps is transforming the simplicity of coding for the web to the desktop environment - a future Apollo promises.

Bring it on.

Blink; and a week Goes By

2006-10-25T18:51:17-07:00

Oh dear. I make a resolution to join the early-to-bed, early-to-rise set and a week goes by without a post. The thinking was that I would shift my late night tete-a-tetes to the wee morning light to prevent runaway blab sessions - it was just too easy to give sleep the slip to further romance the cathode ray tube. The results were late mornings arriving sleep deprived and unproductive. So I wanted to switch each day's aggregation to the morning with a firm rollover to 'work' around 8am...

...only to discover my appetite for sleep gobbling up that 'flex' time. It's as if the outstanding balance for six months of penny-pinching the sleep budget has suddenly come due. Either that or the cold, rainy weather in Salt Lake City this week has induced a premature hibernation.

Anywho - the stuff persistent on my browser tabs this past week.

1) Congrats web developers - with the release of IE7 last week and Firefox 2 this week testing time requirements just went up (but you're on the ball and had been testing against release canidates months before, right? RRRrriiiiiiighghhhhttt). Perhaps the only saving grace here is that IE7 will be pushed out as part of the Windows Update 'service' . It's a big headache for large corporate sysadmins, no doubt as all those sites previously hacked for IE will suddenly stop working. I'll be intently watching my browser share stats - it'll be interesting how quickly the IE6 crowd drops to 0%.

2) The more I use Macs the more I dislike them (the pretentious advertising certainly doesn't help either - and I'm not alone here). I've spent several days at a customer site this week and almost concluded that I don't 'get it'. I'm not hip to what the kids are grooving to.

3) Yes, the site needs a revamp. Generally, light text on dark backgrounds are a bad idea. It causes much consternation and an unpleasant furrowing of brows among a certain set of people. Also, strangely, Safari renders all text as being underlined. Unlike wordpress, which I could savely swap in another template and call the 'haters' on their 'fronting' I'll have to go through the CSS for the BlogCFM.

4) Oh, and just so I don't miss last week's blogging bandwagon here's the obligatory 'OMG! GOOGLE BOUGHT YOUTUBE!'.

What Does Your WorkSpace Look Like?

2006-10-18T03:03:00-07:00

That's right - What does your workspace look like right at this very instant - no muss, no fuss. No fair cleaning up or sorting things into neat piles to impress people - just the straight up, unadulterated condition of what lies at the end of your vestibule. Throw the pics online somewhere and post a link in the comments.

Here, with much hubris, is the current state of Voyeur Studios:

Note the baby monitor - or as I like to refer to it: introductory corporate intercom. ;)

The corporate trust fund, right of the laptop and before the 'Song a Day' calendar. (Actually, it's my almost two-year-old's piggy bank - we're trying to impress upon him the importance of saving early. Not sure why it's in the office though. There's way too much in there to be Vox Pop funding ;) .)

As you can see Vox Pop Design is fueled by... POP! Hmmmm.... There's got to be a sponsorship in their somewhere. In engineering college we lovingly referred to Mountain Dew as 'Engineering Green' . It was a staple of study time - that is, until finals came around and we switched over to chewing coffee beans raw, but that is another (and rather nasty) story.

I've showed you mine. What about yours?

CodeAway this Saturday, Oct 21st!

2006-10-16T15:26:30-07:00

That’s right! The next installment of the geek co-working event takes place this Saturday, October 21^st, 1-5pm at the Whitmore Library. Wireless internet will be available with a current Salt Lake County Library Card (or if somebody with a current card sets up a PC to PC sharing network). This being a library we ask there be no food or beverages; however, if you feel the urge for a snack at any time during the after noon you’re free to make a munchie run.

So just what happens while people are CodeAway.org-ing? In the past we’ve managed to demonstrate our aggregated power by getting a deserving post to the front of Digg, gotten a programming introduction to using Google Maps, explored scripting options for automation of T-Shirt shops, and rallied the digital rolodexes to try a new transplant a job.

I’m currently going through my stack of to-dos for those things that keep slipping to the backburner. With any luck I’ll be able to get into at least some of:

A migration app to translate phpbb data to Wordpress format (including the regular expressions for converting BBCode into HTML)
Pushing through the last of image prep for a Vox Pop Design portfolio inclusion
Finishing overhauling the Militant Geek storefront
Working on a group management app for the SLCFUG (the schema is there but running SQL statements just to enter a book review is a pain)
An election timed promotion for Militant Geek (although I’m almost too late for this)
A watermarked logo generator for Chamber West member’s websites
Adding tag cloud functionality to a personal time tracking application
Find out if there is any automation possibility for the numerous free classified sites in existence (and studying the Edgeio spec a bit better)

Whew! And that’s all stuff I can think of off the top of my head. I’d hate to scroll through my notes and see how many more little projects lie in ambush. Want to help? Got projects of your own? Then I guess I’ll see you at CodeAway!

Q. You Know Your Blog is Getting Popular When...

2006-10-13T14:49:49-07:00

A. The Spam starts getting worse. :(

No, I will not shill for your copycat 'web 2.0' productivity app. I am always interested in new tools that can help developers carete bigger/better/sexier software. However, that does not involve any promises of a positive review, positive referrals, or even positive vibes to automagically flow your way. I grew up on a farm - that does not mean I want to be a part of your link farm. And if you were truly a legit affiliate marketing program you wouldn't ask for cash up front.

Approach me as a person not as a business opportunity.

Developer Salaries... EXPOSED!

2006-10-10T16:41:00-07:00

Salary is one of those great taboo topics around the office place; right up there with using office products for personal use; everybody wishes they could talk about it but they're afraid of what they might hear. Thankfully, Indeed.com has launched a powerful new tool to help developers get a grip on their perceived worth (discovered via Fred Wilson's blog). So how do programmers stack up?

While displaying all languages in use in various workplaces would have been unwieldy I've tried to highlight some of the most common. In the generalist of generalities, languages web based earn less than those used for traditional desktop development. These relationships seem to hold true across the country with any overall differences caused by the local cost of living (for example, compare Utah to Washington DC).

Also worth noting is the difference a title can make. For web slingers there may be no clear distinction between analysis, design, development, etc. There are, however, large perceived differences between each – hence the skewed salaries. Before we all change our titles to 'web engineers' be sure that you have the skills to back it up if called.

Software for the Reputation Society

2006-10-09T02:48:00-07:00

Like a straight guy on the TV’s Next Top Model, time was rare this weekend. A large part of that had to do with the alpha release of the whuffie tracker, the first in a series of tools for the emerging reputation economy. Before we get to the software a bit of background is necessary.

The term ‘whuffie’ is a numeric representation a person’s standing with their peers. It comes from Cory Doctorow’s acclaimed science fiction novel ‘Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom’ (free ebooks of the novel in a variety of formats are available for download). It closely models other theoretical post-scarcity economies (the first portion of Charlie Stross’s novel, Accelerando – also a free download – comes to mind). In worlds in which physical demands are (mostly) met there still remain constraints on the economic system; reputation and standing being chief among them.

Many knowledge workers already feel the effects of such reputation economies. Who gets invited to FooCamp, who is chosen to speak at the conferences, who gets picked to write a book – it’s all about how a given community confers status upon those who have demonstrated skill and/or created value for others. It is alternately called buzz, fame, and/or good will.

Hearing that whuffie is a numeric value often snaps people into a conventional currency model; cash is a limited thing, to give some to you I must subtract some from my stash, and that a dollar given from me is worth the same amount as a dollar from Bill ‘Bling Bling’ Gates. Whuffie doesn’t behave in this manner, however. For example, I have many different subsets of friends. I may be well regarded among the blowhards for this blog. I simultaneously may be dismissed (or unknown) among fantasy football owners for my poor performance thus far. A dollar is a dollar and the value doesn’t change among the groups I associate with. Whuffie does, however, correctly reflecting the esteem one’s peers place on the individual within the context of personal. Larry Ellison (Oracle’s CEO and chief A-Hole) has lots of money but low whuffie. Linus Torvalds has high whuffie among technical crowds but low or non-existent whuffie among my grandparents.

The whuffie tracker is the first step toward a distributed reputation economy. It runs as a Skype add-on that monitors individual’s conversations. One can only give whuffie after they’ve received whuffie. Users can associate a series of topics (via tags) that they’re knowledgeable in. When a question is asked of the system, the software (represented in one’s Skype contacts as the ‘Bitchun Butler’) attempts to match the question with someone who is most able to answer it. Provide a satisfactory answer and whuffie will be given. It is not just the recipient who benefits – because of a powerful mathematical model those who have strong relationships also benefit; in other words, people are rewarded for close relationships with helpful, insightful individuals.

Throughout this weekend I had numerous conversations with the developer. He’s got a great grip on how the project needs to be grown but needs help. If you’re a developer who’s interested in creating a bold new frontier go to Joe Petviashvili’s blog, read how to get started, check out the SourceForge repository, and start coding. All you have is whuffie to gain.

AJAX Usage to Surpass Flash?

2006-10-05T15:59:00-07:00

Via the Read/Write web comes analysis of a Ektron and SitePoint poll of 5,000 developers. The chart which is raising the most interest is the projection of where developers will be investing their efforts in the coming year. The results show developers that will use AJAX for rich internet applications (RIA's) to surpass those using Flash.

Another one of those shoot from the hip polls that will only raise ire and flamewars among those that feel threatened. Proceed to argue amonst yourselves, if you're so inclined... ;)

Google Launches Source Code Search

2006-10-05T14:43:31-07:00

Hot on the heals of talking about free technical repositories here on BloomBurst comes word that Google has launched its own code search. According to sources the Google code search is already bigger than the two other code search engines, Koders and Krugle.

Go ahead and get your search freak on at the creatively named Google Code Search.

Personally, given a few quick searches I'm a little disappointed with the results output. It provides the line that contains the term searched for with only a couple lines before and after. It would really be nice to see more of the context behind the code being used.

Other thoughts?

Online Business: Militant Geek Update

2006-10-04T15:48:00-07:00

Rather than just drop kick the project into the ether I thought it would be fun to nudge it along and continue posting updates at regular intervals. One of the biggest advantage that a store front like this has over a traditional brick and mortar edifice is that, once established, maintenance costs are nearly zero. The various services purchased range anywhere from a few months to a year in length. I could do nothing from this point on and potential buyers could still purchase items – but what's the fun in that? While it won't have the attention that I spent on it through September the Militant Geek store is too valuable a sandbox to give up.

Yesterday was the Day Against DRM – you might remember that this was one social media promotional bit that paid large traffic dividends. The site was again picked up by Boing Boing in a recap piece. After that, numerous sites re-broadcasted the story which had the nice side effect of also linked back to the T-shirt shop.

There is also good cause to expect business to grow, with little help, in the next several months – spending some time with Google Trends shows two very noticeable cycles:

a bubble over the summer months when T-shirts would be preferred clothing
a sharp spike around thanksgiving, indicating heavy holiday shopping.

Trying to garner traffic in the month limit provided for myself was extremely challenging for a number of reasons. A large one happened to be that it can take several month for natural search engine traffic – the kind from all mighty Google, to begin coming to a site. By starting the project in September will have 'primed the pump' for this chief buying time.

Spreadshirt, within the last day, also launched their categories feature. It was one feature that I wish I would have had at the onset of the project – the ability to group designs logically along different themes. Amazon also send a friendly reminder email that their affiliate program was available. Like I said, there are plenty of programs to try out.

Next: What I did Wrong (prepare for a long post ;))...

Total Spent: $38.95
Total Shirt Revenue: $16.27
Total Ad Revenue (all sources): $ 4.91
Total Revenue: $21.18
Total Visits/Pageviews: 2010/ 3526

BlueDragon 7 Beta Out

2006-09-28T23:59:00-07:00

While I'm talking about alternatives to Adobe's ColdFusion Server, I also need to mention that New Atlanta's BlueDragon Server, release number 7, has just been released into beta (via CF Developer Pete Freitag).

Earlier this year I had a chance to have dinner with New Atlanta's President, Vince Bonfanti. He has extrodiary perception about where developer needs truly lie and how best to approach them. He and the rest of the New Atlanta crew are doing some really exciting things to give ColdFusion devs options - and that's a good thing.

Railo Support From the Blue

2006-09-28T23:58:00-07:00

Everybody has those tech support horror stories: hours spent on the phone, abusive (and/or ignorant) operators on the other end, endless rebooting, etc. But what if the tech support was so good it actually sought YOU out? That's the experience that happened to me with Railo, the free alternative to Adobe's ColdFusion server.

Several months ago I briefly mentioned Railo memory oddities that I was having while doing initial impression testing. Yesterday, amongst the Spam and deposed Nigerian princes there was this friendly note:

“Hi Matthew,

i read that you had some issues in using Railo. 
This really is new to me since Railo lets you 
determine how much memory it can use by using the 
JVM switch -Xmx. Its the same as Coldfusion, there 
it can happen too, that you have memory problems 
for the same reasons. Anyway, none of our 
customers had this issue yet and I wonder if it 
could be something more serious.

Just let me know.

Regards Gert”

For the record, I hadn't even toyed with any settings. But I sure will now, knowing there is support like this available. Not only did a representative for Railo make the effort to contact me out of the blue, he also treated me as enough of a professional to grant the benefit of doubt. It's 'little things' like this that greatly reassure me about further exploring the Railo package and suggesting it to others. It's definitely something to keep in mind for anyone trying to develop a community around their software product.

ElectroBlabOGabOrasm

2006-09-27T23:00:00-07:00

I know its short notice but tomorrow (Thursday) I’ll be the featured speaker at the ChamberWest Lunch event. ChamberWest is the combined Chamber of Commerce association for the Utah cities of West Valley, Taylorsville, and Kearns. During the impromptu presentation I’ll provide an introduction on the necessity for small businesses to be online. I’ll also be pitching an upcoming old school (ala snail mail) Vox Pop branded newsletter full of tips and tricks for saving money and growing a business with online tools.

For those of us who live, breathe, and eat Internet-based goodness all day long it can be quite a shock to realize that we are a vast minority. Businesses (especially those in the Fortune Five Million Category) that have embraced web based tools are the exception and not the rule. The challenge, then, is to be able to undeniably demonstrate the value present without getting hung up on the hype (a ‘Web 2.0’ reference certainly will not be found tomorrow).

Things get underway at 11:30am, Marie Callendar's - 2882 West 4700 South.

Online Business: Day 23

2006-09-27T13:35:45-07:00

This is the latest in a line of posts about an online business. The rules are simple: (1) I can’t spend more than $50, (2) must be software development related (3) built ‘in the margins’ (the three hours or so after my toddler goes to bed) and (4) needs to make a car payment by October 1^st (net revenues of $495.01). It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based dinking can go. The project is MilitantGeek.com, a geek T-shirt site with bite.

Yikes! I got busy with various Vox Pop Design related projects heading into the weekend and before I know it my business experiment had been setting dormant for almost a week!

The need to devote time to other projects combined with an unplanned trip to Washington D.C. for an indeterminate amount of time means that this project will sadly ‘end’ with a whimper. As can be seen from today’s totals it is highly unlikely that I’ll accomplish the goal of $495.01 – in fact, I haven’t even made my $39 back. As an observer on StartupNation commented:

“I would hate to see the project fail because it didn't make $500 dollars in a month of being online.”

Another commentator on the SpreadShirt forum (login required) stated:

“You can make money on the internet, a lot of money - but a month? That's going to be hard if its your first month.”

It’s true; the final goal was very ambitious given that it was starting from scratch and in a time frame too short to hope for any ‘natural’ search results (i.e. traffic from search engines). But if the experiment doesn’t meet $500 by October 1^st is it a failure? Certainly not. For less than what a family spends on an evening out I had a chance to learn a tremendous amount about design, blogging, hosting, 3^rd party fulfillment, social media optimization, building buzz, and on, and on, and on. I would argue that for as little as it takes to get started developers, designers, and entrepreneurs can't afford not to try something like this.

It is my hope that in the next few days, between projects and travel, I’ll be able to dismantle these last four weeks with a critical eye. I hope to identify what went right, what could have been done better, and what I currently still has me stumped.

Let’s go to the numbers (through September 26^th):

Total Spent: $38.95
Total Shirt Revenue: $5.59
Total Ad Revenue (all sources): $ 4.11
Total Revenue: $9.70
Total Visits/Pageviews: 1260/ 2285

Free Technical Resources for Developers

2006-09-25T03:47:11-07:00

I love O'Reilly books. A quick scan of my workspace reveals at least three within arm reach (Programming ColdFusion MX, JavaScript the Definitive Guide, and SQL in a NutShell). If I saunter around the the desk corner there is another pile. Bar none, they are some of the best technical references available. However, being able to run out and buy the latest and greatest animal covered tome isn't that practical. The more free alternatives, the better.

Last week came word that O'Reilly online has launched their Code Search service. It's an online application that lets software developers browse code examples in their previously published books. Big whoop? You bet - try 2.6 million lines of big whoop. Give their Code Search a try.

The latest issue of Software Development magazine (September 15th, 2006) also is worth checking out. Andrew Binstock (who is quickly becoming one of my favorite software columnists) has a great roundup of free technical resources (Software Development Magazine, as we've previously mentioned, is also free to software professionals). These books include:

Thinking in Java (3^rd Edition)
Free Tech Books (online aggregator of around 120 free books on programming)
Computer Books (Peter Kitson's well maintained and high quality list of links)
Algorithm Orientated Texts
Mathematics and Cryptology Selections

Do you have a favorite 'watering hole' for your programming refreshment? What is it?

CodeAway Tomorrow

2006-09-22T14:52:59-07:00

Tomorrow, September 23 from 1pm-5pm we’ll be having our next CodeAway event. This is a plush time for code hackers, web slingers, and associated entourages to gather, share, and build. Be sure to come with a project (either started or the concept). We’ll start the afternoon with brief introductions and then the time is yours. WiFi will be available but because we’re in a library libations or munchies are prohibited.

We’ll be meeting at the Sprague Library, 2131S 1100E, Salt Lake City, UT (link is to a Google Map).

Special karma goes out to Laura Moncur for arranging the space and being such an enthusiastic advocate.

Background and Buzzword Bonanza

CodeAway is an experiment in collaborative working spaces. It has the informality of an unconference with the sharing environment of coworking efforts. It acknowledges that all individuals have great ideas but not the time to implement them. It provides a firm, set time for individuals to experiment in an open, supportive environment.

Online Business: Day 17

2006-09-21T16:54:31-07:00

This is the seventeenth in a line of posts about an online business. The rules are simple: (1) I can’t spend more than $50, (2) must be software development related (3) built ‘in the margins’ (the three hours or so after my toddler goes to bed) and (4) needs to make a car payment by October 1^st (net revenues of $495.01). It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based dinking can go. The project is MilitantGeek.com, a geek T-shirt site with bite.

While there are a number of things in the air that I’d love to talk about I’ve got to make this little more than a quick update. I’m in the middle of building out a community site with lots of streaming media. It’s tremendously exciting stuff but it does take time.

As I alluded to before, the custom T-Shirt creators are incredible. I would strongly recommend that if others get bitten by the desire to do this check out (in no particular order):

Preshrunk (T-Shirt review blog. Semi-regular updates but highlights the cream.)
T-Shirt Countdown (entire community built around customized T’s)
Thread Reviews (TShirt aggregation site. Allows voting Digg style)
And look for TShirtMetropolis (to be launched soon)

I spent much of yesterday trying to soak in much of the quality advice shared on the numerous boards. Taking a cue I went and made a series of lower priced T-Shirts that use the ‘Circumvent DRM’ and ‘Explicit Contempt’ logos. These design categories are linked to from the ‘Day Against DRM’ page. Now if curious random surfers happen upon the page and click on either of those designs they are presented with a more options with a range in prices. Too much choice can confuse. However, I hope that I’ve managed to introduce some purchasing flexibility that wasn’t there before. It’s also something that I could do until I get a chance to rework the storefront into a ‘design first’ model; not ‘product first’ as it currently is. By going ‘design first’ more images can fit on the screen, they can be tailored to the look of the site, and each piece can be a stepping stone for numerous items; all in all, it’s a superior organizational method than having users linearly click through all items displayed randomly (as it is now).

Finally, traffic is starting to wane. I need to pop another social crusade soon to keep momentum going.

Day 17 – September 20^th

Total Spent: $38.95
Total Shirt Revenue: $5.59
Total Ad Revenue (all sources): $3.93
Total Revenue: $9.52
Visits: 112
Pageviews: 181
Total Visits/Pageviews: 1078/1951

Online Business: Day 16

2006-09-20T14:55:00-07:00

This is the sixteenth in a line of posts about an online business. The rules are simple: (1) I can’t spend more than $50, (2) must be software development related (3) built ‘in the margins’ (the three hours or so after my toddler goes to bed) and (4) needs to make a car payment by October 1^st (net revenues of $495.01). It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based dinking can go. The project is MilitantGeek.com, a geek T-shirt site with bite.

Today I promised to talk a little about my research and exploration of the communities surrounding T-shirts. Because the budget for advertising this project closely resembles a goose egg I have tried to engage targeted groups of people. I wasn’t kidding when I stated that customized online T-shirts are huge. The first community that I checked out was the T-shirt Forums. This is a major site devoted to all things T- not just those using fulfillment services (CafePress, Spreadshirt). The forums were a treasure trove of information; how people were promoting their work, design tips, possible off the shelf artwork for sale[1], and new shirt ideas.

SpreadShirt has also just re-launched its forums. While they are sparse right now the traffic from the site has been a steady 5.53% of total unique visitors. Providing thoughtful answers and posing quality questions do cause people to check out what a person is about. More valuable than the traffic, however, was seeing how people were organizing their store fronts. I’ve talked about sucking the store into an iframe to try and retain at least something of the MilitantGeek ‘chrome’[2] and provide basic traffic details. What others have done is create custom images of their designs and arranged them to best fit their site. For example SnarfShop or AtomicJellyFish both start with a block of designs. Clicking on the design then loads up all shirts with that design, sometimes loading the store in frame (SnarfShop) or seamlessly passing the user off to the SpreadShirt domain (AtomicJellyFish). Rather than have just one design per color the stores are loaded up with the same design on a wealth of colors. I’ve mostly tried to avoid this thus far because I didn’t want people having to scroll through pages and pages of similar items. However, by reworking the store I could make navigation much easier while providing greater variety in shirt selection.

I foresee some html/css storefront rework in the immediate future.

Finally, some quick quibbles:

The ‘Day Against DRM’ set of banners are far and away what is bringing traffic to the site. However, it is also the biggest exit point (81.14% of the people that hit that page then end up leaving). I need to come up with better ways of diverting flow to other parts of the site. Of course, I do have links to multiple T-shirts at the bottom but I have no clue whether those are being hit since they are dumped into the SpreadShirt site’s statistical black hole.
I added social networking buttons (Add to Digg, Add to Del.icio.us, etc) to the bottom of Militant Geek posts. I used the Sociable plugin for WordPress. Incredibly easy to configure and get running with.

Day 16 – September 19^th

Total Spent: $38.95
Total Shirt Revenue: $5.59
Total Ad Revenue (all sources): $1.28
Total Revenue: $6.87
Visits: 199
Pageviews: 296

[1] Speaking of off the shelf artwork Pete Cashmore has word that InnerTee has entered private beta and should be inviting users around September 24^th. The idea is that designers contribute designs into a community pool and then receive royalties when those designs are put onto T-shirts. Spreadshirt already has a built in ‘preset’ bunch of designs. It would be very cool if the two companies could bridge across each other; that is, the preset batch of designs from Spreadshirt would contain available designs from InnerTee.

[2] Chrome here refers to the Militant Geek branding, hyperlinks, and advertising and their associated look.

Which Corner Should I Paint Myself Into?

2006-09-20T01:36:00-07:00

At the end of July I lost my job as a software engineer. Since then I’ve had the unenviable task of pitching myself for full time and freelance work with varying degrees of success. I find myself struggling with an easy question: what do I do?

I can communicate, which is rare among tech folk. I first got a sense of this while in a predominately engineering heavy university. In my junior year I took over a anemic student newspaper on the verge of being eliminated and, in less than four months, turned release dates into campus events. I cut costs, revamped the format, and made something exciting. At one point entire print runs were snapped up in less than three days. It was an exciting experience, to be sure. However, I can count on one hand the number of contributors for the entire semester. Every issue would culminate with me frantically dashing out a tenuous strand of copy to fill white space and unify the themes (something that hasn’t changed that much between then and now, ironically). Technically adept people that can communicate well are a rare thing. So am I a tech writer? Despite a couple pending magazine articles to the contrary, I’d say no.

My first job after moving to Utah was writing firmware code in Assembly and C. I know how painful it is to try and debug a device that doesn’t have a screen (I ended up hacking together an unused microchip pin to the computer serial port interface and printed out status messages in HyperTerminal, thank you very much). If you have a guitar effects pedal from DigiTech you just may have some of my work in there. Does that make me a software engineer?

It was at that same job that I started writing ‘dynamic’ web sites. I put dynamic in quotes because I was writing in Perl and using delimited flat files for persistent storage. It was my first attempt at a web application. The bug tracking and process management was simple by some of today’s offerings. However, once I saw just how powerful and easy to deploy working on the web was I was hooked.

My last job I conceived and created an Analytics engine. It allowed users to generate complex database manipulations through a web based GUI. With a dataset defined they could then chart in manners that would easily expose patterns in their business processes. That was interspersed with codifiable explorations in hierarchical wikis and time management solutions. Those software packages with my code in it sold for six figures. So am I an enterprise web developer?

There was also the time I was employed by Microsoft Game Studios. I was one of two individuals brought on to test a complex 3D course builder application. During my employment I immersed myself in usability theory and informational design techniques (the employee-only Microsoft resources are incredible). The expansive creative power of the application had to be conveyed in a way that was simple and intuitive to be grasped by a casual game player. The only way to do that was through effective design.

As Militant Geek has shown I can also hold my own with bitmap and vector based image programs. I’m no guru but I’m getting to the point where I can get ideas from my head onto the screen with little compromise. Does that make me a designer?

Toss in an MBA and the ability to intelligently discuss emerging technology business and I’ve got a resume that recruiters call ‘unfocused’. It doesn’t help that I don’t have a strong answer for ‘What do you want to be doing in 5 years?’. A response of ‘I want to be creative and have people pay me for it’ doesn’t help clarify things. It certainly doesn’t jive with development shops looking for ROI friendly code grinders. I’ve started answering ‘pundit’ just to be flip. If I’m feeling really saucy I reply ‘a benevolent dictator of an ideological neologism’. Needless to say, that doesn’t lead to many job offers.

So what the heck is my thing? If I’m a jack of many trades but master of none what do I single out as a strength? Do I put stuff that I’m passionate about on the shelf just so I can fulfill a narrow role (albeit a role with a steady paycheck)? What do people who don’t conveniently fit under one job title do? How do I get this all into an elevator pitch?

ARRRRG!

Developer to Write App a Day

2006-09-19T16:42:26-07:00

A self-appointed ‘software jedi’ has vowed to write an application a day for the next 30 days. Bravado or just mad prototyping skills? Cruise over to the App a Day blog and judge for yourself. The application brew-ha-ha started on September 15^th and the finished code is available for download from the site.

Online Business: Day 15

2006-09-19T13:39:11-07:00

This is the fifteenth in a line of posts about an online business. The rules are simple: (1) I can’t spend more than $50, (2) must be software development related (3) built ‘in the margins’ (the three hours or so after my toddler goes to bed) and (4) needs to make a car payment by October 1^st (net revenues of $495.01). It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based dinking can go. The project is MilitantGeek.com, a geek T-shirt site with bite.

I was surprised and happy with the immediate (albeit small) results Adsense provided. As a result yesterday became all about further diversifying the revenue streams. One way was by signing up for the SpreadShirt Affiliate program. SpreadShirt allows people to embed a special Flash-based shirt designer tool on their website. The percentage return does vary. However, all accounts seem to suggest that receiving 20% on customized shirt purchases are possible. I couldn’t find a banner that I was happy with to advertise the feature. However, they do have a number of text based links. People can now easily create their own custom T-Shirts from the link in the high visibility sidebar upper right.

I also signed up for Chitika eMiniMalls. Chitika ads differ slightly from Adsense in that they show an image of the product with various tabs for finding out more. While they can be contextual (like Adsense) doing so would violate the Google Adsense terms of service. From what I’ve read as long as I configure Chitika’s product to be static (that is, items that I choose) it is ok to have the two forms of advertising on the same page.

I also am beginning to wonder if quickly dismissing the business angle in pursuit of more targeted social media optimization was a mistake. While it may have been good for short term traffic I’m concerned that I may have jeopardized long term results. A business blog may not have the kind of audience interested in buying Geek related tshirts. However, by describing the site and providing a link they further boost the site on search engine rankings. Long term search engine optimization (SEO) has always been on the back burner given the compressed time goals of the project; I just hope that if I decide to carry on beyond October 1^st these decisions don’t become missed opportunities for further growth.

There was also time spent researching other stores and asking lots of questions. More on that tomorrow.

Day 15 – September 18^th

Total Spent: $38.95
Available Products: 45
Shirts Sold: 1
Shirt Revenue: $5.59
Ad Revenue: $0.96
Total Revenue: $6.55
Visits: 165
Pageviews: 273

Online Business: Day 14

2006-09-18T14:15:00-07:00

This is the fourteenth in a line of posts about an online business. The rules are simple: (1) I can’t spend more than $50, (2) must be software development related (3) built ‘in the margins’ (the three hours or so after my toddler goes to bed) and (4) needs to make a car payment by October 1^st (net revenues of $495.01). It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based dinking can go. The project is MilitantGeek.com, a geek T-shirt site with bite.

As I last described, the MilitantGeek site has begun festering lots of link love around the net. I even got a mention on the enormously influential Boing Boing over the weekend. The processes that I’ve employed, as I’ve recently learned, are called ‘Social Media Marketing’ (I had previously referred to them as ‘Pinko’). The reason I chose this route was because I didn’t have the depth of content or the time to wait for natural search results to happen. Search engines can take anywhere from 1-6 months to crawl a site. Even then if there isn’t a high volume of relevant content a site will not do well. By using a bit more elbow grease and knowing the interested audiences I’ve been able to increase visitors to the site/store.

Unfortunately, despite talking about laying groundwork, I failed to have Adsense in place for the first wave of traffic. I had always meant to increase my potential revenue streams beyond just TShirts. Google Adsense, as you’ve no doubt heard, provides an incredibly easy way of serving advertisements on a site. The text based ads can be tuned to match a site’s color scheme and are relevant to the content down to the page. And while I can’t entirely be certain I believe that placing Adsense on a site gets it listed faster with Google’s search engine; after all Google has to continually crawl a site in order to return content related ads. I did have some initial difficulty getting the Adsense code to play nice with various WordPress plugins (thus the delay). However, those seem to be fixed. Going forward I’ll also be sure to mention any Adsense related revenue with the daily totals.

The polling feature seems to be doing well. As I described before polling is a great way to get user feedback and create reader ‘buy-in’. The first shirt design created from poll results will be appearing sometime this week in the store. The second poll has been posted.

Along those same lines a feedback form has been created. This is another one of those ideas, like Adsense, that should have been done in the beginning. If you’ve got an idea for a T-Shirt, some juicy gossip, or words of support you can now easily get in touch. It’s really about becoming store ‘2.0’ (yes, I winced as I wrote it too); there is a genuine attempt here to allow readers to shape the fate of things.

Those following the project my be quick to point out that I’m entering my third week and I’ve only sold one shirt. That is an absolute accurate observation and something that I’d be a bit frustrated about if I wasn’t aware of Jennifer Laycock’s T-Shirt Experiment (pdf link). Both in her experience and here there is a definitely exponential ramping affect that happens/will happen. I still firmly believe that I’m on that path as opposed to a depressing linear line hovering around zero. I just haven’t hit that separation, or inflection, point yet. Considering that we’re now beyond the midpoint for the month this following week will be focused on getting to the upward swing of the curve.

Day 13 – September 16

Total Spent: $38.95
Available Products: 45
Shirts Sold: 1
Shirt Revenue: $5.59
Visits: 223
Pageviews: 473

Day 14 – September 17

Total Spent: $38.95
Available Products: 45
Shirts Sold: 1
Shirt Revenue: $5.59
Ad Revenue: $0.72
Total Revenue: $6.31
Visits: 184
Pageviews: 271

Online Business: Day 12

2006-09-16T13:14:11-07:00

This is the twelfth in a line of posts about an online business. The rules are simple: (1) I can’t spend more than $50, (2) must be software development related (3) built ‘in the margins’ (the three hours or so after my toddler goes to bed) and (4) needs to make a car payment by October 1^st (net revenues of $495.01). It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based dinking can go. The project is MilitantGeek.com, a geek T-shirt site with bite.

Yesterday was a very good day for the online marketing efforts. The ‘Day Against DRM’ tie in was very well received by multiple groups. Link spamming is absolutely wrong. However, if you are providing something of value or filling need people do respond. As of this Saturday morning (the 16^th) that page had been dugg 16 times and was posted to the Defective by Design home page. In addition, the project was picked up by Lindsay writing for the official SpreadShirt blog. She was kind enough to not only describe the project and say some positive things about the designs but link multiple times to both MilitantGeek and BloomBurst. Traditionally Friday’s are low traffic points – people are busy getting work finished before the weekend, taking off early, and generally paying penance for surfing the web earlier in the week. The combination of those efforts caused a nice diversified stream of visitors. (Plot taken from Google Analytics for Friday, September 15^th – it’s important to remember that these are only clicks on the MilitantGeek website; as I discussed earlier movement within the SpreadShirt shop isn’t currently being tracked.)

While there wasn’t much outward facing work done last evening I did have several very productive IM chats. It’s probably common sense to most, but one must always be cultivating feedback. I’ve been lucky enough to have met some really intelligent, approachable people in the last several months. I hope to be executing on some of the fantastic ideas that we collaborated on.

Finally, I can’t decide whether I should weed out some of the weaker designs. Because everything is digital the first thought is there is no cost for having extra inventory – just put everything online and eventually somebody in the long tail will buy that odd Tshirt. However, having those less impressive designs do carry a cost: they take up screen real estate. People do not like to scroll. I’d love to hear what people think about this – just leave everything there or keep the shop concise with the best designs? Let me know.

The numbers:

Day 12

Total Spent: $38.95
Available Products: 45
Number Sold: 1
Money Made: $5.59
Visits: 61
Pageviews: 190

Online Business: Day 11

2006-09-15T04:25:00-07:00

This is the eleventh in a line of posts about an online business. The rules are simple: (1) I can’t spend more than $50, (2) must be software development related (3) built ‘in the margins’ (the three hours or so after my toddler goes to bed) and (4) needs to make a car payment by October 1^st (net revenues of $495.01). It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based dinking can go. The project is MilitantGeek.com, a geek T-shirt site with bite.

First off, new T's. Rob Merrill sent in 'Binary ~~gets~~ turns me 1'. Also in the store is a lovely Sony Rootkit parody. Of course, I can't use Sony but scrambling the letters ironically spells 'NOSY'.

I also heard back about the Scorpio tie-in. While the timing isn't what I'd hoped for (a winner picked by this Friday) there is interest in putting the winning design on T-shirts in the Militant Geek store. This is ongoing.

The big news, however, is finally having the pieces in place to approach the communities. Let's see if my viral advertising hunches come to fruition. After putting the polish on I'm pleased to announce that the 'Day Against DRM' page has been posted. Tonight the link was submitted to both the Defective By Design (an anti-DRM group) idea list and a spot on Digg. If you've been interested in this project, happen to have a Digg account, and think the work done thus far is interesting then your Digg would be greatly appreciated.

Day 11

Total Spent: $38.95
Available Products: 46
Number Sold: 1
Money Made: $5.59
Visits: 8
Pageviews: 25

Online Business: Day 10

2006-09-14T10:57:00-07:00

This is the tenth in a line of posts about an online business. The rules are simple: (1) I can’t spend more than $50, (2) must be software development related (3) built ‘in the margins’ (the three hours or so after my toddler goes to bed) and (4) needs to make a car payment by October 1^st (net revenues of $495.01). It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based dinking can go. The project is MilitantGeek.com, a geek T-shirt site with bite.

Just the facts – couple of new designs (May the Source Be With You Star Wars TShirt, and a 'We're Listening' HP Logo Parody), fixed some layout issues, and still prepping...

Day 10

Total Spent: $38.95
Available Products: 43
Number Sold: 1
Money Made: $5.59
Visits: 18
Pageviews: 53

ColdFusion User Group - Sept 14th Meeting

2006-09-13T14:45:00-07:00

Lonely? Tired of spending another night in front of the TV? Looking for the right relationship?

Well, there's good news! The Salt Lake ColdFusion User's Group (SLCFUG) will be meeting this Thursday, September 14th at 6pm. While the location may have changed (more below) the quality thought provoking topics haven't. We'll be covering how to leverage other technologies with ColdFusion. For example, we all knew that Flash and ColdFusion is like peanut butter and jelly - but did you know ColdFusion tastes great with C++ too? Come on Thursday and find out how!

Our location has changed to the 16th floor high atop the Beneficial Life Tower in beautiful downtown Salt Lake. Those directions are:

Intermountain Healthcare
36 South State Street
Beneficial Life Tower
(inside ZCMI Center Mall - State Street side)
16th Floor, South 1 & 2

Free parking is available in the ZCMI center mall parking garage for the first two hours. Hope to see you there!

Spolsky Questions Ruby; Gets Angry Mob

2006-09-13T13:38:30-07:00

Joel Spolsky is a respected technology guru. He’s a skilled communicator, recommended read for any developer, and the subject of more than one BloomBurst post. And with a recent post criticizing Ruby, he is now the target of a growing web lynching.

Joel didn’t say anything seemingly controversial; he simply pointed out what several application comparison tests have shown: Ruby, for all its hype, is slow. We’re not talking photo finish like speeds here – the difference can be anywhere between ten to fifty (!) times slower. He is like many pundits coming forth right now. The September 1^st issue of the Software Development Times sics two of its regular columnists, including Andrew Binstock, on it. Andrew likes the intuitive design but concludes:

“…don’t expect a panacea in Ruby, but a language with its own strengths and weaknesses and an acute need for better tools and better performance.”

Ruby is a new relatively new language and, like most languages, needs some time to mature. The speed increases will come. However, instead of accepting that inevitability the Ruby community got out the torches and pitchforks.

David Heinemeier Hansson, the Ruby on Rails poster boy, was quick to write:

“Rails is for the vast majority of web applications Fast Enough. We got sites doing millions of dynamic page views per day. If you end up being with the Yahoo or Amazon front page, it's unlikely that an off-the-shelve framework in ANY language will do you much good. You'll probably have to roll your own. But sure, I'd like free CPU cycles too. I just happen to care much more about free developer cycles and am willing to trade the former for the latter.”

As Joel is correct in pointing out he has no problem with the framework – it’s Ruby that is questionable. I also agree with Joel’s assertion:

“I understand the philosophy that developer cycles are more important than cpu cycles, but frankly that's just a bumper-sticker slogan and not fair to the people who are complaining about performance.”

Quieting factual evidence by saying something is ‘fast enough’ is like telling everyone that a Kia is a ‘good enough’ car. For some people a Kia fills their needs, budget, and style. But is it for everybody? Even a majority? Absolutely not. Ruby has a niche to fill but it is not the second coming of C++.

Ruby has risen to the level that it has because of a fanatical set of bloggers. It is time to separate the fact from fiction and evaluate the language for what it is, not what the sound bytes say.

Online Business: Day 9

2006-09-13T04:08:00-07:00

This is the ninth in a line of posts about an online business. The rules are simple: (1) I can’t spend more than $50, (2) must be software development related (3) built ‘in the margins’ (the three hours or so after my toddler goes to bed) and (4) needs to make a car payment by October 1^st (net revenues of $495.01). It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based dinking can go. The project is MilitantGeek.com, a geek T-shirt site with bite.

It’s amazing how much stuff gets done with a little bit of insomnia. In addition to a number of new products added to the store the MilitantGeek.com site itself is sporting a spiffy new design. Just having shirts on a page is problematic. In the words of web marketers there isn’t any ‘stickiness’. People come, they check things out, perhaps chuckle, and then they’re back to reading stock quotes or cruising for pr0n (unfortunately, some individuals can’t tell the difference). There isn’t a very compelling reason to check a store front day after day.

Compounding the problem is that the store by itself doesn’t really give search engines much fodder for results. While I try to have rich and keyword inclusive descriptions it most likely isn’t enough to flag down travelers on the info superhighway (when was the last time you heard that cliché trotted out, eh?).

After leveraging GoDaddy’s readily available WordPress installation, finding a 3^rd party skin, and spending some quality alone time Militant Geek now can meet some of these larger goals. I can expand on each new design as it goes up. It easily alerts people to new product arrivals and provides lots of juicy text for the search engines. The comments allow user feedback on each of the pieces; further refining products and fostering community through dialog. Finally, because of the huge WordPress community, there is a bucket load of plug-ins easily available for instant use. For example, I went from poll-less to participatory involvement for making new apparel in less than ten minutes.

The last several days are all laying the foundation for major Digg and Boing Boing efforts toward the end of this week. While Militant Geek is a constant experiment in progress one never gets a second chance to make a first impression. It is vital to have hooks in place; not the kind to painfully gouge a fish, but the kind for people to hang a hat on.

Because I now can begin building keyword rich entries it is important to take a minute and think about the site wordage. If I had to break down what the site is about three words come to mind: (1) Geek, (2) Humor, and (3) T-shirt. If I only sprinkled these terms about the site I wouldn’t be capitalizing on all the traffic that may enjoy Militant Geek but were using different search terms.

One of the great reasons for having a Google Adwords account, even if you’re not currently paying for advertising, is the Google Keyword Tool. It allows you to type in phrases and view numerous permutations of those ranked by their popularity. The results can be pulled out to *.csv format for easy excel manipulation. A quick look at the top ten results, ordered by search volume, is as follows:

Keywords	Search Volume
clothing shirt	3
custom shirt	3
tee shirt	3
women's shirt	3
band shirt	2
baseball shirt	2
buy shirt	2
cool shirt	2
cotton shirt	2
designs shirt	2

When you do this there will be a lot of noise. The trick is sussing out the signal. We can see that ‘geek’ doesn’t even appear in the top 10 – in fact, ‘geek’ doesn’t even happen until #24. Some of the results are red herrings. For example, Militant Geek probably isn’t going to corner the market on ‘baseball shirt’ searches. But several phrases - ‘clothing shirt’, ‘custom shirt’, ‘tee shirt’, ‘buy shirt’, ‘cool shirt’, and ‘designs shirt’ – all immediately leap out as things we could try. Cruising down to where the geeks terms are we find ‘geek gear’, ‘geek gifts’, and ‘geek jokes’; all phrases that we would be hard pressed to be found under if we only concentrated on ‘geek humor T-shirt’. In fact T-shirt doesn’t even appear on the list – ‘tee shirt’ and ‘tshirt’ do, however… looks like I’ve got some menus to update.

That has been just a peek into the fascinating analytical world of search engine optimization. I’m sure there are some experts out there who would consider this a gross simplification. I’d love to hear how they get started with this kind of stuff.

And now the numbers:

Day 9

Total Spent: $38.95
Available Products: 41
Number Sold: 1
Money Made: $5.59
Visits: 11
Pageviews: 50

Update: Turns out one doesn't even need a Adwords account. The keyword tool is also available in external form.

Update2: Late night - I was looking at the wrong numbers. They've been corrected.

Slow Microsoft SQL 2005 Server Express?

2006-09-12T15:09:00-07:00

One of the image manipulation/community pieces that I'm working on has the requirement that it be built on an SQL database. Since I'm running Vox Pop Design on a diet I installed the free Microsoft SQL Server: SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (hereafter the brevity challenged branding will be referred to as MSSSS2005EE.. which, now that I look at it, isn't a whole lot better).

My question is whether the Studio Express tool that is used for writing queries runs as dog slow for everyone else as it does for me?

Online Business: Day 8

2006-09-12T00:01:00-07:00

This is the eighth in a line of posts about an online business. The rules are simple: (1) I can’t spend more than $50, (2) must be software development related (3) built ‘in the margins’ (the three hours or so after my toddler goes to bed) and (4) needs to make a car payment by October 1^st (net revenues of $495.01). It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based dinking can go. The project is MilitantGeek.com, a geek T-shirt site with bite.

Wow – it’s all ready time for update number 8’s (day 7, after all, was a day of rest). Today I finally heard from an official with the Spreadshirt site. He politely explained that the delay in account upgrading was due to the fact it was a manual process. Given the nature of web applications there is absolutely no reason for this. For example, this evening I upgraded my Yahoo Fantasy Football account to have access to their StatTracker application. The check out process was simple, efficient, and when I was finished I was able to immediately watch the Minnesota Vikings squeak out a win over the Redskins. Having to wait a weekend for somebody to manually run my credit card details is preposterous. That is something to keep in mind for any developers creating their own eCommerce apps out there – users have been trained to expect immediate results from online purchases.

I also moved ahead with several initiatives for building traffic. One of which was the creation of a logo for Scorpio, the codename for the 8^th ColdFusion version. Tim Buntel, grand ColdFusion community czar is having an informal logo competition to give the team something to use at the upcoming 2006 Max conference. Seeing as this is a great opportunity to attract development types to the store I threw my hat into the ring. It does face some stiff (and truthfully, more creative) competition. Despite several pages of scribbled concepts that quick announcement (Friday) and subsequent final call (today) left me scrambling. Oh well. In my submission I also mentioned the store and pitched the possibility of teaming with whoever wins to create a ‘sub-store’ for the Scorpio team. I'll see how that goes.

Sadly, that’s all so far. Traffic simply needs to jump by at least an order of a 100. As an interesting tangent BloomBurst traffic actually went down last week - while there was definate interest in this project it would seem some of the regular development readers where very apathetic - hopefully I'll be able to continue the MilitantGeek experiment while also mixing in some more 'expected' software development opinuendo.

I need to press forward with existing ideas but I'd love to hear other ideas of how to build an audience. Until then to the numbers:

Day 8

Total Spent: $38.95
Available Products: 38
Number Sold: 1
Money Made: $5.59
Visits: 4
Pageviews: 4 (Spreadshirt says there has been 20)

Online Business: Day 6

2006-09-10T02:23:00-07:00

This is the sixth in a line of posts about an online business. The rules are simple: (1) I can’t spend more than $50, (2) must be software development related (3) built ‘in the margins’ (the three hours or so after my toddler goes to bed) and (4) needs to make a car payment by October 1^st (net revenues of $495.01). It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based dinking can go. The project is MilitantGeek.com, a geek T-shirt site with bite.

As I mentioned yesterday this weekend’s projects demand the business of a beaver. The pontificating on peculiar passions of the online business pursuit will have to wait. Today:

MADE THE FIRST SALE! VIVA LA REVENUE (I took High School Spanish because of the field trip, not to retain ;)!
Continued to play with the free WordPress blog included and set up automatically with my GoDaddy hosting. The idea is to supplement the store with a blog. The additional wordiness will provide an area for Google Adsense (representing a new revenue stream) and additional content for SEO. Not ready to go live yet, however.
I am most disappointed with Spreadshirt customer support. After paying for the upgrade yesterday I still haven’t seen a change to my account. I contacted customer support this afternoon and still haven’t heard back. Also frustrating is that the design uploaded last evening still isn’t available. I can’t upload additional designs until my account is upgraded and I can’t create additional products until I have designs approved. As the bears say, GRRRRR!
Still no idea about the Analytics Problem.
To end with an up note another great way of getting the store in front of a audience inclined to buy occurred to me. There are numerous software development user groups throughout the US. If they have a ready logo I can offer to create shirts for them at or near cost – the user groups would have great clothing to advertise their group at very effective prices and I would (hopefully) build awareness of the store within their groups. I’m still wrestling with the pricing, however. I don’t want to have the full markup on the user group shirts because they would be providing advertising and awareness. On the other hand, I will have to set up and manage their sub areas. I feel like having a nominal ‘management’ fee. Any thoughts? I especially like to hear from some user group managers on this one – interested? What’s a fair markup?

Day 6

Total Spent: $38.95
Available Products: 38
Number Sold: 1
Money Made: $5.59
Visits: 0
Pageviews: 0 (the SpreadShirt Store says there has been 1, strange especially since I got an order today – something that requires a couple of pages)

Online Business: Day 5

2006-09-09T00:31:00-07:00

This is the fifth in a line of posts about an online business. The rules are simple: (1) I can’t spend more than $50, (2) must be software development related (3) built ‘in the margins’ (the three hours or so after my toddler goes to bed) and (4) needs to make a car payment by October 1^st (net revenues of $495.01). It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based dinking can go. The project is MilitantGeek.com, a geek T-shirt site with bite.

Today’s update will be quick since its Friday night and I’ve got three big projects due at the beginning of next week (two photo/image manipulation community applications and an article for a developer magazine).

Tonight I spent an additional $10 to upgrade my Spreadshirt shop to a premium store for one month. With the free account a store owner is only allowed three vector images. At the rate I’m adding ideas and the superior quality vector printing provides I assumed pretty early on that I’d be going down this route.
I had a request for the ‘Girl Robot’ Tee-shirt in a female style. The design is now in the store (select ‘Women’ from the ‘All Articles’ drop down to be taken straight to the screen).
Also added two new ‘Circumvent DRM’ T-shirts. I’m really happy with how the parody of the Compact Disc tag turned out.

To end on a down note I’m getting the feeling that my stat numbers are incorrect. What’s worse is that I should have known better. MilitantGeek.com is a wrapper for the store – an iframe helps take an ugly store URL and pulls that inside of my website. I did this, in part, because Spreadshirt did not provide rich analytical data and I couldn’t add Google Analytics to the store itself (they didn’t allow JavaScript). The problem is that I’m not able to track anything on how people are moving within the site. Google Analytics registers that someone has arrived. However, as people click around within the iframe the bit with the Google JavaScript isn’t changing. I can’t tell which images are getting people to look at the detail page, where people are stopping in the checkout process, where the exit points are, etc. It’s not a total loss – I can see a list of referrers– something that is important. However, I’m disappointed that I didn’t realize this at the beginning. I plan on jumping on the Spreadshirt forums tomorrow to see if other store owners have a solution for this problem. If any SEO or Analytics folks out there have any ideas I’d love to hear your thoughts too.

As promised, short and sweet. To the numbers:

Day 5

Total Spent: $38.95
Available Products: 38
Number Sold: 0
Money Made: $0
Visits: 5
Pageviews: 5 (the SpreadShirt Store says there have been 22)

Online Business: Day 4

2006-09-08T02:57:37-07:00

This is the fourth in a line of posts about starting a T-shirt business online. The rules are simple: (1) I can’t spend more than $50, (2) must be software development related (3) built ‘in the margins’ (the three hours or so after my tottler goes to bed) and (4) needs to make a car payment by October 1^st (net revenues of $495.01). It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based dinking can go.

First the quick bits:

After a brief flight of pricing fancy I returned items to $19.99, $21.99, and $23.99 price points. After all, this isn’t Pierre Water we’re selling.
Moved the stronger designs to the front page.
Fought GoDaddy’s cluttered interface some more. They provide numerous options and are insistent about presenting it all at once. I would go to explore one option, click the ‘activate’ button, and then be locked out of my account for unknown amounts of time during ‘server updates’. Thank goodness for prime time football.
While Inkscape has been a great free graphics tool for creating vector images but it does have limitations. One problem I’ve been having is that none of the objects in the uploaded *.eps file can be smaller than .06 inches. I usually import images into Inkscape and render them to paths (taking the bitwise information and converting it into a series of directions and lengths). If there looks like there might be a problem Inkscape does have a simplify option. However, after doing that I still can’t be sure whether I’m in violation of the .06 inch rule. I’ve uploaded several images only to have them rejected. This process isn’t a quick one either – the vector designs need to be reviewed by a person and can take up to 24 hours. The result has been several of the designs that I am most excited about are caught up in this bottleneck. If anyone knows a method for specifying minimum object size in Inkscape I’m all ears.

Now, let’s get back to advertising. Last night I briefly dropped some abstract marketing concepts and then ran off to bed. Hopefully I’ll be able to expand on those ideas and get into the kind of detail that will make sense.

I had the pleasure of having lunch today with Jason Alba of JibberJobber.com. In between ranting and raving we discussed this project. Jason is active with a number of blogs and was kind enough to share what was working for him. He suggested that this series in plebeian empowerment would be perfect for several well known business blogs. I’ve been thinking about this since our meeting. Sure, I’d love to see the project linked to by notables such as Janet, Utah’s very own Diva of Affiliate Marketing. But I don’t think it would help.

Playing up the business angle would certainly drive traffic. But it is not the traffic that is inclined to buy. The product audience (those that are inclined to contribute to the bottom line) are IT and software professionals. Because of limited time and resources I need to be focused on reaching these people first and foremost.

The first avenue is Defective by Design’s Anti-DRM day October 3^rd. It serves as a rallying point for media conscious geeks; even getting coverage on the all mighty traffic powerhouse Boing Boing. These things can be viral wildfire. A recent Digg front story was about an individual who had created nothing more than some clever logos for a geek cause. The story was subsequently picked up on the weekly DiggNation show. My hope is to have logos, T-shirts, and site submissions done for a similar blitz by the end of this weekend.

The second example is Tim Buntel’s call for Scorpio logos. Scorpio is the code name for the next version of ColdFusion. The development team is looking for some to symbolize the project until it is released as the official ‘Adobe ColdFusion MX8’. There is no pay but plenty of exposure to ColdFusion fans – exactly the kind of audience who might be interested in buying Geek shirts.

So all I need to do is be insanely creative and produce link worthy objects of geek affection by the end of this weekend. That’s all.

So am I missing the boat by focusing away from the business blogs? I’d love to hear some opinions.

Now the numbers:

Day 4

Total Spent: $28.95
Available Products: 33
Number Sold: 0
Money Made: $0
Visits: 11
Pageviews: 12

Online Business: Day 3

2006-09-07T03:58:00-07:00

This is the third in a line of posts about starting a T-shirt business online. The rules are simple: (1) I can’t spend more than $50, (2) must be software development related (3) built ‘in the margins’ (the three hours or so after my tottler goes to bed) and (4) needs to make a car payment by October 1^st (net revenues of $495.01). It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based noodling can go.

Before we get into the first attempts at advertising Militant Geek, the technology engendered T-shirt shop, we first have to address our couture. As Mel rightly pointed out in yesterday’s post there wasn’t any female styled apparel. I did some digging and discovered where in the settings to separate items by gender (apparently there are three types supported by the store – men, women, and shapely women). I’ve turned on the setting and will refer to Geek (male) and Geekette (female and junior) lines in the future.

There have been some other design uploads that are either in the store or pending. Google Analytics has been installed and is reporting stats. I will include page views and visits in the daily totals.

That brings us to advertising. In an ideal world a spunky geek centered clothing line would have advertising money for Slashdot and/or Federated Media placement. Even a spot on the newly launched GigaOm project Web Worker Daily would be some great visibility. But as any Minnesota Viking’s fan knows the world is a cruel, cruel place. My advertising needs to be of the Pinko Marketing type. That is, marketing that recognizes that we live in an age without consumers – only conversations; that’s a very ‘new age’ way of saying I need to build word of mouth on a pile of links.

This can be a great way of building traffic to a site – if it’s done right. Done badly it is, at best, noise and, at worst, spam. This evening I wrote a piece for one of my other sites, mutednoise. I questioned whether this new way of creating T-shirts could also be social media. This just happened to be my site but conversations can happen anywhere that a topic fits (I’ll branch out and describe the selection process in more detail later). Because the article offers a unique perspective I felt fine Digging It, throwing it on the new Netscape, and making sure Del.icio.us was aware. Can I expect 20,000 people by tomorrow? Digg is that powerful. But I’m not holding my breath. Continually stirring up conversations about the site traffic is the slow and steady path to natural growth.

Considering it’s almost 2am (I got happily sidetracked this evening discussion CodeAway related matters) I’m going to have to cut things short. We’ll leave the discussion of community features surrounding Militant Geek as they get rolled out. Let’s roll that beautiful bean (counter) footage:

Day 3

Total Spent: $28.95
Available Products: 33
Number Sold: 0
Money Made: $0
(Sept. 6) Visits: 12
(Sept. 6) Page Views: 15

Online Business, Day 2

2006-09-06T01:02:00-07:00

This is the second in a line of posts about starting a business online. It's all part of an experiment in how far some talent, determination, and web based noodling can go.

As promised tonight we're going to talk numbers. What does it cost to start Militant Geek, a boutique and nerd centric T-shirt business?

Let's start with the platform. To answer a question that came up in multiple conversations yesterday I am not reinventing CafePress. I certainly don't have the time or resources to create that kind of infrastructure in a month and for under $50. I am creating a business based on selling butter – not a better churn. In the case of Militant Geek I chose to use SpreadShirt.com for a number of reasons:

1. They have incredible quality
2. They use American Apparel (the last U.S. based clothing manufacturer)
3. They were one of the first to allow printing on black T-shirts (although CafePress and possibly Zazzle also has this now)

4. They have incredibly flexible store customization options

Opening a store and uploading up to 20 digital designs a day is free. The free account also allows for up to three vector designs; vectors are essential for black T-shirt printing (and black t-shirts are essential for a successful geek store). So far so good.

Next up is a domain name. Having a strong domain name gives a site identity, makes it memorable (http://MilitantGeek.com verses http://spreadshirt.com/shop.php?sid=43098), and puts a store just one notch higher on the 'professional impression' gauge. I've used Yahoo Small Business services in the past. However, in the spirit of experimentation I decided to try GoDaddy. If there was any truth in advertising they would be known as 'add ons a-go-go'. After wading through their painfully busy site I emerged with a domain name for $16.40 (make sure get a 10% discount by entering 'DIGG' on checkout – what, you don't watch DiggNation? Come On! Kevin Rose is worth, like, $60 million!!!!). That cost includes:

1. One year MilitantGeek.com registration
2. Private Registration Services (a splurge, perhaps, but one I will always make)

3. Something called 'Deluxe Business Registration' that seemed vital to getting private registration services at the time but now seems questionable

Next we come to store analytics. The only information I get about site visitors are totals for today and all time. As Janet from the Newspapergrl blog rightly points out online businesses must take a page from the porn industry and track, track, track (make sure this is one of the only pages taken). I need vastly more information than the number of daily visitors if I am going to evolve content over the course of the month. I need keywords used in organic searches, click through maps, exit points, etc. Here I *heart* Google Analytics. Sorry Omniture - Google Analytics provides the level of detail that I need for $0.

Spreadshirt allows customization of the html and css surrounding the store but it doesn't allow JavaScript. JavaScript is needed for Google Analytics. It was back to GoDaddy to see if I couldn't find some bargain basement hosting. I will wrap the Spreadshirt store inside an iframe – a decade old hack that will allow me to accumulate rich stats while using the existing Spreadshirt generated store. (This should be live by Wednesday morning – the DNS has to transfer from pointing directly at the shop to the wrapper page.)

Because this is the thrifty version of business building I only purchased two months of hosting – it's cheaper in the short term and if the project turns out to be a horrible mistake I haven't left money on the table. The cost here was $12.55 – 2 months of economy hosting with available PHP for $7.98, available ColdFusion functionality for $5.97 (again, a splurge but my unofficial duty as ColdFusion User Group Manager), and again the 10% DIGG discount.

So, to sum up day two:

Total Spent: $28.95
Available Products: 15
Number Sold: 0
Money Made: $0

Next up – advertising by a dummy.

Blogging the Launching of an Online Business

2006-09-05T01:36:00-07:00

Last week I bemoaned the latest Utah development news. It seemed as if somewhere the technology entrepreneurs had jumped the shark on the way to profits. I am convinced that if an individual has a decent amount of talent, resolve, and access to the Internet they can make money with out having to resort to the kind of shenanigans Chris Knudsen was sharp to point out. But any two-bit blogger can say what it takes to be successful. I’m going to DO it.

From now until September 30^th I am going to launch a business online and blog each and every detail. Why put every mistake and foible on display? Because I know there are some really bright people that read this blog; be pointing out what’s wrong they’ll be helping to write the way things should be done. Together we can create a blueprint that any individual with a moderate amount of skill can follow.

Before we build let’s lay a few ground rules:

1) The goal, by the end of September 30^th, is to have a car payment waiting in the bank. That means that for my LLBean Edition Outback I need to make $495.01 this month.

2) Any fool can see returns when throwing tens of thousands at a problem. The initial outlay for this experiment must stay under $50.

3) I will update status throughout the month as time allows. Ideally this means at least an update each and every day. However, given that I’m concurrently establishing Vox Pop Design certain jobs or onsite commitments may demand some flexibility in that schedule.

4) The business must be in some way related to software development so I don’t completely alienate those BloomBurst readers not interested in entrepreneurship.

For a quick rundown on some $0 (or nearly $0) ways to build a business online I recommend Scott Allen’s brief overview on About.com. He provides a number of options which may or may not be suitable to your disposition. Personally, I was enamored with Jennifer Laycock’s T-Shirt Experiment (a PDF combining the month long blog entries is available online for free).

Thus MilitantGeek.com is born. Militant Geek is a designer line of clothing for the opinionated techie. Why be meek when one can be Geek? It’s a business that I can have some fun with, does tie back to development, provides a customized experience for customers, and taps into the novelty T-shirt craze. It should provide some great avenues for SEO, light application programming, online marketing, affiliate program usage, etc.

Let’s go – I’ve got a car payment to make.

Tomorrow: the numbers.

The Language is not the Product

2006-09-03T00:00:00-07:00

As president of the Salt Lake City ColdFusion User’s Group (SLCFUG) one of my unofficial duties is to evangelize the language[1]. I do readily acknowledge, however, that one should always use the best tool for the job. I quickly defer usage of ColdFusion to that which is more capable. But because ColdFusion is a ‘boutique’ language not many know of its abilities. I am always on the alert for examples to illustrate its capabilities during ‘my-lang-is-bigger’ fests.

ColdFusion developers have a love/hate relationship with MySpace, arguably one of the most trafficked site on the Internet. On one hand we want to shout it’s usage of ColdFusion[2] from the rooftops – only ‘serious’ languages like Java or .NET are supposed to obtain such lofty spires. However, because of numerous reasons (the default profiles are an eyesore, the developers aren’t doing proper error handling, there’s been little refactoring) crowing about MySpace becomes harmonious music to ColdFusion critics.

I dealt with much frustration this evening while ‘beautifying’ Vox Pop Design’s profile page – http://myspace.com/voxpopdesign [3]. For a user the frequent errors would be annoying. For a ColdFusion programmer who gives a crap the apparent flippant development is like nails on a chalkboard. It’s a great example of how we can’t expect one product or site to be the rallying banner for a language – there’s just too much human element involved. We could invent the most elegant language ever known but somewhere there’s a coder who can make it look kludgy.

The language is not the product.

[1] I make a clear distinction between the CFML language and the server produced by Adobe, which also is called ColdFusion. There are alternative CFML parsing engines available for reduced cost (New Atlanta’s BlueDragon) or free (Railo). Each has its place.

[2] To be entirely clear MySpace is running a ColdFusion interpreter, called BlueDragon, on top of .NET. They do this chiefly for the speed increases that occur when a .NET/Windows Server interacts with a MSSQL database. These are faster than a JDBC bridge that would occur with Adobe’s Java based ColdFusion server.

[3] Huge props to Mike at Heavy Industries for providing an exceptional tutorial. I can’t image the countless hours that went into discovering the necessary CSS hacks to corral the default mess.

Bemoaning the Week in Utah Dev News

2006-08-31T12:24:09-07:00

I am passionate about seeing a technology ecosystem blossom in Utah. I want scores of small software shops springing up throughout the Wasatch front, ala 37Signals or the Robot Co-Op; the kind of small independent places building hosted applications that empower people to be more efficient and creative. If the last week’s news is any indication, however, we’ve got a long way to go before we turn that corner.

Take, for example, the two Utah Valley partners who were pulling in $71k in two months. If numbers where everything that would be an impressive penny. However, they were doing it with splogs – or spam blogs. Splogs are sites purposely meant to attract search engine traffic by using a raft a nefarious search engine optimization (SEO) trickery. With sites now atop search lists they sprinkle in a few ads and *POOF* - a business model built on deception. They add no value, confuse searchers, and often use content gleamed from other sites. That’s why Microsoft is now suing the pair.

In a sad similar bit of news we have an individual who was not only piggybacking off the popular social news site, Digg, but also using its content. DiggGames has received a cease and desist letter from the Digg legal crew for doing some trademark wrangling. To be fair, DiggGames does seem to provide something of a service – what it is highlighting can be a cumbersome thing to weed out of the normal Digg garden. However, aping a domain name is still a trademark no-no.

Finally, Friday brought an alarming plea for help from the recently expunged Provo Labs development team. Reading the lead’s blog is at times fascinating and terrifying. To be clear I am in their corner. I want shops like theirs to succeed. But their situation reminds me of the Thelma and Louise movie. The crew seems incredibly exhilarated by their new found freedom – I just hope they don’t drive themselves off a cliff in the name of independence; their vehicle seats ten.

Two superstars in their respective categories, Jamis Buck (Ruby programming) and Cameron Moll (design) no longer even call Utah home; both having evacuated this summer. The trouble seems to go clear up through the ecosystem to the redwoods of the area: SCO’s Linux claims against IBM have been found baseless, Overstock’s has an embarrassing tit-for-tat clouding the air, and Novell is spinning hard to get Linux traction. It all makes me wonder what state our flower patch is in.

I know there’s more going on in the valley than domain squatting, legal threats, and desperate grabs for business. Where is the good Utah development press? Where are the successful, small, and ethical software shops and what are they doing?

ColdSparx 0.2 Released

2006-08-28T16:03:37-07:00

Today I released the 0.2 code of ColdSparx, a ColdFusion Sparklines solution. Sparklines are intense, little word sized graphics. ColdSparx empowers ColdFusion developers to create them. The project leverages that ColdFusion is built on Java and Java can do quite a bit with regards to image rendering.

If that sounds interesting pop over, check it out, and leave comments.

Railo CF Server - Memory Hog?

2006-08-26T23:27:19-07:00

I've been either testing, trying, or buying numerous software packages as Vox Pop Design gestates. One of the more facinating packages that I've come across is Railo, a free ColdFusion server alternative. It runs as a pure Java application that slices and dices common cfml (ColdFusion markup language) like an Iron Chef on chicken. Because of boasted support for Mach-II, Model-Glue, and Fusebox it seemed to pack enough gooey goodness to feed most of what I am doing.

However, after this latest binge of software setup I noticed the performance on my main Windows XP machine had become seriously compromised. After a restart an alarming 800+ MB's of RAM were consumed; that's something that only happens if I leave Firefox open for weeks. Seeing a java instance at the top of the process memory usage and acting on a hunch I stopped the Railo service and instantly saw a half gig of RAM free up.

Railo may be free and boasts, due to its pure Java nature, to be incredibly fast. However, it is seriously not an option for some of the older server boxes I was hoping to use. Has anybody else played with the Swiss Railo? Has it been a memory hog for you too?

Can Software Development Flourish with Prosper.com?

2006-08-23T14:08:39-07:00

In my experience, I've never met a developer who didn't have an idea for a cool new product or service. Just as often, I've seen those ideas get shelved. It's the execution on an idea that matters and for most developers, the its the financial aspects of executing that's daunting.

Software doesn't require huge amounts of capital. Many development tools are free (or nearly so). The Internet enables worldwide distribution for the price of a home page. Further, sometimes nothing more than competent conversations can drive hungry users right to your download. If that's all we had to worry about ideas would be in full bloom everywhere.

A financial quandary does exist, however. It lies not with the software but the human needs of those behind it: the month(s) of rent (or mortgage) while getting started, medical insurance, and food. You know – shelter, health, and hummus. Because the money amounts that we're talking about are trivial or even pedestrian for traditional lending institutions (angels, venture capitalists, and banks) ideas end up dormant.

StartUp Nation (a podcast) recently had a fascinating piece about a website called Prosper.com.(It subsequently got picked up by LifeHack.org.) The idea is that an individual can borrow money from their peers instead of a bank. Lenders bid differing amounts toward a goal total set by the borrower. A lender's bid also includes their desired percentage rate. Competition causes those lenders who offer funds at the lowest rates to be accepted (a plus for the Borrower). Meanwhile, the Lender only has to pledge a piece of the goal they feel comfortable supporting (a plus for the Lender). All loans are for three year spans.

For example, maybe I really would like a month and $5000 to get an idea off the ground. Because of my decent credit rating individual lenders offer a total of $5000 at an average rate of 7% interest. The monthly payments over the life of the three year loan work out to be $159.39 – not too shabby. (You did have a business model to make the monthly payments for this idea, right?)

The individual possibilities of this plan are interesting. It becomes downright compelling, however, when combined with Prosper's Groups feature. Lenders feel more comfortable when lending to groups of people. Belonging to a group of entrepreneurial geeks means that a borrower has someplace to go with questions. Their idea will be vetted because they're trying to get fellow members to invest. Members are free to put forward only what they are comfortable risking and can let non-group lenders make up the rest. Finally, all group members have an incentive to help a project succeed because the Group's reputation is essential to acquiring favorable rates and loan amounts in the future.

So is this a perfect solution for developers with micro-economic needs? Not quite. I pitched this idea at the August CodeAway event. It was a cool reception, at best. There was the opinion that for loans as small as $1000-$10,000 an individual would be better off boot strapping the best they can. For example, this might mean not having medical insurance, living with parents, and eating ramen every meal. While that's not a solution (or even possible) for many this is how Digg.com got started on its way to $60 million. The 'wisdom of crowds' angle of being joined with a group of peers was also held suspect. The fear was that it would put too many cooks in the software kitchen.

However, I still think there might be something there. I'd love to get feedback from the idea holders themselves, the developer community. Would something like this be helpful? What do you like about the idea? What doesn't make sense? Is the amount too low? Is this an area really better left to angel investment? Let's find a way to take more of those ideas off the shelf and onto people's computers.

September CodeAway Announced

2006-08-22T02:27:00-07:00

As Laura mentioned on her blog September's CodeAway Event has been announced. We'll be meeting from 1-5pm Saturday, September 23rd. The event will be in the spacious basement of the Sprague Library (sounds fancy and European, for some reason). I'd like to say that XMission was making WiFi available just for the event but they're the kind of people that have put free wireless Internet in all local libraries all the time. (Think that's a good idea? How about helping XMission's founder unseat Orrin Hatch this fall?)

What is CodeAway? CodeAway is a series of events to get bright, talented, computer savvy people together and embolden their ideas with the support of a community. At the last event we managed to get a very deserving blog mentioned by CNet. What will happen this time?

We'll also be handing out flyers, rave style, at tomorrow's Geek Dinner. The visual juice (in nasty, low rez, web friendly format):

(*ahem*, I suppose I could also reuse that graphic as an ad for Dell laptop batteries.)
Just to recap those details:

The Sprague Library
2131S 1100E. Salt Lake City, UT
September 23rd, from 1-5pm

Hope to see you there!

August CodeAway Recap

2006-08-21T13:07:48-07:00

I’d be negligent if I didn’t recap last week’s very positive CodeAway event. The second meeting had us deep in the bowels of Vox Pop’s intergalactic headquarters. Code was quaffed, projects planned or canned, and a whole package of Chips Ahoy cookies eaten.

I don’t want to repeat too much detail as Laura (and her camera) captured much on her site. However, our efforts toward the end of the night bear some mentioning. Laura’s husband, Mike, was virtually attending (via IRC) and was hoping to get an article freshly posted to their gadget site on the front page of Digg. Willing to help out and eager to see the power of Digg in effect CodeAway was able to push the article forward - at which point it took on a life of its own. Within a day it had been ‘dugg’ more than 1500 times, caused traffic which set off server alarm bells, and got picked up by CNET. The Digg rally helped add some solid, quantifiable achievement to an already great evening.

I’m in the process of setting up next month’s event. While I do already have some ideas in mind I’m open to any venue suggestions. Please keep in mind that in order to make the time useful the CodeAway crew needs:

decent, free, and wireless Internet connection
a variety of seating – sitting on most restaurant style seating doesn’t work for 3+ hour events
smaller group sizes to promote intimacy (yeah Baby!)
food, while nice, is secondary to the exchange of ideas – in fact, it would be preferable to leave the ‘dinner’ for after.

What would you like to see from the next CodeAway event?

Airline Hassle is Dev Opportunity

2006-08-16T15:17:00-07:00

We have reached a tipping point. Last weekend’s foiled terrorist plot not only highlighted the determination of non-state entities to disrupt but brought with it a whole host of new flight regulations. No liquids of any sort on the plane and all shoes are now a removal must. I try to make it a point to travel carry-on only to avoid potential lost luggage and the extra wait. Now I’ll have to check a bag just so I’ll have toothpaste and shampoo. I should count myself lucky; those traveling in the UK have the misfortunate of not being allowed carry-ons of any sort. Considering the quality of the in-flight movies on my last several trips I can only say – ouch.

Paul Kedrosky, venture capitalist, is declaring the recent events a tipping point. Fred Wilson, from Union Square Ventures, wonders what he’s supposed to do on a six hour trans-Atlantic flight. From a user group manager’s perspective my contacts willing to come and speak has shrunk considerably. It’s not because they have to check shampoo. A mind shift has occurred: air travel is just too much of a hassle to justify the experience.

Seth Godin, a buzzword happy guy and failed Web 2.0 guru, claims that we just won’t be able to give up meeting face to face. It’s as if all the world’s problems would only be fixed if we could pop on a plane and shake hands with every person upon landing. I agree with Chris Messina – we’ve got the displays, the bandwidth, and the VOIP. If we don’t have the ability to create rich interpersonal experiences with our technology let’s goddam fix it. Let’s get innovative on this problem even if it means giving up air travel all together.

If the airline industry were a software program it would be one huge interconnected mass of spaghetti code. It is not forgiving to disruption – my wife, a Jet Blue reservationist, knows she’s in for a long night when a random storm pops up on the Eastern seaboard. A single act of nature can cause negative ripples (delays, canceled flights, etc.) through the entire business pond. A successful terrorist act would not just complicate some vacation plans – it would threaten our entire economic well being.

There is an opportunity for software developers here. We need to create distributed systems that enable the same kind of relationship building that, till now, have been the domain of face-to-face greetings. We need to create the kind of communications infrastructure seen in clever, authority stumping P2P apps. We need to turn the Internet, something already hardwired to survive a nuclear attack, into a superior expressive platform.

If developers can seize this opportunity we’ll be so much the better for it.

Update 2006-08-16
An airliner headed for overseas has to make an emergency landing in Boston because a passenger began to freak out during the flight. The precautions are necessary but how are people supposed to get things done in this climate?

Pete Ashdown to Speak at the SLCFUG Tomorrow

2006-08-09T00:00:00-07:00

Pete Ashdown, founder of Utah's first ISP (the beloved XMission), Democratic candidate for Senate, and all around nice guy will be speaking at tomorrow evening's Salt Lake City ColdFusion User Group meeting. The man with the brass croquet pieces will talk about why Orrin Hatch is bad for Utah's developers, using a wiki to draft policy, and more.

We meet at 6pm and directions can be found on the front page of the SLCFUG.org website.

Geek Dinner Recap Video Available

2006-08-08T13:38:05-07:00

Laura Moncur was nice enough to throw together a video from last month's Geek Dinner. It features several geeks in both pre- and post-feasting; including yours truly (2^nd person in). The great thing about derivative media, whether it be be blogging or broadcasting video, is that it helps get the message out. We need a diverse set of people at these events if we are to build Utah into the Info Interior.

Some of us are much more powerful than one of us.

Another Developer Shoehorned as Slacker Nerd

2006-08-08T12:22:37-07:00

I can't begrudge Kevin Rose and his Digg website. Despite all the vitriol the misleading Business Week cover story has generated (here, here, with a response from BW here) he is obviously onto something. But did we really need the over-the-top geek mugshot? Is dressing a successful 29-year-old technology startup veteran as the guy who mows your lawns really going to command respect?

I don't begrudge casual work-wear for the entrepreneur set. Since going full time on Vox Pop Design my modus operandi has been t-shirt, jeans, and sandals. It's the extra details – for example, do you really believe that he was listening to music during the photo shoot? No, the headphones are a prop no different from the backwards baseball cap and manicured day-old stubble. The photographer (and the inside story) are working hard to project Kevin as nothing more than a stereotypical geek. A bright and talented software developer is cast as a one dimensional cartoon; *sigh* that's probably more palatable for Business Week's audience anyway.

I do begrudge blatant image manipulation. But hey, he's on the cover. Good for him.

Football Developers? Must be a Fantasy!

2006-08-07T23:48:05-07:00

In a recent post I mentioned that I am a developer that liked both football and number theory. For someone of that refined taste what is the logical autumn pursuit? Why, fantasy football. Considering the office at Vox Pop Design world headquarters consists of a solo solitary member, a company league wouldn’t make for much playoff drama. Rather than play with a bunch of strangers, however, I thought it would be fun to intellectually throw down with my comrades in code.

First up – who would be interested in a developer exclusive fantasy football league? Second question: what service should we use? Last year I was in a group that used Yahoo – for $10 a person could watch they’re live game and stat updates which was very reasonable (can’t remember if they were using Macromedia Flash or not). I also enjoyed their color commentators. My brother swears that Fox Fantasy Football is the best but I know absolutely nothing about its features or underlying tech. Of course there is the official NFL fantasy football site. There’s also the newly launched FleaFlicker, a Java applet system.

The only real big thing I want is the ability to upload custom images to represent the teams and/or league. It’ll be a nice little place to show off each developer’s made Microsoft Paint skills. ;)

Any advice? Who’s interested?

CodeAway, Anyone?

2006-08-04T17:44:00-07:00

As manager for the Salt Lake ColdFusion User’s Group, attendee of the monthly Geek Dinners, and periodic conference crasher I’m a big believer in groups. More specifically, I believe that people are more productive, creative, and passionate when buoyed by their peers. This is how, in part, a strong Utah development community can fend off external threats. Vibrant, energetic, and useful groups are essential to Utah’s technology future.

A spark of magic can happen in a vacuum….

…but it will succumb to asphyxiation before anybody can see it.

There are a number of exciting initiatives that regularly raise an ire of envy from that ‘other’ valley; projects like SuperHappyDevHouse, TehSpace, the CoWorking Initiative, CivicForge, etc. In almost all cases an environment has been established that gives really talented people a space to play with ideas in a collaborative, supportive space.

I’m trying to establish a series of events for the Salt Lake Valley area called CodeAway. It would be a night every so often where developers (technology agnostic) could get away from the normal hubbub and play with code. Said another way: it’s a play date for the bit inclined. A basic F.A.Q is available at http://CodeAway.org.

Space is limited. For those interested I’d be happy to email the West Valley City, UT address to you – leave a comment and I’ll know where to send it. How does the evening of August 15^th sound? What will you work on?

Knowing When Not to Develop

2006-08-03T01:39:00-07:00

I returned home tonight after an adventurous getaway to the wilds of South Dakota [1]. The pile of pulp product waiting for me must have required a small grove to create – bills for the recently hydro-seeded lawn, the new issues of Software Test & Performance, Software Development Times, and Inc., and assorted generic plays to reconsolidate my student loans. The one shining spot, however, was my brand new business platinum visa card. It sounds silly but seeing Vox Pop Design embossed made my heart skip a little. I just need to browse through the terms and away to the safe it goes. The last thing this small business needs is a big spending spree.

Speaking of small business, while on this trip I had the opportunity to help a pair of entrepreneurs get started. They’re also on a budget and looking to produce professional results while still working from home. I was able to recommend some very flexible invoicing solutions, researched some automatic call distribution (ACD) possibilities, introduced cheap document and spreadsheet collaborative software, and setup their business email accounts. It wasn’t development, per se, but sometimes starting a business with a website filled with the latest bells and whistles isn’t the answer either. I had certainly gone in preparing to pitch more but it wouldn’t have been right.

This situation isn’t just limited to consultants working with entrepreneurs. Every day developers are expected to implement the latest, greatest, and flashiest widgets to products regardless of need. Its project management by mantra: bigger is better. The customer is then left with an expensive piece of paperweight that they can’t figure out.

There are enterprises that can afford the upfront price for this kind of excess. They can afford the customer training. They can afford to wait while the unexpected kinks are worked out. And they can afford to purchase the point release which actually does what they expected the original release to do. But for a vast majority of living, breathing small businesses that kind of expenditure would strangle the life from them. They need simple solutions now. They need to see immediate benefit. And they need to trust the developer not to upsell them on something ‘cool’ when ‘useful’ is what’s needed.

Less than an hour after I started I heard a squeal of glee from one of the partners. She had just emailed her mother from her new business account. I had made the right decision as a developer and hadn’t coded a thing.

[1] I’m a rambling wreck from Rapid Tech
and a hell of an engineer -
ahellofa,
ahellofa,
ahellofa,
ahellofa,
hell of an engineer!
Like all my jolly good fellows
I drink my whiskey clear.
I’m a rambling wreck from Rapid Tech
AND A HELL OF AN ENGINEER! HEY!

I Code; But What Does That Imply?

2006-08-01T16:49:42-07:00

Normally the word of Joel (as in Joel Spolsky, as in 'Joel on Software') is developer gospel. He doesn't post as regularly as some bloggers and he doesn't have to. Most articles are a feast of food for thought that last well after the first sitting.

However, his moaning over a recent Traveler's Insurance ad is shamefully hypocritical. The ad stereotypes developers as having bad fashion sense. It then infers that the tech set are threatening because they understand (not just use) what powers modern life. Joel gets on his high horse and rustles up four points of contention - including this heifer of an opinion:

“Can you imagine anyone more harmless than a geek? A skinny nerd happily entertaining himself playing Dungeons and Dragons, or quietly playing practical jokes on bandwidth-thieves, or laughing hysterically at reinterpretations of 19th century light opera? What exactly is the threat, fat necks? What are you afraid of?”

Um, excuse me? You're offended by a geek stereotype but rebutting with another, and potentially equally offensive, stereotype? Personally, I'm tired of explaining to my non-geek friends that it is possible to like football and number theory. They hear I'm a developer and just assume that I rehash the previous evenings multi-sided dice orgy on Sundays. It's time for developers to toss off these silly and ill fitting labels. Getting pissed because an ad didn't highlight the desired stereotype isn't the way toward cultural acceptance.

A Clarion Call Five Million Strong

2006-07-31T09:42:00-07:00

In the daily minutia of corporate culture we can forget the delight that happens when a customer's pain is solved. From this removed cubical perspective people become product lines. Relationships are defined by return on investment. Customer needs warp into a bullet point arms race that leave the end user curled in fear beneath their desk. This may be how businesses can relate to one another. It's important to remember, however, that businesses are different than people.

The original impetus of this blog has changed over the past year. It has become an exploration of software development and how to resolve the frustration I was experiencing with the business blinders. Change within the confines of someone else's vessel is difficult: ideas become compromised, politics kicks in, and people begin clinging to what's familiar. So I left and will be doing Vox Pop Design, my web development firm, full time.

In my guide on developer productivity I led up to a very important statement that I couldn't talk about until now. All the well-rested evenings, inertia, and distraction reduction won't mean a damn thing if a coder isn't happy. Further, there is too much work available right now for a developer to stay where they're not passionately creating. We are witness to the empowerment of the Fortune Five Million, not the Fortune Five Hundred. Those people need software and the individual software creator has never been in a better position to deliver it to them.

The 'Vox Pop' in Vox Pop Design has always been short for the Latin phrase 'vox populi' or 'voice of the people'. It's now my full time job to make those voices heard. And that makes me very happy.