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?