March 2006

More search options

March 31, 2006

Google has become the de facto search engine of the planet. Frankly, I personally wouldn’t know how to run my life without Google. Definitions, weather, technical problems, etc. — type it into the Google toolbar and hit ENTER. I have heard some of my developer friends say that they would rather resign than work in […]

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Serving Multiple Masters

March 30, 2006

Are you overwhelmed? Having difficulty prioritizing your tasks? Every task on your plate seems urgent? Many people on your back asking you to do stuff? Your experience may be due to serving multiple masters or systems. Let us see how this works. When different persons give you tasks, they have no idea about your current workload […]

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A few meeting ideas

March 29, 2006

Even if you have nothing to do, you will always have meetings. There will be meetings with your bosses, other departments, customers and your subordinates. Apart from the obvious items like agenda and action items, what can you do to make a meeting productive? Here are a few tips: Arrange meetings at times when people are […]

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The Good Programmers

March 28, 2006

The post “Why Good Programmers Are Lazy and Dumb” by Philipp Lenssen is a very interesting read. To be a successful and agile development shop, it is not enough to have good project managers, architects and designers, you must also have really good programmers. They do the actual coding — the output that directly contributes […]

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Gmail Features

March 27, 2006

Gmail, the email service offered by Google, has been around for quite some time now, although it is still in beta. You cannot sign up for Gmail, but if your friends have one, they could invite you. I have been using Yahoo for my personal email and I have been toying around with the idea […]

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Understanding the Manager

March 26, 2006

Everyone has, at one time or the other, had something to say that disparaged their manager. Unless you are a complete toady, you will find yourself disagreeing with your manager at several times. It doesn’t help by just complaining about it. So how do you communicate your disagreement and why should you be careful about it? […]

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Software Bugs

March 25, 2006

If it is software, there are bugs. They are like roses and thorns — you cannot get one without the other. If you aim to build high quality software, the best you can do is to reduce bugs to a level where you can manage them instead of them managing you and the project timelines. […]

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Office Tigers on Outlook

March 24, 2006

The “Office Tiger” is one of those water-cooler jokes. It actually means “Microsoft Office Tiger” and refers to managers who have outgrown doing the “dirty work” (coding, developing, testing — you name it!) a long time ago and now spend their entire time in MS-Office products such as Outlook (sending & receiving emails), Word (typing […]

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The Sample Application

March 23, 2006

From time to time, a new language or framework appears on the market. If it finds enough supporters, it is incredibly hyped to be the next killer technology that will overrun established languages like C++ and Java. The new buzzword is “easy” – the better technology is one that makes easier and simpler for a […]

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Open-ended Questions

March 22, 2006

Open-ended questions are the lifeblood of a discussion. Without them, a discussion becomes a session of agreement or argument, and not what it should be: free-flow of ideas to find the best solution for a problem. Open-ended questions are very important in a discussion between persons of unequal power. In such a discussion, if the […]

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