December 2006

Private Blogs

December 26, 2006

I have started using the new private blog feature in Blogger to start my own personal diary. The only person who can view the blog is me, when I have logged in with my password. There are many uses of such a private blog. Obviously, there are personal thoughts you don’t want to share with […]

Read the full article →

The Economics of a Free Lunch

December 26, 2006

Recently, I was talking with a friend whose IT career had previously taken him through a dot-com company which later went bust. Among other things, he said that the company used to provide free lunch to all employees. He cynically attributed this practice to the company trying to save money by keeping the employees indoors instead […]

Read the full article →

Google Maps Calling Feature

December 25, 2006

Even though I know how the technology works, the following experience was still amazing and, should I say, so sweet. I had just returned from a morning meeting and had just half an hour to eat something before my next meeting. Normally, I would just go to the restaurant and order something, but today I […]

Read the full article →

The “No Silver Bullet” Principle

December 25, 2006

I recently read one of the most significant papers regarding software development: No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., the author of the classic “The Mythical Man-Month”. The article is very relevant even today. In the short history of software development, there have been several new products or processes […]

Read the full article →

The problem with Ken Blanchard’s books

December 24, 2006

I have read many of Ken Blanchard’s books like the One Minute Manager and Who Moved My Cheese. Many of these books occur high in popularity on the lists of many book vendors including Amazon. Many of my friends in school have also recommended these books. They are very short and easy to read — typically […]

Read the full article →

Power Imbalance in Decision Making

December 24, 2006

Here is a fable (I believe from Aesop) about a wolf and a lamb. The wolf wants to eat the lamb and tries to justify the action with excuses, all of which are refuted by the lamb. Finally the wolf gives up the pretense and, without waiting to solve any rejoinders, pounces on the lamb. This […]

Read the full article →

Windows Live Writer

December 24, 2006

I have been using Windows Live Writer to create and edit my blogs to post to Blogger. I am not sure that it is better than the online editor in Blogger, but it has proved to help me to organize my blogging. Whenever I get a new idea about something, I launch Live Writer and […]

Read the full article →

Sourcegear Vault Admin Tool

December 24, 2006

Our company has been using Sourcegear Vault for quite sometime. It is a very good source code control management system for small to mid-size companies. We started using Sourcegear’s SourceOffsite product when we had a need to allow people to access Microsoft Visual SourceSafe from outside the office. By switching to Vault, we consolidated on […]

Read the full article →

Keep Users Coming Back

December 24, 2006

Suppose you have this great web application idea. You successfully develop it and you are ready to have users experience it. You market the product through various means — ads in conventional media, blogs, word-of-mouth, etc. Users start visiting your site and some of them even register. How do you keep them coming back to […]

Read the full article →

Cliche Finder

December 24, 2006

Talking about cliches, here is an interesting link: http://cliche.theinfo.org/. You can copy and paste your text in it and the site would point out the common cliches within it. For now, there is no facility to paste your URL or do a full site search, but it is a good start and hopefully will get […]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →