Via LifeHacker.

This is a great utility; I installed it about fifteen minutes ago and already don’t know what I did without it. One of the great things about Mac OS X (and, apparently, Windows Vista) is toolset that allows you to easily deal with multiple windows. This tiny little utility gets you most of the way there without shelling out for the Windows upgrade (and the new computer that goes with it). When you hit Alt-Tab on keyboard rather than the unhelpful array of Windows icons you get little thumbnails and full window titles. If you have a lot of windows open, you can use the mouse to quickly select from the list. It seems to do some other things too, which I haven’t played with yet.

Some users want hand holding. A lot of it. And they expect the software (or the software developers) to somehow intuit exactly what they want to have happen. I used to call this the “magic button” syndrome, since there was really one thing these users wanted: a magic button on the middle of a web page that would do whatever needed to be done.

On the flip side, though, are programmers who expect users to think like programmers. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that techies and non-techies look at screens very differently. When I see a new screen, the first thing I do is look at every button, link and text box, and form a mental inventory of what I can do. Most programmers seem to do the same. Most users, however, don’t take an inventory approach: they decide what they want to do, and then hunt around until they find the option that does it. If there’s nothing on the screen that obviously solves the problem, mayhem may ensue.

The Bug is in the Details – The Daily WTF

Incidentally, I should go on record that in this particular example, the programmers were “right” – the end user demands are a bit naive. But I’ve seen worse. And most of the comments focus on issues like the difficulty of writing an email address parser that can say why an address isn’t valid. Yes, it’s hard to do. No, average non-programmer has no way of knowing that, other than intuition based on the fact that most software doesn’t do it.

Spolsky’s an interesting character. He knows what he’s talking about from a software perspective. His writing appeals to developers and engineers, since, if you were to strip away everything except what he seems to care most about, you’re left with someone who cares about creating quality, usable software. From the perspective of cross-hallway evangelism (management to developers, developers to managers) he’s probably the best, or at least most consistent, person writing today.

The Healthcare IT Guy » Guest Article: Beware of NULLs in healthcare databases

Although I missed it, it appears that Clay Shirky gave an interesting talk on social networking patterns at the O’Reilly Emerging Technologies conference. Worth a read, and worth following the links.

Along the same lines, I’ve noticed a massive uptick in the comment spam on this blog over the last few days. Over 20 of them yesterday alone. I’ve closed off comments on some of the more popular posts, and will probably upgrade the blog software this weekend in an effort to cut them back further. Since I pre-moderate everything not posted by an approved user the spam doesn’t actually show up here.

Registration required, but it’s free for their web exclusive articles.

The McKinsey Quarterly: The next generation of in-house software development

But DB2 never caught on in the small to medium enterprise, even though Windows and Linux versions have been available for years. It’s not on the radar screen for most developers, who don’t need the massive capacity stretch. Oracle tends to win by default (in the Java world) by having better, or at least more visible, developer tools, and, of course, SQL Server does very well in Microsoft land.

It’s a head scratcher. IBM really should think about the DB2 advertising budget, and maybe start coming up with creative ways to get the database in the hands of smaller developers.

The opportunities in education are really interesting. At their current price point, each terminal could cost $250 or less, even with flat panel displays. That’s far and away the cheapest way to equip a classroom. And there are maintenance advantages. By having a single server the maintenance overhead falls dramatically. This is really important in small school districts without a lot of local IT support. Configurations could even be managed centrally for an entire district. No troubleshooting required for individual PCs.

Eight or nine years ago I wanted to get into the network computers for education market. I moved on to other things when the network appliances that Oracle and Sun were pushing turned out to be more expensive and less useful than they needed to be. Commodity computers (for use as servers) are cheap enough now that this model should be revisited. The cost of ownership benefits, along with the initial cost savings, could be considerable. I can’t wait to see how much traction these guys get.

My initial problem with the concept: when I went to the site, I couldn’t immediately figure out what it was all about. Some exploration showed good stuff, like podcasts from American Public Media (the producers of Marketplace on NPR, among other things), but it wasn’t immediately evident how the site could be useful to me as an information consumer. Search, quite simply, is easier to manage than browsing a content hierarchy, and if I’m going to search, it will take a lot to pull me away from a classical search engine like Google. After all, if I’m doing research, why would I want to limit myself to just blog content?

There may be something here, and I’m going to look at it in more detail later, but on first brush I don’t think it’s a big deal.

Actually, the situation is a little different. Enterprise developers aren’t quite as likely to have an independent vision, but they’re just as likely to assume they understand the customer better than the “sales droids.” Sometimes the results are pretty comical – and sometimes the developers are right.

So then with search engines. Seth Godin points out an informal study suggesting that, in a blind test, MSN, Yahoo and Google are pretty much even.

Just as everywhere else, a lot of perception is bound up in the branding. Some of this is legacy: when Google first came out, it really was the best search engine out there. Google’s success made the space competitive again, and the other vendors have had years to catch up. In many ways, Google is still coasting on a period of technical superiority that ended at least two years ago–showing how valuable such a lead can be, and how adroit management of consumer perceptions can extend its value.

Maybe this is why Google’s hiring practices focus so much on a visible intellectual elite. A company hiring all those PhDs must be using them for something.

As I’ve said before, I think the third edition is a great book. It’s up to date on all the technologies and tools you need to do enterprise development well in Java. One stop shopping. Makes a great Christmas gift, too.

What really struck me was the Wall Street Journal’s headline: “Diller’s IAC, AOL to Invest In Web-TV Company”. I immediately thought they were talking about the late, unlamented WebTV, which, as you may or may not recall, tried to do the exact opposite, allowing users to access the web on their TV sets (albeit poorly). I always thought WebTV was a dumb idea, but TV over the web isn’t. We’ve come full circle.

Boing Boing: Sony anti-customer technology roundup and time-line

Can we fix the software development process with innovative management?