I help make games at Alamofire (the people behind PackRat) and wrote a book on blogging. I write here about politics, the web and other things as time allows. I love new ideas and finding common ground with interesting people. I hope you’re one of them.Launched April 2004
Visit the archives - 1006 posts
Family Reads is a new site built by my family for your family. It's packed with reviews of the best books, plus ideas and inspiration for making reading a wonderful part of your family life.
« July 2007 | Main | September 2007 »
There's a very interesting cover story on Barack Obama in this month's GQ Magazine. The article provides a lengthy behind-the-scenes look at the campaign, the candidate, his family, and what it will take to catch Hilary Clinton. The full piece is available online, though they will make you earn it by spreading the text over 14 different pages. Definitely worth the investment, though.
The calendar that is part of Backpack from 37signals allows you to setup recurring events. You have a few basic options to choose from (every day, week, other week, month, and year), followed by how many times it should repeat.
It's the repeat question that I find fascinating - it's a drop down menu of numbers from 2 to 50. Whether the appointment repeats every day, week, month, or year, you have the same choices.
Now, I love the simplicity of this for a couple of reasons. Most calendars offer a recurrence option of "indefinitely" or "ongoing". Backpack doesn't and when you think about it, how necessary is that really? Do you plan on attending your weekly staff meeting in 2018? Are you sure your monthly haircut will still be at noon in 26 years?
Plus, from a software development perspective, why populate the database with completely irrelevant data when you can have the user impose her own limits? And how likely is it that we will be accessing this information in a remotely similar way in 20 years?
Where things get a bit odd, though, is when it you add a birthday to the calendar. Repeat? Yes. Yearly? Yes. How long? Hmmmm. Let me think.
Each time you add a birthday, there is this macabre moment when you are forced to consider the life expectancy of your friend, family member, spouse, and even yourself. Is Aunt Sarah likely to live 10 more years, or 15? I'll put my friend Paul down for 30, but he does eat a lot of red meat....yeah, I think 25 is probably more accurate. Didn't your cousin just get a cat? I think that's worth another 5 years. And my new workout plan should add a year or two.
Like I said, it makes perfect sense why they did it, and in some ways it's simpler and smarter than the alternatives, but I still hope they add an "ongoing" option in the future, even if it defaults to 50 years behind the scenes. I don't like playing the role of actuary whenever I add a birthday!
Bonus item: Check out this excellent 5-minute interview with Jason Fried of 37signals. It's a great introduction to the company and how they operate (including planning in terms of months, not years). I especially love his commitment to finding the best talent available wherever it is located. In software development, there's really no reason not to embrace distributed teams. And as Jason points out, instead of limiting your effectiveness, distance can actually make your team more productive.
I just finished Smart & Gets Things Done, Joel Spolsky's book on how to find and hire the best technical talent. I've been reading Joel on Software for years and have always enjoyed his perspective on development. This book is very short, easy to read, and a good collection of what you need to know.
The book includes a lot of different ideas, but here are the three that stand out for me.
1. The best developers do not submit resumes, you have to find them. A truly great developer will be hired by the first company that recognizes his or her talent and from that point on will be able to choose where to work. Your best hope is to find them (through blogs, conferences, books, open source projects, and word of mouth), befriend them, and convince them to join you by presenting incredibly challenging, high-impact projects, brilliant co-workers, freedom, and a terrific environment. Money is rarely the deciding factor.
2. Invest in interns. Since finding the best developers can be very difficult, develop a top-notch intern program to attract excellent college students. Treat them well, involve them in critical work, and spend the summer evaluating whether they'd be a good long-term fit. If you both agree, you have a great new hire in a year or two. Joel's company, Fog Creek Software, is famous for its internships. There's even a movie!
3. Treat them well. Once you have top talent, provide with anything that makes them more productive, and therefore better able to accomplish great things for your organization. We're not talking about perks or indulgences. Things like a quiet work environment with extremely limited interruptions (ideally a private office), a chair that makes it relatively painless to write code for 8-10 hours a day, multiple monitors and the right hardware and software tools. It is in your best interest for them to be insanely productive and to want to stay for a long time. These things are a small price to pay for that.
I definitely recommend the book, though it can feel a little thrown together toward the end. Don't read it without reading Getting Real by 37signals, though. In addition to endless insights on the development process and running a company, there is an outstanding chapter dedicated to staffing.
There is some overlap between the two approaches, but I find myself drawn to the 37signals perspective much more as it is focused on small teams where each person needs a variety of skills. Smart & Gets Things Done can apply to almost any technical position, but its heart is hiring hardcore software developers, not web developers and designers.
This weekend, we launched a new website for our fall message series - ineed2change.com. The site was a huge amount of fun to work on. It's the first Flash site I've ever been involved with, which presented some interesting challenges, as well as opportunities to do different things.
The site simply asks, "What do you want to change in your life?" You can post your thoughts, as well as read what everyone else has submitted. There's also a fantastic short film, with three more installments on the way.
The response has been incredible so far. It's inspiring to see so many people who want to truly change their lives, and very affecting to read their struggles, hurts, and dreams.
We've setup a Twitter feed of all the submissions. You can follow along at twitter.com/ineed2change.
Check out the site. The series begins 09-08-07. You can learn more about it here. If you want to promote the site, click "spread the change" for graphics and more.
My son Ben has been very busy this summer. His capacity for creativity amazes me. In the course of a week, he'll work on 3 Lego ideas, the prologue to a book, creating 2 computer games, writing a few blog posts, while continuously developing his very own universe called Weird World.
One of his obsessions (along with his friends) is the video game Super Smash Bros. A new version comes out in December and he already has a countdown on his desktop. The people behind the game are doing a great job building hype for the game by releasing information about it every day on a blog. He's been having fun creating lots of things about the game. He showed me this Keynote presentation he made the other day that highlights all of the currently announced characters and locations. Check it out...
» You know how I love clever phrasing. Here's the NYT blurb on Disney's new movie, High School Musical 2: "The Disney blockbuster that caught on like mono returns with a sequel."
» Great post by Wiley's Jim Minatel on the intersection between writing a blog and writing a book, and how to determine if a successful blog will lead to a successful book.
» Wil Shipley via 37Signals: "This is all your app is: a collection of tiny details."
» Here's an odd coincidence. I have something in common with Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill in Seattle. He recently celebrated his 15th wedding anniversary and is approaching the 20th anniversary of his first date with his high school sweetheart and future wife. Lori and I also started dating in high school and celebrated the exact same milestones earlier this year! The similarities end there, though. He has 5 children and has written 2 books with 7 (!) on the way. Me? 1 child, 1 book.
» After we finished watching The Wonder Years together, there was really only one good choice for our next family show... Happy Days! I forgot how much I used to love that show. I must have watched each episode quite a few times, because I've remembered all of them so far. The show has a really nice spirit (at least the early episodes), though there are a few inappropriate insinuations. The lesson of Happy Days seems to be that it's o.k. to mess up - your family and friends will be there for you no matter what. Not bad for a sitcom.
My blogging essay for Relevant Leader has been published at last. You'll find it in the Summer 2007 issue under the title, How Blogging Can Become a Ministry.
The whole process was very interesting as it was my first experience writing for a magazine. The long lead time everyone talks about is definitely odd compared to blogging. I submitted the final version nearly 5 months ago - not quite the instant gratification you find online. Thankfully, I still agree with what I wrote!
Also, this was the first time my words were completely in the hands of someone else. When I wrote The Blogging Church, every single word was my own and the only changes were from an excellent copy editor. In fact, I even had some flexibility on whether or not to incorporate those. I had control over the organization, chapter titles, index, and everything in between. With Relevant, and I'm assuming most publications, I simply turned over the piece and the rest was in their hands. They chose the title and substantially edited the article, though they did not alter the tone or meaning.
For those of you who are curious about the financial side, Relevant Leader does not pay contributors. The general idea is that publication serves as exposure for the writer, particularly new authors whose books are also advertised in the same issue or actually included in their quarterly shipment (my book was neither). It's also considered a step toward writing for the more widely read Relevant Magazine, where writers are compensated. I've always been a fan of Relevant and greatly respect their unique audience, so it is an honor to be included.
If you'd like to read the original essay in its entirety, it's available online in four parts.
With Apple's recent release of the Safari 3 beta, I decided to spend a week with Safari and see if I could make the switch. As much as I love Firefox, there some great, elegant touches in Safari that I miss from time to time. Plus, you can easily sync your Safari bookmarks with the iPhone, another nice incentive.
The result? Safari 3 is a really good browser. It is super-fast in my experience and a pleasure to use. There are definitely some bugs that cause a few sites to crash the browser, but I assume the final version released in October with Leopard will address those. Nevertheless, after a week, I'm back to Firefox. Here's why:
10. After all these years, simple web features such as the TypePad HTML toolbar still don't work in Safari due to JavaScript issues.
9. Safari only allows you to pick software on your hard drive to manage RSS feeds, whereas Firefox allows you to choose Google Reader and other web-based tools.
8. Google Docs doesn't officially support Safari and it shows.
7. In Firefox's preferences, you can turn on the ability to start searching the page as soon as you start typing (and you're not in a form field). It not only saves a keystroke, but it's really fast and gets you want you want immediately. Safari's new Find is a big improvement, but still not as dead simple.
6. Firefox offers easy bookmark syncing between different computers through Foxmarks or Google Browser Sync. Apple wants you to subscribe to .Mac for the same ability.
5. You can block nearly every ad in the world with Adblock and the Filterset.G Update (thanks, Brad!). By default, Safari blocks no ads on pages and doesn't even consistently block all pop-ups. Sites that were usable in Firefox are nothing more than living, moving billboards in Safari.
4. The del.icio.us Firefox extension that allows you to add bookmarks directly to del.icio.us from the browser is sweet.
3. The outstanding Google chat option in Gmail isn't available in Safari. It would nice if Google would make that clear as it can take a long time to figure out why you don't have the "Standard with Chat" option in Gmail on Safari.
2. Firefox has great session restore, so if the browser does crash or get closed suddenly, you can often get right back to where you were.
1. If you work with the web for a living, there are many Firefox extensions that are essential, especially Web Developer and Firebug. Other favorites include MeasureIt, ColorZilla and QuickProxy.
There are hundreds more terrific extensions that can make Firefox do just about anything you want and nearly all work on both Macs and PC's. If your primary browser is still Safari or IE7, Firefox is worth a try.
Robert Scoble spends 37 minutes with the guys from Twitter. Outstanding!
Recent Comments