Slugging it out over maps

Google and Yahoo are going to slug it out over mapping. MSN wants to join in too. In a touch of synchronicity both G and Y released their mapping APIs today so all us geeks can play. Smart move.

After sales surprises

It’s easy to forget that sometimes it’s the little touches of quality and honesty that shine through after you’ve bought a product that can make all the difference. In this interview with the top US engineer for Honda, the power of a core ‘do the right thing’ value comes through: Q: Maybe it’s just hard [...]

Soylent Green

Something big is happening on the internet, right now, under our noses, and we’re involved. The cluetrain has finally arrived, though in British Rail style it’s been a bit delayed. From time to time, I come across a blog entry that I know I’ll be talking about and thinking around and plagiarising for weeks to [...]

Wikis and command and conquer management

A disappointingly short interview with Jimbo Wales, the founder of wikipedia nevertheless contains some great insights about the nature of wiki-like collaboration on corporate intranets. I like best his judgement that it’s good when “people don’t have to get permission to do something useful.” This feels right to me – I would rather that my [...]

Mock objects and life expectancy

For my sins, I’m a smoker and caffeine-addict. On a previous project, before I discovered the mock-objects religion, it took so long to run unit tests before a code check-in that I had time to nip downstairs, get a coffee, have a quick cigarette and be back upstairs before the green bar was halfway done. [...]

A mac developer speaks

“[this] whole talk is about how if you follow your dream you’ll not only be happy, but you’ll also be financially secure, and it’s easier to believe that kind of advice when it’s given to you by someone not LIVING IN A SHACK DOWN BY THE RIVER.” I’m not a big fan of powerpoint-style presentations. [...]

A test by any other name

RubyOnRails comes with built-in support for unit and functional testing – great for us test-driven development whackos. In a new rails application we’re developing, we used the excellent salted hash login generator to kick off the development of our site’s authentication. The login generator ships with tests – yippee! Since it’s a widely used extension [...]

It’s a whole new internet

“I think the large, feature-rich multimillion dollar IT systems aren’t working as promised.” Too right. This quote comes from a great interview about the new online triumvirate of wikis, weblogs and RSS and how they’re really about people and collaboration. The new internet is not about technology any more than newspapers are about ink. I’ll [...]

Microsoft called me a dinosaur

Microsoft posters have appeared all over London. Apparently, whereas I thought I was a technically-savvy chap, I am in fact a dinosaur. Great way to talk to potential customers, Microsoft. Here’s another blogger’s take which is right on target.

Gold in them there blogs

Thanks to Matt Galloway’s blog for pointing me to BlogPulse. One set of choices that presents itself as CTO of a start-up is what technology we should be using? does it actually matter? and how do we judge a technology’s fitness? I don’t think it matters as much as some people would have you believe [...]