Platform convergence?

Posted March 7, 2007 - 8:56am by chris

A Drupal colleague of mine, Steven Wittens just whipped together a new web application using the <canvas> tag, called ComicJuice. The ability to draw on a web page canvas is just one step closer to web applications that can do everything previous generation desktop applications could do.

Bad FAQs

Posted February 8, 2007 - 7:38am by chris

How often do you visit a web site looking for information about some product or service -- even open-source software -- and encounter a Bad FAQ like those described below? Don't become part of the problem in your own efforts.

From the forward to the Subversion manual:

A bad Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) sheet is one that is composed not of the questions people actually asked, but of the questions the FAQ's author wished people had asked. Perhaps you've seen the type before:

Q: How can I use Glorbosoft XYZ to maximize team productivity?

Good advice

Posted February 8, 2007 - 7:28am by chris

For the recovering perfectionists of the world, and I count myself among them, this bit of advice seems useful not just in software development, but in many aspects of life.

"It is important not to let the perfect become the enemy of the good, even when you can agree on what perfect is. Doubly so when you can't. As unpleasant as it is to be trapped by past mistakes, you can't make any progress by being afraid of your own shadow during design."

--Greg Hudson

Warrior Politics and social networks

Posted February 7, 2007 - 2:35pm by chris

I recently read Robert D. Kaplan's book Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos. It got me to thinking and so I read some more books and white papers about military response, complexity, networks and collaboration. There were a number of related themes, one of which is to push power and knowledge to the edge of the network, in order to solve the complexity issues -- as well as to serve as a critical part of a transformational change required to address today's and tomorrow's terrorist threats to nations.

Linux wins over Windows in Sweden

Posted February 7, 2007 - 10:38am by chris

I came across this news release today, which describes how the Swedish Armed Forces have chosen Red Hat Linux and open source over Windows. In fact, they are replacing their existing Microsoft installations with Linux.

This is a good sign. With any luck, other NATO or EU nations will make similar choices, which will take them in the direction of being able to more easily collaborate with each other on multi-national issues, like security and anti-terrorism.

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