My Cantina

Monday mornings can be a hard slog, especially when you’ve worked a bit on the weekend and it is hard to know where the working week starts and ends, sometimes. That said I’ve had quite a good morning this Monday morning and am that much closer to the next Surfulater release.

I did hit a small roadblock though, stopped for a Coffee and hit the Blogs and my day has well and truly been made by a post by Kathy Sierra over at Creating passionate users titled If your software was on a date….

Kathy asks

“How would your software (or product, service, book, cause, etc.) behave on a date?” 

and goes on to list her “Dating Rules For Software” which include:

• Look your best
• Be fun. Don’t be negative. Be the one others want to be around.
• Be trustworthy and consistent.
• Don’t be fake.
• Be polite, be helpful.
• Be forgiving.
• Be sensitive, be a good listener.
• Don’t assume I’m an expert.
• Be fun.
• Don’t assume there’s no competition.
• Check your ego with the valet parking attendant.
• Married people really DO have more sex.

I loved reading this, the rules are down-to-earth, simple and sensible,yet so many software products would score poorly when judged against them. The explanations for each rule are a delight to read. It reminded me of “ABOUT FACE, THE ESSENTIALS OF USER INTERFACE DESIGN” by Alan Cooper which is a must read for all software developers. My approach to the design and implementation of the user interface for Surfulater was certainly influenced by Alan’s book.

I’d like to think Surfulater scores reasonably well against Kathy’s dating rules, but it is up to our users to pass judgment not me. I’d love to hear what you think.

Time to get back to working on my dating skills.

Back in June we put out a Press Release on Surfulater, which unfortunately didn’t get much coverage. I did however create a new opportunity for Spammers who must harvest e-mail addresses on Press Releases, but that’s another story for another day.

Over the weekend I was doing some Web searching and came across a mention of the press release and a link to it. The “I guess it had to happen” bit is the web site was all about surfing of the kind you do in the water, not on the web, and it was an Italian web site to boot.

Google is trialling a new service named Google Base that allows people to post and make searchable any type of content. You can post events, housing, jobs, products, second-hand vehicles etc. This seems like yet another step in Google’s relentless march for domination of the Net.In a description on the Google Base site, the company described the service as

Google’s database into which you can add all types of content. We’ll host your content and make it searchable online for free. 

To quote Infoworld

The service could put Google in competition with online auctioneer EBay Inc., which recently bought a minority share of Craigslist Inc., a classified listings site, observers say. EBay, based in San Jose, Calif., bought a 25 percent stake in San Francisco-based Craigslist, which covers a wide range of categories from jobs and apartments to used cars and personals. 

Other comments mention the rumoured Google Office and how you’ll be able to use it to edit content you place in Google Base.Google wants your car listings, events, etc. at ZDNet covers some more ground. I’m sure we will all be hearing a lot more about this is the coming days and months and like everything Google does we’ll watch and wait with interest.

If you are involved or have an interest in software or web development you have most likely heard mention of Web 2.0. I started hearing about Web 2.0 earlier in the year and to be honest I don’t have much of a feel for what it is about just yet, apart from it being the next big thing happening to the Web.

Earlier this month the Web 2.0 Conference 2005 was held in San Francisco and from what I’ve read so far it would have been a great conference to attend. I’ve just finished reading a brief wrap up of the conference titled The Future Of The Web over at Information Week. Here are a few quotes I found interesting.

Jeff Weiner, senior VP of search and marketplace at Yahoo acknowledges that the Web 2.0 concept, much discussed of late, has been overhyped. But, he adds, there’s something to it.

If you take O’Reilly’s analysis at face value, the “Web 2.0″ is about lots of things that client-server computing, or even the Internet, for the most part, hasn’t been. Instead of pages that load, it’s about sites that feel like software. Instead of software that runs in a browser or on a cell phone, it’s about apps that span devices. Instead of being all about content from Web producers, it’s about content being produced by people everywhere: blogs, wikis, digital photos. Web 2.0 is about viral marketing instead of advertising, though that sounds suspiciously like 1999. And it’s about the power of networks and the ability to deliver better results as more people use a service (think Google’s search, Amazon .com’s ratings, or Technorati’s blog commons).

Aaron Ricadela’s take on a 12-page treatise by Tim O’Reilly on what version 2.0 of the Web really means.

It’s either the start of something cool–or Internet Bubble 2.0. Maybe it’s a bit of both. Thomas Claburn

The article is well worth reading. It will be interesting to follow Web 2.0’s progress and see where Surfulater fits into it.

We are back from our big trip to Europe and getting back into the normal swing of full time work again. We did have a fantastic time and were fortunate to visit a treasure trove of amazing places. A very few highlights include Pont du Gard where Cherryl said I had an epiphany and she was right, Provence in general, Cinque Terre, Chianti, Florence and especially Venice. When you go to Venice make sure you visit Palazzo Ducale and grab an audio player. We visited many fine Churches, Cathedrals, Galleries and the like but Palazzo Ducale really stands out for me. The Borghese Gallery comes in a very close second though.

Our Notebook PC’s and other technology behaved well while we were on the road and we were able to provide near our usual high level of support, keep all the wheels in motion and our customers satisfied. This was a worry before we left and I’m reassured now that we are back that all of our planning and preparation paid off.

We are certainly rested, refreshed and enlightened and looking forward to getting back to work on the next release of Surfulater. Customer feedback is very good with so many of you telling us what a great program Surfulater is. A heartfelt personal thank you to you all. And please do keep the comments coming.

Finally a quick hello to everyone we met on our travels. Lets hope we catch up again some day somewhere.

I’m travelling overseas at present on a much needed and well earned break. Getting connected to the Internet while travelling is way, way easier than 5+ years back, but even still it isn’t anywhere near as easy as I’d like.

In some places we had a 24/7 broadband connection just like back home, but unfortunately this has been the exception not the rule. And of course the best laid plans don’t always work out as they are supposed to. (more…)

I’ve been going through the near annual acrobatics of setting up some new PC’s with all of our standard applications recently. You start off by locating all of the CD’s (for stuff that comes/came on CD) and installing these. Then register them as required. Sounds easy enough, and it sort of is, as long as you can find all of those CD’s. (more…)

Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users recently wrote an article Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak which I’m sure will resonate with everyone reading this. Kathy wants companies to stop adding features to products, for features sake, even if that means losing some potential customers. (more…)

I’m fanatical about backing up my work. Writing software is complex and costly business and the thought of losing work and having to do it over is one I don’t care to entertain. I backup to an off-site server several times a day, and to other PC’s including my Notebook which has everything on it I need to allow me to continue working, if something should happen to my Desktop PC. (more…)

Well the fact of the matter is Surfulater is barely visible on Google (apart from paid ads). So I’ve been been doing some research to try and see how we can rectify this sad state of affairs. It is pretty obvious that if folks can’t easily find Surfulater when they do a Google search, then the chances of them becoming a customer are pretty slim. (more…)