Project OrielEmbracing Change

The links are a bit more esoteric this time, but I had to do something to off set the game link I sent last week. :-)

* Fortune recently updated their 100 Best Companies to Work For http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2007/full_list/ One of the things that put Google on the top was that their employees get to spend 20% of their time on independent projects.
* This week I met a guy who writes software programs that write software programs. In his case, he uses the open source programming language, Ruby http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ to write high-performance, multi-threaded web services in C++. These web services see traffic in the 20,000 – 40,000 request per second. He works for Dow Jones and likes it when they only have to add 20 servers for a new feature instead of 300.
* “Agile is the ability to react faster than the changes that are occurring” — Steve Adolph, Agile International Conference 2006
* I saw a local presentation on a plug-in for the web framework, Ruby on Rails http://www.rubyonrails.com/ that allows you to seamlessly and easily distribute large sets of data across multiple database servers. According to http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/recent there are currently 561 different plug-ins for Rails to assist with everything from a rich user interface to performance statistics on your web site.

Another week, another set of links (for better or worse!)

* Apple TV is now shipping. NYT has a good article on it calling the hardware “Basically, it’s an iPod for your TV” http://tinyurl.com/2d2dcq
* For the puzzle solvers in the group, http://www.planarity.net/ is a game where you must arrange the points so that no line crosses over another. I got passed level 5 and gave up.
* Did you know 59% of all public web servers run open source software? See http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2007/02/23/march_2007_web_server_survey.html for the charts, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_software for a primer on Open Source.
* Microsoft currently has an (unhealthy?) hold on the document and spreadsheet world with Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. There are, however alternatives such as http://www.openoffice.org/ which functions much the same way as Microsoft Office does. My current favorite however, is http://docs.google.com/ – Google’s online & in-browser, version of Word and Excel. They aren’t the fastest, but it works surprisingly well for an app-within-browser, and having documents available anywhere, easily searchable, and shareable has me hooked. Best thing about the alternatives: they are 100% free!

Enjoy!

I am happy to report that today is Friday and we are looking at highs near 40 this weekend.

* The telecom industry keeps changing by leaps and bounds lately. The latest thing I came across is www.grandcentral.com which aims to unify all of your phones and voicemail under one phone number. Free if you have just two to consolidate. What is interesting, is that people can call your grandcentral phone number, and your cell/home/work/etc phones all ring at the same time. By pressing * during the call, you can transfer the call from cell to home or vice versa to save on minutes. NYT has a good article on it: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/technology/15pogue.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin
* Quote: “They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night” – Edgar Allan Poe
* Retailers are often measured in success by the sales they generate per square foot. Saks: $362/square foot. Best Buy: $930. Tiffany & Co: $2666. Apple Inc. came in at a whopping $4032 with their iPod and computer stores. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/03/19/8402321/index.htm
* Everything you ever wanted to know about Jim Henson and the Muppets: http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Hello!

My apologies that this is coming out a whole day early, but I will be out of the office tomorrow and didn’t want to disappoint.

* Recently ran across this directory on the network that has Power Points of all the Summit presentations. I found the one from Google to be quite interesting. \\bpfile1\renewal\Marketing\Public\Summit Meetings\2007\PRESENTATION ARCHIVE
* Retail IT: The release date for Sedna (Pivotal 6.0) has been officially set: “end of December 2007″
* If you haven’t tried www.netflix.com yet, I’d suggest giving it a go. They have an engaging ajax-style web site, and the rental-movies-by-mail (with included return envelope) has fit well into my viewing habits.
* Quote: “The speed of the project is the speed at which ideas move between team members” – Alistair Cockburn
* Find yourself never having time to get around to those classic’s that you always wanted to read? Try http://www.dailylit.com where you pick the book, and they email a small bite-sized chunk of it to you each day.

Good Friday!

* I hope everyone has been staying safe with all this snow! In honor of slow drive times, Google Maps http://maps.google.com has recently added a traffic button in addition to their satellite view. Red=Stop & Go; Yellow=Slower than normal; Green=Clear Sailing; Grey=No current data. Check it out at: http://tinyurl.com/2hu8gv (image below is from about 2pm yesterday)
* Also, try Google Maps on your cellphone: http://www.google.com/gmm/
* Sort by tag/label instead of folders: A number of Web 2.0 sites such as http://del.icio.us http://flickr.com and http://gmail.com all use the concept. Say you are trying to sort your Christmas photos – do you put them into your 2007/Holidays/Chirstmas folder? Or perhaps your Holidays/Chirstmas/2007 folder? Are “holidays” a subset of 2007, or is 2007 a subset of holidays? And what if the pictures were taken on vacation? where does the vacation folder go? Enter tags. Everything goes into one location and each item is tagged as many times as you want. ’2007 holiday Christmas vacation” is now just 4 tags on your photo and searching on any one of them will get the pictures you were looking for. I use gmail.com for my personal email and was leery of the idea at first (folders are good, right?) but now that I’ve used it a while, I have to say that folders seem antiquated.
* Back on the road/driving theme: Our favorite exit off of 61 is getting a big update with round-abouts next summer: http://www.cottage-grove.org/project_updates_roundabout.shtml#simulations