Google earth - the new killing application ?

Amazing, unbelievable!!!
Take a look at google earth a desktop application to use google maps.
You can scroll the earth!
Totaly useless but so cool!

I went there

Since my previous post, I made other discoveries:

• Lisboa
  
• Niagara falls (nice)
• Barcelona
• Stockholms

Refactoring to Pattern

I just finished it! (youpi!)

Really interesting but honestly sometimes it is hard to read such a book during week ends ;)

But now I can use it a reference by finding codes smells and they're possible refactoring...

The Broken Window Theory

If you hadn't read "the pragmatic programmer" yet, go for it now!!

If you had then this blog entry about the broken window theory (and where it came from) is intersting.

I live here

Nice feature of google maps (mappy already did it move the blue bar in the uppper left icon):
I live here!

MIT weblog Survey

A survey about weblog use, it's long but you get detailed statistics.

Actually I'm an average guy!
The only interesting points are:
- I started blogging in 2004 wich seems to be the highest "blogging start year"
- I mainly use Instant messaging for work.
- My year of birth is the second most frequent of all bloggers.

I included a link to the MIT survey on the right of this page.

Requirements never change?!

Nice post, I already knew that but figures are still usefull when trying to maker a point!

* Out of hundreds of projects, there is no case in which requirements remained stable throughout design.
* Of more than 200 product developers, fewer than 5% had complete requirements before beginning design.
* On average, design commenced with only 58% of requirements specified.

UI is Hard

UI is Hard:

Poster #1: They need to stop hiring angry little men and romantically spurned women to design user interfaces.

Poster #2: But doesn't that describe most programmers?

Poster #3: No, that describes all programmers.

I'm more and more convince that usability and UI are more important than any other aspect of software development. Just like my previous post.

Another Quiz

After taking the "What leader are you?" quiz, here comes: "What is Your World View?"

You scored as Materialist. Materialism stresses the essence of fundamental particles. Everything that exists is purely physical matter and there is no special force that holds life together. You believe that anything can be explained by breaking it up into its pieces. i.e. the big picture can be understood by its smaller elements.

Materialist 88% Postmodernist 81% Cultural Creative 69% Existentialist 69% Idealist 56% Modernist 50% Romanticist 38% Fundamentalist 19% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

Usability guidelines

A succesfull story about developping a usable'program:
Clean, Cutting-edge UI Design Cuts McAfee?s Support Calls by 90%

Those 20,000 downloads of ProtectionPilot over a 10-week time span generated only 170 calls to McAfee's support linesapproximately one-tenth the volume that the company would expect, according to McAfee software development manager David Ries.(...)

With every feature, you have to make a design decision. We tried to make reasonable and good assumptions about setting limits; we actively eliminated options, and then validated those options with the users.(...)

Too many developers confuse what is possible with what is needed, he says. Youve got UI products out there with 200 different settings; as a user, youre not sure what to touch. Its like sitting in the cockpit of a 747.(...)

Its difficult, because some users will always request more. I think you have to decide what you want the product to do, and take a stand. Among the products Ive used that dont work well, most made the assumption that if they gave me more options Id be happier.(...)

For example, the word abort means something to developers, but it doesnt fly with users, Ries says. If you ask the programmer if something makes sense in his product, he will say that of course it does.(...)

A list of interesting articles about usability:

• errors
• comics
• ten years
• recruiting participants

Still about usability, what font is the most common font on any plateform? Font survey:

• window
• all platforms
• combined results

JUnit 4

Original Post from Kent Beck.

Other posts from TestNG: Cedric and mindstorm

Annotations, grouping tests...

What Is Software Design?

Excellent article that spawn the foundations of some agile methodoligies'concepts as explain by Martin Fowler.
Amazing it was written in 1992 !!

Google want to scan San Fransico

May be it's a joke anyway here's the article link.
The next step include it in google maps?!

The Game Console Controller Family Tree

no comments: http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/index.html