Archive for January, 2008
Thursday, January 31st, 2008
Job hunting in london
Here is the summary of job hunting tips that I typed up in 1999 when I first arrived in london.
—- start of email –
firstly recommend you buy a copy of “what color is you parachute” book and read though the interview chapter - you could actually read it in the book store:)
So far […]
No Comments » - Posted in technology by pbirnie
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
Edward Tufte Mobile Usability patterns
Iphone usability
Pattern: to clarify add detail
“clutter and overload are not an attribute of information - they are failures of design
if the information is in chaos - don’t start throwing out information - instead fix the design”
No Comments » - Posted in technology by pbirnie
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008
Nokia Dishes Out $153 Million for Trolltech
Nokia Dishes Out $153 Million for Trolltech
interesting - QT also have a version of their product that does web pages with components (automatically includes the javascript)
No Comments » - Posted in technology by pbirnie
Sunday, January 27th, 2008
Induction
The first software house that I worked at had a company policy which I think was quite useful. The first day for any employee - (Contractor or Permanent) was spent going and introducing yourself to at least 80% of the people in the […]
No Comments » - Posted in technology by pbirnie
Sunday, January 27th, 2008
Query log analysis is a bad solution to a problem - We need a client side mind reading device
In the world of search determining user’s query intent is a very hard problem
“Query intent” is the term used to refer to “what the user actually wanted”
For example: The user types “italian cooking” into the search box - How is the search engine supposed to know that the user wants “Italian cooking books” instead of […]
No Comments » - Posted in technology by pbirnie
Sunday, January 27th, 2008
White labeling - the answer to targeting different user demographics
The life cycle of a community product feature:
someone comes up with an idea
person suggest an idea to the product owner of community site
product owner says thats a good idea but some of our community will not like it
idea stays on shelf
Common Product owner statements are -
“no, that feature is too […]
No Comments » - Posted in technology by pbirnie
Monday, January 21st, 2008
“Weird Al” Yankovic - White & Nerdy
No Comments » - Posted in technology by pbirnie
Monday, January 21st, 2008
dot com bubble
No Comments » - Posted in technology by pbirnie
Friday, January 18th, 2008
Heros and Processes
When companies are small they are successful because of heroes. These are the handful of people that keep the company going and as the organisation grows, the ratio of heroes to other reduces and the company must start to […]
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by pbirnie
Friday, January 18th, 2008
twikis are better than blogs - conflicting forces in online media
I was using this blog entry to install MAMP(apache, mysql, php on mac) . The instructions are good and the author has invested a lot of time in working on it - however I ended up making the same mistake as one of the people who commented on this blog - The step “Next […]
No Comments » - Posted in technology by pbirnie
Friday, January 18th, 2008
director => passage of fire
To me having “director” in your title used to mean powerful person but I have come to realize that you don’t get to be a director without screwing some people over. In fact I have realized that if you want to be a director you need to pass though a passage of fire - […]
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by pbirnie
Friday, January 18th, 2008
Europe needs more power outages
Email from my parents in Johannesburg
”
Hi Paul,
Writing in torch light 4th night in row no light at home after 8pm ESKOM problem!!! good news they say it should be “ok” by 2016!!
All traffic lights have been out etc so trip of 1.5 km to Sandton City can take 30 min.
..
lots of love […]
No Comments » - Posted in technology by pbirnie
Tuesday, January 1st, 2008
Happy new year
May your happiness increase like the petrol price, your sorrows decrease like the zim dollar and you survival be as resilient as Zuma’s. Wishing you a happy new year.
