Why Facebook Matters

I’m New to Social Computing

I’ve been pretty intrigued by Facebook since I heard of it a couple years ago.  I was introduced to the site by my business partner, Scott Spencer, when we started BizZoo.  We are no longer business partners (he got busy, I got whiney, the startup started stopping up) but we are still friends.  We don’t hang out anymore, nor do we really keep in touch, but I still see his updates on my Facebook profile.  BizZoo didn’t make the cut, actually it never left the drawing board, but Scott and I were both captivated and inspired by the concept that people can socialize online and conduct normal, valuable human behaviors via their keyboard and mouse.  I am on to a new (and completely kick-ass) start up, Scott is getting his MBA, and we will certainly run into each other one day someday.  After all, he lives about 2 miles from me. 

Facebook Surprises Me by Taking Me Back

Recently, I had an email from Facebook that informed me that Jeff Bailey had added me as a friend.  The funny thing is that he and I were really good friends when we were kids.  Having him add me now is a little ironic.  He then suggested, again via Facebook, that I add Jay Hargreaves.  Now, Jay and I were about as tight as any two boys could be growing up in small town Wisconsin.  I still remember his dad, when I was about ten, explaining the virtues of fiber for an aging man (for reasons I won’t get into).  Jay was there when I hit a rock and launched from my bike after hitting a small stone speeding down the hill next to St. Mary’s and his mom stripped me down and scrubbed the gravel out of my bleeding shoulder.  I had the hots for his older sister.  He and I have not seen each other, nor spoken, in decades. 

The Information Generation

The really interesting thing about Facebook is that its not trying to capitalize on something people might be looking for and its not trying to convince us that we need something we have so far done fine without.  It’s merely a site designed to provide a social medium on which people can be themselves, not some pumped up alter ego, and connect with other people whom they may or may not know in a traditional capacity.  Most other sites are trying so hard to be what Facebook is while Facebook is just trying to be transparent.  

While the Internet may have made information accessible, it did not make it useful.  In fact, it made it overwhelming.  Its like dumping six dump trucks full of copper wire on top of a battery and hoping a super computer will come out of it.

People have a tendency to take a new resource and apply it in unpredictable ways.  Resourcefulness is probably our most powerful characteristic.  I’d say opposable thumbs is an old and tired theory.  Out of this abundance of available information and the desire to access it came faster access.  From hyper-connectivity came the ability to interact, real time, online.  From that came sites like MySpace and YouTube but my site to watch has got to be Facebook.  Its an organization of applied social computing that has inherent value and immediate applicable utility.  Its pretty freakin’ fun, too. 

Synaptic Enhancement

I started playing guitar when I was about 14.  I practiced obsessively and got pretty good at it.  I moved down the A town to pursue it as a career.  I then got into computers and found my priorities changing and, when my son was born, took a break from it.  I played a little but my skills atrophied.  When you learn a skill such as guitar, the neural connections between your brain and the muscles that execute the action are strengthened and thickened.  They become more efficient.  Essentially, you have enhanced throughput to those end points.  I think this is a great metaphor for this social computing phenomenon that we are a part of.  When I started playing again, I woke those old pathways again but they weren’t as strong.  Eventually, after renewed practice, I became as proficient as I’d been and eventually got even better. 

As we continue to become more socially connected with both new and old acquaintances, we become more socially adept (I am somewhat of a social nitwit in real life).   Our interconnections become more efficient.  Take, for example, organizing a gathering of friends.  That’s a simple and common application, after all.  Now that I have access to these old friends, I could let them know I was planning a trip.  I have a few close friends’ phone numbers.  With little effort, we could all meet up at some club and throw down a few pints in celebration of friendship.  Extend that to business and consider how much easier it is to stay in touch with someone after years of silence should you recall that so and so was really good at such and such.  I know I have met several people, along the way, who I felt would make really good allies in some future business endeavor.  I’ve lost touch with them because tools like Facebook didn’t exist.  I very well may run into them again, perhaps on Facebook, and I’ll certainly remain connected going forward.  My future nervous system will remain more intact than my historical one.

The Internet brought us access to information.  Google organized that information and gave us the ability to find and use it.  MySpace gave us the ability to have an online personality.  Facebook organized that and gave us the ability to connect and interact.  People are far more important than facts.  That was fun but it made me want to play guitar.  My synapses need some radiohead to reinforce them.

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VMWaqre snapshots vs backups

I’m a little confused this evening as I repeat the process of shrinking my Virtual Machine. I had copied my VM’s from my internal HD to my newly formatted (Mac OS Extended (journaled)) and then defragged my 72G Vista image. I then tried to sdelete the drive to clear out unused space when I inadvertently ran out of space on the external hardrive. I had to kill VMWare. Suprisingly, the VM came back up without an issue. The image is now 97G. Not exactly what I was after. Aparently, sdelete uses a lot of temp space and it left it allocated.

I decided to repeat the process on my internal harddrive and then copy the result to the external. Yes, I’ll copy the image before I sdelete.

So that leads me to my question regarding snapshots. VMWare Fusion supports one snapshot per VM. Once you create one, you cannot shrink your disk. When you discard a snapshot, it takes for-freakin-ever for VMWare to “clean deleted files”.

Assuming you had some free space on a drive somewhere, why would you use snapshots at all rather than the very easy, fast “copy the file” and backup the whole thing. You ca have as many copies as you have space so there’s no “single snap limitation”.

If you could maintain multiple snapshots, or branched machines like in VirtualPC, then there’s a point to using them. I just don’t see the point in Fusion and wish I wasn’t waiting fr those deleted files to be cleaned up. Thought that’s what I was doing by deleting them

Tags: VMWare

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Formatting Extenal Hard Drives

Switching from Windows to Mac is a many faceted adventure. I initially formatted all my disks as Fat32 because I still use Windows quite a bit and wanted interoperability. However, I discovered that this format has a file size limit. I believe its 2G. That’s pretty small considering my virtual machines are almost all over that.

Most drives come formatted for Windows. Windows has a work around so you can work with larger files. For my purpose, I want native support for large files so I am reformatting my drive for Mac. Which format?

According to Apple Support, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is the most reliable.

You will not be able to read this disk from Windows but you can make it available through VMWare to your Virtual Machine.

Tags: VMWare

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Browser Tools, Blogging and Simplifying Workflow

I tend to be a creature of habit. For example, I LOVE the Coby hamburger at Food 101 in The Virginia Highlands (1397 North Highland Ave, Atlanta, GA 30306). Whenever I eat there, I get the hamburger. They have awesome crab cakes and just about everything is fantastic but I always get the burger.
I do the same thing with other aspects of my life. Every now and then, however, I discover something that makes me regretful that I hadn’t tried it earlier (more on that later). I use Windows LiveWriter to blog. Its awesome, really. However, I have to fire it up. If my VMWare Vista isn’t running, I have to launch that. If it was suspended, that takes a minute.
I’m writing this post using ScribeFire. ScribeFire is a FireFox extension that is tightly integrated into your active browser window. You get alot of context at your fingertips that will save time when creating links to resources outside your blob (or even in your blog). It appears to have social bookmarks built in as well. I also added the del.icio.us bookmark add-in from Yahoo because it looks pretty feature-rich. Navigating to Del.icio.us turns out to be the barricade between me and my social network savvy self. With all the machine refreshes I’ve had lately, and the sheer number of computers I use every day, I am sharply beginning to realize the value of centralized, shared bookmarks.
While I still expect to use Windows LiveWriter to blog in general, providing quick access and integration with browsing is a crucial efficiency enhacement that I wish Safari had. I’ve been a Safari fan for a while now but I may start using FireFox on my mac now that FireBug is compatible with FF 3.0.
I couldn’t program as efficiently as I do without FireBug. Period. I expect my blogging will increase due to ScribeFire. While I sometimes get too busy to see what tools are emerging, failing to do so costs me and everyone around me time and money. Being diligent in purposefully discovering new options for old behaviors is a very valuable exercise. For example, I found that adding Food 101 Truffled Honey Mustard to their Coby burger is terminally delicious.

Posted in Blogging, Programming | 1 Comment »

Browser competition 2008

I haven’t checked stats for a long time.  I used to be very concerned about which browsers were most popular and therefore had to support.  These days I write w3c compliant xHtml and test in IE and FF.  That usually means Safari works fine.  Every now and again, I yuck it up on my BlackBerry.  If I can legitimately use the site on the BlackBerry and it looks relatively consistent between IE and FF, I move on! 

IE comes with Windows so it goes without saying that the average consumers will use IE.  I’m astounded by how many people still have IE6, as Microsoft is so persistent with Windows Update, but IE 6 is still a lingering Png hater.  Those people who choose, for whatever reason, to use an antiquated browser will have a down-level experience. 

FireFox has done a great job providing a free-IE-alternative that actually surpasses IE in many, many ways due to an awesome plug-in (add-in) architecture and devoted community support.  It also happens to be standards compliant, an absolutely critical feature.

Browser Beefs

So these two browsers are both duking it out for Internet supremacy while the rest are dismissed as geek toys that real clients would never use.  Since they are in a feature war, performance has been declining.  On the other hand, one company has focused on making a browser that is lightweight enough to run on a handheld yet give full browser feature support such as JavaScript and real html page rendering with css. Safari is an incredibly efficient browser that is also standards compliant so it isn’t difficult to support nor challenging to use. 

Firefox and IE suffer from the same problem: bloat

The simple act of surfing the Internet is no longer the simple act of surfing the Internet as we have phishing filters, content filters, experience trackers, toolbars, etc.  I couldn’t live without FireBug for FireFox.  However, for regular surfing, I just want an Html browser, nothing more.

The Sleeper

Safari not only is the default browser on the ever more popular Mac computers, its the browser on the iPhone and iPod Touch (I think, will know shortly).  For this reason, the Safari browser is very quickly becoming a main stream browser. 

I’m quite pleased with this.  Recently, I’d started using Safari on Windows.  My home computer had gotten so bogged down and slow that that it was almost unusable even to browse the Internet.  It has 760MB or so of Ram and plenty of HD space but I’d been too liberal with service based tools and everyone needs their always on "helper" or "update" service installed with their software so just launch windows and I’d start paging.  

I had switched, almost exclusively, to Firefox.  About a year ago, however, FF started crashing whenever there was Flash on a page.  As it turns out, there is Flash on almost every website, once you leave Google, and FF was completely useless with this problem.  I tried reinstalling Flash.  I uninstalled FireFox, deleting everything I could find, only to find it happily restored its old settings and bad behavior from some unknown location.  I couldn’t reasonably find all the FF references, in order to fully remove it, because searching the hard drive took freakin’ forever.  The computer was dying a slow, slow death and was asking for the hammer treatment.

After installing iTunes (because I got an AppleTV and had to), I discovered that, using Safari, I could launch the browser, load Google, complete my search, and walk away before IE would load the first Google home page.  IE would pop sometime after I’d gone to bed, I think.  Even when IE was already open and waiting, I could launch and use Safari before IE would finish rendering a page.  I recently reformatted that computer and installed a clean version of XP.  Oh how I miss how a clean XP install is so snappy.  The same is not true of Vista, unfortunately (at least not, typically, before the last service pack.  Perhaps they’ve affected some improvement?).  After my clean XP install, I quickly changed the default browser to Safari and refused the IE7 updates (I guess I’m one of those people mentioned above.  I’m also overdoing the parenthesis).  The computer that was ready for the scrap pile is now a perfectly suitable Internet machine with games for my 5 year old and Open Office for when someone sends you a document in your email. 

When you click an Internet link, Safari happily services your request within seconds.  It launches super fast now.  It browses ridiculously fast.  Pop-up blocker?  not so good.  That’ll discourage me from wasting time on those sites that pop windows.  If you are a site that pops windows and you aren’t peddling porn, you suck.  If you are peddling porn, you definitely don’t care and you probably also swa||0%.

Posted in Windows | 3 Comments »

Firefox calculates Table row/cell height incorrectly

Usually its IE, these days, that consumes my spirit as I try to make pixels submit to my command.  Back in the Netscape days (thank goodness that browser is long gone), IE seamed like it could do no wrong because Netscape was such an example of code gone wrong.  Now Firefox gets the same holier than thou reputation. 

I’m creating a range bar chart in html.  Why Html?  Well, because we already purchased Dundas.  SInce it cost as much as a full MSDN license, we aren’t at liberty to try competitive tools.  Not to slander too hard but D is such a pain in the ass that I’d rather draw raw html than attempt a chart in that throw-back to Netscape quality and expected behavior.  Note to tools vendors and their developers and project / product managers.  Usability testing is your friend.  Just because the developer who wrote the code can make it render a really nifty chart does not mean your product is meeting the needs of the public.  You have to bring in real users to see what comes when they try to implement the feature…  (if only I always took my own advice)

A range bar chart is just boxes so why not draw with html?

The problem

Notice the second bar.  Isn’t 9.3 less than 10?  Hmmm…  Inspecting the html in Firebug reveals that the percentages are correct.  No matter what I do, the larger bar stretches just a hair further than it should and winds up below the bar low to its right.  If I reduce the range, things clean up. 

FireBug also revealed that setting the font-size to a very small number inside the font-less tables fixes this weird issue. 

        TABLE.barchart{
            height:100px;
            width:100%;
            border-collapse: collapse;
            table-layout:fixed;
           font-size:1px; /*setting this fixed incorrect bar height in ff*/
        }

Oooooo, thas mo’ bettah!

Don’t look a gift horse in the teeth

I have no idea why that makes any difference.  Perhaps someone has an idea?  I really don’t care!  It worked.  I can move on.  I don’t necessarily like having css in my stylesheet that is noting but a hack but there are certainly a few "IE Hack"(s) so why not stuff in one "FF Hack" ?

Posted in Programming | No Comments »

Agile Story Cards

I’m back to basics at my new job.  We haven’t really needed to oversee our project with process, not really, until recently. Things are ramping up.  We’re launching an amazing product and there are several opportunities on the heels of it.  Some of them may actually involve generating revenue.  We are a start up in every sense of the world: pre money, pre market.

Our new Process

I’ve used Scrum for the last few years, and with much success.  To capture and track work details, I’ve used Rally and, most recently, Mingle.  Both products are best of breed.  I’ve tried lots of others, none measure up.

Agile Software Tools

Here’s the easy way to choose which one to use:
a) If you are new to, or have less than a year or more of solid, successful agile experience and/or your team is of varying degrees of agile expertise, choose Rally.  Rally provides solid guidance and the tool fits the process very well.  By using the tool and following the extensive guidance provided, you’ll get better at your own agile process and learn more easily and quickly.  I would then also recommend some training from Rally, they are very, very good and very down to earth.

b) If you have been an agile nut for two or more years ad you KNOW how to run an agile shop.  Now, dont lie for my sake, you’re not telling me, your telling yourself.  If you really have a solid grasp of the principle concepts behind agile development process and methodology, Mingle is superior simply for its flexibility.  You can set it up how you prefer and the interface is very clever.

The Rusty Factor

So, which do you use, Rusty?  Neither!  I brought these tools to the table at my new company and got everyone to commit to using them.  They never did, but they committed.  Yesterday, Bill and I planned the remaining work we knew had to be done this month.  Even in an agile shop, deadlines can be set in stone, right?  We have a date to meet where there just isn’t any wiggle room.  He and I story carded on 4×6 note cards and then went across the street to the cafe to estimate.  An hour later, we had a very confident estimate for how much work we had remaining.  We brought this back and then leveled with the boss.  During this short meeting, I explained that someone had to enter the details into Mingle (the tool that won the dice toss).  Christian explained that he would rather call and ask where we stand than log into some tool, like it or not.  Actually, kind of like it.  When I explained that the tool gave us reporting and history and documentation, he said, "so what, who cares?" 

Forgetting to Think before we Believe

Up until that minute, I felt that being able to report velocity and back test estimates and track defects against features was important.  Is it?  Really?  Not really.  Its important to get the job done, do the right job and work as efficiently as possible.  Its important to pull your weight and grow so that you can earn increases in comp.  However, reports, burndown charts, etc. are mechanisms for managers to herd cattle.  They need to know which cattle have strayed and need a zap on the ass.  They need to know when the herd could be herding faster and when they can whip and when they should not.  However, a good teem needs none of this.  A good team is empowered and motivated by self interest that aligns with company strategy.  A good employee is one that wants to succeed as a business as much as the owner does.  So don’t believe the masses that you need reports and projections of velocity based on historical tracking.  Believe you need great people and nothing less.

So I am using 4×6 note cards on a cork board to plan and track projects.  How refreshing.

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Internet Service Providers in Competition for Worst Service Award

I remember, and I am not that old, when companies were built upon value and customer service meant providing service to customers.  I remember when speaking to a customer service representative meant you had the attention of, and representation from, the company.  I even remember when you could speak to a manager and a fair outcome was almost certain.  My mother used to call and complain about everything.  She’d get free comps sent her way all the time and she’d still huff if things weren’t perfect.  Its seems the pendulum has swung the other way.  Now you can’t get decent service from major providers unless you have a relative with authority in the company.  Did over-complainers kill quality service?  Did the global economy destroy local concern?  Did my mother create an unrealistic expectation in me for satisfaction in retail?

AT&T

Now that I know what happened, this is a shorter story.  I’ve been with BellSouth for a long, long time.   ATT&T bought them.  So, now I am with AT&T.

On June 10th, my Internet service went down, unexpectedly.  I tried everything I knew to reconnect.  I reset my modem, removed my wireless and plugged it directly into the computer, etc.  I called Tech support.  They indicated that I was disconnected for non-payment.  I retrieved my bill only to verify that it showed my last payment as received on time and paid in full.  WTF?!  Billing would be open the next day between 8 and 5.  Frustrated (understatement), I called Comcast, instead.

Comcast

When I announced, at work, that I was switching to Comcast because AT&T was unreliable and their staff incompetent, Christian laughed and said, "Oh, you’ll be real happy with them."  I couldn’t imagine anyone being less helpful than AT&T (formerly BellSouth) employees.  Before I go on, I’ll note that the AT&T acquisition has resulted in more polite, incompetent staff.  They are nice, just not real smart.

So I ordered my Comcast Internet and Phone and was told that I would have to wait more than a week for the installation.  Fast forward to July 2nd, and my wife stayed home to accept installation.  No show, no call.  I clearly indicated that our home phone was NOT a good contact number.  I found a message on my home answering machine from 3:30 pm, one call, that a technician was there.  Unfortunately, he did not knock or ring the bell (as evident by the fact that the dog didn’t go apes$#&, so we did not get our Internets installed.   I, of course, called the next day. 

Who fights with potential customers?

When I had ordered the service, they needed the last four from the social of the person who was home.  Of course, I gave them my wife’s.  Unfortunately, she had worked from 8pm that night until 8 the next morning and was sound asleep in bed.  Since she had been up saving lives and bringing new babies into the world, I felt her sleep was more important that Comcast’s security question.  I explained that she was sleeping and would like to provide alternate information to verify my identity.  The CSR then became argumentative, antagonistic and hostile with me.  She said, "I cn’t do anything until you give me that number!"  I replied that ‘d, "already given here 6 pieces of personally identifying information that should suffice."  Her response was that, "anyone could pick that up off a pice of your mail." 

Excuse me but its Comcast!  All I want is a new friggin’ appointment for installation.  I’m not even a customer yet.  Am I at risk for someone maliciously scheduling an install of HBO at my address?  I really couldn’t believe what was happening. 

A year or more ago, we ordered cable television.  A very similar thing happened to my wife and she canceled the order.  When I returned home that day, she was pissed off.  It ain’t easy to do that and we didn’t consider Comcast again until we were without Internet for two weeks. 

So I canceled the order.  Its remarkable that I attempted to purchase service twice and never so much as got the cable run to the house.  Perhaps its fate.

AT&T back online

A it turns out, AT&T reps were very polite.  They weren’t able to get my service activated until I called half a dozen times and spoke to twice as many people.  The last person I spoke to in billing was very professional.  He managed to get my service turned on, much to the tech support representatives surprise, while we spoke.  He asked her to call me back but she said, "we’re not supposed to do that."  He referred to her as "Tech Support" and she called him "Billing" even though they had both stated their names wen they came on the line.  Michael eventually explained that my service had been issued a non-payment cancellation order in error.  In other words, they completely f’ed up.  Even so, I am not entitled to ay compensation or refund for my lost time or frustration.  He insisted that on my bill after next I would see a credit for the time from when my service was disconnected to when the order was placed to reinstate it.  I decided not to raise issue with the fact that it took them an additional 5 days to process their reinstatement order.  I was too exhausted from all the long ass calls.  I won’t tell you how long I stayed on hold each time, because I could tell you.  I just made use of my speaker phone and pretty much stayed on the phone like a for sale sign on a suburban townhouse.

Disconnected Services

In software, we try very hard to operate services so that they are autonomous of each other.  This aids in efficiency through change.  However, I realize now that sometimes its important for systems that depend on each other to know some details about each other.  In this example, it would have been helpful if tech support could understand how billing works, particularly since it appears billing is responsible for service activation. 

A the Award for Crappiest Internet Service in the South?

If you consider customer care and personal treatment to be moderately important, Comcast is the worst provider you could choose.  Sure, Bellsouth will probably go out with every thunderstorm and they might even turn you off, just for fun.  However, when you call them, and you will have to cal them, they will treat you like a customer that they want to keep even if they don’t deserve you.  I can’t tell you what the technical side of Comcast service is like, I never made it past, "hello"

Posted in Atlanta | 1 Comment »