Dream It... Done. Mingle Proj-o-matic, a revolutionary new feature in Mingle, completely automates the software development process. Highly intuitive and powerfully predictive, this feature does away with the need to hire a large team of developers, testers and analysts for creating software. Simply create the story cards and watch as Mingle handles the rest! How Proj-o-matic works.
http://studios.thoughtworks.com/mingle-hidden/introducing-mingle-proj-o-matic
]]>Starting today, Alex Hung and I will develop our products separately. We started a partnership a few years ago to release our blog clients under the same banner. At that time, I was a full-time software developer at Kula Co. Ltd. However, I'm now working for Technorati Japan and Alex has his own full time job. I also have some changes coming up in my personal life with have less time to devote to administrative matters related to the sales of the Windows version of ecto. We have been developing independently as well, so at this point a partnership does not make much sense anymore.
http://infinite-sushi.com/software/ecto/news/2008/03/separating_ways.php
]]>Story Highlights Sydney among first world cities to plunge into darkness Saturday night Building and landmarks worldwide turning off lights for this year's Earth Hour This year 26 major world cities, 300-plus other communities have signed up Even popular search engine Google has displayed a completely black Web pageNext Article in World »
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/29/lights.out.ap/index.html
]]>The iPhone SDK has been out for couple of weeks now and I've been using it to develop an application for my work as a technology demonstrator. My experience thus far has been largely positive. I wasn't surprised by how well-made the SDK is, even at this beta stage. The amount of work involved in releasing any SDK, let alone one that is so tightly scrutinized, cannot be underestimated.Consider that I am learning three new things simultaneously: programming in Objective-C, learning how to use Xcode, and what is available in the iPhone SDK, I am going to describe the whole experience instead of just confined to the SDK...
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/03/28/dev-chair-iphone-sdk-experience/
]]>SCI FI's Emmy and Peabody Award-winning original series "Battlestar Galactica" returns for its fourth original season on Friday, March 28 @ 10pm ET/PT with two back-to-back half-hour specials. The first new episode will premiere the following week, Friday, April 4 @ 10pm ET/PT. "Battlestar Galactica: Revisited" (10pm) will serve up the essential information on the series' past three seasons, providing the uninitiated with an introduction to the characters, relationships and spine-tingling drama that have captured the imagination of audiences around the world. "Galactica's" executive producers, Ronald D. Moore and David Eick serve as guides, providing insights and revelations about the critically-acclaimed series. "Battlestar Galactica: The Phenomenon" (10:30pm) is a celebrity-studded celebration of the show's impact on pop culture. Interviewees, including Seth Green, country music'sTop Male Vocalist of 2007 Brad Paisley, and The Soup's Joel McHale, and others, wax poetic about why "Battlestar Galactica" is one of the best frakkin' shows on television. As season 4 opens, the last remnants of humanity continue their search for a new home, the thin line that separates them from the rapidly evolving Cylons is being redrawn. "Galactica's" crew, rocked by Starbuck's sudden and mysterious return from the dead and her claims that she has been to Earth and can lead them there attempts to make sense of the inexplicable. Meanwhile, four members of the fleet are still reeling from the revelation that they are Cylons and have been all along.
]]>I really don't have time for this, but I'm going to do it anyway. I'm starting a new blog post series that's roughly "How do I know what the best way to write software is?" Before I get started on it, I wanted to talk just a little bit about how we know something.
]]>Logicalis have put together some advice on how to reduce the impact of IT on the environment. The suggestions range from reducing hardware requirements through virtualization and other consolidation techniques to old favorites like double-sided printing, video-conferencing, electronic forms and turning off your desktop at night.
http://www.digitaldimsum.co.uk/2008/02/02/can-virtualization-save-the-real-world/
]]>As the Writer's Strike continues into the end of January with no real end in sight, most people are running out of quality TV programs to watch. Heck, we're even running out of quality-less programs to watch. Unless you are a fan of reality shows such as Gladiator, there isn't much coming in the next month or so, if at all, for this rapidly evaporating season.
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/01/27/dev-chair-a-geek-solution-to-the-writers-strike/
]]>Good computer science graduates do not make good software developers. Really, I mean it. But for the polar opposite reason that these two New York University computer science professors think.When I was in high school my physics teacher once told us, "All physics experiments work. They just may not work the way you want them to."This encapsulates neatly what software development is all about. On one hand, it is science. It is deterministic. Each programming language statement performs exactly as stated (baring bugs in the compiler, or the SDK, or the OS). On the other hand, software development is closer to engineering where years of experience allows a software developer to spot patterns in the model and apply them to build a system.Unfortunately, just as in physics, computer science courses do not prepare students for what comes after graduation. Skills that are considered crucial in almost all commercial software projects are either not taught in college or are only touched upon. This disparity between the skills graduates possess and what the industry is looking for means it generally takes one to two years of working in real life project for a graduate to become fully trained.For example, here is Stanford University Computer Science course schedule for 2007 & 2008 (spring, summer, autumn, and winter). There are plenty of computer science courses such as Object-Oriented Programming (in C++), plenty of advanced topics such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and algorithm design. But there is only one course that teaches software engineering, and one on C# and .Net Framework.Where do students learn about project management, requirement gathering, testing, builds & deployment? Or soft skills such as how to interact with customers and clients? Do colleges expect students to acquire these skills by themselves on the side? How would the students know they are picking up the 'right' skills, and not just acquiring bad habits?Look at it from another angle. How useful is it for students to know how to design and program an OS kernel? Or to know object oriented programming in C++, verses a 'modern' languages such as Java, C#, Ruby, or even VB.NET? How many OS programmers do we need compared with the number of regular commercial software application programmers? Unless the products are a new OS or a new programming language, I would rather have engineers who build applications on my team than computer scientists who theorize and argue the merits of a design pattern.One explanation given by colleges is that they are not there to dictate what type of role a graduate would/should take in the industry and therefore they are there to teach the fundamentals so the graduates will have the basic skills to further specialize. One may wish to be a developer while another may wish to be a tester, but personally I feel it is more of an excuse than an explanation.Yes, the industry changes rapidly. Tools or techniques fashionable a last yeara are replaced by something new and shiny this year. Does it not sound oxymoronic to anyone that a computer science department is unable to react to these changes like the industry? Why bother teaching students how powerful and wonderful computers are and how they can improve our lives when the very people teaching these concepts are not keeping pace with the industry?If computer science departments are not willing to prepare students for real life jobs, perhaps another department (Electrical Engineering for example) or a completely new one should take over that role? After all, you wouldn't want a scientist to build a bridge now, would you?
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/01/10/dev-chair-do-we-want-scientists-or-engineers/
]]>Thinking back to my own upbringing I feel sure that the problem lies elsewhere. All too often I watch my adult friends back away from a simple arithmetical calculation with the words "I never could do maths". This is not an excuse they would dream of making publicly with regard to reading. Perhaps, just as we try so hard to instil a love of great writers in successive generations, we should be looking for more stories like that of Ramanujan, to inspire all our young people with a lasting love for the beauty of numbers.
]]>AS A RESULT of my Sunday Times column we have received a French writ from Max Mosley and the FIA with regard to comments I made in September about the so-called Ferrari and McLaren spy scandal and the ensuing $100m fine for McLaren. We even appeared on the impressively named World Motor Sport Council’s agenda approving the use of the FIA’s money to pursue us. I had previously debated the energetic manner in which Mosley was apparently pursuing McLaren.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/formula_1/article3021312.ece
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