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December 27, 2004

factors that impact implementing an agile software development methodology

Factors that impact implementing an agile software development methodology

A place to follow-up concerning agile software development methodology

December 23, 2004

Generation C

Have some time to spend? Then take a peek at this newsletter. The edition defines what it terms the "Generation C". And all of us are part of it, the generation which unleashes its creative potential into the world... with products such as Apples iLife suite, digital cameras, videocams, etc..

By the way; I can recommend to subscribe to this newsletter. They don't send out mails too often and it is always worth a read.

boooh... scared ya little robot!

Would love to go to this exhibition.
It never occured to me before but it's true that we are bombarded with the message that robots would some day control us. Why so? Why should they turn against their creators? If ever they would, it must have been a human to program that behavior into them. :)

December 22, 2004

XP teamroom

Team Room

A visual explanation on how an eXtreme Programming team works.
Actually, how an XP office space could look like.

December 20, 2004

IBM to save the day

Really only want to point our readers to this article. I am an addict reader of Cringely. My hope is that Apple can play a bigger role than he says they will... as a newly transformed Mac addict.

Might IBM save the day by keeping Microsoft in check?

December 14, 2004

Collective Inelligence: boosting from within

Blog of Collective Intelligence: What Is My Collective IQ? - Boosting CI from Within

A tiny bit brainy but clever and well-formulated analysis of way to self-improve and boost connectivity within a collective mind

Got me thinking

Geolocalization of your mobile now available in Belgium

Worried parents willing to know where their teens are? Wife looking for your husband ? Reverse ?
Girlfriend / Boyfriend ? I just heard this morning onradio that Geolocalization which is already proposed in UK and somewhat in Paris will be soon available in Belgium...

Testing grounds for local based services ?

Userplane Video Instant Messenger and Flash Instant Messaging Software

Userplane Video Instant Messenger and Flash Instant Messaging Software - IM

Got to look into that !

December 11, 2004

Anatomy of Google

The Anatomy of a Search Engine

The "in and out" of PageRank, reasoning behind usage of Anchor text, the other smart features such as location information (proximity) or font size or weigh : the bigger the better (headlines)... with this paper you discover the foundation of the most popular search engine : Google.

Very instructive,and probably still very actual, as Google must have essentially expanded on and profit from the initial concept.

Reading the paragraph about "the difference between the Web and well controlled collection", I wonder... At the time this paper was published blogs were barely nescent, certainly not as largely spread as they became in the last 3 years.
BLogs introduce a new dimension to search. It's data mining made by people... a lot of people... which also produce their own input which qualifies even further a particular web page. That looks like a relevant information to track and build indexes on, no?
Technorati, Feedster, Bloglines, do propose blogs search engines, but so far I am not convinced by their results...
I would love to know if blogs happen to be next on Google's lab roadmap...


Another one that got me thinking in the Appendix A, talking about Advertizing and Mixed Motives:
"But less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market."
...hmmm... Maybe today's corporate Google use such 'hard to detect' techniques to damage their competitors? How does Yahoo perform in Google as a result of relevant queries would be interesting to watch !

Powerbooks

Look what you can do with your Powerbook. :) Oh, do I want to visit Japan.

Kenji Williams

Stumbled across this on the Apple startpage. I love Macs.

December 10, 2004

Sale of IBMs manufacturing arm

Interesting perspective that Cringely opens here. The sale of IBMs manufacturing arm spells the end of the Intel& IBM symbiosis. PowerPCs and other chip designs by IBM might finally get promoted!

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20041209.html

December 07, 2004

turn of your cellulars

Might the day arrive where you will have to go on a cellular detox? I've always been wondering if all those electro-megnatic fields can be good for you. I for one know that I won't feel all that refreshed in the morning if I sleep next to an electrical circuit.

Read the story on Wired.

December 03, 2004

DSDM vs XP: complementary!

I've been following a thread of discussion on the DSDM opendiscussion mailing list. The subject was whether and how DSDM could suit the needs of a software product company .

Along the way someone recommanded XP instead which resulted in further animated talks.
I am highlighting here one reply that I believe gives an interesting and knowledgeable point of vue:

From : Dane R. Falkner:

I agree and disagree with your assumption that XP is more likely to give you a zero-bug scenario. I hope I am fare to both XP and DSDM. I have been using a hybrid for a few years now. But let me explain why I agree with you because I think I understand your perspective, yet from my perspective and the DSDM perspective I disagree.

DSDM is a non-prescriptive framework. It only "prescribes" that 20% of the minimum things needed to make most development efforts successful. What you do with the other 80% is a matter of customization and preference. An XP shop that adopts DSDM will continue to use XP. There will be several new elements added to the development method including some changes to project planning, scheduling, and length of iterations.
But most XP remain unchanged. I am a project manager who uses most of DSDM all the time and all of DSDM some of the time. On all of my DSDM projects I use a little or a lot of XP depending on the capabilities of the team and the technical/political environment of the company.

XP developers are always my best developers. If my clients could get past the "Extreme" in the name they would recognize the disciplined professionalism that XPers possess. That said, there is still a larger world view that escapes many Pers. The benefit of DSDM as a project management wrapper to XP, especially in software product development, is the quality of the final product.
Most XPers would define bugs as something not working as expected in the
application. DSDM describes a bug as it relates for suitability or fitness for business purpose. Perfectly working software that does not provide the business with what it needs is far lower value (quality) than software that atisfies the business need but has a few bugs.

Case in point, we have Symantec in our usability lab right now. They are running usability tests on the next version of one of their products. There product is relatively bug free for this stage of development. But the users that are testing the software are struggling to use and understand the software and it does not satisfy all of their most important needs. This product was developed using XP.
Unfortunately, had they used DSDM with XP to develop this product it is likely that it would have been far more useful and intuitive. It might have fewer features, but they would be the ones most important to the market and they would be easy to use because the marketplace users would have been driving features and quality.

I like XP and I like DSDM. When projects require only one small team then I prefer to use mostly XP with some DSDM. When a project is big, I use all of DSDM and as much of XP as my customer will accept. I have one customer right now that is using DSDM and won't use XP, so I have improvised. They are working towards a test driven development environment, they don't do pair programming, but two people are experts in each area and can take over for the other (joint code ownership), etc.

That looks like an healthy approach to me!