"tips" entries
Dan Roam's "The Back of the Napkin"
I can't draw. Really. I'm a competent interaction designer, but my graphic design skills are those of a plankton. I can't draw on the right side or the left side of my brain. Yet, like everyone else in business and technology, I need to communicate. As so many studies — and common sense — show, we make decisions better (or,…
Scratch conference
I've been teaching computer classes at the local primary school and have been making use of Scratch, an environment for kids that they control by programming sprites, sounds, and events. I'll post in the New Year about my experiences teaching, but wanted to get the word out about the Scratch conference in July next year. If you volunteer or are…
A great performance and operations blog
Anybody interested in web performance & operations should read Todd Hoff's High Scalability blog. When it becomes clear you must grow your website or die, most people have no idea where to start. It's not a skill you learn in school or pick up from a magazine article on a plane flight home. No, building scalable systems is a body…
Travel Tips: FlightAware
In the course of my travels, I have discovered a few sites that are extremely helpful to get a smooth ride. Airlines currently have an information advantage over the customers. They have all the data, you have none. Want to know how many seats are free? They know but they don't want to tell you. When is that flight really…
Verdien: Smart Power Management for Your Machine
It's common to leave computers on all the time. People want their machine to always be there for them. The problem is PCs consume a lot of power — whether or not they are actually being used. Verdiem has developed SURVEYOR, a product that aims to help PCs be smart about power, save businesses money, and still keep PCs…