I finally managed to get the Hyrax International LLC web site up and running — it’s really amazing what you can do with WordPress and a few plugins. Not at all like “back in the day” when we hand-coded this stuff in Perl and HTML1.0.
I still need to look into the “right” e-commerce solution, but [...]
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Ok, I’ll admit it — I think the iPad is going to be a huge success. Not because it has some whiz-bang feature or gizmo that makes it better than any of the competitors. No, I think it will succeed because it’s completely different. Apple is trying to solve a problem that’s been plaguing “the [...]
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Fill out the survey! It’s only 6 questions long! It’s worth it and you could win an iPod Shuffle! And seriously, it will be very valuable.
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The figure we most often hear is 10% unemployment. But that’s not the whole truth — it’s a politically spun figure that minimizes the real story. According to BBC America, we might actually be looking at unemployment closer to 17% if factoring in the “lost workforce,” or those people that have decided to drop out [...]
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“You cannot not communicate. Every behaviour is a kind of communication. Because behaviour does not have a counterpart (there is no anti-behaviour), it is not possible not to communicate.”—Paul Watzlawick’s First Axiom of Communication
This, according to 52 Weeks of UX. Stated another way, “This is the first rule of UX. Everything a designer does affects [...]
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I love this little sequence by The Oatmeal. It’s unfortunately far too true to life. It does baffle me that so many clients will hire a product design firm (whether it be web sites, marketing materials or hardware) only to completely disregard their cumulative decades of experience in favor of “Miffles the dog.”
Anyhow, buy The [...]
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Can someone explain what this means? I found it in my email this morning: “You heard it, India is outsourcing outsourcing. So why should you consider nearshoring your outsourcing, instead of offshoring it?”
The article was about how India is now outsourcing to Mexico, apparently because India is becoming as expensive as the United States (or [...]
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Posted by zbeckman - January 20th, 2009 Comments Off
We use HP’s QuickTest Pro (formerly Mercury QTP) for much of our automated regression testing. Unfortunately, QTP is a pricey piece of software, with a cost in the vicinity of $7,500 per user license. While it is a state-of-the-art automation system, at this price tag it comes with quite a barrier to entry — at [...]
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Posted by zbeckman - November 14th, 2008 Comments Off
In certain military contexts there’s the concept of “tell me three times,” a form of checksum that eliminates error by introducing redundancy. This is something I’ve been meaning to write a meaningful piece on for a while — and this diagram is at the root of it. It’s an integral part to any complete process… [...]
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Posted by zbeckman - April 22nd, 2008 Comments Off
How do I get an iPhone that works (natively, not using roaming) in Iceland? I’ve visited the Iceland Apple Store but the site is woefully out of date and offers no information about iPhones. And yet, there are a scattering of references across the ‘net that make passing reference to using iPhones in and [...]
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Posted by zbeckman - April 17th, 2008 Comments Off
Training Industry Times recently published some rather disappointing statistics: Over 92% of surveyed business have experienced pressure to reduce their training budget in 2007. Worse, 56% reported that the pressure to reduce or altogether cut training costs were “significant.”
Is this attitude regarding education part-and-parcel of the declining attitude toward education in the United States? More [...]
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Posted by zbeckman - April 5th, 2008 Comments Off
If you want to learn about Scrum there are two books I recommend. Well, more than recommend: These are, in my mind, the definitive works on the subject. They’re both an easy read and if, like me, you get engrossed you’ll probably mark them up extensively and finish the set in a weekend.
Agile Software [...]
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