Tag: productivity

Skip Photoshop

When designing a UI we usually go right from a quick paper sketch to HTML/CSS. We skip the static Photoshop mockup. Here are a few reasons why we skip photoshop:

  1. You can’t click a Photoshop mockup.
  2. Photoshop gives you too many tools to focus on the details.
  3. The text in Photoshop is not the text on the web.
  4. Photoshop puts the focus on production, not productivity.
  5. Photoshop is repeating yourself.
  6. Photoshop isn’t collaboration friendly.
  7. Photoshop is awkward.

Commit Policies

Policies implement the intent of the salmon run. By placing unrestrictive policies to the left, I can checkpoint my work frequently. By placing restrictive policies on the right, I can maintain the stability of releases. And by incrementing the restrictiveness of these policies in small steps, I reduce the backlog of code that is “trapped” towards the left. Compare this to a centralized VCS, in which (since there’s no local repository), developers may keep changes out of VCS for hours or days (since the alternative is making a central branch, which is expensive to create and expensive to tear down). Or compare to a DVCS system without an index, where the overhead of either making and tearing down branches, or of pruning temporary commits, can discourage a developer from making a checkpoint every minute or 2. (At least they discourage me, even though these operations are far less expensive than with centralized VCS.)

i like the notion of having chained stores with increasingly higher bars between them. pretty obvious between head and release branch, less so between working dir and head

Paperless

Going paperless was a conscious decision by the Uhliks. But many families may be closer to entering a paperless world than they realize. Paper-reducing technologies have crept into homes and offices, perhaps more for efficiency than for environmentalism; few people will dispute the convenience of online bill-paying and airline e-tickets. “Paper is no longer the master copy; the digital version is,” says Brewster Kahle, the founder and director of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library. “Paper has been dealt a complete deathblow. When was the last time you saw a telephone book?”

now, to throw out the copiers, printers and fax machines at the office.

TripIt

TripIt is a personal travel assistant that automatically organizes all your travel plans. TripIt is free and makes it easy to… Quickly organize your vacation and business travel – no matter where you book Automatically get itineraries with all your plans, weather, maps, restaurants and more Easily access your itineraries via email, personal calendar or mobile device Share your trips and see where you overlap with friends and colleagues

heh. inept websites from travel companies == business opportunity.

Millenial Slander

What does this all boil down to for managers not looking to make the mistake that Donald did? Well, it’s a bit humbling, but frankly, millenials are just not that into you. Whatever you’ve (the boss) got on your plate… your (corporate) goals and mission… unless you’ve taken the time to enroll your GenY/Millenial employees into your purposes, they’re just not that interested in pleasing you unless it’s clear they’ll get what they’re looking for simultaneously…. not eventually (as in paying dues, like you did). Some might see this as arrogance or that this is a generation of slackers (as if you weren’t called a slacker when “you were their age”), but make no mistake about it. It may be that they’re simply more on-purpose than you ever were at that age.

a bit bumbling, but at least an attempt to explain that we are not in kansas anymore with new hires.