Month: August 2005

Scott Berkun: Work vs. Progress. Simple work, like mowing a lawn or washing a car has transparent progress: as each small unit of work is completed it's visible to everyone. But with complex work, building software, running a business, writing a novel, it is harder to identify true progress. [Tomalak's Realm]

Zotob and Variants. I've been reading the massive press coverage about Zotob (technical details are here, here, and here),   and can't figure out what the big deal is about. Yes, it propagates in Windows 2000 without user intervention, which is always nastier. It uses a Microsoft plug-and-play vulnerability,   which is somewhat interesting. But… Continue reading Zotob
and Variants

Hurry!. How can you tell if you're too obsessed with urgent? Do senior people at your company refuse to involve themselves in decisions until the last minute? Do meetings regularly get canceled because something else came up? Is waiting until the last minute the easiest way to get a final decision from your peers? Smart… Continue reading Hurry!

Clueless. We're all clueless. That's the best word I can use to describe the state of the art of marketing. Three examples: I'm at the supermarket yesterday. I run into my friend John, not someone I often see at the Food Emporium. John has a list. Standard grocery list, “here honey, please go out and… Continue reading Clueless

Don't Buy Tech Books that Don't Have Betas. By marc While I was reading the final version of Agile Web Development with Rails today, I noticed that one of the pages, page 53, looked completely different than it had when I'd read the first “Beta Book” version of it (back when it was page 51).… Continue reading Don't Buy Tech Books that Don't Have Betas

Life inside one big text file. Giles takes one of the biggest, geekiest leaps you can, moving all of his stuff into a single big-ass plain text file. [43 Folders]

IDC says IT to stay strong through 2009. Spending on IT will continue to grow for at least four more years, according to research firm IDC. The analyst house predicted that worldwide spending will reach $1.34 trillion in 2009, up from $1.06 trillion this year, IDG News Service correspondent James Niccolai reported in this story.… Continue reading IDC says IT to stay strong through 2009

Windows worms now attacking each other. The most recent crop of Windows worms continue to circulate and, what's more, security firm F-Secure said that Zotob, Bozori and IRCbot are engaged in botwarfare. “We seem to have a botwar on our hands. There appears to be three different virus writing gangs turning out new worms at… Continue reading Windows worms now attacking each other

TinyUrl vs. URL123. In our email newsletter, we usually use TinyUrl.com to shorten links. It prevents us from having to send out long links like this: http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/ a_nice_customer_experience_from_american_express.php The creator of url123.com just sent us an email describing the extra oomph his service provides though. If you were to use URL123 instead of TinyUrl, you… Continue reading TinyUrl vs. URL123

FC Now: Leading Ideas: Making Communication Work. “When it comes to improving performance, most organizations' problems can be traced to their inability to think and talk together at critical moments.” — Paraphrased from William Isaacs's book Dialogue, p.3 What passes as “communication” in most organizations is nothing more than people talking at each other. Firing… Continue reading FC Now: Leading Ideas: Making Communication Work