DCS Media - All

Twitter: The Bird is the Word

Jonathan Danylko — Thu, 07 May 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Twitter is tweeting...sorry...talking to a lot of companies!

Is everyone starting to talk like Elmer Fudd or what? Sheesh! :-)

Just a quick post about everything going on with Twitter. It doesn't surprise me that Twitter is talking to a number of different companies. Twitter's growth rate is downright scary.

And the big boys are taking notice.

The companies interested in purchasing Twitter see a lot of potential in such a tiny function. Twitter provides a ton of features that any company would love to acquire, such as:

Mini-blogging engine (mini as in 140 characters)
A complete search engine
Information organized by groups by the user
API data streams
Near real-time conversations (which is next, btw)

What company wouldn't want these features? Lately, it seems that the bird is the word....

Sorry, I couldn't resist. :-)

Along with the possible acquisition of Twitter, everyone wants to keep up with the Jones with the latest trends. Here are some sites that utilize Twitter to track trends on the Internet. You could even use them to track the Twitter acquisition?

Also, Tweet me if you get the chance. ;-)

40+ Usability Guides for Developers and Designers

Jonathan Danylko — Fri, 01 May 2009 07:00:00 GMT

If you need help determining what the standards are with user interfaces, bookmark Experience Dynamics.

I've been building a lot of web sites lately and as I'm moving more towards mobile development, I'm beginning to question the lines of where desktop stops and the web/mobile starts.

I recently had someone talk to me about implementing a Drop Down List/Combo Box that had a total of 45,000 items listed and they just needed to pick one item from the list. And that was a web page, not fat client.

Hmmm...This may need some re-thinking on the designers part.

I'm sure all developers try to make their web pages or client applications as rich as possible to allow the user to get their job done quickly and efficiently. Granted, there are times where we want to have the "Minority Report" user interface, but ya know...we just aren't there yet.

When I posted "Can developers dress up a pig?", this was definitely meant for all developers as well as for me. Every once in a while, we need a little help in the layout/design department. However, there are times that I've had waaayyy too much Mountain Dew or Amp and my brain says "Usability? HA! Just Code it!" But then you revisit it at a later time to "dress up the pig."

One site I recently discovered was Experience Dynamics. They have a large list of usability guides on mobile usability, web usability, and desktop usability and judging by the "(Updated March 2009)" note, it seems they are constantly updating it.

Just make sure you don't implement a web page with over 10,000 items in a drop down list.

I hope this list helps.

Microsoft's "New" Technologies

Jonathan Danylko — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Microsoft's new technologies of ASP.NET MVC, T4, and MEF are taking development to the next level.

Lately, I've been diving heavily into ASP.NET MVC and jQuery. I really like them! No, I mean I really like them!

Some of the side-projects I've been building over the past year came together when I was introduced to ASP.NET MVC, and since then, I haven't turned back yet ("Web Forms? Feh").

If you are new to ASP.NET MVC, I would recommend Phil Haacked's site. Not one article, but his entire site. Since he was one of the co-authors of ASP.NET MVC framework, it only stands to reason to blog about it. I would recommend one of his articles though: Everything you wanted to know about MVC and MVP but were afraid to ask.

T4 -- The Future

No, I'm not talking about the upcoming Terminator: Salvation movie or the TV series, but the Text Template Transformation Toolkit.

I just found out about this little nugget. A code generator is hidden inside all of your Visual Studios. Yes, even right now as you are reading this. If you are coding something multiple times, I urge you to stop and make a T4 code template out of it.

As an introduction along with the link above to Oleg Sych's site (He's the T4 master), check out Scott Hanselman's post about T4 to get you kick-started.

Wow! No more code generators for me. Just VS 2008 Pro.

But wait, there's more...

So here I am working on my code generators for my framework and libraries, and all of the sudden, I see another post about MEF. If it deals with ASP.NET MVC, I will be all over it.

Microsoft's Extensibility Framework (CodePlex) is a .NET library that enables greater reuse of applications and components. Even though the library is in development, it looks like it has great potential.

The Finishing Blow

Lastly, I wake up and check the ole feed reader this morning for some fresh news.

In my programming folder, I noticed Scott Hanselman talking about Elmah ("Elmah who? Elmo's cousin?").

Elmah (Error Logging Modules and Handlers) is an assembly that you place inside your bin folder and modify your web.config and Bam!... you're done! Instant Error Handling (on a stiick!)

Error handling is kind of like flossing. Everybody says they do it, but actually don't do it enough. Elmah seems to have that under control now as well.

According to Scott, it's like "TiVo for your ASP.NET errors." Kewl way of looking at it. :-)

I haven't dug into Elmah yet. I'm still floored from the last three technologies.

Has any experimented with the MEF or Elmah yet? Comment below.

HOWTO: Connect a FreeNAS to a TiVo

Jonathan Danylko — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Bob Bakh discusses how to connect a FreeNAS (Networked Attached Storage) to a TiVo.

Recently, I had someone send me a question from a previous post about how to hook up a FreeNAS to a TiVo. Bob Bakh was generous enough to provide a description of how he hooked everything together.

Take it away, Bob!

I configured a box to run FreeNAS on my network to manage storing Media, and backing up vital information in my home.

It was a great tool, however I wanted more, mainly the ability to simply play media stored on the FreeNAS box on my home TV without the use of a general purpose computer. One way was to use my AppleTV, hack it and use an AFP mount, or an NFS mount directly to the AppleTV, this worked well, but was a pain, and a hacked AppleTV is not a happy AppleTV. So I gave up on that plan.

I looked at my TiVo and realized I had the makings of a decent setup there, so I started to Google around for some solutions. I stumbled across a simple one in my world, which was to TiVo Desktop with the GoBack feature enabled. I used the free TiVo desktop from TiVo. And the GoBack function allowed by a hack from Visual Hub, however that hack is no longer available. A PC version is available.

You will need to buy the TiVo desktop plus to accomplish this, but it does take some manual setting of what video files you want to transfer.

Okay, so this worked, and my computer showed up in the TiVo now playing menu and allowed me to see videos that were in a mounted directory from the FreeNAS. I would select the video and it would transfer to the TiVo, and life was good, it was a bit slow, but it worked.

Now my issue with FreeNAS and other software based NAS systems was that I had to manage the hardware, and it got to be a little warm in my home office where I stored the system, so I made a few changes.

I now run a QNAP TS-509 , a 5 disk raid 5 self contained NAS system. It runs on a micro Linux kernel, has redundant network connections, and runs really cool, so my office is no longer 10 degrees hotter than the rest of my house, and it’s a whole lot quieter.

I originally had it configured the same way as the FreeNAS system, and it worked fine, but I was on the hunt for a better solution. The QNAP has a little thing called ipkg, which allows me to install UNIX utilities written and packaged for its kernel.

I installed the following

binutils - 2.17-2 - The GNU assembler and linker and related tools
bzip2 - 1.0.5-1 - Very high-quality data compression program
confuse - 2.6-2 - a configuration file parser library
ffmpeg - 0.svn20080409-2 - FFmpeg is an audio/video conversion tool.
flip - 20050821-1 - Utility program to convert text files between UNIX or Mac newlines and DOS linefeed + newlines.
grep - 2.5.3-1 - Global regular expression parser
libc-dev - 2.6.1-3 - libc development files.
libdb - 4.2.52-3 - Berkeley DB Libraries
libnsl - 2.6.1-4 - Network Services Library
libstdc++ - 6.0.9-6 - Standard C++ library, needed for dynamically linked C++ programs
ncurses - 5.7-1 - NCurses libraries
ncursesw - 5.7-1 - NCurses libraries with wide char support.
openssl - 0.9.8i-1 - Openssl provides the ssl implementation in libraries libcrypto and libssl, and is needed by many other applications and librari
pcre - 7.8-1 - Perl-compatible regular expression library
python - 2.5-1 - This is a package that sets up the default python.
python24 - 2.4.5-1 - Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language.
python25 - 2.5.2-2 - Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language.
python26 - 2.6-1 - Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language.
python30 - 3.0-1 - Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language.
readline - 5.2-2 - The GNU Readline library provides a set of functions for use by applications that allow users to edit command lines as they are
ruby - 1.8.7-1 - An interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming.
sqlite - 3.6.4-1 - SQLite is a small C library that implements a self-contained, embeddable, zero-configuration SQL database engine.
zlib - 1.2.3-3 - zlib is a library implementing the 'deflate' compression system

Then I visited pyTiVo. This is the home of pyTivo, a python script that emulates a TiVo server on your network.

This allowed me to configure a directory on the system as my TiVo directory, and now I serve up videos straight from my QNAP to my TiVo, much more efficient, and no more gateway box.

There is also a nice windows version, Mac version, and Linux version available of pyTivo.

I used the pyTiVo installation instructions. What this gave me is a great way to manage my videos, and with a workflow based on handbrake and visual hub, I’m able to convert my children’s DVD collection to MPEG-2 and have them view it on the TiVo, and able to keep months of their TV shows stored offline for their viewing.

It has been a great solution.

I think you may be able to install pyTivo directly on the FreeNAS system, but I never tried it.

I hope this answers some questions for you, and I can help if there are any others.

Bob Bakh
thebakhs.com

Exceptional Work, Bob! Thanks for a fantastic post!

Yes, it is the biggest piece of crap!

Jonathan Danylko — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Wow! I wrote that. But so much HAS changed since March 2007.

I recently received a comment post from a reader about how awful a past post was. I read the post over and started thinking about my question, "When to use AJAX programming?"

After thinking about the question and reading it over yet again, I realized something about the reader's opinion:

He was right!

In that post, I mentioned when would be an ideal time to use AJAX: Only use AJAX in Intranet applications.

What a load of malarky! Who wrote that!

Oh.

Well, some of my points are flawed and some are right on. However, I've learned a lot since that time and found better techniques on how to write AJAX applications.

I do stand corrected. The usability aspect of AJAX would not only enhance the application, but could off-load entire web pages of HTML from the server and transition it to a simple data transfer of JSON and/or XML back to the client without an entire page refresh.

What's your take on AJAX?

So much has changed since AJAX was introduced, but how many people are currently using AJAX in their applications? I know this is just one question, but there are many more that people should be asking.

Are developers worried about security regarding AJAX and what safeguards should you add to secure your AJAX application?
Should there be a limit as to how much AJAX is added to an application? What are the guidelines for too much or too little?
Does it skew the web analytics of your web site?

I leave these questions to my audience.

What do you think about these questions and the advantages/disadvantages in my past post? Post your comments below.

The Ultimate Guide to a Job Search

Jonathan Danylko — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Here is a collected personal experience of job hunting throughout the years. This guide is to help those in need of finding a job and how to come out on top.

After being out of a job for an allotted time of almost 2 years throughout my career and since the economy is slowly starting to come back (SLOWLY!), I thought this would be a great time to offer tips and tricks on how to actually perform a job search.

Initial Shock

After finding out the first time that I was laid off, I was completely devastated and upset with myself. I started thinking that everything I did was for naught. Not so!

Don't take it personally, it's just business.

When working for someone, keep in mind that they have an agenda and a business to run. I know, I know, they let a lot of talented people go and it's a bitter pill to swallow, but they are doing it for the better of the company. Remember, They can't take your experience away from you.
Do NOT burn any bridges!

I have talked to a number of managers who at one point had to release a consultant/employee and it was out of their control. The manager felt horrible about letting that person go...until that person opened their mouth. Needless to say, the consultant was extremely upset and took it personally. The consultant made it abundantly clear that he would never work for them again.

The manager calmly agreed.
Dust off your resume!

In your career, your resume is your secret weapon. Have it ready at all times, including on-line. You never know who you'll be talking to next. I currently have my resume on Google Docs. The great thing about Google Docs is that they can download it in PDF, MS Word, or any other format.

NOTE: Make sure you have a text version of your resume and cover letter for email deliveries.

It's all about choices!

Now, stand up, dust yourself off, hold your head high, and get ready to make your next move. You have two choices:

Work for someone, or
Work for yourself

I won't go too much into the working-for-yourself aspect since I already talked about this in a previous post (5 ways to turn your layoff into an opportunity).

If you have enough money in your account to sustain a lifestyle for a 3-6 month period of time, by all means, go for it!

If not, well...continue reading. :-)

Create your resume portfolio.

Let's focus on your resume. As I said, your resume is your greatest weapon when looking for an opportunity so you need to make your resume look outstanding.

"Blah" Resumes

Don't just print out an updated resume on plain ink-jet paper and hand it to someone. Not a good thing to do. Again, THIS IS A JOB. I can't stress that enough. Your image should shine through when you hand them your resume. Look for example resumes on the Internet and tailor them to fit your personality or image.
Make a trip to Staples, OfficeMax, or Office Depot

Purchase the following items for your resume:
- Exceptional Resume Paper
- 10" x 13" Clasp Envelopes
- GOLD Paper clips
- Portfolio-Style folders with two pockets on the inside.
These are your tools to create a solid resume that looks professional. The gold paper clips are for your multiple attachments (I go with gold because they look better and are more attractive than the silver paper clips).
How to organize your "resume portfolio."

Include recommendation letters, actual photo or graphic images (if applicable for design work), and cover letters (placing your cover letter first) on the left-hand side of the portfolio and place your resume on the right-hand side.

Then place each "resume portfolio" into the 10x13 Clasp Envelope.

You are now ready to start marketing yourself!

Network, Network, Network!

Let's get cracking! You have to find a job!

Prepare your Job Search Journal/Log

Open Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer and save a blank document as Job Search Journal - 2009. Your Job Search Journal should look like this.

3/16/2009
-------------
8:00p - Contacted Mrs. Doe from recruiting company @ 999-999-9999 regarding position at Marketing, Inc.

9:30p - Received call from Jeff about an interview for Friday
.
.

3/17/2009
-------------
* Found a new job posting on Indeed.com for a CIO position.
.
.

I know this sounds like a pain in the @$$, but trust me, your contact list is very valuable.
Make yourself visible to recruiters

One thing that recruiters look for are people who show some initiative and are in constant contact with them. As my father used to say, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease."

My job search site of choice is LinkedIn.com. Over the years, I have accumulated a large number of recruiters in my address book so this was a great place to start.

LinkedIn.com makes this a VERY simple process. Since you can tag all of your contacts with a particular keyword, I've tagged certain contacts with the "recruiter" keyword and sent an email to all of them with the click of a button.

After sending out an email to these recruiters, 80% of the recruiters wrote back within 30 minutes telling me about opportunities and wanted to schedule an interview to get a better "feel" for my skills. This entry would be added to my Job Search Journal as:
- Sent emails out to my list of recruiters from LinkedIn.com
  - Joe at blah blah
  - Phil at blah, blah
No vacation time on this job.

Just because it's called "Job Search" doesn't mean you stop now and wait for people to call you. It should be called the Job Search "Job."

Understand that this is a JOB in itself. You wake up in the morning, you sit at your computer, (or go out) and you start networking through email, phone, and setting up interviews.
Don't forget the Job Classifieds section

Your job search should also include newspaper classifieds. Even though we live in a digital world, that doesn't mean that we need to disconnect ourselves from people.

At one point on a Sunday, I gathered all of the possible jobs that fit my skills from the Sunday paper. I looked through my contacts and tried to find any name that was inside that company (here is where LinkedIn.com comes in handy) and wrote a personalized cover letter to that particular person and included it with the resume portfolio. I woke up the next morning and went out with a stack of "resume portfolios" and MapQuest maps. I went the quickest route to hit all of the companies on my list, walked into the company, and handed my resume to the person responsible for hiring individuals.

Yeah, I hear you, "Oh, that is soooooo old school."

I say, "The street ain't that harsh."

The funny thing about doing this, half of the people I met that day remembered me and kept me in mind for future positions or opportunities. They noticed I got off my @$$ and wanted to make an effort of helping them to fill positions instead of projecting an image that I was at home waiting for people to come to me.

And of course, each company I stopped at would be entered into your Job Search Journal/Log.

The Digital Job Search

Of course, we couldn't have a complete job search without Internet activities. Here are some possibilities for a thorough job search on the Internet:

Internet Job Sites
- LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/)
- CareerBuilder (http://www.careerbuilder.com/) (My favorite)
- Indeed (http://www.indeed.com/)
  Another one of my personal favorites. Indeed.com has the ability to create a search agent in the form of an RSS feed. So every morning you can check your feed reader for positions that meet your criteria.
- Monster.com (http://www.monster.com/)
- The Ladders (http://www.theladders.com/) (Subscription-based job board: $30/month)
- Dice (http://www.dice.com/)

LinkedIn.com "Plug"

I'm sorry, but I have to mention this. One other quick note about LinkedIn.com, they have a utility offered on their site called the Jobs insider.

This extension is absolutely amazing. It's offered as either an Internet Explorer or Firefox extension. It's free, so download and install it.

Let me give you an example of how it works.

I was on a job site looking through a list of jobs and found one that was really interesting. I clicked on it for additional details.

Immediately, the LinkedIn.com Jobs insider Sidebar appeared and notified me that the company on the job detail page that I was looking at had 6 contacts connected to that job and they could help me get that particular position. I clicked on the number 6 and it immediately took me to LinkedIn.com's web site with people I could contact to help me with this position. Amazing!

Job Search Schedule

Now that you have a general understanding of how a REAL job search works, here is an overview of my schedule that I wrote while looking back over my Job Search Journal:

Sunday
- Wake up and check the Sunday newspaper. Look over the classifieds and cut out what interests you.
- Research the companies and see if you have any contacts from those companies who could help you out with a name or recommendation.
- Spend the rest of the day printing out resumes for those particular job positions. If you got a contact or name, print out a cover letter with the contact name and include it in your resume.
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
- Mornings were analog activities
  - Distribute my resume portfolio's to the companies that I was interested in by driving to their locations. This had an additional benefit of getting the "stink blown off of me" during the week (translation: it got me out of the house and moving).
- Afternoons were digital activities
  - Check my email for possible opportunities
  - Check the job boards for positions that fit my skills and submit resume's as well.
  - Even though it's analog, return any phone calls or start calling recruiters to find out the status of jobs mentioned previously.
  - Since Friday is heading into the weekend, most recruiters will or won't call back after 3:00p or 4:00p.
Tuesday and Thursday
- According to a number of job recruiting places, Tuesday and Thursdays are the best times to schedule interviews, so it's best to keep these days open. The best thing to do if no interviews are scheduled is to proceed with the digital activities in the afternoon as discussed above.
Saturday
- Review your Job Search Journal
- Schedule activities for next week.
- Get more resume supplies. :-)

Conclusion

I've covered everything in this guide from initially knowing about losing your job to making an actual job out of it. In this economy, you need to have a creative side of finding work, whether it's freelance or full-time.

Two other pieces of advice I have to offer. One is a product. A book actually. A book called What Color is Your Parachute? This book is definitely the handbook for determining what you want to do with your life, whether it's working for someone or working for yourself (an entire chapter is dedicated to that). By all means, pick up a copy to expand your job search abilities.

The other piece of advice I have is don't be hard on yourself and don't wallow in self-pity. You literally have a job to do. Start networking and prepare yourself for a career, regardless of what you decide. You control your life. No one else does.

I hope this guide gave you an idea of how much work goes into a job search. This guide was primarily for people who are out of a job for the first time and need some guidance and help. I hope I've provided that assistance.

If anyone has other suggestions for other job seekers out there, please post them in the comments below.

Links for 2009-02-02 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:00:00 PST

5 ways to turn your layoff into an opportunity
Ahhh...a new year, new promise, new goals...new layoffs? What!!?!??!

Create a Firefox that matches your personality

Jonathan Danylko — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Lately, Firefox has been climbing in the browser ranks...and for good reason.

With the continuing growth of Firefox spreading throughout the web, Firefox's architecture to allow add-ons, themes, and plug-ins provides users with an absolute easy way to assist you in your travels on the information super-highway.

The Mozilla Foundation created a section on their site called Fashion your Firefox. They've organized some of their web-worthy extensions into categories for people who want to accessorize their Firefox browser.

The categories include:

Finder and Seeker
Social Butterfly
Shutterbug
Digital Pack Rat
Rock Star
Decorator
Shopaholic
News Junkie
Executive Assistant

Select the Extensions that you think will assist you and you're on your way.

It's amazing to see how far Mozilla has gone with their extension architecture. Firefox extensions even provide a way to replace applications with Super Extensions.

Are their other extensions that you think are better than this list? Post something below to start a discussion.

5 ways to turn your layoff into an opportunity

Jonathan Danylko — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Ahhh...a new year, new promise, new goals...new layoffs? What!!?!??!

In my opinion, the economy is never stable. It can always take a millionaire and make him a beggar in less than a day. This past year has proved it.

There are a lot of people who are losing their jobs because of the economy. Let's check out the list, shall we?

Harley-Davidson - 1,100 jobs
Sun - 1,300 jobs
Microsoft - 5,000 jobs
Sony - 2,000 jobs
and many more companies are laying off workers.

How do you survive this sort of thing? There are a number of things you can do in this time of crisis.

Create your own business

What better time than now to start your own business. Nothing like trial by fire.

If you have a hobby on the side, now may be a great time to think about dedicating your time to starting up a business based on that hobby. Talk to your friends and see if they would be willing to work with you as well. Who knows...You may find a fellow business partner who shared your same hobby or dream.
Start writing

There are a lot of great opportunities out there since the web spawned blogging and journalism. Determine what your expertise is and either start blogging on a regular schedule or write an eBook and sell it through ClickBank or other digital product site.
Learn a new skillset

Of course, you can always learn a new skillset if your existing skillset becomes either old or obsolete. Recently, Computerworld just came out with a report on the 9 hottest skills for 2009. Check out the list and see if you can apply or enhance your existing skills based on the list. Oh...and make sure you live in a city that has growth potential.
Join LinkedIn.com

The old adage "It's not what you know, it's who you know" holds true on LinkedIn. Make sure you register and start requesting recommendations/endorsements from your fellow co-workers. Then start focusing on the jobs portion of the site and start apply for jobs that fit you. Who knows, you may find that ideal, dream job through one of your friends.
Create a small widget and sell it

Nowadays, someone can create the smallest application and make a million dollars at it. Find a small widget that is cute, ridiculous, funny, or just plain gross and market it through the right channels. You might find out that a little idea can go a long way.

This list provides only five ways to tackle this economy, but there are definitely more.

Did I miss any? Post a comment below to further the discussion.

Does 1 developer = 1 developer?

Jonathan Danylko — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:00:00 GMT

When a developer is brought in to a project, most managers believe that since that person is a developer, they should automatically understand the system. Not so.

Most businesses believe that if they lack a programmer with a certain skillset, they outsource the job to a programmer or programmers. It doesn't matter if it's in or out of the country, consultants or new employees.

When a new developer is brought in and introduced to a new system and asked to maintain it, they struggle. With the amount of "creative coding" applied across the hundreds of thousands of systems, managers expect a developer to pick up where the other developer left off.

As I've said before, all programmers "paint" a different image on their digital canvas. Writing code is no different than painting for artists. It may be more abstract than what another programmer is used to, but their creativity sometimes makes other programmers tilt their head and start twitching because it's not what they're used to seeing in code.

The amount of knowledge or skill for one developer may not be the same for another. As a matter of fact, if a new programmer is introduced to a new system, the amount of work is based on four criteria:

How much does the developer know about the system?
Joe Schmoe is considered an entry-level developer and cannot provide the same value that Joe Elite just gave to the project because he just designed the entire application.
How much business knowledge can the developer apply to the system?
Does the developer have previous knowledge in this line of work? Did he/she/they work on a similar system somewhere else? If not, there needs to be a ramp-up period for the new recruit to understand what the client is looking for and how the system works.
Can the developer get along with team members?
If a new employee/contractor is added to the team and the team starts to bicker instead of being productive, it may lead to a disaster for the project down the road. As the old saying goes, "Too many chiefs and not enough indians."
Is the developer a novice, intermediate, or advanced programmer?
If someone doesn't know the difference between a flyweight and singleton pattern and the project uses patterns, I think Joe Schmoe may seem a little overwhelmed with the project. This criteria should be addressed when interviewing individuals.

Even though one developer is replacing another developer, it does not mean the project will be successful or fail miserably, but it does mean that it may extend the length of the project. Usually, the amount of work required by one developer multiplies by at least 2 when a brand new developer is introduced into a new system.

I've seen companies take this route and they expect the developer to hit the ground running. Give the developer ample amount of time to absorb the requirements, design, and technology of the system before expecting the developer to perform the assigned tasks.

One developer does not equal one developer.
Jonathan Danylko

Have you experienced other criteria when outsourcing a project or brought in a new developer? Did I miss one? Tell me about it below in the comments section.

Hot Deal:32GB USB Drive for $60

Jonathan Danylko — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Too good to pass up.

This was just too good of a deal to pass up. A 32GB USB Flash drive for $60.

YOU COULD EVEN INSTALL AN OPERATING SYSTEM ON THIS PUPPY!

If you still need convincing whether this is a great deal or not, consider this:

All 5 reviewers gave this product a 5/5 review
Kingston is a great name for memory/flash drives
Consider the competition underneath the product description. The cheapest price from a competitor was $96.

Another reason I bought one was my 8GB SD card is on its last leg.

And yes, I bought one.

Links for 2008-07-22 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 PDT

The Dark Side of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi - BTCloud
With everyone using Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and RFID wireless technology, be aware that hackers know it exists as well.

Links for 2008-03-13 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Outlook Alternatives: Moving from Outlook to Thunderbird
MS Outlook has been around for a long time, but maybe it's time for a little change.

Links for 2008-02-07 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:00:00 PST

Free Utilities for Burners and Your Network
Tired of your Roxio burning software? Need to document your network? Check out these free utilities.

Links for 2008-01-28 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:00:00 PST

Why John Rambo is the Ultimate Freelancer
Here's some advice for freelancers on what to do and what not to do: John Rambo style.

Links for 2008-01-25 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:00:00 PST

Firefox Optimization Add-Ons
Here is a list of Firefox extensions that answers a reader's email about optimizing web page load times.
Small Business Backup Lesson: DO IT NOW!
What disaster recovery steps did I take to make sure this disaster doesn't happen again?

Links for 2008-01-18 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:00:00 PST

Fireday Review: ReminderFox
This weeks review pertains to an excellent extension for keeping track of date-related appointments and to-do's including birthdays and anniversaries.