The Eighty-Twenty Solution

Windows, Still Out Of Touch

2010-02-04T13:56:33Z

You’d think after 30 years or so, someone would have thought to put the touch command into Windows.

copy /b test.txt +,,

I have no idea what the syntax of the command (particularly the ,, part) translates too, but it does work (on Windows XP at least). I told a co-worker about this and his response was “ouch. I’ll bet there’s a better way to do that in powershell”. A cursory check on Google reveals that this has been done, but most definitely not in a one-liner.

QOTD

2010-01-28T18:19:28Z

“Everyone gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” – Gertrude Stein [via Cruft]

Now that is a quote for the ages.

The Future of News

2010-01-21T01:54:04Z

PBS NewsHour New York Times to Charge for Web Content (MP3"). They had an interview including Bill Grueskin, formerly of the Wall Street Journal Online, and he had several very interesting things to say. I think that the NYT is going to make the paywall work. The trick is putting enough content out there to get readers from search engines, but not so much as to give away the store. The NYT has enough readers who value the content, very much like PBS. Locally, I doubt the Denver Post could get away with it, though they seem to be locking down the sports section. Excellent local sports coverage might be the one thing that can save local papers.

It’s obvious that the newspapers really screwed up ads. Nobody saw Craigslist coming, and when it was upon them, they should have followed suit and gone totally free for ads except for certain sections – help wanted like Craigslist, and probably real estate, who already pay big money for print exposure.

New York vs. Silicon Valley Style

2010-01-20T22:40:46Z

via Jon Gruber, Tumblr vs. Posterous, or “New York vs. Silicon Valley style”. It’s mostly an analysis of each site’s signup process, but there’s a larger point that the signup process should just get out of the way, particularly for a service that claims to just get out of the way.

since everyone is on EC2 and Ruby on Rails, technology is no longer what differentiates most consumer web apps. What does is design. UI/UX design. Social design. Business model design as well…But you can’t just engineer anymore. You have to design.

I think that’s true. Tim Bray made the same point about search today, basically that he likes Bing for aesthetic reasons and that Bing is “the future”. I don’t know, old habits die hard. Maybe it’s not true for search. But my sense is that Gobry’s point is valid. If you have to make people register, make it easy. Wizards suck. Checklists suck. Seriously, if I need a roadmap to sign up, I’m not going to stick with it.

Of course, if Silicon Valley or NYC don’t float your boat, there’s always the New Jersey style. Is there still space for evolutionary design? Do first impressions mean so much?

Games in the News

2010-01-08T14:59:37Z

Two items from Morning Edition in the last couple days:

What’s my Motivation, Money?. I thought the bit on Atlassian’s FedEx days was really interesting. I suspect that even in something like retail, the employees aren’t just there for a paycheck. At least not the employees you really want.

When Play Means Pay: Video Game Jobs On The Rise. I suspect (not actually knowing anything about the industry) that this is a really good thing. I think there’s a lot to be learned from games. On the other hand, from the bits I’ve read, small video game companies can be a startup deathmarch on steriods (as cool as a private chef sounds, it also translates into 80+ hour work weeks), and the big ones have so much capital at stake that they will no longer take real risks. There’s this natural pattern of the revolutionary becoming staid. Will all these new graduates just become 21st century Office Space characters?