Ido Green Blog

IPhone is winning again Vs the blackberry...

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:13:00 +0000

Web2.0 in 4 minutes

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:17:00 +0000

Sometimes you get this in very short time...
Here is a short video that show part of the power that we have today under the 'big/buzzy' name web2.0
I guess the only part they miss is Yahoo! pipes ;)

Javascript - the right way...

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:05:00 +0000

Simple a useful 'tips' for write (much) better java script code

Always pass your code in JSLINT
This is the most basic/best advice I can give you.
JSlint should be your 'compiler' for java script. It will catch so many bad coding behaviors that you want to bind it to your process and before committing any new code to your source control (you do use source control, right? :) you are passing the code there and fixing all the recommendations.

Use jQuery
"...jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript." or in the short version "Do more, write less".
It's so true in their case. Specially, if you aren't a JS guru, jQuery will give you the option to 'look' like one.
If you do need a nice widgets that aren't part of jQuery (e.g. Rich Text Editor) - I would go with YUI. There new version (3.0) is very well documented and they giving you lots of excellent tools to build on their widgets.

Always Use 'var'
Variables in java script either have global scope or function scope, and using the 'var' keyword is vital to keeping them straight. When declaring a variable for use either as a global variable or as a function-level variable, always prefix the declaration with the 'var' keyword.
It is a good idea to always declare global variables using 'var', but it is vital to declare function-scoped variables using 'var'.

Avoid 'eval'
The eval() function in javascript is a way to run arbitrary code at run-time. In almost all cases, eval should never be used. If it exists in your page, there is almost always a more correct way to accomplish what you are doing. For example, eval is often used by programmers who do not know about using Square Bracket Notation. Don't use it unless you are an experienced developer and know that your case is an exception.

Avoid 'with'
The 'with' statement in javascript inserts an object at the front scope chain, so any property/variable references will first try to be resolved against the object. This is often used as a shortcut to avoid multiple long references.

Use The + Operator To Type Convert To Number
In javascript, the + operator is used for both addition and concatenation. This can cause problems when adding up form field values, for example, since javascript is a non-typed language. Form field values will be treated as strings, and if you + them together, javascript will treat it as concatenation instead of addition.

To fix this problem, Javascript needs a hint to tell it to treat the values as numbers, rather than strings. You can use the unary + operator to convert the string value into a number. Prefixing a variable or expression with + will force it to evaluate as a number, which can then be successfully used in a math operation.
Example: +theform.elements["field1"].value // this will 'tell' the JS that its a number.

Avoid document.all
document.all was introduced by Microsoft in IE and is not a standard javascript DOM feature. Although many newer browsers do support it to try to support poorly-written scripts that depend on it, many browsers do not.

Scientifically proven ways to be (more) persuasive

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:18:00 +0000

It is an interesting field 'behavior intelegance' or as we like to call it in the IT world Peopleware. When we talk about peopleware we refer to anything that has to do with the role of people in the development or use of computer software and hardware systems. But more specifically issues as developer productivity, teamwork, group dynamics, the psychology of programming, project management, organizational factors, human interface design, and human-machine-interaction. As a developer and/or manager (leader) you want to be better in harnessing your developer after your ideas, goals and most imprtant 'boring tasks'. Last night I found this interesting article about scientifically proven ways to be persuasive.
Here is just one good example:
"Ads quoting negative behavior en masse reinforces negative behavior. Petrified Forest National Park A/B tested two versions of a sign imploring people not to steal pieces of petrified forest from the park. One mentioned large amounts of petrified forest taken away on an annual basis, the other one simply asked the visitors not to remove petrified wood. The first one actually tripled the theft ratio as it showed stealing petrified wood as something commonplace. Same effect was observed after airing an ad that implored women to vote, but mentioned that 22 million single women did not vote last year. That kind of information actually portrays not voting as more socially acceptable."

All the rest of the list...

Btw, the photo was taken by me 217 years ago on a wonderful trip to New Zealand! Bonus points to the reader that will recongnize the palce ;)

SEO for developers

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:44:00 +0000

Diagnosing Technical Issues With Search Engine Optimization

View more OpenOffice presentations from Jane Robot.

The Blue Angles from the pilot sit

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:43:00 +0000

Google I/O 2009 - Ignite Google I/O

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:24:00 +0000

If you have 50min and you want to see 10 persentations (yes - 5 min per one) check this:

The Apple App wall

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:26:00 +0000

Very impressive, on?

Some good articles for long flights

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Sat, 30 May 2009 19:21:00 +0000

If you like Gladwell (or shame on you... you didn't read his last 3 best sallers!) you need to take this one with you to the road. It's three-part email exchange that deal with sports and other interesting topics of life.
Another great piece from the new yorker is Gladwell last article - How David Beats Goliath
Last but not least... like 'yet another tech blog' - check out the new wave.
Disclemir: I like these dudes in Google :)

"If you review your first site version and don’t feel embarrassment, you spent too much time on it." - The dude from linkedin/paypal and others.

Closures and PHP (5.3)

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Thu, 07 May 2009 23:07:00 +0000

PHP 5.3 will be introducing closures to PHP. Closures, also known as anonymous functions, will allow you to declare functions “inline” and store them in variables. While the syntax may seem a bit weird compared to how it is in languages like JavaScript, closures will be a useful addition to the language. Let’s take a quick example of how you would define a closure:

$closure = function($name) { 
echo "Hola $name; 
};

This one takes value of $name and store it in the closure's scope.
even if we later change the value of $name outside it.
var $name;
$closure2 = function($hello-word) use ($name) { 
echo $hellow-word . ' ' . $name; 
};

Closures in 5.3 will work without the issues of create_function - not to mention have a much better syntax as you won’t have to escape your stuff in a string. Closures could also be used as event handlers. If you’ve used JavaScript, chances are you’ve used something like:

window.onload = function() { … }

Another good use is with functions such as array_map or usort:
They take a function as an argument, which is then called once for each item in the array passed as the other argument. These functions aren’t always very complex, or maybe they aren’t used in more than one place, so you wouldn’t necessarily need to have them as separate functions.

For example, calling a specific method in each object in an array, and putting the result to another array:

$results = array();
array_map(function($row) use (&$results) {
$results[] = $row->someMethod();
},  $someArray);

In this example, the use() is needed for the closure to be able to access $results. We also need to pass results as a reference, since the modifications we do inside the closure won’t otherwise affect it. What this code does could be achieved with a loop too.

Maybe a more typical example of a one-use function is with usort, which sorts an array by using a user defined sorting function:

$arr = array(2,1,3);
usort($arr, function($a, $b) { return $a < $b ? 1 : -1; });

Difference between use() and globals

You may wonder why do you need use() when you could use globals. It’s true that in a simple case using global $foo or use($foo) are pretty much the same, but there is a difference. Imagine a case where you write a function, and there’s a local variable inside the function. You want to use this variable inside the closure. In this case, we need to use the use clause. If we used global, it would attempt to look up the variable from the global scope. Even if there is no such variable available globally, it won’t use the local variable in the function. With use(), the local variable can be used inside the closure.

As always, be safe and work slowly on any new topic ;)

Aba - it's got nothing to do with you!!! :)

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Tue, 05 May 2009 05:56:00 +0000

Scalable web sites - what is the magic there?

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:20:00 +0000

It's amazing that today in 2009 we still need to build (sometimes) our own grown 'home' solutions to problems that you would except other attack in the past.
It's true that today, unlike the happy days of the first bubble (1994-1999) we can leverage lots of open source projects (e.g. memcached, Apache with the mod_cache, mod_perl etc') and some services like: Amazon S3, Google app engine etc'.
BUT, this is driving you just to another point in life. In real world situation, when you have your servers and you are in a point the EC2 is not economic any more. You need to design the architecture that will give the performance you need. This presentation encapsulated some very important ideas (caching, caching and some more caching on more horizontal boxes). Enjoy...

Scalable Web Architectures: Common Patterns and Approaches - Web 2.0 Expo NYC

View more presentations from iamcal.

P.S

It's true that if all your web application is running on the app engine you can 'smile' - but because they are very young, I would not use them for a business case right now...
Let them grow and mature at least until 2010. Not to mention that if you are in the world of php (like facebook, yahoo and some other big boys on the block) you can do nothing with them right now.

How to Pitch you idea?

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:44:00 +0000

What is pitching? In Wikipedia :) I found this "... the movement of an aircraft around its lateral axis, or a measure of the degree to which an aircraft's nose tilts up or down...". So you can take from that what you want on our world of VCs, start up and 'elevator pitch' of your idea. There are lots of 'tips' that you can get from anyone... on 'How to' pitch your idea to an angel investors and/or VCs.
The main goal, is to get attention and to move the process forward as quickly as possible. The goal of the other side is to have 'more' meetings and not to frame the process. Why? because it buy them more time to do 'due diligence' and to shop around for other ideas/teams.
It's not always the case, if your idea is touching the spot that the investor was looking for fill, you will be lucky to see that the process is moving fast with some 'tail wind' that is blowing. Here is a very good and short presentation I've saw that capture the important aspects you need to take care about.

Pitching Hacks at Stanford

View more presentations from Venture hacks .

One thing I will add to all of this is the important to frame the process with the investor after the first meeting. Do it when the investor is asking you for another meeting 'next week'. It's (more then) fine to ask the investor to give you some framework of dates so you could calculate your steps. This will not only move the process (in case you idea is interesting enough) faster but it will make sure that if there is no big interest you won't waste time and resources on this dead lead. Very (very) important in the early phases to be focus and to use the resources you have only on projects that will move the needle.

Will Computer think and/or feel?

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:05:00 +0000

I've read this Excellent post about the subject. This is my short take on this:
I agree with Professor Shoham. It's not that I have the answers, however, I do know what I don't know.
One thing that keep amaze me today, is the fact that each time someone try to argue that 'machines won't be able to do it' we see an examples that are far more advance then what we thought we will see in our life time. There are lots of examples for that, you can watch some in the video below.
It's true that today the human knowledge on 'how brains works' is very very limited. We can know the basic mechanics but nothing is going deep. However, Jeff Hawkins (who is the guineas behind Palm and Treo or in other words invent the field of PDAs) is now attacking brain studies from a new, creative angle that hopefully will harness man kind we understanding on HOW this 'computer' is working.
Mr. Hawkins urges us to take a new look at the brain, to see it not as a fast processor, but as a memory system that stores and plays back experiences to help us predict, intelligently, what will happen next.

You might enjoy this 20 minutes of Mr. Hawkins explains why and how he is devoting his time to this study:

and from a different angle Dan Gilbert believes that, in our ardent, lifelong pursuit of happiness, most of us have the wrong map. In the same way that optical illusions fool our eyes -- and fool everyone’s eyes in the same way -- Gilbert argues that our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy. And these quirks in our cognition make humans very poor predictors of our own bliss.

last but not least, back to the mechanism - the only part we are good at this point of time. Neurologist that doing interesting work in the field is V.S. Ramachandran, who looks deep into the brain’s most basic mechanisms.

In the end of the day, it seems that 'soon' we will be able to build something that will have the capacity and complexity of connections we are able to recognize today in brains.
Frighten future? every change is frighten, no?

Malicious Javascript and How to fight it

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:25:00 +0000

Reverse Engineering Malicious Javascript

and some productive work with jQuery:

jQuery Essentials

Advance Javascript - best tutorial on the web

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:18:00 +0000

It's not me that writing it - of course :) it's mostly Mr. Crockford.
I've collected this links I had with me for the past few years... for anyone that would like to improve her performance in this 'defacto' client language of the web.

Very good reference to to functions and other properties in the language.
The main JS source in Mozila
Excellent guide to JS.

You can also just use this basic script to test stuff on firefox with firebug:
just put it in a blank html page:

<>
<>
< type="text/javascript">
document.write("output your tests here");
< /script>
< /body >
< /html >

Simple objects:

var obj = { property_1:   value_1,   // property_# may be an identifier...
      2:            value_2,   // or a number...
      ...,
      "property_n": value_n }; // or a string

function:

function Car(make, model, year) {
this.make = make;
this.model = model;
this.year = year;
}

idoCar = new Car("Audi", "A6", 2009);
AmirCar = new Car("Mazda", "Miata", 2007);

(!) Things to note: Always give your 'constructor' functions capital at the beginning
so you will see it when you browse the code and catch all these nasty bugs that
happen due to 'missing' the 'new' keyword.

--
Here are 4 good tutorial with the 'father' of JS:
The first video:

Douglas Crockford: "Advanced JavaScript" (1 of 3) @ Yahoo! Video

The 2nd video:

Douglas Crockford: "Advanced JavaScript" (2 of 3) @ Yahoo! Video

and the last video in this series:

Douglas Crockford: "Advanced JavaScript" (3 of 3) @ Yahoo! Video

Squid and the power of anonymous proxy server

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:45:00 +0000

I've need to do some more linux administration work lately and this little hack game us lots of usage from our squid proxy server. The problem is that you want to be able to have a proxy but if you wish to get all the Ads and other 'noise' web sites are giving you, there is a must to mask the original IP.

For the ones that does not know what squid is all about here is a short description: Squid is a open source highly versatile proxy server, which can be tweaked to give any kind of proxy you want. The default configuration is for a transparent proxy. But when you need to be highly anonymous you can configure the squid.conf file at /etc/squid/ to get what you want.

Go to: sudo vi /etc/squid/squid.conf
Insert following configuration:

#Miscellanous

forwarded_for off
header_access Allow allow all
header_access Authorization allow all
header_access Cache-Control allow all
header_access Content-Encoding allow all
header_access Content-Length allow all
header_access Content-Type allow all
#header_acccess Date allow all
header_access Expires allow all
header_access Host allow all
header_access If-Modified-Since allow all
header_access Last-Modified allow all
header_access Location allow all
header_access Pragma allow all
header_access Accept allow all
header_access Accept-Enncoding allow all
header_access Accept-Language allow all
header_access Content-Language allow all
header_access Mime-Version allow all
header_access Cookie allow all
header_access Set_Cookie allow all
header_access Retry-After allow all
header_access Title allow all
header_access Connection allow all
header_access Proxy-Connection allow all
header_access All deny all

Now save the file and reconfigure squid or restart the server with this:

sudo /etc/init.d/squid restart

you done! ;)

Now you have a very high level of anonymity.

jQuery excellent talks

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:43:00 +0000

Advanced and some jQuery gems with John Resig

Few notes from this nice tutorial:
Cool jQuery Gems:
$("div").data("ido", "java");

Selector engine:
$("div > p") - find all 'p' that are child of the 'div'. It very 'expensive' problem (n sqr at least) in terms of performance. under the hood jquery will merge the results and figure out the unique sets of results.
This is the most expensive that all the selectors engines will 'waste' their time.
From jQuery 1.3 we have a new selector engine (4k :) that is 1.5-4x faster.
no dependencies and it can be used by others libraries as well.
It is faster because it does things 'backwards' check the 'p' then the 'div' and there is NO merging and no unique!
So for queries like 'div > p' it will be much faster! (it's like the firefox/webkit selector engine).

Niceties (or nice parts = Gems)
* Query caching - with Dom events on modified, inserted, removed.
* Smart Fallbacks - get elements by class names.
* Manipulation - four common methods: append, prepend, before and after.
For example to do this popular action: $("

add Ido!

")
the jQuery will do 3 things:
1. Cleaning the input. Make sure there are HTML tags.
2. Converting the DOM. Create empty div and using 'div.innerHTML' to put the HTML.
The problem is that it won't work on:

Two excellent videos for the weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 17:24:00 +0000

The first video is a talk with Mr Josh Bloch. He is a software engineer, currently Chief Java Architect at Google, and a technology author. He led the design and implementation of numerous Java platform features, including the Java Collections Framework, the java.math package, and the assert mechanism. He is the author of the programming guide Effective Java, which won the 2001 Jolt Award, and is a co-author of two other Java books, Java Puzzlers (2005) and Java Concurrency In Practice (2006). This video was taken at "Conversation with Josh Bloch" at Google Web Toolkit conference.

and the other video is from the well known - Seth Godin.
He is the author of six bestsellers, including Permission Marketing, an Amazon Top 100 bestseller for a year and a Fortune Best Business Book. His newest book, All Marketers are Liars , has already made the Amazon Top 100 and has inspired its own blog. Seth is also a renowned speaker, and was recently chosen as one of "21 Speakers for the Next Century" by Successful Meetings Magazine and is consistently rated among the best speakers by the audiences he addresses. Seth was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, an interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in late 1998. He holds an MBA from Stanford

Basic rules for your life

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:25:00 +0000

It's old but so true...
Some basic rules for life and your goals.

Life is not fair - get used to it!
The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.
You will NOT make $60K a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room
Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF.
Do that on your own time. Late at night is the best.
Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs. Ahhh? so Entourage is not real life?
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.Only if you want to be part of the 'high tech' industry. If you will go and work in a garage the chances are you will work with some cool dudes.

The biggest mistake in any development project

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:02:00 +0000

Possibly the biggest mistake in any development project is failure to plan. Recently, the CTO of a new start up told me that planning was unnecessary and a good developer could just start coding. If you been in this business, I'm sure you will smile and imagine the tears that will come later on their faces :)

In any wab development process, wire framing is one of the first steps in your planning process and arguably it’s one of the most important ones. This is when the idea starts to take shape as an application, becoming boxes and buttons that users will interact with.

What are the main steps that you want to go over in this design process? Here are a few that I would pay attention to:

1) Your Objective
This 'picture' should be clear as possible and this will be used as the gule of all parties. Projects are rarely simple and anyone with experience will know what a myriad of unforeseen issues and challenges await you if you go down this route. A wire frame will help you identify many of these issues in a way that is time and cost effective. It is far easier to make changes to a collection of paper screens than after you have written a thousand lines of code. The process also helps to create a better understanding of the application. Putting it down on paper raises questions and ideas and leads to changes.The final output will be a blueprint from which designers, developers, architects and project managers will work and makes sure everyone is in sync.

2) Decide Who’s in Charge?

Make sure someone owns the wire frame process. They are responsible for keeping it up to date and managing feedback, changes etc. In the case of a start-up this is often the founders, the ones with the idea and vision who understand the end goal. In the case of our clients we often take on this role. It doesn’t matter who it is so long as ’someone’ is in charge.

3) Involve Everyone
Maybe not at the first meeting, that should focus on simply getting the idea on paper and involve the key stakeholders whose idea it is. Fewer, people involved makes this process quicker. As the wire frame develops involve other members of your team and your client’s team. For example, if you are integrating your app or site with existing databases then make sure the DB owner can check that all the data fields exist in their database before you add them to your wireframe. Collecting a user’s fax number is no good if there is nowhere to store it. Equally designers have a good understanding of user experience and can spot potential problems in the flow early on.

4) Set a Deadline for Completing the Wire frame
It is important to set aside predefined periods of time and deadlines for deliverables to keep a project moving. The initial wireframing session could be one day or several depending on the size of the application. But set a period and stick to it. Follow up review meetings can be much shorter or even done remotely.

5) Keep it clean
If a particular page requires two text boxes and a button then it should have just that, no more, no less.

6) Avoid Designing Your Wireframe Too Much
Wireframing is about the functional way in which something operates it’s nothing to do with presentation or design. We try to avoid anything that could be construed as design. This will almost always distract the audience. Add a little blue just to try and make it more interesting and you will have a half an hour conversation about the merits of blue. Design should be left to designers.

7) Remember that UI is not UX
It can be extremely tempting to start thinking about the use of presentation methods such as AJAX. Remember that a wireframe document is about the functional elements and not the way they are presented or users interact with them. For accessibility reasons applications need to work without features like AJAX and therefore more like the wireframe.

8) Think About the User
It sounds obvious but it’s so easy to get caught up in creating a wireframe and forget about the user. The functional is what we’re focused on but it is still important to consider the user experience that is being created. For example, if you create a registration form that is three pages long you probably won’t find that many people fill it in.

9) Don’t Get Lazy
It’s often easy to say “the login page is obvious let’s not include it in the wireframe”. Make sure you wireframe everything. At the end of this process you should have a document that can be stepped through just like the final website. Every step counts and none should be ignored.

12) Organise Your Wireframe into Sections
A website or app is often divided into sections such as news, products and user account. Break up your wireframe document accordingly for much easier reference.

13) Number Your Pages
A web application often consists of a number of processes; a checkout is a good example. Often these are linear but sometimes users can choose different paths such as skipping a step. Clearly number the pages in your document and then label which page a particular action (such as clicking a button) takes the user to.

14) Look for Repetition
Consistency within an application is helpful to users, developers and designers. Repetition of groups of elements can therefore be a good thing. For example, wherever a user enters an address it should be the same fields in the same order. Look for these areas of repetition as you wireframe.

15) Check it all Makes Sense
The final document should be easy for anyone to follow. If only a developer can understand your wireframe then something has gone wrong. Ask at least one person who has nothing to do with the project if they understand it.

16) Ads are Functional
Many sites include advertising for monetisation, this may be as simple as Google ads but it is functional and not design, so include it.

17) It’s Not Just the Public Site
Many sites have an administration area for managing content, viewing registered user profiles, resetting passwords etc. This may not be viewed by many people but it is still important. Sometimes it can contain data that is not publicly available (such as a user account enable button). This is important information to developers when designing the database.

18) Know When to Stop
Make sure all relevant stakeholders have the opportunity to give feedback but don’t turn this exercise into painting the Sistine Chapel. Typically I would say three drafts should get the job done. The first gets the idea onto paper. The second reflects feedback from other parties such as developers, and designers. The third should be the final polish.

19) Choose the Right Tools
Pen and paper is often the way to start. It is much easier and faster than using a computer and lets you get thoughts and ideas down as the concept evolves.

Once you start creating the document our advice would be to use the tool you’re most comfortable with. Developers for example may use Microsoft Visio, project managers PowerPoint, Designers Adobe Fireworks.

I think that the wireframe should be a document though rather than something interactive (like design, it can be a distraction) and therefore creating HTML may not be the best thing.

There are a number of specific tools for wireframing, for example Balsamiq provides an environment for quickly adding and customising common interface elements. They have given it a hand drawn feel to provide a visual lift while not actually being design.

20) Consider Dependencies
Everyone knows what a shopping cart process is, right? Therefore it’s easy to wireframe and put to one side. Not entirely. What if you’re using a third party payment provider such as PayPal? That may influence how parts of the site must work. Research the areas where there will be dependencies and make changes accordingly. It’s easier to do it now than later.

Hopefully this article has provided a clear sense of the wireframing process, who’s involved, how to approach it, the tools to use and what the final output should be. The most important thing to remember, however, is that a thorough and well put together wireframe can save you a lot of time later in dealing with issues later on down the line.

Introducing Change

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:36:00 +0000

Barry Hawkins gave us this excellent talk in Java Posse Roundup 2009 lightning talks session.
Enjoy.

Job seekers and Facebook/Linkedin

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:34:00 +0000

Here is a part of an interesting article I've got form Mckinsey Quarterly. It deal with the new emerging social networks and their usage to find your next dream role.

"...The popularity of sites such as LinkedIn is soaring: less than a year ago the site had little brand profile and was seen mostly as a venue for corporate suits trolling for professional contacts while plotting their next career move. Today LinkedIn’s year-on-year growth is up nearly 200% in the United States and it now has more than 35 million members—many of whom were formerly employed within the hard-hit financial sector. This surging popularity of online social networking is transforming the nature of business networking, with profound implications for the way business people manage their careers. But it also augurs profound change for social networking itself.

With so many people stampeding into Web-based social networks, the line between social and business networking is becoming increasingly blurred. An important question is whether the values and codes of conduct specific to the virtual world will come into conflict with real-world values and norms. Facebook, where the idea of a “friend” is directly embedded in the interface, is increasingly cluttered with self-promoters, career artists, and marketing entrepreneurs. What happens as this trend intensifies and those using Facebook exclusively for career networking invade?

There are, of course, powerful economic reasons behind the trend. As sociologist Nan Lin puts it in his book, Social Capital, “Individuals engage in interactions and networking in order to produce profits.” These profits are based upon information, influence, social credentials, and recognition. The accumulated social capital, meanwhile, helps individuals to gain competitive advantages in the labor market as a result of privileged access to “resources” located on the social networks.

Still, for many there’s nothing more irritating than when a new “friend” contacts you almost immediately with an inappropriate request for a favor. Generally, it’s more advisable to approach social networking as a giver, not a taker, and gradually build relationships according to reciprocated favors. Overall, online social networking, with its support groups and trusted access, is governed by a culture of sharing, not selling.

And can the throngs of interlopers really be considered friends? Anthropologists tell us that it’s impossible to maintain stable social relationships with more than 150 people. Maintaining a professional network of more than 150 looser connections on LinkedIn might be plausible, but it would strain the richer social relations that make up the fabric of sites such as Facebook. Among Facebook’s 175 million members, the instances of “defriending” are already growing.

It’s a safe bet that if the economic downturn grinds on, we will witness further conflict between the non rational instinct to connect socially and the rational calculation to build social capital for professional reasons. If so, it may put further strain on the notion of an online friend. "

There are lots of researches that show that you will find you next job from these 'friends' that are not close to you. Gladwell, speak about it in his books and it make a lot of sense. Your close friends 'know' more or less the same circles that you know. On the other hand, the 'social friend' you have today might come from more 'far circle' that the chance they have information that is new to you is much bigger.

Java possee roundup 2009 - second day

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 04:37:00 +0000

The sun was up in the sky and the coffee was excellent. Not a bad start for the Morning sessions. The first session I was attending was about: "How to build your Agile team?" or something along these lines...
It was very interesting session about one of the most important subjects of building you team. There is no magic here but the insight Barry H. share with us from his experience was very (very) helpful. Some main points to take into consideration:
- Keep a long term perspective. Look on the big picture from time to time.
- Present your offering in terms of its value, not its implementation. That is the right way to sell your ideas to managers.
I saw it so many times in the past :) it's true, so painfully true.
- Never underestimate how boring you can be.
- Personal hygiene matters. Yes use soap, deodorant... they are your friends.
- No one cares what you know when they find you ugly.
- Prove before you preach. Small wins. This will give you momentum to do the big changes you want to do.
- Don't mention: Agile, re-factoring, etc' to 'big' managers. They scare from words that don't understand.
- Know your political landscape. Meaning, try to speak with someone that can do something... or in other words don't talk too much with someone that can do nothing because it is not very helpful.
- Don't oversell!
- Realize when things are not a fit and move on. I would add here - do it NOW.
Btw, I've mix here his key point from the lighting talk.

Lighting Talks:

and the presentation I gave on YQL:

Ido Green - YQL demo

View more presentations from greenido. (tags: yql ido)

You can take the code and play with it from this little project I've hosted at code.google.com

Java possee roundup 2009 - first day

noreply@blogger.com (Ido) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 03:58:00 +0000

We had a very productive day in crested butte. The morning started with a very (may be, the best in the USA) good coffee at 'Camp 4 coffee'. Then, in the morning sessions I had the pleasure to participate in 'Scalability session' and in 'technological depth'.

The main takes I've got from the first session on 'Scalability':

Architecture and design of your application. This is the most important phase in your application life. Take the time (that you don't have!) and invest it here. Consult with experts and developers that did something similar.
Hibernate and other ORM frameworks are great for specific applications. Analyze if they will serve you on your application.
Cache layers - memcached...
Profile your application to find the real pain points and not the one that you 'thought' about.
Last but not least, be aware from premature optimization.

Technical depth:

In the real world we are force to take short cuts. How do you track them? manage them? fix them?
Bug tracking methods for internal and external bugs/features/improvments.
When you force to act on some not elegant code?

Later at night there were (like always) some very interesting, cool lighting talks.
Here are the main ones:

Selenium - unit tests for web pages.
How I became 3/4 of the man I was - Very interesting talk that Bill P. gave. It's unreal to see how a person can shave 1/4 of his body in 6 months.
The art of the photo - Joe. some really nice photos.
High Gear Media - Me. What we built in the last year and who we are planning to build this new media company.
Loop quantum gravity - Fred. So interesting to hear what we have in the front of sience.
Gmail - the best email application. Learn the keyboard shortcuts. Move to menu. Labels.
Animation in java fx - Peter and the Dog that enter in the middle of the talk. Interesting to see where Java FX is moving with animation.
Racing 101 - the good old talk from Joe.
Scala client for twitter - cool application that is all in scala and let you play with Twitter.
Your eyes sucks at Blue - Bill P. we could not believe him in the first 5 minutes that we can really see blue :) but if you think about it green and red are much more important color for survive, no?

BTW, if you think I've miss something or just want to share some comments - please do so...
Last but not least, there are lot of dehydrate people up in the mountains so you must have something to drink.