We had an absolutely amazing time and I would strongly recommend it to anyone interest. We sailed at 800 feet up in the air and just an absolutely great time. Met some new people, enjoyed the ocean air, and had a blast.

We used a Groupon deal and went through Marina Del Rey Parasailing.

Here’s the video of us taking off from the boat

So here they are, the photos from DFR 2011

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(95 Photos)

Click here to see the full set.

Whether it’s Samsung on the jersey of the Chelsea soccer team or it’s Nike designing a new jersey for the Oregon Ducks everyday, advertising is engrained into sports.

Over the years of watching sports, advertising is something I largely ignored and just shut out. But in the past couple of years, I’ve been paying more attention to it. Noticing that it’s been getting more and more subtle with the messaging.

It’s not just a “Half-time show, brought to you by AT&T,” it’s not just a “replay brought to you by Time Warner.”

It’s “DVR replay brought to you by Time Warner” and “This innovative look is brought to you by AT&T.”

It’s the subtleness or “DVR replay” or “innovative look” that really gets you thinking about those major brands as those words. “DVR replay” might make you more inclined to either ask about a DVR service or even simply just want to order it because you’ve been hearing it more and more. Or with AT&T’s “innovative look,” it’s planting a seed in your head that AT&T is an innovative company with innovative products.

In reality, the company isn’t changed by advertising words, but the perception is. Perception can be everything when you’re competing in such a difficult market such as cable TV or the wireless telecom industry.

Overall, I think that the subtleness in advertising is helping and actually makes me more inclined to pay attention.

Google is stepping up the game and allowing publishers to more effectively create ad units that will hopefully convert better — for both publishers and Google.

The ad unit customizer allows you to choose a contrast type, and then customize the colors based on the contrast.

WebdesignLedger.com has some further reading on The Principle of Contrast in Web Design.

Here are a few of the key highlights:

• Overhauled Menu System (now using floating menus)
• Overhauled Media Uploader (finally!!)
• Admin Tool Tips (this is great to help guide users)
• A Cleaned-up Admin Toolbar

Here is what the new Media Uploader looks like.

Overall, I’m very impressed with what the WordPress team has put out and they are on-track for continuing to build the best open-source blogging and CMS platform available.

What do you love most about WordPress?

But if you think about it, it’s not just a link, it’s really a promotion to help push Google+.

What do you think? Ad? Self-less promotion?

Today, something very big happened. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, resigned. He has an amazing 35-year career and made some of the most innovative things of today’s world. Tim Cook has been named the now-acting CEO.

I openly admit that I used to be anti-Apple, but in 2007 that all changed. I was given the opportunity to use my first Mac and my life was changed forever. I am now an iPhone-carrying, Macbook Pro using, Macbook Air owning, Apple fanboy.

So much of what I use today has been hand crafted by this man and the world owes so much to him.

Thank you Steve, you’ve been a true example to all of us on how to innovate.

Bugzilla was complex to initially setup and felt a bit clunky while using it, so we didn’t use it for very long. We tried Mantis and it just didn’t have the chops to get it done [for our needs.] Trac is a great application. It’s great for bug tracking, but not that great for project management. It leaves a lot to be desired from a project management point of view. Redmine is also a great application, but again, lacking in the project management side of things.

Hello JIRA.

(pronounced JEEra or jee-rah)

JIRA, by Atlassian, is an amazing application.

Product planning for the future should be part of any company that has a roadmap beyond their current project. As a Product Manager, I’m constantly coming up with ideas and often, they don’t fit into the current sprint of development (in an agile development environment). So where do those ideas go? Create them as tickets and plan them into future product releases.

A release could be next month or next year, it doesn’t matter — it just matters that you’re able to get the ideas down and then plan them later on.

After using the previous bug tracking applications I listed, one thing I noticed about all of them (except JIRA), is that they are very static. Very black and white when it comes to the user interface. One thing that JIRA does a really good job of is not forcing you to refresh the page on every action. While this may seem like a small feature, having an AJAX-like interface, it provides a much more fluid experience when using the application.

One thing I would really like to see JIRA include in future releases is a better way to plan roadmaps for future sprints by theme. For example, if we’re working on the “Maps” project in August and then “Mobile” in September. Right now, there’s no way to really plan by theme, but hopefully they will add that in the near future.

Overall, having used JIRA for the past six months, I’ve been very happy with it. That’s not to say it’s the perfect solution, it certainly has some features which are lacking that I need. But to date, JIRA has solved many problems which other applications couldn’t.

But what about you? What do you use for project management and/or bug tracking? And what have you found to be useful in terms of features?