philweber.net

Women in Technology, Kosher Edition

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:07:04 -0800

When was the last time you attended a programming conference or user group that had more than a handful of women in attendance? Yeah, same here. That’s why I was so surprised when I arrived for the first day of my training class in Tel Aviv last week: 11 of the 26 students were women!

During lunch I commented on the unusual ratio and learned about this:

One company in Israel has built a successful [outsourcing] operation [by] building IT centers in specific neighborhoods in Israel filled with ultra-orthodox Jewish women, who often find traditional jobs outside the home difficult or impossible.

Because of their religious beliefs, the women often find conventional employment in the secular workplace uncomfortable at best. Ultra-observant Jewish women are more formal in their interactions with men, for example, than in the average workplace. Many – though not all – of the Talpiot workers are ultra-orthodox, and Talpiot addresses issues specific to them by offering separate break rooms to women workers, for example.

Because the ability to work at challenging IT jobs while remaining true to their religious values is so appealing to the women, Talpiot is able to pay far lower wages than are offered in nearby Tel Aviv. That enables Talpiot to employ Western workers while remaining financially competitive with outsourcing firms located in traditional low-wage countries such as India and China.

Adventures in UX

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:44:56 -0800

I joined Corillian Corporation in July, 2004. I spent about a year in tech support then switched to training, where I’ve been ever since. Last June Corillian was acquired by CheckFree, an online bill-payment provider. In December, CheckFree was acquired by Fiserv. In the space of about six months (without changing jobs), I’ve gone from a company of about 250 employees to one with over 22,000 employees!

One advantage of working for a larger company is the opportunity to explore different roles within the company. I’ve been fascinated by user experience (UX) design since I read Alan Cooper’s Guest Opinion columns in BASICPro (now Visual Studio Magazine). Those columns were excerpts of Cooper’s first book, About Face, which I similarly devoured as soon as it became available. And I found his VBITS keynote presentations in the mid-1990s thought-provoking and inspiring.

As an independent software developer, I wanted to create applications that were not just functional, but were a pleasure to use. My clients were usually more interested in having their apps delivered as quickly and inexpensively as possible. This conflict was a repeated source of stress to both me and my clients, and contributed to my decision to leave software development for the less schedule-driven disciplines of tech support and training.

When CheckFree acquired Corillian last year, I was excited to learn that CheckFree has an entire team (“User-Centered Design Solutions”) devoted to UX. The team was in the early stages of a major research and design project and, aware of my interest in the field, invited me to participate as an intern. It has been an incredible experience. It’s one thing to read about personas and how they can be used to inform the design of an application. It’s quite another to actually participate in field research and data analysis, to help design an application that will help real people achieve their goals.

Just before Thanksgiving, three teams of two visited the homes of 20 online banking users in Atlanta, GA; Columbus, OH; and Portland, OR. I was a member of the Portland team. We showed up with audio and video recording equipment and spent two to three hours talking with each participant about their financial and life goals, their current online banking experience, their desired experience, and how an ideal online bank could help them achieve that experience. (For more information on participatory design research, see Making Connections Through Participatory Design.)

Next, we spent several days going through our notes and recordings, entering data items about each participant into an Excel spreadsheet and assigning the items to various categories (e.g., demographic info, breakdown/frustration, ideal experience, quote, etc.)

At this point, I had spent about 15 hours with six very interesting people, and another 30-40 hours entering and coding their observations. They had shared some fascinating insights, but it wasn’t clear to me how we could distill all this raw data into something actionable. Thankfully, the team invited me to join them the following month at Lextant in Columbus, OH for the data analysis phase.

We began by having each field team present an overview of their participants. Our data entry items had been printed on Post-It notes; as we discussed what we thought was significant about each participant, we stuck the associated Post-It on a large sheet of paper representing that person.

As we talked about the participants, we began to see patterns emerge. At the beginning of the analysis phase, we had no idea how many personas we would end up with, but it soon became apparent that our 20 participants fell very clearly into three distinct groups. We created affinity diagrams to determine which characteristics of each participant were statistically significant. Next, we analyzed the three groups to determine the differentiating factors that caused an individual to belong to one group but not the others.

I’ve just described the process in two short paragraphs (and unfortunately I can’t go into detail about our findings for reasons of confidentiality), but in fact it was a full week of intense, exhausting, rewarding discussion. There were numerous inspired brainstorms and “a-ha!” moments. By the end of the week, I wanted to start my own online bank to deliver some of the amazing ideas we had come up with!

So, would I want to do this for a living? Yes and no. I find UX research extremely interesting, and interaction design is a wonderful creative outlet. I’m passionate about usability, but therein lies the problem: usability is not a verb. Toward the end of my week at Lextant, it began to dawn on me that ultimately we must create an application that Fiserv can sell to banks, which are primarily interested in “optimizing the online channel”: finding ways to separate customers from their money. Usability is a tool to attract eyeballs, but it’s far from the top priority.

I’d consider a career in UX if it were in an environment in which usability is a first-class citizen, where the people making the decisions are as passionate about UX as I am. Otherwise I would just be tilting at windmills.

Farewell, IE7

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 22:14:57 -0800

I upgraded my home and office PCs to IE7 in late October. It’s a fine browser; I intend to keep it on my office PC. At about the same time, my wife and I bought a Dream’eo Enza Portable Media Center for our anniversary. My desktop at home runs Windows Media Center Edition, which communicates with a Linksys Media Center Extender in our living room. Unfortunately, that particular combination of devices does not play well with IE7.

You see, Windows Media Player won’t sync album art to the portable device unless the images are embedded in the individual files (or possibly if you let Windows Media Player automatically update all the album info, but I don’t trust it enough to try that). So I dutifully went through my music collection and embedded album art in all the tracks (using MediaMonkey, which I recommend highly). The portable device now displays the album art beautifully.

But now Windows MCE displays a black square where the currently-playing album’s cover should appear! This is apparently a well-known issue: MCE + IE7 displays album art just fine, unless it’s embedded in the music file.

So my choices were:

Keep IE7 and embed the album art, so that it appears on the portable device but not in MCE;
Keep IE7 and delete the embedded art, so that it appears in MCE but not on the portable device; or,
Uninstall IE7, so that album art works correctly everywhere.

Sorry, IE7, you’re not that good. Farewell from my home PC until you work correctly with MCE and embedded album art.

UPDATE: Windows Media Player’s refusal to sync non-embedded album art to the Dream’eo Enza may be a problem with the device. If so, I apologize for impugning WMP. Nevertheless, my options remain the same.

Also, this comment claims that one can get IE7 to play well with Windows Media Player simply by allowing WMP as an add-on on IE7’s Manage Add-ons menu. Anyone with IE7 and MCE 2005 care to try this and let us know?

My Calendar Wish List

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:43:06 -0800

Between the recent demise of Kiko and Scoble’s rants about Google Calendar, online calendars are a hot topic. I don’t use an online calendar because I have yet to find one that does what I want. Here’s my scenario:

I use Outlook with Exchange with work
I use Outlook without Exchange at home
I carry a Palm PDA on which I want to see both work and personal items

I don’t know of any way to sync my Palm with Outlook on two different PCs, so I must currently enter appointments and tasks in Outlook and on my Palm.

I’d love an application that lets me enter all my appointments and tasks in one place, then syncs my work-related items with Outlook at work, my personal items with Outlook at home, and a combination of items with my Palm. Attention Web 2.0 companies: I would happily pay a monthly fee for such a service!

I had high hopes for AirSet, and it’s close. But I don’t see any way to sync personal items with Outlook and both personal and work items with my Palm.

Am I the only one who wants this? Do you know of an app that supports this scenario?

Mailing List Drama: I'm a Net Nazi

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 13:46:31 -0800

Consider this scenario: One of your neighbors wants to build a deck. He’d like some assistance, so he decides to ask the community if anyone is willing to help. He climbs atop the roof of his house with a bullhorn and announces: “I am building a deck and would appreciate some assistance. If you are willing to help, please let me know. Thank you.”

Shortly thereafter, another of your neighbors replies through his bullhorn: “I built a deck not long ago. I’d be happy to help you with your plans.” A third neighbor replies (also via bullhorn), “I have some tools I can lend you. What do you need?”

This exchange continues over several days among various neighbors. Finally, you ask politely if they’d consider taking the conversation to a less public venue. Your deck-building neighbor becomes angry and uses his bullhorn to publicly object to your “incredibly stupid” request. He calls you a “Nazi” for trying to “control” his ability to communicate, and suggests that if you don’t want to hear it, you can simply wear earplugs.

Sound ridiculous? I experienced something similar this week on a private mailing list to which I subscribe. The list is hosted by a product group within a large corporation for the purpose of sharing future plans with and soliciting feedback from advanced users of the product. A member of the list asked if anyone would be willing to help him localize a free utility for which he is responsible. A few members responded, and over the course of several days they exchanged nearly two dozen messages on the list.

Eventually, one of the members (not me!) asked if they’d consider taking the conversation off-list. The original poster replied at length, explaining that this exchange had about run its course, but he didn’t think there was anything wrong with using the list for this purpose. At that point, desiring to express my support for the member who had objected and to discourage this type of activity in the future, I posted the following:

From: Phil Weber
Date: Apr 4, 2006 5:54 PM
Subject: Re: Want to show off your bi-lingual skills ?

I can't speak for Matt, but I have no problem with your posting a request for help to this list. But once someone decides to volunteer, they could (and should, in my opinion) take it offline and communicate with you directly. Thanks!
--
Phil

That’s when the original poster got angry, calling me a “Net Nanny Nazi” and my suggestion “incredibly stupid” on his weblog.

Personally, before posting to a mailing list, I ask myself:

Is this message appropriate, considering the topic and purpose of the list?
Will the majority of the list’s members find this information useful?

If the answer to either question is ‘no,’ then I don’t post it. Does that make me a Nazi? You be the judge.

My Virtual Coffee Table

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 01:40:13 -0800

Kathy Sierra asks, “What's on your (virtual) coffee table?” Here, in roughly reverse chronological order, is my recent reading list.

As I entered my books into LibraryThing, I was surprised that I had read so many books last year. Most of my reading is technical in nature, so I tend to prefer electrons to atoms. Two factors contributed to my reading more than usual in 2005:

Our trip to China. There’s plenty of time to read on a 12–hour flight (especially when the movies are in Chinese!) I polished off four books on that trip, including the only fiction title on the list, which I purchased at Shanghai airport for the flight home.
Starting a new job. Two of the books on my list are related to my new position as a trainer, and Kathy is responsible, directly or indirectly, for both of them.
The first, Head-First Java, bears her byline. I purchased it after she revealed in an e-mail that “the exercises in our head-first books come right from our classes.” Variations of the book’s exercises have indeed proved effective in my C# classes.
In that same e-mail, Kathy recommended the other book, Designing World-Class E-Learning, whose primary message is that students learn by doing (and failing); to teach effectively, we must let students experience what we want them to learn. No more Death by PowerPoint!

The only disappointment on my list is Gerald Weinberg’s Weinberg on Writing. I bought it on Johanna Rothman’s recommendation; she seemed to promise that the book would help me become a prolific writer. Weinberg is an engaging storyteller, but his book is really about accumulating ideas for writing: he advocates carrying a notebook at all times and recording “stones” (ideas) with which you can construct “walls” (finished works).

Ideas are not my problem: I have a long list of topics about which I’d like to write. My problem is lack of motivation. After 40+ hours of work and 10 hours of volunteer work each week, all I want to do is sleep or watch TV. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet found a book to solve that problem.

Cingular Update

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 22:09:33 -0800

I never received a reply to my e-mail to Cingular Sales (brimstone beasts!) I was all ready to close my Cingular account and switch to Verizon, when I realized that it would cost me $175 to get out of my contract. Time for Plan B…

I switched my account to “Cingular Orange” (a full-blooded Cingular account, as opposed to “Cingular Blue,” a half-breed formerly-AT&T Wireless account) and ordered a free Nokia 6102. If the Nokia had Bluetooth so that I could use it as a wireless modem, that would have been the end of it. But it doesn’t, and I’m not crazy about the clamshell form factor (“Is that a phone in your pocket, or…?”)

So I purchased an unlock cable for my one-year-old Sony Ericsson T637 and unlocked it. I inserted the SIM card from the new Nokia, and voila! My old phone works great on my new Cingular account, and I now qualify for the $60/month unlimited LaptopConnect plan. I also unlocked the new Nokia phone (which I was able to do free of charge online) and gave it to my wife, whose 5+ year-old Nokia 8290 is getting a bit long in the tooth. Transferred her T-Mobile SIM card to the new Nokia, and it works great, too!

It cost me about $30 to unlock my old phone and I had to sell my soul to Cingular for another two years, but I now have high-speed-anywhere connectivity and my wife has a shiny new phone. I can live with that!

And the Winner Is...

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 00:42:32 -0800

I closed the polls on my contest at midnight (Pacific Time; apologies to my readers in Hawaii who thought they had three more hours to enter) on February 1. Next, I went through the 100+ entries and disqualified those that were over 100 words or lacked originality. I forwarded the remaining 26 to my boss, who volunteered to help me judge (she’s a sucker for a good contest: she also loves American Idol). She narrowed it down to eight, and from there I agonized over three. The winner of the free copy of Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite with MSDN Premium Subscription is...

John Dukovich of Green Moon Solutions!

It was a difficult decision. I like that John works for non-profit and socially-responsible organizations, and his company may actually be able to take advantage of Team System’s features.

Congratulations to John, and thanks to everyone who entered. Just a reminder that if you’re a teacher or student, you may qualify for free or dramatically discounted Microsoft developer tools through the MSDN Academic Alliance program, and if you run a software company, you can join the Empower for ISVs program.

Cingular Sucks

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 23:56:31 -0800

From: Phil Weber
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 8:15 PM
To: sales@cingular.com
Subject: Please take my money!

I am a former AT&T Wireless customer. I am satisfied with my current phone and calling plan. I would like to add a Laptop Connect Unlimited line for $59.99/month and purchase a Sierra Wireless Aircard 860 PC Card modem. Cingular's Web site allows me to order them, but when I get to the checkout page and enter my payment information, I am told to “double-check my address and try again” (see attached screenshots; the address is correct).

I went into my local Cingular Wireless store today and attempted to order them in person, and was told that because I am a former AT&T Wireless customer, I do not qualify for the $59.99/month price. In order to qualify, I must switch to a Cingular plan, which would be fine except that in order to do so, I must also purchase a new phone!

This is unacceptable. I am an existing customer who WANTS to pay you an additional $60/month, and Cingular won't let me. I would prefer to keep my existing phone and calling plan, but if I have to purchase a new phone in order to obtain wireless broadband access, I'll do so with Verizon.

Can you help me?

Thank you,
Phil Weber

Update: Apparently, I’m not the first customer to experience this frustration.

Wanted: Programming Topics for High School Students

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 21:54:27 -0800

Several co-workers and I have volunteered to present lunch-hour sessions for Advanced Placement computer science students at a local high school. Mine is on January 30 and I need to choose a topic. Games and gadgets would probably go over well; maybe something about how chicks dig geeks? :-)

Seriously, if you have any ideas, please share them!

Contest Update

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 21:20:22 -0800

It’s been three days since I announced my Visual Studio Team Suite / MSDN Premium giveaway. Since then, I’ve noticed that several other MVPs are planning similar giveaways. Come back often (or subscribe); I’ll alert you to any additional contests I discover.

I’ve received 67 comments so far and I have to say, I’m a little disappointed. The majority of comments say, essentially, “I really want it but I can’t afford it.” Come on, people! This isn’t a raffle; you need to give us a reason to choose you over someone else. A few have resorted to threats (“Choose me or else I’ll use Java/Linux”), promises (“Choose me and I promise to learn how to use it”), or pity (“Choose me or my children will starve.”) I was hoping to hear, “I work for this charity/non-profit” (I did get a couple of those) and/or, “I could really use these specific features of VSTS...”

There have been a few standouts: Aidan is working on an innovative Web project that deserves some attention. And I enjoyed Adam Wright’s poem. No promises, guys, but you made a favorable impression.

FYI, if you want the software because you’re a starving student or running a startup, Microsoft offers significant discounts to both academic institutions and software companies. If you don’t score a free copy from an MVP, you should check those out.

Update: Patrick Santry, owner of WWWCoder.com, is giving away several VSTS/MSDN licenses.

Update 2: XML guru Oleg Tkachenko has licenses to give away and is looking for ideas.

Contest: Win Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite with MSDN Premium Subscription

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 22:02:01 -0800

Microsoft has generously given me (and, presumably, other MVPs) a few licenses to Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite with MSDN Premium Subscription “to share with other individuals of [my] choosing in the community.” Now, I’m under no delusion that this is sheer altruism on Microsoft’s part; I’m sure they want to drive adoption of VSTS (and I want more readers!) Regardless of the motives involved, however, I have cool software to give away, and that’s where you come in.

In the comments to this post, tell me in 100 words or less why you should receive one of these licenses. I’ll keep the comments open until January 31, at which time a panel of judges (to be determined) will select a winner.

So, make us laugh, make us cry, give us goosebumps. Convince us that you deserve a free copy of this $10,000 software package (and in case you don’t win, start sucking up to other developer MVPs you know!)

Funny Story of the Week

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 20:11:18 -0800

Bala suggests that I add a “Funny Story of the Week” category in order to boost readership. I don’t know if I can come up with a funny story every week, but I have created a Humor category; here’s this week’s entry:

Not long ago, we had a “Bring Your Child to Work” day at my office, and we had a barbecue for the kids. I was eating at a table with some boys, so we started telling kids’ jokes. At one point I asked, “What's round and white and lifts weights?” (Correct answer: Extra-strength aspirin.) One of the boys looked at me and answered, “You!”

Shrinkage

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 15:45:59 -0800

There’s nothing like traveling with a bunch of skinny Asians to make one feel fat (take a look at this photo while singing, “One of These Things (Is Not Like the Others)”). Looking at our photos from China, I decided it’s time to do something about my expanding girth.

I’m rather a picky eater, so the thought of changing my diet to lose weight does not appeal to me at all. In an ideal world, I would eat whatever I feel like and simply exercise enough to burn all the calories, but that’s not going to happen, either. I needed to figure out how many calories I actually use, then consume slightly less than that in order to lose this excess baggage.

Enter Diet Diary from CalorieKing.com. Tell it your age, sex, height, weight and activity level, and it will tell you roughly how many calories you should consume to maintain your weight, or in my case, to lose one to two pounds a week. Then use its extensive foods database to record what you eat and track your progress.

I’ve been using the software since December 5 (nearly four weeks) and so far I’ve lost about 4½ pounds, so it seems to be working. Now I just need to exercise more than once a week, and my waist will be smaller than my chest in no time. Watch out, skinny Asians!

Cool Utility

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 15:29:19 -0800

Scott Hanselman swears by MaxiVista (they even have his face on their home page!), a utility that allows you to use a networked PC (typically a laptop) as a second monitor. But what if you want to actually work on both PCs? I suppose you could Remote Desktop from your primary PC to the second, then use MaxiVista to drag the RD session over to the second PC’s monitor (think about that for a second!) Here’s a better solution...

By way of Ofer Achler, I have discovered Synergy, an open-source utility that lets you share your keyboard and mouse with a networked machine. Simply move your mouse pointer off the edge of one screen, and it instantly appears on the other; keyboard and mouse events are sent to that device. It even merges the clipboards of all connected PCs (or Macs; Synergy is cross-platform), so you may copy and paste among them.

Very cool free utility; highly recommended. Now, if they’d just put my face on their home page...