Entries for archive: 2008-10

Found 7 entries.

Finally, OpenID for Google Accounts

Google has just announced that it is allowing OpenID for ALL of it's user accounts.

It's weird though since it is calling it Federated Login when in fact it really should state the fact it is is enabling OpenID (I had to double check just to make sure it was). Over on the Google Code Blog however, they're being a bit more technical :-) and actually saying so - Google Moves Towards Single Sign on with OpenID.

Overall, this is great news. Yes, Blogger has allowed OpenID for a while and there was that little test with Google App Engine, but this is what we've wanted for a long time.

There are very few companies now who don't accept OpenID and very few of the big ones (with lots of users) who don't provide OpenID.

So hopefully in the near future you'll just need one OpenID, and therefore one password, to log in to as many sites as you use. Of course, you'll be able to have as many OpenIDs as you want but that's your choice.

There seems to be some interesting things going on with each of the new people accepting Google Accounts by their email address rather than traditionally by their OpenID URLs. I suspect that this is just a predefined step over the first contact the website consumer has to do when first contacting the provider. I'll probably post further into why this is happening another time.

But anyway, that's beside the point.

Now all we need to do is make Google, Yahoo! AOL and all the others accept OpenIDs!

It's a long slow road, but we're eventually getting there.



    

    

    

    

        Labels:
    
        openid,
    
        google,
    
        planet-geek,
    
        planet-catalyst,
    
        yahoo
    
    


    
Inserted: 2008-10-30 13:06 (3 years, 3 months ago)


    
    
Rollerblading Group in Welly

        

    
        
Just thought I'd post a link following on from my post the other week about how I enjoyed the roller disco.


It turns out that Wellington has Rollerblading group (thanks Shiny for the link) though the group is still young, it looks like we can kick-start it with a few more people.


They (me and the group founder at the moment) are having a blade around Oriental Parade on the 9th November from 2pm, to Evans Bay and then back for coffee and ice cream.


There were a few people who seemed interested after my last post about rollerblading so come and join us (weather dependent).


Hope to see you there.


P.S. I went out to Makara Park on my new mountain bike today - and fell off twice. I now have a number of bruises on my shins but luckily it wasn't major. Still, it's fantastic fun though.



    

    

    

    

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Inserted: 2008-10-29 18:38 (3 years, 3 months ago)


    
    
Not Doing Smilies

        

    
        
Sometimes you wonder how you got into a particular situation. Sometimes you got yourself there, other times, you're where you are because of decisions other people made before you turned up.


It turns out I was in a situation today who's root cause was due to the people before me. It was only when I booked time against the project did I think of this blog entry. I booked some of the time spent with the comment:


Not Doing Smilies


At the time I wrote it I was being completely serious since I had to stop a particular website from converting those :-) smilies into images. Yes, it was that weird.


It was only afterwards, when a colleague of mine told me it was the "best comment ever", that I realised I myself was not doing my usual smilies.


Why wasn't I smiling? You see, we were in a situation whereby we were repaying 'Technical Debt'. I know this because Stephen gave us a great talk on it a few months ago. I guess I always knew what it was since I've had to clean up other people's messes before but his talk really rammed it home how many multiple times we actually have to pay it back. Once in technical debt, you spend continuously more trying to get out of it. It's almost like it spirals out of control and in some of those cases, many people's fixes are just papering over the cracks (another colleague's comment today).


The General Problem


So there we were, trying to figure out what the hell was going on with something which had about the same tensile strength as a piece of chewing gum. It was inherently brittle and it just pained me to wonder why and how it was originally set up as it was.


As it turns out, the problem above wasn't the overall problem but was at the end of a long list of problems. The root cause problem however is in the way this particular part of the project was set up. It was done in a hurry in the first place so that the client could get something up and going 'as fast as possible'. I'm guessing this is what the client wanted.


If you're anything like me, then as soon as the client says 'as soon as you can', 'by tomorrow' or 'ASAP' then you know you're onto a losing situation already. Even if you argue, refuse or try to clarify why this isn't a good idea, you're usually stared back at with a I'm the client and I'm paying for it, so you just do it' look. By then, no matter what good reasons you give, it then becomes a powerplay in which you're bound to be on the losing side - for reasons other than technical ones.


Another negative in all of this is the fact that the client - in a fair majority of cases - may actually be an internal person who is working alongside you. This person might be someone in a higher position, a manager or maybe just someone with the loudest voice. The end result is the same; you're left to do a sub-standard piece of work against your wishes. And no matter what you argue, how you put it and explain the reasons why this decision is a bad mistake, you're still forced to do it.


This doesn't sound good does it?


And you know that ultimately, it's going to be you who has to clean up the mess afterwards. Let's face it, you're the person most intimately involved in the code and therefore you just know why it's going to fail. It's so clear to you yet still, there is nothing you can do about it. Yet all these other people who don't know the code as well as you force you to do it. My brain hurts thinking about how this can ever be a good thing.


History Repeats Itself


I don't blame the people before me for what happened today since I wasn't there, I wasn't in the situation they were when those decisions were being made but I can only imagine that they were left with no choice since they had to get this thing going 'ASAP'. Granted, I might have done something different in their situation but that solution might not have been much better than the one we were left with today.


So what was initially designed as something to get 'up and going very quickly', soon descended into a botch job that no-one liked, no-one took ownership of (because it was a botch job) and therefore that particular subsystem was left to rot and die unloved and in a state of disrepair. Eventually, it all came to a head when the brittleness of the solution came back to bite us - all of us - on the sensitive behind! No-one really likes being bitten on the bum no matter what they say!


Before we move on, let me just re-iterate one part of that previous paragraph, and I'm going to put it in a quote so that if you skimmed over it just prior to this paragraph, you'll definitely see it this time:


... no-one took ownership of [it] (because it was a botch job)


This is one of the most important things in software and probably in lots of other walks of life too. If something is so bad that no-one wants to look after it, then you're on to a losing situation already. If a particular job was done correctly (because they were given the correct amount of time and support) then it would be easier to maintain and for people to actually take ownership of it. That way, it wouldn't rot in hell like all those other bad pieces of software out there do.


This in itself is bad, but here is something even worse ... prepare yourself now ... in our industry, we've seen this happen a thousand times before, no-one has ever learnt their lessons from this and yet we'll see it again and again and again in the future!


That's just sad. Really sad.


All I can do at this moment is slap my forehead and shout "Craptastic Batman"!


Who Pays to Fix Things Up


At first glance, it turns out that the people who have to pay to fix the whole mess up is us. The client certainly won't be billed for this situation I'm sure. So it turns out we're paying for it. In fact, we're paying for it in many more ways that one:


  1. our time spent to fix it up
  2. our developer's energy since it is quite a stressful situation
  3. our developer's non-work time, since it had time spent on it over the weekend
  4. our enthusiasm wanes for something that wasn't already initially liked
  5. our time (and therefore money) to re-implement it properly, in a good way and without duct tape


In fact, it's not just us paying for it. The client also has to pay for it, though not in a direct monetry sense:


  1. people using that part of the system couldn't use it for a while
  2. some client's time was spent liasing with us at every step of the way
  3. other areas of the system were slower or substandard and therefore affecting even more people using it


Finally - and this is the worst of all - the visitors to the website also had to 'pay' ... since they received a substandard experience because of the problems. Either that costs the visitor a little bit of time or it may result in their eventual rejection of the site and never to return.


Shortlist for Clients and Managers to help 'Make Things Better' (TM)


To finish off on a high point, here's my quick checklist for making things work out better from the start. This is not a technical list but a list which can be used to just generally make things suck less:


  • when the developer says something will take 32 hours, don't say "do it in 16" - they know the code better than you, believe that if nothing else
  • if you have an idea for a new feature, ask how long it will take first; don't say "we want it by Friday" - if you haven't had this feature up until this point, then you can do without it for another short while until it is done properly
  • if you desparately need a feature for a particular date, please think of it in advance or at least don't expect other things to keep on trucking. Prioritising is the key and that'll really help things
  • kthxbai


See, I told you it was a quick checklist. Now go and mull it over and let me know what you think.


:-)



    

    

    

    

        Labels:
    
        website,
    
        geek,
    
        planet-geek,
    
        developer,
    
        planet-catalyst,
    
        bugs
    
    


    
Inserted: 2008-10-28 19:51 (3 years, 3 months ago)


    
    
Save Us

        

    
        
I just stumbled across a post which I think would make all of us happy.


It's called Save the Developers - enough said!



    

    

    

    

        Labels:
    
        planet-catalyst,
    
        web-development
    
    


    
Inserted: 2008-10-12 23:19 (3 years, 3 months ago)


    
    
"A Wry Smile" about Skype

        

    
        
Glyn Moody has just written an article on why Skype should be open sourced.


Why eBay Should Open-Source Skype is an interesting read. Whilst I think open-sourcing Skype would be good, it would be hard to convince eBay to do it. So Glyn's views that everyone should get behind an open source version of it doesn't get a look in until it actually is open sourced.


Alternatively, the FSF's list of High Priority Free Software Projects should be looked at and considered the best approach at this time.


Yes, an open source version of Skype will win but if that doesn't happen, getting behing Ekiga and the other open source VOIP programs and open VOIP protocols is the best thing to do at the moment.



    

    

    

    

        Labels:
    
        skype,
    
        planet-geek,
    
        planet-catalyst,
    
        voip,
    
        ekiga
    
    


    
Inserted: 2008-10-10 08:18 (3 years, 4 months ago)


    
    
Help When Writing Blog Entries

        

    
        
Over the past few weeks, I've been reading a few blogs about writing. Mainly they're designed for people writing blogs but these guys also write for magazines, newspapers and other places too.


So far, I've been really enjoying exploring two sites in particular:



Once I start reading an article on CopyBlogger I end up doing the Wikipedia thing. I find myself with 7 or 8 tabs open with them all still to read.


Hopefully my writing style is improving and I'm really happy with my latest entry on Retire at 40, titled One Technique on How to Start Saving.


I'd seriously recommend subscribing to CopyBlogger and ProBlogger also has fantastic articles.



    

    

    

    

        Labels:
    
        personal-finance,
    
        planet-geek,
    
        planet-catalyst,
    
        writing
    
    


    
Inserted: 2008-10-08 12:25 (3 years, 4 months ago)


    
    
Optimising a Blog the Non-Technical Way

        

    
        
This is a technical blog but I'm not talking technical for a moment. I'm talking content and other things around running a site. It's something I have never really done but over the past couple of weeks, is something I've been enjoying a lot.


Granted, when we see a problem, we generally see a technical solution to it, but I want to look at this from a different angle for a moment.


Take a look at my new blog, Retire at 40. Yes, I know the subject matter is a bit out there but consider the layout for the moment and not yet the content. Also consider some of the other things I have been doing to try and get it off the ground.


Layout and General Stuff


Here's a list of some of the tweaks and other things I have been doing in the last two weeks. Generally I change just a bit at a time and hopefully so that it'll help capture more people, more subscribers and with less clutter.


  • using Feedburner for my feed so I can see my subscribers
  • added Email Subscribers to the mix
  • moved the RSS and Email subscribe information to the top of the page
  • also put them at the bottom of each (individual) post
  • using Google Analytics to see my hits (currently almost 600 hits in just 21 days :-)
  • getting myself 'out there' by posting a guest entry on another Personal Finance blogger, SingleGuyMoney - Being Green and how it Saves you Money


Content


Now onto the content (but not the subject matter). Here, I have been reading a few other blogs to help in this department. Some of the things I have been trying to do are:


  • use a Creative Commons picture on every post
  • outlining my post before I write it
  • putting subheaders into the post, such that it is easier to manage and read - that storyline feel to it keeps readers interested
  • writing as though I'm talking to you not as though I am writing about me (Note: this blog is about me, so that's why I do it here.)


I have also been reading a number of blogs about writing copy such that I can increase my skill in this area too. Of course, you can read all you like but it's all about actually doing it. Again, this new blog gives me an outlet to practice and hone my writing skills.


Future Plans


These are some things I plan to do over time when it makes more sense:


  • remove the archive completely since no-one really uses it (do you?)
  • properly categorise all my posts into a converging set of tags, and show that instead
  • put the 'Digg This' button back on each post when I get more subscribers
  • promote myself more, either as a guest on other blogs, getting guests onto mine or (as is traditional) commenting on other peoples
  • keep reading about Personal Finance, writing in general and - since I can't leave this out - technical bits and pieces to help put all this in place
  • start learning more about adverts, affiliate schemes and even direct sponsorships


Oh, and by the way, I'm really enjoying using someone else's hosting service for my blog. I'm sure a few of you wonder why I'm using Blogger instead of my own CMS, but yes, this is also an experiment too (did you notice I separated my stylesheet out onto GooglePages so it didn't have to be included in every page from Blogger - something I still consider a deficiency in the Blogger service).


Progress


So far, I am happy with what I have done and with what I have been learning. It turns out (as always) there is more to it than is initially apparent. As things start happening, I'll keep you posted about how it's going and what other changes I shall be making due to what I have been learning elsewhere.


Oh, and if you're interested in the whole Personal Finance field (like myself and Stephen) are, come talk to us since I find it all very interesting. As with all the other subjects I have touched on today, there is plenty more to learn.



    

    

    

    

        Labels:
    
        personal-finance,
    
        planet-geek,
    
        planet-catalyst,
    
        blogging
    
    


    
Inserted: 2008-10-04 00:41 (3 years, 4 months ago)