user experience
I’m one of the rare people who actually likes Windows Vista. Sure, it’s far from what was originally promised in terms of features, but it’s still a solid quality of life improvement from the crusty old 2001 version of Windows XP. Or at least it will be,
unit testing
Let’s say you’re about to deploy an application. Said app has been heavily tested by your development team, who have all been infected by unit testing fever. It’s also been vetted by your QA group, who spent months spelunking into every crevice of the app. You even
internet culture
It’s hard to pin down the exact etymology of the word Lazyweb, but it seems to have one primary meaning: 1. Asking a question of an internet audience in the hopes that they will be able to find a solution that you were too lazy or inexperienced to find
computer science
While researching Classic Computer Science Puzzles, our CEO Scott Stanfield turned me on to A.K. Dewdney’s The New Turing Omnibus: 66 Excursions in Computer Science. This is an incredibly fun little book. Sure, it’s got Towers of Hanoi, but it’s also got so much more: The
security
The web is nothing if not a maze of user accounts and logins. Almost everywhere you go on the web requires yet another new set of credentials. Unified login seems to elude us at the moment, so the status quo is an explosion of usernames and passwords for every user.
programming languages
Software developers do have a proclivity for puzzles. Perhaps that’s why books like To Mock a Mockingbird exist. It’s a collection of logic puzzles which is considered an introduction to lambda calculus, one of the core concepts of Lisp. Such puzzle questions are de rigueur for many programming
storage
Everyone who has ever purchased a hard drive finds out the hard way that there are two ways to define a gigabyte. When you buy a “500 Gigabyte” hard drive, the vendor defines it using the decimal powers of ten definition of the “Giga” prefix. 500 * 109 bytes = 500,000,
security
The multi-platform password cracker Ophcrack is incredibly fast. How fast? It can crack the password “Fgpyyih804423” in 160 seconds. Most people would consider that password fairly secure. The Microsoft password strength checker rates it “strong.” The Geekwisdom password strength meter rates it “mediocre.” Why is Ophcrack so fast? Because
user experience
Cyrus Najmabadi* hates tabs in web browsers: Ok, I seriously don’t get tabs on Windows. Hell, I don’t get tabs on OSX either. In the latter there’s a great system called Expos, and in the former the taskbar does the job. Once I start using tabs, things
user interface design
Task-Centered User Interface Design is a 1993 book delivered in digital shareware form, and also available as a PDF. Although it’s almost fifteen years old, it’s still highly relevant – a testament to the timelessness of studying human interface design principles. It was written by Clayton Lewis and
software development concepts
One of the premium features of the New York Times website is the Windows Reader. It’s free if you subscribe to home delivery of the paper, otherwise it’s $14.95 per month. One of the key attractions of the Times Reader is that it lets you read the
usability
In-N-Out Burger is a fast food institution here in California. Part of their appeal, I think, is their radically simplified menu. Instead of forcing customers to process a complex menu with a hundred choices, In-N-Out got real and pared it down to what really matters: a