Why are we still using Outlook Web Access, an internet email client that is seven years old and terrible design even for seven years ago. It pains me that my office uses a program that was bad even by the standards of 2003 when it came out. But the real question here is… why the hell hasn’t microsoft updated this piece of crap at all? Seriously? The company has billions of dollars, couldn’t they spare a quick million to rewrite the damn thing? Hell, for a mere $2 million, right now, I’ll quit my job and go write it for them. It should take about eight weeks to produce something better. Eight weeks… tops. And i’ll even write it to support IE.

Lately I’ve been the subject of what I call developer drift.

Developer Drift is the process by which an unchallenged developer slowly moves from one project to the next. The project may be in house or external or something completely fabricatec by the developer’s mind, but it basically means a developer is less interested in the current project than the project over the horizon. It’s the “Grass is always greener” truism made concrete in software engineering.

For me, this has taken the form of the fact that our customer wants really boring user interfaces which I can crank out like they are nothing. Problem is, I almost never crank them out, because they are meaningless and I never feel challenged/creative by them. (For me challenged=creative.) So I take forever to implement them and tend to make a lot of excuses on why this is taking so long. I feel justified in why it takes so long in the fact that when I am challenged, I really do crank out the code at an extraodinary rate which borders on the obscene when compared to average developers. I’m very prolific when I want to be.

The same thing was true when I was back in college studying English Literature. I could crank out a paper that I found interesting in no time flat, but assign me something that was pedantic and I’d sooner rip my own teeth out with a spoon (”because it will hurt more”).

So the real question I’m trying to find an answer to is “How do you deal with developer drift?” How do you stop people from losing interest when they are bored because the project has become boring? A project I used to work on is suffering from this very problem… they want to keep the team together, but the more boring stuff they do, the less likely they are to be able to keep the team together? Is there a way for this project to challenge it’s developers at the same time as doing boring things? Would contests or “feats of skill” help keep things from getting stale? Or should they just accept this as the life cycle of the developer, assume that people are going to drift away, and prepare for the next generation?

You tell me… how does your project deal with developer drift?

I laid down some funky techno grooves. Check it: http://inudge.net/inudge#/ft8r

This week I’m changing work locations. As part of this I was comparing the space I work in to the new space and trying to quantify which is better.  I remember that a while back I posted about Environmental Factors in helping to create the best possible work experience.  And then I was thinking about how to rate each space.  My idea was to come up with some nice scale, but it’s pretty obvious that each of these things is subjective and a single scale doesn’t work.  So here’s my idea instead:

1). ORDER THE LIST: Rate the following twenty items in order of importance to you.  Use a 1 for Least Important and a 20 for Most Important.  No Item can have the same number.  Now, here’s the important bit: If you don’t agree with the list, or something on the list isn’t a factor, replace it with something else.  It doesn’t matter what the items in the list are, so much as that there are 20 of them.

• Privacy
• Seclusion from Other People
• Inclusion with Other People
• Ability to Listen to Music Openly
• Ability to Listen to Music on Headphones
• Ability to Modify Environment Lighting
• Cleanliness in Work Environment
• Ability to See Outside
• Ability to Hang Posters or Artwork
• Lots of Wall Space
• Lots of Desk Space
• Lots of Floor Space
• File Cabinet Storage Space
• Nice Furniture
• Comfortable Chair
• Bookshelves
• Ability to Wear Jeans and Flipflops
• Access to the Internet
• High Quality Computing Hardware
• High Quality Computing Software

2). RATE EACH ITEM: Now go through and rate your workplace/workspace on each of the items from 1 to 5 where 1 means NO or LEAST and 5 means YES or MOST.

3). FACTOR EACH LINE: Multiple the rating from Step1 by the Rating from Step2 for each line.

4). TOTAL IT UP: Add all the numbers from Step 3.

5). DERIVE THE SCORE: Divide the result from Step 4 by 105 and round down.  This is your WCLRS score.  Use the following reference to help you determine how good your score is:

2 = PRISON = You work basically in a prison cell without the perk of the inmate on inmate love.  Get a new job.

3 = ABYSMAL = Things are pretty piss poor in your workplace if you are seeing a score like this.  Get a new job.

4 = BAD = Your workplace comfort is really pretty bad and that is keeping you from working at the top of your game.  You could try sprucing things up a bit with fake plants and the like, but without a concerted effort by management to create a better workplace, you’re pretty much screwed. Get a new job.

5 = NOT GOOD = It’s getting better, but really it’s not very good at all.  You could try working with your company to fix things, but I doubt you’ll be able to effect change.  Pity though.  You might consider getting a new job.

6 = ADEQUATE = Okay, your workplace is adequate.  It’s not great but it also beat working in prison.  Plus, clearly your company knows some of these factors are important and they might be willing to work on the other things. You might also consider getting a new job.

7 = PRETTY GOOD = This is down right pretty good.  Your working in a fairly comfortable place and clearly your employer values creating a decent place for its employees.  This, by the way, is the minimum rating for someone who works at home.  If you work at home and get below a 7, just chuck it all and go live on a beach in Guam.

8 = DAMN GOOD = You’re doing damn good.  It’s a nice work space, very comfortable, very enjoyable.  So long as the work doesn’t suck and the people you work with are not complete wankers, this is an excellent job.

9 = AWESOME = Damn near perfect.  You should keep this job even if you don’t like the people you work with.

10 = PERFECT = The gold star standard of workplace comfort.  If you work here, please email me at |a r e i .at. a r e i .dot. n e t| and let me know if you are hiring.

Here’s how I rated my current workplace, and how I rate the workplace I am moving to:

STEP 1 ORDER THE LIST:  For me the list is ordered like this…

01 = Ability to See Outside
02 = Ability to Listen to Music Openly
03 = Lots of Wall Space
04 = Lots of Floor Space
05 = Inclusion with Other People
06 = Carpeting
07 = File Cabinet Storage Space
08 = Nice Furniture
09 = Ability to Hang Posters or Artwork
10 = Bookshelves
11 = Lots of Desk Space
12 = Comfortable Chair
13 = Cleanliness in Work Environment
14 = High Quality Computing Hardware
15 = High Quality Computing Software
16 = Ability to Modify Environment Lighting
17 = Ability to Listen to Music on Headphones
18 = Access to the Internet
19 = Privacy
20 = Seclusion from Other People

STEP 2 RATE EACH ITEM: Here’s my CURRENT and my NEW workplace ratings.  The first number is the current, the second number is the new as shown here: current/new

4/2 = Ability to See Outside
1/2 = Ability to Listen to Music Openly
1/2 = Lots of Wall Space
1/1 = Lots of Floor Space
1/4 = Inclusion with Other People
3/2 = Carpeting
2/2 = File Cabinet Storage Space
2/1 = Nice Furniture
1/2 = Ability to Hang Posters or Artwork
1/1 = Bookshelves
1/2 = Lots of Desk Space
2/1 = Comfortable Chair
5/1 = Cleanliness in Work Environment
5/2 = High Quality Computing Hardware
5/2 = High Quality Computing Software
3/1 = Ability to Modify Environment Lighting
5/2 = Ability to Listen to Music on Headphones
4/2 = Access to the Internet
2/3 = Privacy
1/2 = Seclusion from Other People

STEP 3 FACTOR EACH LINE: Just multiple each lines rating by the order position, gives me the numbers below again in current/new format.

04/02 = Ability to See Outside
02/04 = Ability to Listen to Music Openly
03/06 = Lots of Wall Space
04/04 = Lots of Floor Space
05/20 = Inclusion with Other People
18/12 = Carpeting
14/14 = File Cabinet Storage Space
16/08 = Nice Furniture
09/18 = Ability to Hang Posters or Artwork
10/10 = Bookshelves
11/22 = Lots of Desk Space
24/12 = Comfortable Chair
65/13 = Cleanliness in Work Environment
70/28 = High Quality Computing Hardware
75/30 = High Quality Computing Software
48/16 = Ability to Modify Environment Lighting
85/34 = Ability to Listen to Music on Headphones
72/36 = Access to the Internet
38/57 = Privacy
20/40 = Seclusion from Other People

STEP 4 TOTAL IT UP: Add up each number for current and each for new to get the totals:

Current: 594

New:386

STEP 5 DERIVE THE SCORE: So here I take the totals and divide by 105 for my score:

Current: 594/105 = 6 = ADEQUATE

New: 386/105 = 4 = BAD

So, now that I have it all figured out, I am basically going from ADEQUATE to BAD.  That doesn’t sound like an upgrade to me at all.

Time to get a new job.

Google announced yesterday a new offering called Google Wave.  There is an excellent article at TechChrunch that gives a complete overview.  All I can say is: THIS IS HUGE PEOPLE. The concept of Google Wave, the underlying idea is exactly the right step that the web and the internet needs to take. It’s a combination of Email, Instant Messaging, Twitter, Transparency, Collaboration, Wiki, Media sharing, and so much more.  Oh, and it’s an Open API and Open Source to boot.

If you’ve ever talked tech with me in the last three years and we’ve had the discussion about what is next in technology, then we’ve had a very similar discussion about the concepts behind Google Wave.  I’m not claiming Google has once again stolen my idea, but what I will claim is that there clearly is a need for this type of product that I saw and google saw and others saw as well.

Two things in particular I want to call your attention to that make Google Wave a huge idea:

1). Adhoc groups… What adhoc grouping really does for you is to let people create internet groups as easily as they create real world groups.  Think of it this way… when you walk into your work place break room and two other people walk in and the three of you start talking, you have created a group.  It’s fast in the real world, why can it not be like that in the internet world? For most of the internet when you want to form a group and start working together there’s a fairly large investment in creating the meta systems the group needs: setting up a mailing list, setting up forums, setting up a media store, setting up a user database, etc etc.  It’s a pain in the ass really, and it make setting up a group fairly non-trivial.  To some degree, Yahoo Groups and Google Groups automates a lot of that, but then you still have to go through the effort of getting people to join etc.

What Google Wave does is to make group creation simple and almost instantaneous.  Basically, you create a group by dragging a bunch of contacts together and off you go.  You can immediately begin discussion, expand the group, whatever.  Additionally, if you need other tools for that group like a map or a document or some other thing, you can add a widget or a robot to participate in that  group and boom, you have more functionality to fill the groups need.

2) The second feature that is huge for me is transparency.  Transparency is the notion behind Twitter in that you broadcast snippets of your activities out to the world and everyone can see what you are doing.  This is the beginning of transparency though.  To take it further you need to automate transparency such that as you do things, they automatically are published.  Of course, this brings up privacy concerns, but I think there are simple ways to solve this.

I know that Wave has some level of transparency, but it’s still to early to tell how much.  I suspect that even if this is an opt in version of transparency, like Twitter, that soon there will be robots and widgets (the extensions to Wave) that will automate a lot of this functionality.

The point is, though, that transparecny can be a huge social tool… but more importantly it could be a huge business tool.  And the company that sees this is going to get a huge edge over the company that does not.

Anyways, that’s my thoughts on Google Wave.  You should efinately check it out.

Lately I’ve been having a lot of conversations with people about what environmental factors go into creating the perfect work/space environment for a person.  This in part may have been introduced by Eric Spiegel over at Datamation posting a couple of articles recently asking Where’s Your Coding Happy Place and Finding The Coding Zone: Your Perfect Trifecta.  In the articles he discusses where is the best place for him to code and what external stimuli facilitates that.

In User Interface design there is a concept called Flow.  Flow represents that “in the zone” state about which Spiegel talks.  It is this perfect state of unity with ones work.  It’s a wonderful place to be and when we can achieve it we are at our most productive and do our best work. The problem with Flow or “being in the zone” is that it is amazingly easy to interrupt.  A ringing phone, a coworker asking a question, or piece of email can all break you ot of your Flow and completely disrupt the brialliant work you’ve been doing.  And once Flow is interrupted it is fairly hard to recover again.

Breaking flow is really easy to do and there are a number of pieces written about things that do this.  Just about any kind of interruption or distraction will do it.  In a User Interface, for example, a popup dialog box or an animated paper clip can be enough to completely destroy the user’s Flow.  It’s considered bad UI Design to create activities that break flow.

What is much harder to quantify is what exactly does it take to achieve flow?  This is ultimately the question that Spiegel is asking in his article about “The Coding Zone.” A lot of people go about achieving Flow in different ways: turn off the phone, close the email application, close the door, blast the music, have food and drinks at hand, turn the light on, turn the lights off, work at 3am in the morning, whatever it takes.  And a lot of people know what it takes for them to find Flow.

For me, Flow is about comfort and ignoring the rest of the world.

First and foremost I need to be comfortable.  A good chair, appropriate lighting, keyboard perfectly position in relation to seat.  All these things factor into comfort for me.  In particular, lighting is very important.  I’m one of those “likes to program in a cave of darkness” person.  Unfortunately, I’m also one of those people forced to work in a cubicle with overhead florescent lights.  I have managed to convince my fellow cube mates to keep the overhead lights off and rely on the personal cubicle light, but sometimes this takes a little arm twisting.

As to ignoring the rest of the world, well that’s fairly easy: turn up the music so you don’t hear outside sounds, don’t answer the phone (unplug it if necessary), and turn off the interrupting applications.  I’m pretty adepts at just ignoring the Instant Messages, Emails and Phone Calls that cross my desk.  I’ve also minimized the interruptions that they present… for example, email plays a simple low volume sound for me, but nothing else.  It lets me know it’s there, but does not draw me away from what I am doing.

Flow allows us to work at our highest, most efficient levels.  So why do our employers fail to set us up to achieve flow?  Instead of helping us to find our “zone” they do everything in the power to surround us with distractions.  In my workplace I have to dress a certain way, I have to be there at a certain time, I have to work in a cubicle listening the the minutia of my coworkers.  None of these things is helping me find my Flow.  In fact, all of these things are actively hindering me from doing my best work.

Let me repeat that: My company is actively hindering me from doing my best work.

Kind of scary when you think about it.  You would think that for a company, quality is the most important thing.  Yet from the actions of most companies, that’s hardly apparent.  In my workplace, quality is second to how the company appears to the outside world.  Perhaps that’s the nature of business, but it really just speaks to a lack of quality.  That makes me sad.

So, let me leave you with a question… but instead of asking how you find the best Flow like Spiegel does, I’m going to ask you this: Is your company intersted in quality or something else? Do they encourage flow, or do they discourage it?  Do they Flow?

So, being a Java guy I’m fairly religious to Sun as a company.  I invested in their stock a while back (for good or bad) and thus I always kind of keep an eye on the company.  Recently I came across a series of video blogs by Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun.  The one I want to share with you is his second video blog.  The blog talks about the Sun view of the technological market place, and how giving brands away for free (like Java and MySQL and others) drives adoption, which in turn can drive revenue. Now, I’m no corporate financial officer, just a code monkey, but I found the blog well thought out and I thought I would share it with you.

My own company is currently working on a new project with the goal of productizing it.  We’re still in the early development of this product and haven’t had the discussion about how to sell it to consumers yet.  However, as I go about building the User Interface for this site I cannot help but keep thinking to myself (even prior to reading Jonathan’s blog) that the value of the site can only be realized by driving users to the site (or as Schwartz put it: building adoption).  In order to achieve this, the site would need to be largely free to the masses and make its revenue either through some ancillary stream or by charging only for some specific “higher role” usage.  As I designed the front end and go about coding it, I keep telling myself that the site is meant to be used by millions of people freely and must scale accordingly.

Like I said, I’m not the business guy, just a code monkey, but I really can see this notion of giving something away and finding revenue beyond just usage.  I like to think of it as the Field of Dreams model… In the movie Ray, the main character, is told to “Build it and they will come” which is much like the philosophy Schwartz is espousing.  The existence of the Field of Dreams brings the people, and there is surely revenue to be made after the fact: selling popcorn or something; the method is not as important as getting the people, driving adoption.  If you have the people, selling them something they want beyond what you are offering should be easy.

Anyway, if you’d like to read/watch the video blog I am talking about, you can find it here: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/date/20090306

If you’d like to read/watch the entire video blog series (there are four of them), you can  find it here: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/date/20090302

If you’d like to follow Jonathan Schwartz’s blog, you can find it here: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/

I found this an interesting concept.  The question of the day, however, is will it work?

So I have an iPhone, just like all the other nerds out there.  Next week apple is going to offer details on their next version of the iPhone software (version 3.0) and as such everyone out there in the blogosphere seems to be writing about what they want in this new version.  I’ve read a few of these lists and agree with some of the items on them such as Cut and Paste, Images in Text messages, and background processing, but there’s one spot I’d really like some work on that nobody seems to think about.  I cannot help but wonder if i’m either missing something or no one else has every thought about this.

So the feature I’d really like to see is: The ability to adjust cache settings inside safari.  See, Safari, the iPhone web browser, appears to have a tiny little cache that remembers almost nothing.  The means that web pages are slower to download overall, plus when safari restarts, any old pages you want to revisit need to get downloaded again, which is slow.  What I’d like to see is a number of settings that you can adjust in safari that let you dictate whether or not the caching is allowed, how big the cache can be, and whether or not to clear the cache when closing safari.  The second one, how big the cache is, is especially important to me.  See, I don’t store a lot of video or music on my iPhone so I basically have like 75% of my iPhone’s memory sitting around doing nothing.  I’d love to be able to amke that 75% assigned to my safari cache and thus increase some of my browsing performance.

Now, all of that said, I know its really a minor request.  Plus since I own a first generation iPhone and not one of those 3G specials, I understand performance is more of an issue for me and less of one for other people.  Yet, at the end of the day, this is just one man’s blog and one man’s request for what *I* want to see.  So I get to make crazy demands.

You’ll notice that an all new version of the site is up and running.  This is version 3.1 of the site and long overdue to be installed and put into production.

The old site was, well, getting old.  The big problem was that all of the blogging stuff was custom code and very limited.  So as any rewrite I wanted to take out that code and use a commercial blog system.  I also wanted to clean up the directory structure, redo some of the css and put up the new logo art I did a few months ago.

So, the new site is now up running the Wordpress software. It took some massaging to get it just the way I wanted, but after a few hours I eventually got it setup to something usable.

More changes to the site are coming, but the basic core is there.  I intend to add links to cross post article urls to other sites like digg and delicious and the like.  Plus there’s a fair amount of content from the old site that needs to get linked in.  And a few other flourishes.  Finally, I will be taking the livejournal site down and redirecting it here so therre’s only one blug to manage.

So, here it is, up and running.  Thoughts and comments welcome.