I was out recently with a couple of freelancer friends of mine when they started talking about the near constant requests they get for spec[ulative] work, which is basically work done for something other than money. I didn’t really understand it since I’m not a freelancer anymore (and haven’t been for quite some time) but then I read this, I felt their pain.

Tag clouds are a Web 2.0 device so ubiquitous I’m looking at one here in Wordpress and developing one for Wonderfile. The Wordpress version is simple; no sizes are applied. In Wonderfile however (see also del.icio.us for an example of this), we make tags larger or smaller depending on how many items have been “tagged” with each particular tag. More items, bigger tag.

I was thinking as I applied this technique though, large sized tags attract the eye, so a big tag that’s not quite right for the job might often win out over a smaller, more suitable tag. Thoughts?

Want to work at Amazon? Now you can, answering incredibly mundane questions that computers aren’t generally very good at. I decided to try out Amazon Mechanical Turk, a service which allows programmers or others with hard questions for computers but easy questions for the human mind to interact with anonymous humans. This is a cool idea, but the implementation of it is a little unfair; now I know how HAL felt. (more…)

I’m learning that projects built on agile frameworks (like ArcSite) can really unfold almost by themselves–once the database is written, the objects fall out of that. Once the objects are written, controllers and web services basically write themselves, and once you have a controller, you’re ready for the template.

I was pleased this evening to get to spend some time developing ArcSite’s web services layer–it’s going to be really robust and easy to create and use.

Every year, I learn two new languages and write (or at least design) one; I’ve done this for four years now and I keep up my skills in each language. I usually take about a month per language. I always learn one in January and one in June (well, June 21 to the end of July actually) January, I learn a language I don’t want to know but feel like I should. My birthday is in June, so I feel like it’s a good point to reward myself with a “candy” language. Help me pick a new language to learn! (more…)

Geoffrey James, who I did not know blogged for BNET, posted some tips on selling to engineers. While I think the article underestimates the capacity of engineers to see through the sales tactics of meathead software salespeople to the software itself, he makes some valuable points, especially in Rule 3 (admit your ignorance, intelligently).

As a software developer for a comparatively small company, I tend to balk at very large companies who try to sell us things. Since their salespeople know we’re not going to be a huge account, they often ignore these seven wise steps and just tell us why we should use their product and blow us off when we ask questions. I had a notably offensive sales demo with a company peddling overpriced web statistics software recently.

NB: For those of you not in the know, Geoffrey James wrote the very famous, often cited Tao of Programming.

A current Internet issue that I care a lot about the potential death of Internet radio due to everyone’s favorite self-appointed sheriff, judge, and jury, the RIAA. (Read all about it from the point of view of the radio stations themselves.) BUT It looks like SoundExchange, which is the central collection point for Internet radio royalties, will extend the current royalty structure until 2010, at least for the “small” webcasters which can’t afford to pay the crazy new royalty rates.

I listen to Radio Paradise while I program, and some of my best work would never have been born without it.

About six weeks ago, ArcStone discontinued its practice of offshoring indefinitely. Since then, I’ve been doing a fair amount of research into the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing. It’s become clear that a rational examination of this problem cannot occur by examining outsourcing and offshoring without considering the larger economic context. (more…)

Google’s done it again. By incorporating historically disparate search results such as videos, news, and blogs into the main body of the first page of search results, Google has effectively closed itself to some of the more disgusting SEO habits.

Some in the burgeoning SEO industry are clearly already a little upset and suggest that Webmasters try to move past Google. I say, good luck. Seems stupid to me–Google’s not going anywhere.

All in all, this is great news for us at ArcStone. We mostly practice organic SEO, which emphasizes quality content rather than obsessive use of keywords by writing content and creating links that are useful to humans and search engines alike.

Microsoft has recently asserted that Open Source Software violates 235 patents, and that Linux violates 42. While those claims are highly questionable since Microsoft won’t say which patents are violated, the real question is how many patents might Microsoft be violating? The sick thing is, nobody can really find out, since Microsoft won’t share its source code, but anyone can accuse Linux of any violation arising from its source since Linux is an open, honest operating system.

Worse yet, Microsoft is already inking agreements with some of the less altruistic Linux vendors, including Novell, which as part of its deal is protected from patent lawsuits.

I will admit that it seems unlikely that legal action could arise from these so called patent violations, but if it really is just a scare tactic, it’s a really dirty trick. Hinting at legal action to either scare businesses back towards Microsoft products or towards its partners that sell lawsuit-protected versions of Linux is highly unethical and really nasty. All this serves a purpose I suppose–if their gambit fails, they’ll have egg on their face. And regardless, this whole incident makes me feel much less guilty for bashing Microsoft. They deserve it in spades.