I have adopted an email technique that works well for short quick messages to colleagues I find myself sending fifty times a day. Quite simply, I put the entire message in the subject line, leaving the body blank.

Recipients can then assimilate the entire communication without clicking on the message. For people who leave their email up all day on a dedicated screen the messages roll in like IMs, making the only effort needed to read them a quick glance.

I apply the following thought process when sending subject only messages:

1) Will the message be short enough to display in its entirety?
2) Does this user already have my contact info? (send a normal message to new contacts so they have your full signature)
3) Will the user need to reply to you with detailed questions and/or responses?

Consider the following example of a typical short message:

Subject: Meeting
Body: I am double-booked this afternoon. Can we reschedule our 1PM meeting for tomorrow?

Subject only version:

Subject: Meeting – I am double-booked this afternoon. Can we reschedule our 1PM meeting for tomorrow? – Best, Nicholas

Don’t forget to end your message appropriately. Just because its all in the subject line doesn’t mean you can forget your manners.

There has been a lot of talk about Wonderfile lately. For those of you in the dark, Wonderfile is our answer to the problem of organizing, sharing, searching, filtering, archiving, and distributing digital information.

To accomplish all the amazing things you can do with Wonderfile, we give you three tools: Libraries, Categories, and Tags. This trio of tools allows for unparalleled flexibility, organization, and searching capabilities.

To further illustrate how these tools can be put to use I have prepared a list of my top 10 ways to use Wonderfile:

Keep Track of all the PDFs I Download
Library: PDF Stash – Tags: Documentation, White Paper, How-To

Organize My Source Code
Library: Secret Sauces – Tags: Open Source, PHP, Security

Store Scans of Take Out Menus
Library: Munchies – Tags: Chinese, Free Delivery, Fast

Archive My Digital Artwork
Library: My Artwork – Tags: Anime, Flash, Black and White

Share Photos of the Kids
Library: My Two Sons – Tags: Candid, Halloween, Sports

Backup My Important Software
Library: Tools Of The Trade – Tags: Utilities, Drivers, Shareware

Capture Important Emails
Library: Transmissions – Tags: From Me, Receipts, See Attachment

Store Bookmarks
Library: World Wide Wonders – Tags: Funny, Useful, Blog

Play Photoshop Tennis
Library: 40 Love – Tags: My Serve, Completed, Draw

Sort Candid Celebrity Photos
Library: Celebrity Snaps – Tags: Vacation, Britney, Red Carpet

We’re getting soooo close to our Wonderfile beta launch….

An old salty dog programmer (also very successful money-wise) once told me. “A software application isn’t really done until it’s been rewritten from scratch at least five times.”

We’re on our fourth rewrite of Wonderfile. It doesn’t encapsulate our complete vision for the app, but we feel that it’s quite useful as it is, and definitely good enough to publically beta test.

What is Wonderfile? It is a completely new way to think about organizing electronic files. We’re done with the nested folders of the 80′s and have created a hierarchical tag-based framework for managing files. This is really different stuff – a paradigm shift. Comments from experienced IT pros we’ve shown early demos to…

* “Why hasn’t anyone else done this?”

* “I can use this in a ton of different ways.”

* “How can I invest?”

We’ll be posting the access code for our limited beta on this blog October 15th. We’ll let 250 testers in to the system – first come first serve. They’ll be given privileged account status (i.e. less expensive after the test is over) and will be able to influence future development of the system.

For a sneak preview, come see us demo Wonderfile to our peers at Minnedemo Oct. 11 (free beer for the first 200 attendees). Minnedemo is held at O’Gara’s in St. Paul – the demo’s start at 7:30 and we’re the fourth company on stage…

Visit – http://minnedemo.org to register.

I have a theory.

A web application will be at least 100% better if the developers who create it also actively use it.

It is akin to a meal prepared by an expert chef. The best chefs constantly sample their creations as they prepare a meal. When it is ready, they’ll serve it to their patrons and then sit down themselves to enjoy what they have lovingly created.

Like a chef, expert developers need to actively sample (test and use) their software while working on it, then sit down and consume their own code as a user would.

QA provided by testing experts definitely has its place – but I fear that sometimes developers (even good ones) miss significant opportunities to write better applications because they rely too heavily on testers / users to catch bugs and provide interface feedback. This reliance costs time – but even more significantly, we lose opportunities to improve the user experience because those who know how to change the code don’t take the time to actively engage and use the application. This lost opportunity for creative improvement could be avoided if developers spent an hour actively using the application for every 10 hours spent coding.

When I say using – I don’t mean quick tests, scripted testing, a little demo or anything like that – I mean actively using the application like their users will have to. I’m talking really, really use it and engage. A good chef will sit down and eat the meals he prepares – from that he draws inspiration for improvement. Programmers who consume the applications they write will create better software – hands down.

I couldn’t think of anything else to post, so I decided to put up a brief synopsis of my current musical adventures, especially what I listen to while I program.

1. The Knife. These guys are great; sort of electronic with fast beats. I listen to them when I really just need to focus, even if I’m having a bad day. I’ve never written any great code with them playing, but what they do for me is allow me to write code even when I really don’t want to.
2. The Hold Steady. I can’t listen to most of their stuff except in full album format, and I never listen to them just to get motivated. I reserve The Hold Steady for when I need to stay on a hot streak. I can listen to them on headphones, like The Knife, so they’re good for a midday streak often.
3. The Decembrists. I have all their stuff on my computer, and I’ve written a lot of my best stuff to their erudite lyrics and catchy melodies.
4. Radiohead. An old standby for writing great code. My very best coding sessions have involved listening to everyting they’ve ever done, in chronological order–it’s what I put on when I know I’m hot and I want to stay that way for the next 12 hours…
5. Dave Matthews Band. Not many programmers I know of are down with DMB, oddly, and I can’t listen to them for really hard concentration, but for basic bug fixing, they’re alright.
6. Mayaflyer. I like to start and end every day with Mayaflyer. They’re the only reason I’ve ever produced a worthwhile line of code, ever.
7. Wilco. Unbelievable for sustained periods of productivity. I can code for hours, especially with “A Ghost is Born.”
8. Just about anything from Schubert onwards, chronologically. I code really well to Shostakovich symphonies, Brahms concertos and sonatas, and Menotti’s operas. Also Philip Glass. If you’re a programmer reading this, try some Glass, especially the album of the Brazilian group playing his stuff, it’ll blow your mind.
9. TV on the Radio, The Strokes, The Libertines, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Velvet Revolver, Portishead, Interpol, We are Scientists… see Radiohead.

Oh, and as for what I’m reading right now, I’ll admit without embarrassment that I’m progressing through the Harry Potter series in order; I’m on book four and loving every second of it.

Ever since I got my iPhone, I’ve been drawn more frequently to YouTube, that glorious time suck. I suppose it’s because YouTube is now even easier for me to abuse than ever before, but the fact remains. I saw an interesting one over the weekend, the “hipster PDA” which is an organizational tool consisting of note cards, a pencil, and an alligator clip. The “hipster PDA shuffle” is the same, but with an iPod shuffle instead of the alligator clip (funny, right?)

Also over this last weekend I had a programming spurt of unprecedented effectiveness and productivity. All this, plus the normal course of my reading has led me think a lot harder about why I work the way I do, which is to say, why do I have such great and productive 60 hour spurts which last a few days and then return to normal efficiency? Or more importantly, how do I change my ways so my output doesn’t drop but the schedule is more predictable?

I’d like to think that I started to answer this question for myself over the weekend. See, my biggest problem is that when I hit a brick wall in the course of writing code, invariably I end up watching YouTube for three hours (if I’m good at programming I’m much better at watching YouTube). So this weekend, when the urge to watch the ‘tube hit, I managed to drag myself out of my chair and into the conference room, away from any computer, and refocus on planning and architecture. It worked amazingly. I did about two weeks worth of work in three days.
Anyways, working at the office with other people, I can’t always go to the conference room or pace the floor with my music blasting, so I’m going to need to find a more social method of working. Ideas?

Oh, by the way, I wrote this post from my iPhone.

Having a cluttered desktop doesn’t just look unattractive, it seriously hampers your productivity. It always starts the same way: You receive an important email attachment and you think, “Hey, I’ll put this on my desktop so I can find it easily” or “I need to use this file right away–I will drop it on my desktop and file it away later.”

Twenty attachments, downloads, and new files later, your desktop is like a pig on roller skates: unwieldy and bloated. But don’t fear gentle readers, I have five tips to help you reclaim this valuable real estate and impress anyone who happens to glance at your screen.

Tip #1 – Pick A Nice Desktop Background
If you have a great image on your desktop, one that you actually want to look at, it provides a bit of subtle, subconscious motivation not to cover it up with file icons.
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I’ve posted a little snippet of Austin demo-ing ArcSite. ArcSite enables our clients to browse to any page on their web site, click a button and edit text, images and links. It is infinitely customizable and will work in any design.

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…)

A common thread from everything I’ve been reading and thinking about lately is that an effective worker or firm (any type) must constantly seek new ways to maintain and improve productivity. I’ve been on a non-stop mission to drive up my own person efficiency for about a month now, and just by taking five minutes a day to really think about it, I’ve made remarkable strides, though I know I have a long way to go.

I realized that since getting my MacBook Pro, it’s the only computer I use at home and at work. But I have two great computers at home too–a Windows box and a CentOS Linux box each running 2+ GHZ and 1+ GB Ram. They were going to waste! So I hauled them into the office and stuck them under my desk, plugged them into my previously empty KVM switch, and now I have a lab server (Linux) which mirrors our development and production servers to speed update times and allow for easy collaboration with others in the office and a Windows box which I’ll use for testing.

For any computer worker who has a strong desire to be more productive at their job, I have one small tip–invest some time and money (if need be) in learning to type faster. I’ve seen a hundred programmers who can’t go more than 40 or 50 WPM. It’s what we do at least 40 hours per week… so why not take the time to learn to do it exactly right?