Ma.gnolia: Ed Yourdon's Bookmarks

The state of mobile OS's

yourdon — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:09:24 PDT

A good TechCrunch summary of the state of mobile OS's, as of June 2008

Bill Gates comments on usability of Windows software

yourdon — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 05:45:18 PDT

Blog posting that links to a long email that Bill Gates wrote to this own people about the confusing, user-hostile nature of Windows software... reflects an attitude that many of us feel when frustrated by the software that we use...

Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants

yourdon — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:33:48 PDT

A good article in CIO magazine about the difference between digital natives (people under 30, who grew up with Internet etc) vs digital immigrants (the older people, who still hesitate, and who often refer back to the "good old days" before cellphones, IM, etc).

What Does Gartner Really DO?

yourdon — Mon, 19 May 2008 07:05:20 PDT

Interesting assessment of Gartner and other IT research/analyst firms, by Cringely ...

The Cognitive Age - New York Times

yourdon — Fri, 02 May 2008 05:24:02 PDT

There’s a problem with the way the globalization paradigm has evolved. It doesn’t really explain most of what is happening in the world. David Brooks goes on to suggest that "The chief force reshaping manufacturing is technological change" and "...the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information." Good stuff!

Addictomatic: Inhale the Web

yourdon — Fri, 02 May 2008 05:17:24 PDT

Great new search engine: type in the usual search term, and then see a visual representation of all the different "resources" on the Web that contain info, articles, pictures, videos, and other forms of information about that topic.

business web 2.0 survey - How businesses are using Web 2.0: A McKinsey Global Survey - Marketing - Digital Marketing - The McKinsey Quarterly

yourdon — Fri, 02 May 2008 04:57:18 PDT

How businesses are using Web 2.0: A McKinsey Global Survey. A Digital Marketing Survey about business web 2.0 survey by The McKinsey Quarterly. Free registration for most Marketing Digital Marketing articles. peer-to-peer networking, internet investments, web 2.0 global trends, and global web 2.0 trends. By and large, executives are satisfied with their previous investments in Internet technology, and most are investing in trends that promote automation and networking online.

Clay Shirky on "Where You Find the Time to Spend Online"

yourdon — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:36:26 PDT

Where do people find the time to do things like edit Wikipedia? They watch less television says author Clay Shirky. This links to a video clip of a terrific presentation that Shirky gave at a recent Web 2.0 conference. He begins with a wonderful anecdote about the early years of the Industrial Revolution; I'm not going to give it away, so you'll have to just watch it ...

Michael Arrington on Twitter stats

yourdon — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:14:04 PDT

Michael Arrington presents some statistics about Twitter usage: number of users, number of messages, etc. What's most interesting about this post, actually, is the long list of 100+ comments from various people around the world...

YouTube - Richard Hammond presents Bloody Omaha (The Graphics)

yourdon — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 07:38:29 PDT

How we 3 graphic designers created D-Day on a shoe string budget for the TIMEWATCH program "Bloody Omaha"...

Can Blogger-Bashers Predict the Success of a Product? Unlikely. - New York Times

yourdon — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:20:55 PDT

David Pogue responds to those vocal pre-release blogger-bashers, who are, as it turns out, terrible predictors of a product’s success or failure. This time he's talking about the MacBook Air, and his argument was persuasive enough (don't ask me why) that I've now ordered one of the sexy new machines. Drool...

Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK)

yourdon — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 13:47:55 PDT

Children increasingly rely on personal technological devices to create social circles apart from their families, changing the way they communicate with their parents. Interesting NY Times article about the way kids use SMS texting that parents generally don't understand or feel comfortable with...

Agile progress report shows adoption has hit a wall

yourdon — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:09:13 PST

IBM official talks about the strengths and weaknesses of software development in this "Infoworld" article. Probably a good idea to take the edge off the hype associated with "agile"

Facebook vs. LinkedIn: Which is better for business?

yourdon — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 07:48:51 PST

Social networking sites are increasingly a part of the business world, but should you go with buttoned-down LinkedIn or anything-goes Facebook? Computerworld tested both services on six common business scenarios, with some surprising results.

Kevin Rose Can’t Keep Up With E-mail; Blaine Cook Can’t Wait To Speak With a Human

yourdon — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 07:37:01 PST

Summary of an interesting panel at the Future of Web Apps conference in Miami, with some interesting observations about how people wish they could manage the overwhelming onslaught of email today...

Twitter In The Classroom

yourdon — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 06:37:01 PST

Edmodo says it's going to be Twitter for teachers and students, with features like calendaring events that are tailored to the classroom. It will be interesting to see if it takes off ... at this point, ALL of Twitter has roughly 950,000 subscribers, so it's much smaller than, say, Facebook or MySpace.

Avenue A Razorfish 2008 Digital Outlook Report

yourdon — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 06:35:24 PST

This is actually a summary of the Razorfish report, provided by Guy Kawasaki. I was particularly intrigued by the finding that people are willing to buy multiple handheld devices, even with overlapping capabilities, in order to get the optimal experience they want for a specific function -- e.g., email, music-playing, etc.

TripIt is awesome

yourdon — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 18:22:12 PST

From a recent blog by Joel Spolsky. I'm currently using Dopplr to coordinate business trips with other road warriors, but from the way Joel described TripIt, I'm definitely going to take a look at it...

Microsoft can't speak straight any more

yourdon — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 18:17:46 PST

Joel Spolsky has a wonderful commentary on Microsoft's double-speak non-communication about why their SQL Server 2008 product will be late. As he suggests, Microsoft should just tell us it's late -- and then shut up. It's doubtful that many people care anyway...

Wikipedia list of social networking sites

yourdon — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:08:17 PST

If you ever wanted a list of forty or fifty of the top social networking sites, you can find it here ...

Tech's all-time top 25 flops

yourdon — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:52:51 PST

Infoworld has a great summary of what it considers to be the top 25 technology "flops." I found it interesting to review the list to see (a) which ones I was familiar with, (b) which ones I had gotten burned by, and (c) which ones I had confidently (but erroneously) predicted would be successful. I guess my biggest mistake on this list was the Apple Newton: I really, REALLY wanted it to succeed, but it obviously didn't ...

Books That Can Change Your Life

yourdon — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 05:49:12 PST

Corporate coaches, leadership consultants and IT professionals give their top picks for books that can change the way you work and the way you live. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my "Decline and Fall of the American Programmer" was the first book on the list...

Breakthrough Could Mean 40-Hour Laptop Batteries

yourdon — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 06:25:40 PST

Good news: researchers have found a way to extend battery life for laptops by a factor of ten. Bad news: while research has been very successful, scientists say it will be "several years" before they can commercialize it. Bummer ...

The "Google generation" not so hot at Googling, after all

yourdon — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 06:19:45 PST

It turns out that many of the assumptions about the Internet-related skills of kids born after 1993 aren't really true. This report, by the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee, dispels some popular myths, and has some interesting conclusions

China's Internet population tops 200 million

yourdon — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 06:15:21 PST

At its current growth rate, China will surpass the U.S. to become the world's top Internet market in the next few months -- with only about 16 percent of its population online

AT&T ready to filter our Internet for us

yourdon — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:00:36 PST

A blog posting from David Weinberger that says AT&T may be making plans to filter packets of Internet data going through its pipeline, to filter out bad stuff. He doesn't know if it's true, nor do I; but it's certainly something to watch carefully!

UK gov't report: Don't upgrade to Vista

yourdon — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:01:12 PST

Report warns British schools not to upgrade to Microsoft's Vista OS and Office 2007 suite, and to avoid Microsoft's OOXML document format because of compatibility concerns. Can't be good news for Microsoft...

The Angriest Man In Television: Commentary on "The Wire"

yourdon — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 08:05:51 PST

"Atlantic Monthly" article on how David Simon’s disappointment with the industry that let him down made "The Wire" the greatest show on television—and why his searing vision shouldn’t be confused with reality. I have to admit that I've only recently gotten hooked by this show, but it really is pretty amazing stuff...

Scott Rosenberg says, "My next book: the story of blogs"

yourdon — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:19:30 PST

Rosenberg is the guy who gave us "Dreaming in Code" about a year ago. As a blogger myself, I'm looking forward to his next book ... even though it's probably a year away...

They’re Playing My Song. Time to Work Out

yourdon — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:11:43 PST

There is a rough science to choosing performance-enhancing music, according to this NY Times article. Which helps demonstrate why many of us simply CANNOT exercise these days unless we have our iPods carefully programmed with the appropriate playlist, depending on whether we're feeling sluggish or energetic...