Small teams - to build better products

As the company has grown - it seems to me that the ability to move has basically come to a grinding halt. Today I heard that for some development projects - with teams of only 3 to 7 or so..

Perhaps this should be an across the board thing? Perhaps we should eschew the massive product centric organization that has been "leading" for the last decade. What would happen if we really put engineers back into having a major say in how a product works, looks and behaves. (don't ask me to create icons though).

I wish that we had a platform that would allow for more development risk as well. It seems that we've built a new system of software that requires very high certainty of quality in order to field an alpha or beta -- so that we are pretty sure we don't break what is already deployed. This quality alone prevents quick iteration and feedback loops from a userbase.

Oh yeah --- Roy, still deleting my mail?

Crazy DWORD aligned dibs

I've a mental block on calculating dword aligned widths for DIB's - just noticed this nugget in the MSDN docs

biSizeImage :

Calculating the size of a bitmap is not difficult:

biSizeImage = ((((biWidth * biBitCount) + 31) &
~31) >> 3) * biHeight:

The crazy roundoffs and shifts account for the bitmap being DWORD-aligned at the end of every scanline.

I love it when the docs reflect my reality

Secrets and Work

Wow - what a week it has been at the office - so much rumour. So much churn. Once rumours start flying like rumours do - there should be full disclosure. There's no bigger killer of productivity.

DailyTech - White MacBook Turning Shades of Yellow

DailyTech - White MacBook Turning Shades of Yellow: "The cause of the discoloration isn’t clear but many users are speculating as to the cause. Some think that it might be due to the cleanliness of the user’s hands"

As I've always suspected -- Mac users are dirty filthy.... users

New Netscape.com

The New Netscape.com

This looks pretty interesting - and I like how the top 'scaped storys have follow ups by the Site Anchors. I am a little surprised to find that this site isn't SNS login enabled. Wonder if that's due it being beta - or just a general attempt to shun it's AOL overlords.

2XL

2XL - Now emulation has gone too far.

the eyes have it

Replacements
Originally uploaded by chishikilauren.

I'm fascinated - can't stop looking at this picture

flagrantdisregard.com Flickr Toys

flagrantdisregard.com Flickr Toys

I'm old.

AOL subscribers up in arms over e-mail ads

AOL subscribers up in arms over e-mail ads | InfoWorld

So I guess that it turns out that people do care about these things.
Perhaps people who sell ads shouldn't be the ones that do the user impact studies?

Nice going guys

Techdirt: AOL Keeps Working Overtime To Drive Away Subscribers

I've nothing to say - but look what we've been up to.

Techdirt: AOL Keeps Working Overtime To Drive Away Subscribers:
"AOL Keeps Working Overtime To Drive Away Subscribers
from the what-can-we-do-today-to-piss-off-our-users... dept

AOL seems to have a knack for doing exactly the wrong thing for its users, from ignoring the rise of broadband, to building up walled gardens just as the rest of the internet was embracing a more open internet. The latest is that they're pissing off a bunch of long term paying customers by suddenly inserting advertisements right below emails. Obviously, there are plenty of email services that are ad-supported, but this is for paying AOL customers, who for years have been able to read email without ads getting in the way. And, of course, these aren't just any ads, but (of course) intrusive ads that users complain are distracting. Considering that plenty of people seem to have kept their AOL subscriptions going for many years just to keep their email address, pissing off a bunch of those people doesn't seem like the smartest strategic move."

UK firm to unveil wall-socket PC

UK firm to unveil wall-socket PC

Oh I love it when there's PC progress that matches my personal preference - small & quiet. The last few years I've been ditching more and more computer equipment from my desk at home - just because it was ugly and it was loud. I don't need all the power and all the glitz, let me read my mail and browse the odd webpage - without the noise.

Soon, maybe we'll be able to complete the vision of home computing (ala Asimov) - computing power is centralized - and remotely accessed. Maybe we can put these stupid appliances in the 'utility room' where the belong.