The way most software companies handle bugs is a giant meat grinder that churns out cynical and bitter users. I propose a higher set of expectations for software. The Bug-Amendment to the (the quite frankly non-existant) Software User’s Bill of…
Like most ideas, someone has already had the gist of it a few years ago [4]. But it would be an awesome fit for Project Glass. We could render realistic 3D models in Augmented Reality using some old concepts from…
Creating an app is a long, expensive, and generally thankless process (something I want to change). A typical app costs $25,000 and 3 months to build. Half of the time you don’t earn enough to cover costs. The other half…
In Ruby on Rails this is made possible through Cucumber, in PHP it’s possible using Behat + MinkExtension. Behat is the integration testing framework, and Mink is the magic for easy code-free web-based acceptance test. Wouldn’t it be nice if…
This is the start of a new model for social bug-tracking. It works in complement to the typical in-house bug-tracking lifecycle, integrating external communication. Draft (v1) below is inspired by Stephen Anderson’s poster on designing user experiences and high doses of homemade…
This is the continuation of Does the G train suck? gtraintruth (blog comments) The problem with the G train is that they frequently skip trains. It’s not at all uncommon to find yourself waiting for 20 minutes between trains in the…
The MTA publishes train service-change announcements by email. A few years ago, a smart guy named Pierre wrote a program to publish these email announcements on Twitter. A few days ago I wrote a program to pull the tweets in, parse them, and…
What do Richard Feynman, Bruce Lee, Jerry Seinfeld, and Robin Williams have in common? The way they talk about their life and work. * Jerry Seinfeld had a little interview where he deconstructed his process for writing a joke and in…
A friend of mine was complaining last night that he had 3 diff smelly alarm clock apps and mapping apps. He was disappointed that he couldn’t unlock the coolness of his sweet smartphone. So I’ll give you the same advice…
Warning: The following rant is full of bitters, like an old fashioned. This rant begins with the ZuneHD. An object of love. “One day it will be a sweet phone!” I’d say to anyone who’d listen. Then Windows Phone 7 came…