As I watch our country slip deeper and deeper into economic depression (yes – this is a depression, like it or not), I often wonder how bad it’s going to get, how things will look on the other side, what will finally get us to the other side, and what this all means in the […]
More and more, I’m beginning to think that our success as a nation – and as a species on this planet – depends on us looking back to our ancestors for wisdom and insight for survival. And, I think that will lead us to one overarching theme: Decentralization. As the human race became more modern […]
I watched tonight’s coverage of the Super Tuesday results with more interest than I’ve in politics for years. It’s fascinating (fun?) to still have both the Democratic and Republican races as close as they are right now. While it looks like McCain is well on his way to clinching the nomination sometime soon, the contest […]
I recently came to the realization that NBC’s The Office is the only television experience that I share with almost all of my friends and family. It’s the one and only show that everyone at our office watches, and that we can chat about the following morning. It’s also a reminder that the so-called “water […]
The increasing number of web frameworks means that design and development best practices are accessible to more people than ever before and are a sign of a maturing industry. The primary goal of most web development frameworks is to save development time. Since most programming projects share a good deal of redundant code (database connectivity, […]
Timed with the release of their web-based presentation application (aka, Presently), Google just published this video which does an awesome job of explaining one of the big problems that their Google Docs suite of programs aims to solve: Everyone is eager to compare “Google Office” with Microsoft Office, and while I feel that comparison is […]
Seth Godin put up an insightful new post today titled Punishing the Outliers which relates to something I’ve been thinking about for awhile. In business, you run across a very small majority of people who do their best to cheat the system and/or do everything they can to get your product or service for free. […]
There’s a term we use in programming and development to describe system interfaces that are designed with maximum flexibility in mind. They are said to be loosely coupled. In plain English, it means that applications have stable and consistent ways for other programs to communicate with them. More importantly, since there are clear boundaries that […]
If you saw last week’s episode of The Office (you do watch The Office, right?), you’ll remember that one of the plot points revolves around a homemade “Rockin’ Robin” ringtone created by one of the characters. It’s extremely funny, so if you missed it, I recommend downloading it from iTunes. Anyway, I think NBC is […]
Earlier tonight I read that our local Menards home improvement store will soon be selling groceries. I’m struggling to find the tie-in between frozen pizza and roofing supplies – I just don’t see why they think this will be a good idea. This type of business strategy (if you can call it one) completely baffles […]