And here they are in YAML

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

1. Retweet Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.
2. Retweet Give honest and sincere appreciation.
3. Retweet Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Six Ways to Make People Like You

1. Retweet Become genuinely interested in other people.
2. Retweet Smile.
3. Retweet Remember that a man’s Name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
4. Retweet Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
5. Retweet Talk in the terms of the other man’s interest.
6. Retweet Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely.

Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking

1. Retweet Avoid arguments.
2. Retweet Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never tell someone they are wrong.
3. Retweet If you’re wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
4. Retweet Begin in a friendly way.
5. Retweet Start with questions the other person will answer yes to.
6. Retweet Let the other person do the talking.
7. Retweet Let the other person feel the idea is his/hers.
8. Retweet Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
9. Retweet Sympathize with the other person.
10. Retweet Appeal to noble motives.
11. Retweet Dramatize your ideas.
12. Retweet Throw down a challenge & don’t talk negative when the person is absent, talk about only positive.

Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

1. Retweet Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
2. Retweet Call attention to other people’s mistakes indirectly.
3. Retweet Talk about your own mistakes first.
4. Retweet Ask questions instead of directly giving orders.
5. Retweet Let the other person save face.
6. Retweet Praise every improvement.
7. Retweet Give them a fine reputation to live up to.
8. Retweet Encourage them by making their faults seem easy to correct.
9. Retweet Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest.

Iran election has started as may be yet another election, peaceful and hopeful. For all parties. With the spread of voter fraud allegations, and suspicions over the way and speed by which the votes were counted, Iranian masses started to mobilize.

Twitter (the platform, not the application as mistakenly analyzed) became the favored topic-centric communication tool (#IranElection, Tehran messages) [twitter postponed maintenance in response to usage]. YouTube helped promote videos of mass protests. Flickr hosted numerous images. Meta-applications like TwitPic and news portals like BBC, have carried varied media propagating information much further. Reddit and other on-demand news aggregators enrolled worldwide symphathizers and activists.

I’m reading now about a twitter campaign encouraging people to change their location on their twitter profile in an effort to cripple down location-based filtering (not sure if it’s not a double-edged sword).
Update: “Senior officials say the [US] State Department is working with Twitter and other social networking sites to ensure Iranians are able to continue to communicate to each other and the outside world.” (via CNN)

Even further, a widespread campaign coordinating a DDoS attacks against .ir government websites out of casual web users. Wired is now saying that this might provoke the Iranian regieme into a reverse Cyber attack (Dr. Strangelove anyone?).

I’m not taking sides in this elections (yet?). I know for fact it’s hard to track down reality in the middle east, and I can’t rule out herd-mentality in this case.

Nonetheless, I’m fascinated with how the Internet has grown in the past years to have such influence on people’s lives. An influence that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Will we be one day able to coordinate election monitoring over the Internet out of Mom and Pop teams? Will we have expats volunteering to watchdog government activities?

Ladies and gentlmen, welcome to the age of the Peoplenet.

Me: So, let’s now log in to the system…
Client: Actually, I wanted to ask about something. Is this written using Microsoft technologies?
Me: No, it’s written on a different stack.
Client: Shoot!
Me: Why?
Client: What technology is it written with?
Me: It’s written in Ruby, connects to MySQL and runs on Linux. Why?
Client: Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!
Me: Well. It was laid out clearly in my proposal that we’re going to use that particular stack.
Client: Is it easy to migrate the application to Microsoft technology. You know: IIS, .Net, etc…
Me: Not unless we re-wrote the whole thing. why?
Client: A friend told me that I could get a Microsoft funding for my application if it was written in Microsoft technologies.
Me: …

That’s after 2 weeks of wireframes and initial design, 5 weeks of implementation, a mid-way release presented to the client in person.

What a way to ruin a good application release.

PS: I have a bad feeling about this, the client hasn’t paid (yet) for the implementation.

It is a true and accurate meaning to the state of an application I’m currently delivering.

So, does a “Finishing Touch” apply to software? A web application? It is a term that is probably more tied to a work of art. A painting.

I won’t delve into how developers are close to composers, or increment vs iterate, but from the outskirts, even a simple feature delivery IS a work of art.

Given the numerous ways of how an application could function, there are only few ways of making it appeal, and that’s a work of art.

Me:

New approach to signup forms
http://huffduffer.com/signup/
I personally like it. More ‘human’.
What do you think?

Adam:

I have mixed feelings about this…

First off, as I am sure is the same with each of you, it was clear this was intended to mimic a paper form (which is where the “more human” comment comes from, I assume).

Though the immediate familiarity is there, I can’t help but be reminded of the circumstances where I am required to fill out a paper form – entering a contest, filling out important records (medical, legal, otherwise), etc.  Most of the circumstances I associated with filling out a paper form were not remembered as particularly comfortable, let alone pleasant – there is, in fact, a feeling of anxiety associated with the task of filling out a paper form…  Just an observation…

Second, one problem with paper forms of this nature is that often is it easy to “skip” past areas which require data entry as they “blend easier” into the body of the form itself.  In fact, 3M has made millions of dollars with little sticky arrows to attach to forms to help users find where they need to enter information.  If used to collect a significant amount of information, this method may also suffer from the same problem.

The standard form objects have moved into the general mindset as recognizable elements which require user attention, not to mention the fact that they provide a whole host of interaction methods (sliders, dropdowns, etc.) not offered anywhere else…  I do think that something like this has its place though…  I am just not quite sure, yet, as to where this would be…

Me:

You’re right. It’s more of [a] mimic of a paper form. Might not be the best way of collecting information online (especially with larger set of entry fields), yet still, there’s something human about it.

May be it’s the way the application is talking to me as a user, or me talking to _it_ (I was about to use ‘him’ instead of ‘it’). May be because of the perception I get that this form will be eventually read by a human being, wearing a reading glasses and handling my signup request with care and passion instead of a cold, heartless ‘Internet’ sitting somewhere down the wires. May be because it’s merely _different_ from the gazillion signup forms I’ve had to fill out to date. May be because I get that this huff/duffer guy(s) wants to be ‘remarkable’ and in doing so will give me a better service.

I agree it’s not applicable in many cases, but being notable/remarkable/different is worth a shot (not sure where though)

Putting that mail together, I remembered the Moo Tools. It took us no less than 15 minutes to discuss it, not even knowing what the huff/duffer guys do
Isn’t that remarkable?

http://thinkremarkable.com/

Let me just say that Ubuntu is living up to its claim of making Linux for Human Beings.

The boot from Ubuntu CD was a no-go. I found that Wubi would essentially install Ubuntu (without the CD) through a single click install (who could have imagined that Linux could be installed from windows just like any other application ).

And as far as the wireless connection setup, I only had to install Wicd to take care of it.

True the experience is less adventurous than my previous RedHat/XP , yet, it’s indeed less frustrating.

If software development is at the core of a business (or even if it’s a support function), I would expect that such scheme can help shed a light on how the service is being delivered. It would make it easier for business people to understand what it means when a propeller-head say that “Story X would take Y days to implement” or that “a new release will be deployed to the production server”.

I can understand (and appreciate) that each party has his own value to add to the supply chain. But, sometimes that internal supply chain is taken for granted, and as days go by, everyone starts swimming in his own pond, forgetting that it takes a team effort to deliver quality service.

I’m not sure if such schemes (Business/Developer Pairing) are implemented, but, I would expect it being part of an operations management practice.

Anyone out there?

via Obie Fernandez.

Via reddit, and from there to the best quote I read in a while:”Watching non-programmers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn’t know how to surf trying to surf.” – Joel Spolskey. The quote is highly interpretive, but, to a great extent it bears the truth.

Your application in 3 days or your money back

OK! That money-back part is of my imagination.

The reason I’m writing this is the “great” message on their homepage.

BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL WEB APPLICATION IS ROCKET SCIENCE

See the word “successful”? It’s a great marketing phrase that reflect how they perceive the value they give to their clients. Delivering a successful web application is indeed difficult, and HashRocket is conveying that message loud and clear.

Congratulations.