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Some time ago, I demonstrated our protocol system to an organization. Everybody was happy. The FC manager the HR manager the IT manager, even the General manager was happy (in organizations you have many managers). Except for one lady that was (of course) manager of the protocol department. She asked me a question: Do you think that you can have all these protocol books inside a computer? (I hoped she meant electronically). This is my work of years (20+) and nobody can do it.
What would you do in my position?
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Well, to tell you the truth, I don't remember the times that friends or customers called me saying: "Hi, I want a website with a simple but really cool design, maybe with a product gallery and also an e-shop, maybe also a forum would be nice and of course I want to update it myself and not to forget RSS for the news."
Nice approach. The customer / friend knows what he/she wants. And then you get to the point telling him that it would cos X thousand euro. If he/she will not hang up instantly it's your lucky day. "So much? I expected something less, something like 300 euro". Then you hung up the line.
 A nice 300 euros website background
Lets evaluate the meaning of the 300 euro cost for a website.
- 1 hour of a web designer costs from 18 to 30 euros > average: 24
- 1 hour of a developer costs from 25 to 42 euros > average: 33.5
So approximately you have around 10 working hours for both of them (almost five from each) to build a brand new and also unique website. No further comment! :)
In marketing and advertising, what you pay is what you get!
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Saturday, 07/APR/2007 - 06h45 | Total emails: 0
Monday, 10/APR/2007 - 00h02 | Total emails: 509 / Emails cut by server side: 476
Actually I am afraid to leave my emails for more than one hour. Would there be a software embedded that will "broadcast" my email address book and of course my personal email to some spam collector softwares and then... you know the rest!
Wellesley, Mass.,—April 2, 2007—Nucleus Research, a global provider of information technology research and advisory services, today announced that the spam epidemic is costing US businesses $712 per employee each year in lost worker productivity.
According to a survey of 849 e-mail users conducted during March 2007, Nucleus Research and KnowledgeStorm found that two out of every three e-mail messages received by today's business users are spam.
As a result, users are spending 16 seconds identifying and deleting each spam e-mail, which translates into an annual cost of $70 billion to all US businesses.
Source: http://www.nucleusresearch.com/
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 Dilemma ... or Decision? Have you ever thought why you are building or reading specifications, on why and how you will proceed on the development of a simple or a complex application? I will give you not one but five reasons: - You will not loose time on developing something that will be then altered
- Your customer and you will compromise on final deliverables
- You will have a solution approach model
- The customer will not ask more than those that are written down
- You both know what you do!
A specification is an explicit set of requirements to be satisfied by a material, product, or service. Before even starting writing the specifications is that there is not only one type of them, but again ... five. These are: - Functional Specifications
- Graphical User Interface (GUI) Specifications
- Technical Specifications
- Platform Server and Client Specifications
- Maintenance Specifications
It sounds a lot of work, even before start working, but trust me, it saves much of your time!!! Interesting: IEEE, Wikipedia: Web Standards, W3CTodays flavor: Molten Lava Cakes+ add your comment... your opinion counts! | comment(s)
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Facebook: A dream come true for developers?
The latest hot player in IT, Facebook, made headlines (BBC, 29/10) once again as a group devoted to the fake US presidency candidacy of comedian Stephen Colbert has reached 1 million users in 8 days.
While it can be argued that this is a sign of our times, as our life becomes more digitalized every day, one can only agree that the potential as well as the lessons learned from them 50 million users site are significant.
The potential remains to be seen, as Facebook now needs to turn those millions of users into money, but the lessons are here. Facebook is an excellent case study in information presentation and customization, providing an excellent interface over the web, allowing access to developers while safeguarding users' privacy and more.
So join the Facebook craze and get some ideas for your applications!
Flavor of the day: Stephen Colbert's Americon Dream
Song of the day
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 One of the supervisors called a Walmart and ordered the cake. He told them to write: "best wishes Suzanne" and underneath that write "we will miss you"...Nektarios was arguing a few days ago on the benefits of using specifications. The sad reality for this line of thinking is though at that in most projects: - needs and thus features and thus specifications will change - assumptions on what is important will differ - two sides will be created: developer vs client - estimations on time constraints will fail miserably :) Enter Agile Development, a completely different way to approach the issue:
- customer satisfaction is the first priority
- face-to-face continuous colaboration between developers and client repesentatives
- acceptance that requirements will change, adoption of required development practices
- shorter development cycles: develop, present, test and alter more frequently Obviously an agile approach will not work on all cases or solve all the issues (as passionate as some of it's supporters might be!). Still, you can bet that it's output will not be like the cake in the photo! Flavor of the day: The 25,000$ Hot Chocolate+ add your comment... your opinion counts! | comment(s)
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