Lotus Notes is a Piece of Sh!t

(ugly ass splash screen that is SO1999)

I thought Sharepoint was a headache. Welcome to Lotus Notes. If you do a google search you will see how many thousands of people think it is poorly designed software. Not only is it extremely slow, but it also defies conventional Windows UI design. As if Window’s UI wasn’t bad enough, Lotus Notes merely adds on to the problem. Search is unusable, formatting documents is difficult, and its scripting language for automation is archaic. I never realized how good Outlook is when it comes to corporate e-mail.

Office Restroom Etiquette

When I want to take a leak at the office, I’d like to do it in peace. I don’t want to talk about scope, code complexity, whether or not Jimmy is getting fired. So when nature is calling, please take a moment of silence. We can go back to all things software related in 30 seconds or less. That is all.

Outsourcing can be a good thing

With more and more technology companies outsourcing development overseas, many complain about the job market here. I tend to disagree. Then again, I’m the type of guy who likes to exit through the entrance.

When your company offshores its development, new leadership opportunities come your way. This is a totally different skill set from your innate technical background. No longer will you be developing, you may be managing and assuring the quality of development being done off shore. These are great skills to have.

You may argue that you are a true coder at heart. No worries my friends’ outsourcing means there needs to be some in-house knowledge of the product your company delivers. They will need a technical guy who understands the architecture, because lets face it, developer retention is a big problem.

I’d like to hear thoughts from the developer community. Feel free to leave a comment.

WTF - Stop with the image verifications!

Can you read that? I can’t.

.NET vs. J2EE - Butter or Guns?

When deciding which platform to select in an IT strategy there are always two things to consider:

Time and money.

As a developer interoperability, efficiency, and complexity are the types of challenges we are proud of tackling, but in the grand scheme of things, scope is measured by the above two points. After all, its the business you are trying to satisfy at the end of the day right?

This brings me to discuss one of the holiest wars technology has ever faced - Microsoft vs. Sun, Good vs. Evil, .NET vs. J2EE.

I come from a Java background. Java is touted as the be all-end all of all things to come. I truly believe it is, given a long project time line with no budget. What I have against J2EE is configuration. Deploying an enterprise archive is a nightmare. Once you’ve got your application in production, kudos to you, but the time it took to develop and deploy the application all of a sudden outweighed budget and cost. Can you honestly tell me your application is supported long enough to justify the development cost a-la Pareto? Chances are most applications don’t fall under this category, unless it is truly an organization wide enterprise application (setting it up to become legacy software as technology moves too rapidly).

This is where .NET comes in. It’s quick and dirty (hacks galore). It’s expensive. You’re locked into Microsoft’s products, and interoperability is only made possible by XML. So what? Applications can be developed and deployed easily because .NET works out of the box. There is little configuration. Your application meets budget, and after a few years the application is decommissioned and off you go writing another application. This is the vicious cycle that developers cannot deny.

So you choose your destiny. Butter or guns? .NET or J2EE?

My Suggestion To Microsoft To Make Windows Suck Less

Give me a real shell.

No.

Yes.

Why Starbucks IS The Undisputed King of Coffee

Apple fan-boys, suburban hipsters, and even my fellow friends alike may disagree with me on this one, but when it comes to coffee + productivity, the 800 lb gorilla takes the bananas.

The company recently announced they will be providing FREE wi-fi to anyone with a Starbucks card.

This is huge. The sole reason why many college students don’t study at Starbucks is due to the fact you need an expensive T-Mobile Hotspot account to get online. $6 a day my ass, thats two, five pump light ice white mochas.

Now, I’ve always been happy with Starbucks, maybe because I’ve been pampered with my company footing my wi-fi bill, but aside from the technology, Starbucks has refined and solidified customer service.

Let me tell you a story about a local coffee shop in my area, no names will be mentioned, because despite the horrendous customer service, I still have my support for budding entrepreneurs.

I have been going to my local start up coffee shop, since high school for about seven years. They catered to the young crowd with contemporary paintings on the walls and the soothing electronic sounds of new-Radiohead while serving coffee on double punch Tuesdays.

All was well until poor customer service took its toll.

I remember an elderly lady walked in with a Starbucks travel mug and wanted to fill up with some good local coffee. What happened next? She was refused coffee and service because she was sporting the Starbucks brand. I understand that brand awareness is key, but c’mon, your local coffee shop will never make it big like Starbucks so why not go for the quick buck at least? The woman obviously enjoys or would like to try your coffee so why not use that to win a returning customer. Minus one for poor service.

My friends and I, who had been loyal customers for 6 years got the boot when a few additional friends dropped by for no more than 10 minutes without ordering a drink. I understand they are trying to prevent the “what would an indian do” scenario but returning customers who have brought in additional friends to drink sub-par coffee, equivalently priced with Starbucks’ premium offerings, should not be treated like that. Minus two for poor service.

The final draw came last year. Starbucks was closed late at night, and my local coffee shop offered extended night hours. I had to crank out some code over coffee so I figured I’d take advantage of the free wi-fi. The oh-so-not-beloved coffee shop decided it would issue a password to get online, printed on the receipt of my purchase, cool. While sipping on my white mocha for a few hours and doing my work, I was interrupted by the barista to be informed that I needed to make ANOTHER purchase because I had been using their wi-fi for over two hours. This wasn’t stated anywhere on my receipt, or anywhere inside the shop. Minus three for poor service. I decided this was the last time I would do business with them.

Now that Starbucks offers free wi-fi, coupled with great coffee, and excellent customer service, there is no need to support the local coffee shop. All they had going was customer service, and when you lose that - you lose the relationships that keep change in your pockets.

PowerPoint isn’t just for presentations

I’ve found time and time again that Powerpoint isn’t being used as just a presentation medium. Have you ever thought about using Powerpoint to prototype your software or a webpage? Maybe create flow charts?Let’s face it, there are prototyping software out there, but it costs a fortune, and there is always a learning curve. I think Powerpoint sucks as slideshow, but when you want to rapidly mock up diagrams its pretty simple out of the box. Some may argue, “thats what Visio is for” but when your company only has an Office License (Visio doesn’t come standard) what are you going to do?Next time you open up Powerpoint, rethink what you can do with it. 

SharePoint Sucks.

Not only is it ugly, it also costs upwards $500+ for a corporate license which doesn’t even include real AJAX capabilities.  Thats not my true grip though - I’m forced to use SharePoint as the presentation layer for my application at work. I want to display a simple RSS feed via a web-part, only to find out the feeds don’t update for HOURS. Agile business out of the box my ass. News feeds are meant to keep you up to date, what is Microsoft thinking? Disabling caching, and setting timeout intervals don’t do any good because SharePoint STILL manages to cache old data - this is useless. If you want a real content/information management system look at some open source alternatives like Drupal or Joomla. Not only will you get your money’s worth (FREE) you’ll also get your sanity back. In the meantime, I’ll be whipping out some custom web-parts a-la ASP.NET since corporate America is locked into the Microsoft Office ecosystem.

How To: Keep Your MacBook Looking New

 

The white MacBook is notorious for picking up dirt. I’m pretty anal when it comes to washing my hands when using any of my stuff whether its my iPhone, laptop or guitar. The folks at the Apple store seem to refer to all things Apple as “brand spanking new” so I thought I’d share my tips on how to keep your investment clean.

 Use Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser

That is all. Your laptop will look like you just opened it out of the box. Magic Eraser’s can be used multiple times so do the world a favor and clean your laptop and maybe your kicks while you’re at it.