Rachel and I were parked on the living room floor sorting through my old books. This is a tricky task because you’ve got to balance your interest in the books with getting the job done. Our current distraction was the Book of Questions. This was a late 80s fad book full of compelling questions you… more
You’ve just finished your big release and the team has mostly returned from that four day weekend where they’re supposed to recharge from four straight months of work. Everyone is still pretty screwed up. Folks still instinctively check the bug database every 4 minutes to see if anything critical showed up even though there’s no… more
The size of the fervent rush towards the Ajax reminds me that folks are dying to discover the Next Big Thing. It’s been awhile since we’ve had a Netscape-magnitude holy shit and while there are have been many false positives… has any Internet technology in the past two years seriously knocked your socks off? Well,… more
I need a place to hold the various holy shits I stumble upon and this is that place. If you’ve had any recent holy shits, please feel free to add as comments. As the year comes to the end, I’ll likely reflect back on the year, tidy this list up, and figure out who actually… more
I can remember the exact moment when I knew Netscape was Screwed. It was an email from an engineer who attended a technology preview of Internet Explorer 3 and the bevy of other Internet technologies Microsoft had rallied behind following Bill Gates’ famous “Internet Wave” email. I don’t remember the specifics of the email, but… more
I have never paid a cent to Google. “Google is doing just fine without your money, Rands.” Someone is paying the bills… who are they? “Online advertising is the revenue stream at Google. This means that advertisers believe that ads on Google translate into sales of their product and they wouldn’t pay if this wasn’t… more
You can smell when crunch time is coming. Engineering is saying the features are done. QA is pulling their hair out trying to get these working features actually working. Meanwhile, there is a steady flow of bugs trickling in and no one is looking at them. These are the side-effect bugs introduced by landing these… more
ed: Reading this article in the context of the recent rise and fall of Orkut service might give you the impression I’m pissed at the Orkut folks. Nothing could be further from the truth… I actually wrote this article late last week. Thing is, I don’t think I’m the target demographic for such services (looking… more
The main motivation for updating the site was really a nit. The right sidebar looked liked crap on Safari and when I started tinkering with the HTML, I discovered my table-based layout was just not up to snuff. “Standards”, I thought, “XHTML and CSS. That’s the ticket.” Random notes from the experience: Let me first… more
The weblog is currently going through an update. Things are going to look a bit odd for the next couple of hours. More on the update in a bit. Happy New Year. Update #1: Sorry for the RSS spam — currently paying for past mistakes… Update #2: Ok, majority of the site is converted over…… more
