January 2008 - Posts

• TripIt is awesome

  You know what I really like? TripIt.com . It's amazingly simple. You take all those travel confirmation emails that you get from your travel agent, hotels, car rental agencies, etc, and you just forward them to plans@tripit.com . That's all you... Posted Jan 31 2008, 06:45 AM by Joel on Software

• Microsoft can't speak straight any more

  Here's how Microsoft says , “SQL Server 2008 will be late:” “We want to provide clarification on the roadmap for SQL Server 2008. Over the coming months, customers and partners can look forward to significant product milestones for... Posted Jan 29 2008, 02:23 PM by Joel on Software

• :CueCat is back!

  Google : “2D barcodes are an especially exciting part of this because they allow readers to "click" on interesting print ads with their cellphones and seamlessly connect to relevant online content.” Years ago, I went out on a limb... Posted Jan 29 2008, 07:35 AM by Joel on Software

• Copilot is now free on weekends

  Remember Fog Creek Copilot ? The app that our 2005 interns built that lets you remote control someone's computer over the Internet to help them with technical problems? Well, recently we figured out that we're paying for a lot of bandwidth over... Posted Jan 25 2008, 08:22 AM by Joel on Software

• Five whys

  At 3:30 in the morning of January 10th, 2008, a shrill chirping woke up our system administrator, Michael Gorsuch , asleep at home in Brooklyn. It was a text message from Nagios , our network monitoring software, warning him that something was wrong.... Posted Jan 22 2008, 05:37 AM by Joel on Software

• This year's Business of Software conference

  The best conference I went to last year was the Business of Software Conference , organized by Neil Davidson of Red Gate Software over in Cambridge, England. It had a great lineup of speakers [PDF] including Guy Kawasaki, Eric Sink, Tim Lister (coauthor... Posted Jan 20 2008, 03:31 PM by Joel on Software

• Undergraduate programming

  From CrossTalk, The Journal of Defense Software Engineering : “It is our view that Computer Science (CS) education is neglecting basic skills, in particular in the areas of programming and formal methods. We consider that the general adoption of... Posted Jan 08 2008, 03:21 AM by Joel on Software

• Voting machine bugs

  Clive Thompson , writing in The New York Times: “In 2005, the state of California complained that the machines were crashing. In tests, Diebold determined that when voters tapped the final “cast vote” button, the machine would crash every few hundred... Posted Jan 05 2008, 04:32 AM by Joel on Software