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What programming language / platform should you choose for your next project ?

Since I try to post on as many programming languages / platforms as possible on this blog, not to mention some of my clients have also asked me, 'What programming language / platform should I use on 'X' project ?' Here are my opinions on the subject, its a long answer, since its got as much to do with the target business, the people you can bring into a team and the abstraction provided by a programming language / platform.

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August 25, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Track Back (0)

Advertising, content networks, domains, registrars, and a few other dirty little secrets on the web

Advertising is now part of the web's DNA, the scientific and collaborative origins of the web might still be there, but lets face it, once business sense got involved it was only a matter of time for advertising to come to the forefront. This entry will cover a few practices I've seen that revolve around the money-pit that is advertising, content, domains and registrars, seen from someone who both buys advertising on the web and tries to make revenue from advertising, if you do any of these things on the web, read on for some dirty little secrets that are not so obvious and are poised to break anyone legitimately involved in this same loop.

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January 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Track Back (0)

Getting through to Hotmail, MSN, Live users : The Draconian -- and useless -- processes

The Web mail market is pretty much like any other market -- two or three very well known and dominant players, with smaller one's poaching from the big one's -- the big one's in this case being Microsoft's Hotmail/MSN/Live service, Yahoo's mail service and Google's Gmail service. Well, there is something seriously wrong when you can't get through to users on one of these mail services -- email being the collaborative and communication medium it is -- so if you in some way operate your own domain and need to send legitimate email to Hotmail/MSN/Live users, read on, as it will bring to your attention what may be happening to your messages and probably save you a few hours or days of frustration.

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November 30, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (9) | Track Back (0)

Specialists and generalists : Happiness and grumpiness

Throughout my career I have seen two lines of thought for evaluating IT professionals, there is the 'look for talent' mantra which I would classify as the generalist search, and there is the 'sink or swim' attitude which I would classify as looking for the specialist. I've been on both sides of the stick, so it came to my surprise that there is in fact empirical research outside of computer science that establishes a link between happiness/grumpiness and generalists/specialists.

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November 15, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Track Back (0)

Content is the peasant, if you only live in the Internet kingdom

Ever since I read the phrase 'content is king' in a book published by Philip Greenspun -- who is an old timer in web technology for those who never heard the name -- it has always resonated with me, but I recently started to question this little fact. All this Web 2.0 hoopla, that has web services as the underpinnings and which Venture Capitalists often call 'content syndication' has all the makings to radically change this little knowledge nugget. With analogies drawn from TV syndication -- which IS a proven business model -- and the easiness with which content can be monetized now a days on the Net, this entry addresses what I believe will be an inevitable situation in the future: content is the peasant, if you only live in the Internet kingdom.

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September 20, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Track Back (0)

Computer programming careers II...survive and thrive.

On a previous post, I linked to another blogger's rather dire outlook on programming careers, while I still tend to agree on pretty much everything he states on programming careers, here is a more positive outlook on how you can survive and thrive in a computer programming career, or at least within an IT profession.

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July 10, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2) | Track Back (0)

Big Mac Index for IT Outsourcing : You get what you pay for.

"I'll have a Big Mac", chances are 99.99% of the time you say this anywhere on the planet you will get what you expect, now try this with a simple IT deliverable "Red Hat Linux installation" or "Three PHP scripts for doing abc", since these are technical processes, its pretty easy to deduce that their perception of being 'done right' is also transferable 99.99% of the time across the planet, but what about the price differences in producing such goods ? I believe herein lies one of the biggest misconceptions to IT outsourcing.

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April 5, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Track Back (0)

Computer programming careers...the continuous debate.

In what is clearly the most objective views I have seen for computer programming careers, this fellow blogger makes a series of very valid points regarding its pitfalls, it might make you laugh, it might make you mad, but its definitely a Hard Knocks lesson and a worthy read for anyone in IT.

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March 12, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Track Back (0)

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