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YaP the lettercrope light 2nO parkingBrought to you by the number zeroNumber 5

Produced with Spell with Flickr (via blog da batixa)

August 31, 2005 | Tags: | Leave a Comment 

YAPC::EU::2005 Photos

I’ll be posting some photos on the YAPC::EU::2005 at my flickr gallery along the 3 days. Also check other people’s photos tagged yapc or yapc2005.

August 31, 2005 | Tags: , | Leave a Comment 

How will Google innovate with Google Talk?

As many have noted Google’s IM Service is live. I read this excellent first insights by Celso and Melo. Both have been working closely with XMPP/Jabber for the last months and make some really interesting appointements / questions about the new service.

Google has been delivering great products to the Web since a few years. This services’s success is based on inovative development. The Gmail Web email application, AdSense, Google Maps and Google News to name a few.

But now Google is playing a harder game. It goes to compete with all the IM giants like Microsoft and Yahoo in their own experienced field. What will they bring us with Google Talk than can make people change their minds?

Melo suggests that it might the start of a new era of pubsub services.

And it might just be. This related article explains why Yahoo! buying Konfabulator is more than just about widgets. Charlene Li thinks that Yahoo will bring widget creation to the end user enabling it to access all the information available at Yahoo.

Google doesn’t have widgets, but they do have the information. With Google Talk they have a mass-market application capable of doing pubsub services that can retrive all this information.

This would slowly move the Web further away from the browswer. But that’s a even longer shot. For now.

August 24, 2005 | Tags: | 1 Comment 

Solving a Small Team’s Web Project Management Issues

The “Buiding of Basecamp” Workshop was one of those things that I desired to do so much and for so much time that when faced with reality it became quite a disappointement. When the day of the workshop arrived I woke up pretty happy knowing that (besides being in Copenhagen) I was attending a much antecipated event. At the end of the day I was feeling really disgruntled with all the experience.

Besides the ocasional discussion I never really came to back to that subject again. Until I needed it.

I’m currently working on a Web project as a Project Manager / Usability Specialist / Programmer / Product Developer within a small team. The project has a really tight time frame (don’t they all?) and developing such a project in a corporate environment is all but an easy achievement.

Despite of still being on schedule a lot of regular (accepted?) Web project problems came along. Functional specs issues, time-consuming meetings, programming delays and lot’s of through-in-the-pan ideas on Web Interfaces. Having to make sure that everything is on track I decided to rethink my actions and make some notes on each of the problems based on some of 37signals ideas.

Funcional specs are political documents and are abstracted, not real. It’s not a must for it to be closed before proceeding to designing and programming. It’s better to start with a couple of Ideas, sketch them on Paper, discuss them, some HTML screens and Prototype. Then grow from there. Iterate. If you need you can always come back to sketch on paper.

All time-consuming meetings have the same problem. Too much people with too much or too little capabilities related to the discussed subject. Not only you might be inviting someone not really needed but also you’ll be taking time from this person’s agenda. It’s wise to choose carefully who’s on a meeting depending on how relevant their presence is.

As a programmer that has to deal with programming delays I’ll take this chance to say that programming in not a easy task. It’s a task that needs concentration. The kind of focus that a corporate open-space just don’t know about. I think that programmers need time alone. If working in such an environment is really needed (in my case is) then either they need to take advantage of early mornings (yeah right.) or late nights (coffee anyone?). Maybe even some time home is good for the project’s productivity.

I know everyone likes to give an a opinion on a website when they get to comment one. I can even understand how well a person feels explaining why while using a successful website it feels like ‘home’. But this is about lot’s of through-in-the-pan ideas about Web Interfaces and Websites are not about that. Websites are the result of hard-work of webdesigners, information architects and usabilty specialists. I think everyone’s opinion is important (that’s why we should listen to our customers) but no one would ever tell an architect to move ‘the window a few inches down’ without even considering his respectful opinion, would you?

One final note on teamwork. Teamwork is all about sharing information. The greater the flux of information the greater the chances of a having a closed team working towards the same goal. Keep a small team and Iterate. Iterate. Iterate. It’ll be easier to share, learn and work.

As 37signals says on building Web projects:

You only need three people for version 1. It’s better to make version 1 half a product than a half-assed product

August 24, 2005 | Tags: | 4 Comments 

YAPC::EU::2005

This year’s YAPC will take place in Braga from August 31 to September 2. Braga is just a 3-hour driving trip from Lisbon which makes it very easy to get to the next YAPC. Besides that there’s lot’s of other good reasons to be there. A bunch of people I know will be there making it a even more enjoyable stay.

YAPC

We‘ll be there too. As one of the sponsors SAPO will take a few team members there. Some of them will even do their own presentations. Pedro (Custódio) will talk about Content Management in Perl with Bricolage, Nuno (Barreto) will talk about Web Developing with HTML Mason and CSS Layout and João Pedro (Gonçalves) will do a presentation on High availability Perl Apps on a large ISP.

A word to my friend Cog who is also one of YAPC’s organizers (congrats!). He’ll also do a presentation on the subject Perl Black Magic - once and for all - Obfuscation, Golfing and Secret Operators.

Lot’s of intesting stuff at YAPC. Take a look at the other interesting talks.

Delta logo

And since there will be a coffee company sponsorship I’m sure we’ll all get a very good time.

August 23, 2005 | Tags: | 2 Comments 

Portugal’s on fire and what do I care?

It’s a disaster. Year after year. Thousands of hectares of burnt forest.
This year is no different and more than 11.000 football fields have been burnt.

There’s probably a handful of reasons for these fires. I know that we’re a really hot country in summer and that there are probably a crazy or two out there that haven’t quite figgured it out how to behave in society.

But this is worst. This is the result of many years without forest maintenance, fire-fighters training and planning, Research and Development and many other solutions to a problem that seems to have no solution.

Mainly it’s about politics (which has nothing to do with problem solving) and that’s what I hate most about it.

August 23, 2005 | Tags: | 1 Comment 

Interactive Shuttle landing: a way for news websites to differentiate

All the online news sites reported the return of the Shuttle. Some news sites added photo galleries which is already a very good thing. But ElPais and the Guardian added their own animations which are best at explaining than pictures or videos.

The Guardian has a very interesting animation which explains how the re-entry on the planet took place and ElPais shows what is new on this Shuttle flight.

NASA Discovery Flight

This is real value for Web content. It adds an Interactive view on the news that would not be possible on another medium.

Both sites posted their animations as soon as the shuttle started descending. The Guardian even added landing time and location to the animation. This means that they had the animations almost ready for deployment and the author working closely with them.

For users its a good experience and for news websites it’s a way to differentiate themselves based on content. Very good work.

The Story on some of the news websites:
ElPais: El ‘Discovery’ finaliza en California la primera misión tras el desastre del ‘Columbia’
Guardian: Shuttle lands safely
BBC News: Discovery returns safely to Earth
CNN: ‘Discovery is home’

August 9, 2005 | Tags: | 2 Comments 

What’s New in the Bricolage 2.0 Content Management System

Bricolage is a content management and publishing system that eweek claims to be “quite possibly the most capable enterprise-class open-source application available.” And this is quite true. Bricolage is a very flexible and powerful solution for content management and publishing.

But is has it’s own drawbacks. Bricolage is quite difficult to install and to do initial setup. Besides that it has a quite complex interface. All this contribute to a very steep learning curve.

At this year’s OSCON, Bricolage maintainer David Wheeler will make a presentation on the new features of the new Bricolage 2.0.

So Bricolage 2.0 will include:
- PHP templating support to allow developers to have other choices for template development other than HTML mason, HTML template, or Template Toolkit.
- Related media uploading to allow a more natural workflow when adding media to stories.
- Revamped interface implemented in semantic XHTML and CSS.
- Multiple database platforms to allow developers to choose other DBs.
- Other things include a comprehensive search API, scheduled and event-triggered tasks (weren’t there already ?) and a comprehensive XML interface.

Being such a strong and flexible tool already, some of these changes will turn Bricolage even better making it very hard to loose to any competitor in it’s own field.

According to David we might have a 2.0 release by the end of the year.

update: not 2.0 yet but 1.9.0 “Punkin” including PHP templating and related media uploads directly from story elements.

August 5, 2005 | Tags: | 2 Comments 

Hot Summer: Project Management, Web development and more

Summer is hot. At work also.

Keywords for what I’m doing in August:
Web project management, User Centered layout design, Web development in Perl and MySQL, Web design with CSS and XHTML, blogs and photos.

I’m thrilled with all the really interesting stuff we‘re doing.

August 5, 2005 | Tags: | 2 Comments 

Hottest day of the year

Yesterday was a very hot day. 40º C during the day. Still 38º C when I arrived home at 8pm. I picked up Ana’s bike and headed to the Parque das Nações where I took some pictures.

Teleférico

The evening was marvelous. Not too crowded but lot’s of life around the area. And a never ending river view. For dinner I had a French crepe with two ice-cream balls, chantilly and hot chocolate at emanha. Definitely an experience to keep repeating.

August 5, 2005 | Tags: | 2 Comments