Thursday, December 20, 2007

Unified Communications & work-life balance: a plea for 'off-duty' mode

Need a mode for mobile comms devices so that 'work stuff' doesn't bug you.
Email should arrive silently
phone calls from work contacts should go straight to voicemail (maybe with a 'press 1 if it's urgent and you really need to ring through')
IM status should be "off duty" (or "do not disturb" - but that kind of implies working really hard, doesn't it?)

Personal contacts, emails and IM's are allowed through though.

Saying "well, you can sset that up" - doesn't do any good for the vast majority of people who never even LOOK at the settings, much less change any of them. It needs to be a top-level, out of the box config.

Whoever delivers this functionality will be hailed as saviors, antidotes to the always-connected, always-interrupted life of the crackberry toters.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Testing 123

This is a test post.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The Zen of Using COTS

One of my rules of thumb for COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) software is: use it the way the designers thought you would. That way you can cruise along the "happy path to success" instead of fighting the system and trying to use it in ways the designers didn't anticipate – encountering bugs and poor usability along the way.

You may have seen this idea writ large in ERP implementations as "adapt the business process to the system instead of vice versa". Think of this as the microscale version.

Or call it the Zen of using COTS.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Microsoft's "Vista Tips N Tricks" site ownz0r3d?

The Windows Vista Tps & Tricks site used to be a Microsoft site that had "tips and tricks for the non-technical user" faced with Windows Vista. (Archive.org has several captures of that content.)

But now, it shows... a biography of John "The Yank" Harrington ???



Hmm, looks like maybe someone snarfed up the domain registration away from MS?



Maybe this is one of those domain name registration renewals that the indicted MS embezzler claimed to have done but didn't....

Update: Google's cache of windowsvistatnt.com shows the bogus version, too.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

The Bug!

Scoble is right - this is TOO cool!