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Blogs » Archive for December, 2004
The virtues of falling on your sword at the appropriate time
At some point, no matter how skilled you are, you are going to make a client upset. There are lots of circumstances where this can happen, some your fault and some not:
- You make a mistake.
- You say something that is insensitive to their style and organizational way of doing things.
- You manage the process poorly, so deadlines are missed.
- There is a mismatch between client expectations of results and your expectations of delivery.
- The client has a crisis, needs to change the project plan, and you resist.
- The client makes a mistake.
In these cases, I find that — for whatever reason (Early childhood issues? Genetic predisposition? Lack of training? Taking the work too personally?) IT professionals tend to get defensive. They try to avoid blame rather than work with the client to get a positive outcome.
These situations feel like a tug of war, with both parties tense and struggling to win. Or, a different metaphor is: pushing against a wall — both parties feel like they are pushing and pushing, getting tired, but making no progress.
In many cases, the best way to handle these situations is as follows:
1. LISTEN to the client, and acknowledge their frustrations. They are stressed …
PHP Sharp
Be warned. Reading this may give you cause to choke on your turkey leftovers.
A couple of years ago, Alan Knowles did some experimenting with getting PHP to run under .NET. He documented his expierences here. Alan managed to put together a working PHP compiler and reached the “Hello World” stage, I believe. Of course there’s a long way to go from Hello World to something that’s actually useful, such as how to implement PHP’s function library. Things that make you think only the insane would want to attempt.
Well it turns out a group of Czech programmers were insane enough to do it – meet Phalanger, a PHP compiler for .NET.
From a little messing around, the basics work. Here’s the output from phpinfo();
They also seem to have implemented some of the better known PHP extensions like GD and PDF. From the Overview.
The principal goal of our project is to enable full functionality of existing PHP scripts without any modification.
Not sure how I feel about Phalanger yet. Two key phrases from the license, which stuck out;
You may use this Software for any non-commercial purpose
You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software
Also failed to find …
Merry Christmas
Drop that editor. It’s time to take a break. Have a very Merry Christmas (assuming your culture celebrates Christmas).
Given a little quiet before the New will attempt a look back at PHP in 2004 and stick my neck out with some soothsaying for 2005.
Also thanks for some fascinating feedback on the blog comment spam discussion. Will try and re-compile as a summary soon. In particular, looks like Six Apart (of Movable Type) will be publishing something soon on techniques used by spammers.
Fotobuzz – Image… Flash Replacement?
It’s always interesting how to see how one clever idea can start someone thinking along slightly different lines.
The guy’s at 2Entwine have taken some of the core technique from sIFR and re-applied it images, allowing you to annotate them on-the-fly images. Once you have it set up, adding nothing more than a custom class to your image file will enable it on that image.
Although Fotobuzz seems to be initally pitched at photobloggers, I think this technique shows a lot of potential in other areas.
Certainly anyone selling products online could find this to be fast and effective way to detail the finer points of their stock in very visual way.
(no, it’s not broken. it’s just a screenshot)
Fotobuzz may also have a use in online tutorials and web learning, allowing, for instance, single screen-shots to demonstrate 2 or 3 separate points without becoming over-crowded. Of course, all information would need to be in the standard body content as well, to allow for users not using Flash.
Never-the-less, the ability to visually tie parts of an image to particular instructions is quite a powerful idea and certainly something we may be experimenting with in …
The danger of using secondary benefits
My week is 100% about copy writing.
During the week, a colleague of mine taught me an important lesson that applies to anything you write about your business:
Know the difference between a primary and a secondary benefit, and focus hard on primary benefits.
A primary benefit is the bottom line reason someone hires you. A secondary benefit is a softer ancillary benefit, one that often supports your primary benefit.
So, in the case of your business, what is the primary reason clients hire you? Chances are that, if your clients are businesses, there is a single reason:
- You help them make more money in less time
Then there are secondary benefits:
- You make them look better by improving their image
- You give them a new way to reach new prospects/clients
- You get things done quickly
- You make them feel better about the image their business conveys
- Don’t be left behind with a lousy web site or no web site at all
I’m NOT saying that the above are the only primary and secondary benefits. But you have to hone in on the fundamental, driving reason that people buy from you. Your marketing message flows from that. If you focus too much on secondary benefits …
What Makes a Good Open Source Product
Interesting article published by Arjen Lentz (MySQL community relations manager) on the MySQL.com web site.
It would seem 2004 started with Linux death knells by way of the SCO lawsuit, and the year is ending with a sober evaluation of where open source and Linux is and where it may need to head for continued growth and market penetration.
While vendor-written pieces can hint of bias, it is well worth the read.
By the way – MySQL 4.0.23 was released on the 21st for those who did not see it. It is a bug fix release.
Public Money, Private Code
This the name of a new advocacy initiative in Australia by contract programmer Kurt Linghor — focusing on open source adoption in the public sector down under.
The fledgling effort, found online at pm-pc.org, seeks to create online report cards on varying levels of government organizations usage of open source solutions. Linghor hopes to achieve this through conducting interviews with IT managers across these institutions.
Advocacy has done a great deal of good for the open source community over the years, however, as open source matures and becomes viable enterprise material, we also have to tread carefully. Not quaking in our boots at the feet of massive proprietary vendors, but considering the commercial enterprises we seek to invest in our open source endeavors. As much as it may be unpleasant, it remains an issue of perception and presentation in getting past technical managers to executive buy-in for adoption. How we advocate and inquire impacts how those holding corporate checkbooks react to our solicitations.
That said, Linghor comes on a bit strong in his media release announcing the scope of Public Money, Private Code. According to Linghor, the information and systems which run our society should not be at the mercy of …
Winter in the Google-verse
Seasonal decoration and localization have been discussion points around the SitePoint office of late. On one hand, what could be wrong with adding a little seasonal vibe to a site? A sprig of holly here, perhaps? A star there? You would have to be a total grinch to object, right?
The problem is whenever you ‘buddy up’ to part of your audience you can’t help but turn your back on another part of it. If you have a very defined niche audience, (i.e. gamers, metal heads, trekkies, hackers, etc), creating an ‘us vs. them’ vibe might be useful, but otherwise you probably need to be careful. Is the positive vibe you’re creating for the ‘us’s worth the small sense of alienation you may be creating for the ‘them’s?
After mulling over this question recently, we were interested this morning when Julian noted the playful polar bears cheekily preparing snowballs on Google. A bit of color perhaps, but this appears on the Google.com.au version of the site, meaning they can be pretty sure their audience comes to them in shorts, a t-shirt and sunscreen.
At a quick glance, the same goes for Google NZ, Google …
Two Intellectual Property Attorneys answer your questions about copyrights and IP
Many Sitepoint readers ask in Forums about rules governing intellectual property, copyright, and related issues. Today we are lucky to have two guest bloggers from the law firm Epstein, Becker & Green (http://www.ebglaw.com) to address those questions.
Tom Rosenbloom is a partner in the corporate group of Epstein, Becker & Green, working with middle market, emerging growth, early-stage and start-up companies in mergers & acquisitions, private equity, venture capital and private financings, and general day-to-day corporate matters. John Garvey is also a partner, practicing in the Corporate and Intellectual Property Departments. His practice focuses on creating and enforcing intellectual property rights for clients, and the capitalization of emerging technology companies.
Here is what they have to write about the subject….Please post any questions they haven’t addressed, and perhaps they can provide answers, or write a follow up post later…..
Intellectual Property and Web Design
By John M. Garvey and Thomas A. Rosenbloom
As a web designer, your clients depend on your creativity and talent to produce high-impact sites that will drive traffic, increase visibility, and promote sales of their goods or services. But creativity can be a two-edged sword. If the website is truly unique and the design is highly novel, …
Web Design 2005: Have crystal ball will travel
Well, as the year draws to a close it’s often a time of review, along with predictions of the coming years trends.
While this is sometimes akin to shaving your head, painting a red target on it and handing someone a rubber mallet it (people have uncanny memories when you’re wrong) it’s never less than a great conversation starter.
Forty Media have put together an impressive list of themes, looks, layouts, colors, typography, coding and content management influences for the year ahead.
Most tellingly (IMHO) they are using one the techniques they nominate as one of the big movers of 2005 — Scalable Inman Flash Replacement or sIFR .
Look at the heading and subheadings. Smooth, finely sanded edges and elegant but non-standard fonts. Understated but very classy (disable javascript to see what the text would look like for non-flash browsers).
Lightbulbs (accompanied by that lilting ‘ting!’ sound) will appear over the heads of designers over the coming months as they, as a group, realize that one of the holy tenets of web design – limited font choices – has been fractured, if not quite smashed.
I’m tipping a new wave of font torturing not witnessed since the glory days of David …
