Blah-Blah Text: Keep, Cut, or Kill?

Cherry-pick from Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox for October 1 on [http://www.useit.com/alertbox/intro-text.html Blah-Blah Text: Keep, Cut, or Kill?]. Summary: :Introductory text on Web pages is usually too long, so users skip it. But short intros can increase usability by explaining the remaining content’s purpose. Enjoy being inspired by Nielsen’s [http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/ writing for the web].

Groovy Actors

[http://www.groovyactors.org/ ] Refreshed my link with Gerald “[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensegrity tensegrity]” de Jong, triggered by a blog entry from TED titled [http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TEDBlog/~3/152990430/theo_jansen.php Creatures on the beach] from the Dutch sculptor Theo Jansen which instantly reminded me of Gerald’s [http://sourceforge.net/projects/fluidiom/ Fluidiom] and [http://www.darwinathome.org Darwin at Home] projects. Gerald’s email signature also mentioned [http://www.groovyactors.org/ Groovy Actors]: :In a nutshell …

Erlang distributed concurrent programming

A new programming language? Well, at least one I never heard of until today. It’s called [http://www.erlang.org/ Erlang] and one of the interesting aspects are that it eases ”’concurrent programming”’ and ”’distributed processes”’. Erlang is a programming language designed at the Ericsson Computer Science Laboratory. Open-source Erlang is being released to help encourage the spread …

Call for a Blogger’s Code of Conduct

Tim O’Reilly’s [http://blogs.oreillynet.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1920 Call for a Blogger’s Code of Conduct] heeft een paar rake punten: #Neem verantwoordelijkheid, niet alleen voor je eigen woorden, maar ook voor de commentaren die je toestaat op je blog. #Label je tolerantie voor offensieve en beledigend commentaar. #Overweeg anoniem commentaar te elimineren. #Negeer de trollen. #Zet het gesprek offline voort …

The Business Case for Open Source Software

The Business Case for Open Source Software: “An anonymous reader writes ‘An InfoWorld blog entry makes a business case for open source software, and attempts to explain the business benefits of OSS to management and business owners. The primary benefits the piece uses to argue in favor of OSS include ”’no licensing fees”’, and ”’no …