Seth Godin – Who cares?:
“If we define good enough sufficiently low, we'll probably meet our standards. Caring involves raising that bar to the point where the team has to stretch.
[…] Caring, it turns out, is a competitive advantage, and one that takes effort, not money.”
An interview by Jane Zupan on the Nuxeo Content Geeks blog – Is 2012 the Year of User Experience in ECM?:
“In the not-too-distant past, user experience (UX) was considered an annoying afterthought for enterprise application development and deployment. User adoption was often disappointing, and the disconnect between business and IT seemed like a deep chasm. In recent years, easy access to technology solutions such as Flickr, Dropbox, Google Docs, and mobile apps that require no reading of manuals or training, has changed the mindset of technology users.”
Jill Hart: “Today, we have multiple generations of people using technology, and users have much more confidence. If they're not able to complete a task, they realize that the problem isn't them, it's the poorly designed system they're trying to use.
[…] Listen to what customers have to say EARLY in the design process. Do some paper prototyping – put together some easy mockups of what your research has indicated that people want.
[…] No matter how I look at content management, in the absence of effectiveness and ease of use, the business value of the system cannot reach its full potential. This applies to any enterprise application.”
Tim Bray – Not Piracy:
“Anyone who claims that unauthorized transmission of bits is analogous to piracy is at least a liar and is deeply disrespectful of the people who are suffering the effects of theft, kidnapping, and murder right now today in the Indian Ocean. They deserve your contempt, and they have mine.”
“Support for hundreds of common and legacy file, email, archive and container formats (e.g. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, WordPerfect, ZIPs, MSGs).
[…] Converts files into HTML and renders embedded graphics as a JPEG or PNG.”
(Via Enterprise Search.)
IT Enquirer – Successful DAM evolves to publishing system:
“Integration or downright transformation into a publishing system: DAM vendors are hot in today's digitized world.
[…] Typical usages for DAM are for example brand management and photo management. Increasingly DAM is also shifting from pure management system to publishing system.
[…] Digital Asset Management can help them [marketing teams], especially when the DAM system either integrates seamlessly with a CMS or when it comes very close to being a publishing and content management system itself.”
(Via Elvis DAM.)
Joel Spolsky – How Trello is different:
“The great horizontal killer applications are actually just fancy data structures.
Spreadsheets are not just tools for doing "what-if" analysis. They provide a specific data structure: a table. Most Excel users never enter a formula. […]
Word processors are not just tools for writing books, reports, and letters. They provide a specific data structure: lines of text which automatically wrap and split into pages.
PowerPoint is not just a tool for making boring meetings. It provides a specific data structure: an array of full-screen images.”
Ed Finkler – The MicroPHP Manifesto:
“I am not a Zend Framework or Symfony or CakePHP developer
[…] I like building small things that work together to solve larger problems
[…] I need to justify every piece of code I add to a project”
(I mostly agree, but I love Rush!)
Ben Yoskovitz – Small Features:
“The first instinct is to build a configuration option to let people decide how they want it to work. That's more code, more complexity, more risk and potential points of failure. It also means more UI has to be designed, and once you go down that road it's hard to pull back. Suddenly, every feature needs configuration options.”
(Via Jason Cohen.)
