Google+ and long-form publishing

In my previous post on Google Plus, the new social network from Google, I emphasized that, at least in terms of features, it has quite a ways to go. The service is still in Beta, and I expect it to go there, but it’s not there yet.

Philosopher

However, one feature, at least, stands head and shoulders above the rest of the competition: Google Plus permits lengthy posts. One of my continuing frustrations with social media sites are the arbitrary restrictions they place on content. Twitter limits you to 140 characters (ok, I can understand that somewhat: it’s based on the SMS text message size that Twitter was originally built to work with). Facebook restricts the size of a post, won’t let you edit them, and makes it very difficult to insert even a blank line in a post. Even FriendFeed (the current feature leader among social sites) limits the size of original posts and comments.

But Google Plus does away with that; while I’m sure there are some length restrictions on posts and comments, I haven’t seen or heard of them yet. And I’ve seen people take full advantage of that fact, treating Google Plus more like a “social blogging platform” than a mere status update.

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Google+ Encircles the Technosphere

Google Plus

Google Plus has launched, initiating a flurry of interest among the bleeding-edge technophiles of Silicon Valley (the metaphorical one that spans the globe, not just the literal one in California). It’s ignited a frenzy of commentary and participation not seen since, well, not really seen before—few services have started with such furor and immediate adoption.

Some of those A-list technophiles have given up their blogs, simply redirecting their personal domain to their Google+ profile page. Others have claimed that Google+ is the “Facebook killer,” and still others are ambivalent. In reality, of course, much of this is hype, and one of two things will happen: either Google will continue to build out G+ so that it truly is competitive with services like Facebook and FriendFeed, or else people will come to their senses, retract their statements, and write cautionary blog posts on the dangers of getting caught up in a feeding frenzy.

Some commentators add additional hype, claiming that Google+ is “not a social network” and that Google’s announcement emphasized “sharing” and not the “social network” nature of the site. This is, of course, baloney. Google Plus is nothing but a social network at the moment; it has no other features beyond those required to connect people together and group them. This is better known (in some circles [see what I did there?]) as a “social graph,” which is exactly what Facebook and LinkedIn maintain on their users.

What’s really important about Google+, however, is what it’s missing, rather than what it has, at least for the time being.

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What’s your operating system?

What’s your preferred operating system on your primary work computer? Are you a Linux hacker, a NetBSD guru, or a simple Mac user?

Use the comments to give your reasons!

It’s not all about the code.

Programmer

While in California last week, I had lunch with a colleague from my days at Yahoo! In fact, I was the manager who hired this person, and I’ve watched him mature from a “wet behind the ears” (but very talented) n00b to a highly-skilled, valuable engineer.

One of the things that indicates maturity in a software developer is the ability to interact with others, to provide feedback when necessary, and to seek advice when it’s needed. This individual had been the technical lead on a project and was having his own problems working with some of the more junior members of the team. The junior members appears to be somewhat intimidated when asked about their work by the older team member—this is not uncommon, since a junior developer is often unsure of his or her work and feels self-conscious about showing it off.

In addition, if the team leader simply “drops in” and asks how things are going, it’s often likely that the junior programmer’s code is not in a set state for demonstrating. For example, the programmer may have been trying to isolate a bug, and has just put in a dozen or so lines of bugs, trying to determine which path the code is taking—not exactly the best time to show it off to your leader!

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Iterative development and branching

Scrum

Sandy Walsh, a colleague of mine at Rackspace who also works on the OpenStack cloud development project, has written a blog post on how Iterations and Time-boxing are (Mostly) Useless. It’s a well-written, thoughtful post, and I appreciate his perceptions, but some of them are (to my point of view) strikingly incorrect and unsupportable.

His general thesis can be summed up by these sentences:

Personally, I think Distributed Revision Control Systems (DRCS) such as git, bazaar or mercurial are the most significant change in software engineering within that last 10 years. Not because having a non-central repository is so revolutionary, but because branching and merging has become such a low-cost operation that the speed of software development has increased dramatically. Development shops that utilize these tools can see some big improvements in how they deal with the “Rough Edge” at the end of the sprint.

A major point of contention with Sandy is that neither the Agile nor the Scrum methodologies specify a branching or merge process, and thus it’s not the revision control system that dictates whether or not the methodology works. In addition, some of Sandy’s perceptions of the Scrum process appear to be slanted by not having had the experience of working in a smoothly-running, experienced Scrum environment.

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How to lose friends and piss off customers

Continental FAIL

I have been a huge fan of Continental Airlines since the early 1990s. I have flown hundreds of thousands of miles on them, and I’ve encouraged friends, coworkers, and family members to fly them, too. For years, they had a stellar on-time record and a great frequent-flyer program. But, more importantly, they always treated me well, personally. They at least acted like they cared about me and my problems.

The first time I ever flew First Class was when a Continental gate agent took pity on me arriving, wet, grouchy, and late, to a flight at Newark International. She gave me a complimentary upgrade and it helped me to relax and look forward to the weekend.

I lived in Europe for five years and all of my trans-Atlantic flights were on Continental. When my wife had to go to an unexpected funeral, Continental helped to arrange the last-minute travel.

Today, the airline managed to reverse twenty years’ of good will in a matter of minutes.

I’m booked on a return flight from San Jose to San Antonio, with a change of planes in Houston. My father (who lives in Beaumont, TX) went into the hospital yesterday morning with some broken ribs and a subdural hematoma after a fall. I talked with my brother (who lives in Houston) and he offered to put me up for the night so that I could visit my Dad in the morning. I have tickets for the Houston Astros game in Houston on Sunday afternoon, so it seemed logical that I could stay with him and drive back with my wife after the game.

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Collaboration – it’s an open world

Crowd at #OpenStack

The normal modus operandi of the technology community is for companies (and their employees) to keep things close to their chests. Intellectual Property (“IP” in the vernacular) is the currency of choice in Silicon Valley and beyond. There is a real (monetary) value in having some unique technology because you can leverage that to sell products that everyone wants, but for which you are the sole provider.

On the other hand, if the technology is not unique, then it can be a very good thing to drive the value down (all the way to zero, if possible), because businesses can then compete on other measures. My employer, Rackspace (see my disclaimer in the sidebar), is a services company. We don’t sell technology per se, at least not in the same way that Apple sells it. Instead, we sell services, so it’s helpful to us for the technology cost to be as low as possible.

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