Reaching the digital preference point

It happened sooner than I expected: earlier this week I reached what I'm calling the "digital preference point (DPP)".

I realized, where possible, I now prefer acquring stuff in digital format rather than in physical form. I already had been getting a lot of bills via email and the web rather than by regular mail. And the Amazon Kindle nudged me further in the digital direction--it's great having so many books portable and searchable instead of taking up space in the house.

But I hadn't really made the switch with music. That was mainly because I refused to deal with low quality DRM'ed selections from the online vendors. But that all changed this year with Amazon MP3s and iTunes Plus.

So earlier this week I was browsing the Amazon MP3 store's specials and saw Colbie Caillat's album Coco available for download for $7.99. It caught my eye because I had bookmarked it when my custom Pandora station played it for me a few weeks ago. Coco seems to have a high quality to crap ratio so I was interested in the full album. My normal M.O. at this point had been to buy a used copy of the CD and then rip it and resell it. Used Coco CDs were selling for around $6.50 plus shipping. The Amazon price for the new physical CD matched the download price, $7.99. And with Amazon Prime, shipping is free, making it the same price as the digital download.

But then I really started to think this through. Was it really worth the effort to rip this CD myself, add/fix all the necessary metadata, post a listing on Amazon and Half.com to resell it, then package it, figure out postage, and mail it once it sells? For what, the ability to make back maybe $3 or $4?

And so I purchased the digital album. It came right down to my computer and got added to iTunes automatically. I only had to fix the genre metadata (because Amazon seems to consider just about everything "Pop"). The whole thing took about one minute of my time. If I had purchased the physical CD, it would have easily taken up 15-20 minutes of my time, start to end.

Crossing the DPP makes this stuff feel more like real entertainment instead of work.

Why I don't like project code names

Lately we've been in the habit of assigning code names to projects my team is working on. We have "Sterling", "Caprice", "Janus", etc. The list goes on to include "Bentley", "Moonstrike", "Delgado", "Kodiak", "Donnybrook", and others.

This is similar to how Microsoft typically uses code names for products before they have chosen an "official" release name. However, we're doing it even in cases where the products already have a name!

Here's why I don't like the code names:

1. They confuse users. In discussions with users and stakeholders, they often don't understand why we keep calling the product "Sterling" rather than "EscrowManagement" or "EMS", for example.
2. They make it hard for developers to find things. In SourceSafe, OnTime, and SharePoint, I see a proliferation of strange words. How am I to know to look for "Caprice" when I want to find the source code for the Standards Management System?
3. They make it hard for DBAs to associate databases to projects. In several cases, we've actually named the database after the code name in test and production. How are the DBAs to know what application the Janus database goes with? Resolving this and item 2 above require the use of a lookup step to map code names to their project.
4. They are geeky. These sorts of things appeal more to developers than to users or executives and create alienation.
5. They lead to inconsistencies that have to later be found and corrected. It is tempting to use code names on screen and report output, but in the final release, that's not going to fly, so someone will be busy going through all the source code to make sure all those references use the real product name before final release.
6. They serve no real purpose. Code names add a level of abstraction, and in most cases that just makes things harder to manage and understand. In the cases where a name is needed for a project before it has an "official" one, just do your best to pick something that is likely to be an acceptable final name. It will be more meaningful than a code name.
7. They create separations in the chain of knowledge about a project. Typically, we assign a different code name to each new version of a project. The result is that when you want to search for information across the lifespan of all versions of the product, you have to search an array of code names.

I would be happy to see project code names go away. If an official name hasn't been chosen, do your best to pick something meaningful. And if you must use a code name, rename everything to the real name once it's chosen.

Collaboration site incentives for contribution

At work we use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) for team and project collaboration. After several months, it now contains a wealth of useful information in our knowledge base wiki, various discussion groups, and blogs. We have the ongoing challenge, though, of getting people to participate. One of the hardest problems to solve is how to get people to take time after solving a problem or coming across a tip to write it in the knowledge base or as a tip of the day.

I think one intriguing solution worth trying is to provide incentives in the form of quality voting. Many web sites that accept user contributions use such a system: users can vote either thumbs up or thumbs down or, in some cases, on a numeric scale, how useful they think the review or article is. The poster of the article then accumulates points based on the number of positive votes their contributions receive.

We could do the same sort of thing by attaching voting mechanisms to discussion boards, wikis, blogs, etc. This encourages not only quantity but quality.

Then, points could be exchanged for rewards. Achieving a certain point level could also be part of employee goals. We could also reward fractional points for simply voting, to encourage reading and voting.

Unfortuntely, SharePoint 2007 doesn't include this capability. It would be a useful excercise for someone to write an extension to SharePoint to provide it. See this article for some ideas.

How are your Google skills?

It's probably safe to call myself a Google power user. I use it all the time and it's rare I can't find an answer to a question with the right Google search (sometimes it does take a bit of work, though).

I'm closing in on my 15,000th recorded Google search.*

So, I'm going to do a few blog posts to talk about some of the cool tips & tricks you can do with Google as well as a few nifty features you may not already know about.

Today I have a little quiz to test your searching skills:

Email me a Google search phrase that will return sites about the band The The.

I'll post the best submissions in the comments to this post.

*If you have a Google account and log in whenever you do a search (or use iGoogle), Google keeps track of your search history and even fine-tunes your results based on your search history. My search count is now at 14,501. My search history starts from April 25, 2005 and apparently my first recorded search was books about ecuador. Later that day I searched on spunkball and clicked this result link.

Kindle at the beach

Ever since it was released last year, I'd been considering buying an Amazon Kindle. I had a few concerns, including the price and wondering if the next generation would be coming out anytime soon. But I finally gave in to the temptation a couple of weeks ago when I was getting ready for a week's vacation at the beach.

I always look forward to having some good quality time for reading at the beach. I pick out a new book or two that I really want to dig into during the week. But the book I really wanted to read this year, Team of Rivals, weighs in at 944 pages, and I wasn't looking forward to lugging that three blocks to and from the beach each day. So, the time was right to get a Kindle.

I hesitated at first, wondering how I'd feel about taking a $359 device to ocean's edge with all the potential dangers that go with the territory (including rogue waves and dropping it in the sand). But I decided to take the risk.

What a good decision! I was very happy with the Kindle during the week and it will go on my list of the best purchases I've made. You can read the general pros and cons of the Kindle elsewhere (my only substantial complaint is how easy it is to accidentally hit the page buttons), but I want to share why I think the Kindle is great for beach reading (because when I was considering the purchase, I wished there was such a post):

• The screen is very easy to read in bright sunlight. I was a little worried that it would hard to see like a typical backlit LCD screen like on a digital camera, but the E Ink display is as easy to read as a printed book page even with sunglasses on.
• It's light and compact for carrying. I had 30 books with me on the beach and it only added 10 ounces to my backpack.
• It was wonderful having so many choices available so when my mood changed, I could switch to something different. Before leaving, I had converted some of the PDF eBooks to mobi format (using the free Mobipocket Creator) and transferred them to the Kindle using the USB connection.
• I could choose what I wanted to read once I got there. The first morning sitting in my chair at water's edge, I used the built-in EVDO connection to preview (first chapter free) and then purchase Team of Rivals. It was downloaded to the device in about a minute and I got started reading. Later in the week I was ready to take a break from that book and I previewed, purchased, and downloaded Blowback and then switched back and forth between the two the rest of the week.
• The built-in dictionary was great for looking up unfamiliar words while I was reading.
• The built-in highlighting and note taking features made it easy to mark sections without needing to carry a pen and notebook.
• The built-in EVDO Internet connection was so handy. I could look up things as they came to mind. I could check email. I could check the weather report. This is so much better than trying to do this on a cell phone because 1) I could actually see the screen in the sun, 2) it's on a decent-sized screen, 3) it has a better keyboard, and 4) it's free.
• I was able to have a collection of my personal documents and notes with me. I'm working on writing a book and a screenplay and I converted my outlines and notes to plain text format and copied them to the Kindle and could then access them when I needed them and could even make further notes using the Kindle.
• And I must say the beach is a place where the (currently free) NowNow service really shines. A trivia question came up in conversation and I wasn't able to quickly find an answer using an Internet search. So, I submitted the question to NowNow, and fifteen minutes later I had three responses from real people pop onto the Kindle (two were helpful, one not so much).

So yes, I think the Kindle is great for the beach (and I'm still very much enjoying it now that I'm back home). I managed to get through the week without dropping it in the sand. But I did clean it when I got home using LCD screen cleaner, a lint-free cloth, a cotton swab (for the scroll bar area), and compressed air. It still looks like new.