My first post back in August identified a project I was going to start, and my goal was to have it done in six weeks. I’m *close*, and closer than last week, but probably another week off. Not happy with myself for missing my initial deadline, and I know even when it ‘launches’ [...]

Posted in Business, Ideas No Comments »

As a quick followup to my previous post (http://michaelkimsal.com/blog/six-week-test-followup-custom-business-cards/) I wanted to drop a quick update here.  Six weeks isn’t too long if it’s your only activity.  Trying to fit in a six week project in the midst of other projects and deadlines is hard, but you already knew that!.  I’m 4.5 weeks in, and [...]

Posted in Book, Business, Development, Software, Web No Comments »

I’ve been working with a couple local people on developing a short term plan for them to get in to or move around in the web development job space, and I was wondering if there’s a need for something perhaps sightly more formal in the Raleigh area.  Here’s my initial sketch…
Weekly classes (probably Saturday morning) [...]

Posted in Business, Development, Job, Society, Software, Web 4 Comments »

I stumbled on an article recently about the government’s plan to change its cookie policy.  There wasn’t a whole lot in the article other than that the new federal CIO Vivek Kundra has proposed that federal websites be allowed to use persistent cookies to track visitors.
It’s *about time*.  Give me, the tech savvy end user, [...]

Posted in Business, Society, Web No Comments »

I’m taking my own advice and plunging ahead with a small, focused six-weeker. I’m not sure this counts or not because A) I’ve had the idea for several months and B) I did a bit of work on it several weeks ago. With that said, perhaps I should only give myself five weeks [...]

Posted in Business, Ideas, Web 2 Comments »

The August issues of GroovyMag and JSMag are both out.  They’ve been out since earlier this month, but I didn’t publicize them here yet. 
GroovyMag’s content this month includes Part I of building a Grails Portal, Part II of  Logging in Grails, a deeper look at Groovy Typing, the Clojure Plugin, Grails with RMI, [...]

Posted in Business, Grails, Groovy, Javascript, Web No Comments »

I’ve been speaking with a number of local entrepreneurs over the past few weeks, and they all have a few things in common.  All are sharp, smart, have good taste (hey, they’re talking to me, right?), have some killer ideas, and seem to be stuck.  Taking definitive action on the ideas seems to be the [...]

Posted in Business, Development, Ideas, Software, Web No Comments »

I had the pleasure of seeing Josh Holmes keynote CodeStock Saturday morning.  His presentation, “The Lost Art of Simplicity,” was very well done.  Very broad topic, but very applicable to likely everyone in the room.  Certainly I took away many good points.  In some ways, it’s a lot of points that we *know* at an [...]

Posted in Business, Conferences, Software, Testing, Tools 2 Comments »

Just saw on TechCrunch tonight that Justin.TV has taken a first step towards DVR functionality in their player. Good to see it, and I just felt like posting that I did call this out as a need last fall   It’s not quite what I was hoping for just yet, but it sounds like [...]

Posted in Business, Ideas, Web No Comments »

I’ve wanted a way to record cell phone conversations for *years*.  With the proliferation of smart phones, you’d think we’d have this by now, but it’s still not a feature widely available (and, reportedly, blocked by some device manufacturers).  So, to scratch my own initial itch, I’ve put together a service to allow me to [...]

Posted in Business, Development, Ideas, Software, Testing, Tools, Web 3 Comments »