Zimbra

Came across Zimbra... very impressive open source app.. I was blown away with what they were able to get the browser to do...

In its current form it is a really nice messaging system... They have a model for allowing 3rd parties to plug into their ui, adding actions/meta data about "stuff in email" such as an order number, person's name, etc..

Seems this open source model of building free products and selling support and customizations is getting more traction.

Expectations of Sotware vs Traditional Engineering

I was reading recently about a comparison of traditional engineering disciplines with software and found some interesting facts that highlight some of the differences. Consider these two projects:

Project 1: completed on time, but

• Estimate cost: $4M -> actual cost $9M
• Post Release: 30% additional performance work
  
• Annual maintenance costs: $3M

Project 2:

• Budgeted time to develop: 5 years -> actual time 14 years
• Estimated cost: $7M -> actual cost $102M
• Post Release: 40M of adaptive costs
• Maintenance: $20M over 10 years

Are these projects successes or failures? If they were software projects they would be case studies of major disasters. However these two projects are examples of great civil engineering successes. Project 1 is the Sydney harbor Bridge. Project 2 is the Sydney Opera House..

Blooks..

Came across hackoff.com, it introduces the idea of a blook (a book serialized on a blog). A neat way of creating an "online soap" that people can read/comment on using popular internet technologies...

Google Suggest for Firefox

Installed Google Suggest for Firefox and it is really nice... Does a good job guessing what I want to search for.. Also the fastest spell checker out there :)

iPod Nano

What a work of art.... A coworker got one and I fell in love.... The ultimate gadget that does it all (photos/music)... Next is to find the accessories for "ultimate" car integration and then compute the damage.. Hats off to the Apple designers on this one...

It would be cool to have a key chain attachment too....

Code Smell?

I have used this word code smell when I see code that just dees not feel right. I did not know that there is some history behind it... enjoy

The Illusion of Simplicity

Came across this and found it funny... Not sure where it is from though...

Simply Fired

Came across Simply Fired... Some funny stories.. The best one I read was a person got fired for eating pizza...

Konfabulator

Came across Konfabulator. It is a cool windows app that recreating the mac dashboard... Most of the widgets are very well done.. Check out the yoda widget....

Grease Monkey

I read today a piece about grease monkey in wired. A clever firefox plugin and concept. It enables people to change web pages after the fact. It is easy to come up with lots of new applications that build on this..

Gas Prices - BAM!!!

Today I went to fill up my car and paid almost $50 for a full tank.. BAM! I remember paying $20 for the same tank last year...

To be honest, the high gas prices are where they should be. We [in the US] do not realize the true cost of gas, paying for it indirectly through other "taxes". Part of me hopes the prices go down, but another side of me says they should stay where they are so that we all keep getting reminded about the true price of oil..

Underground Standards

It is interesting to see how the software industry is moving away from a model of open standards ruling the day to what I will call underground standards (e.g. Spring, REST, Hibernate, XMPP). The underground standards appear to evolve with a key driving principal, simplicity. This reminds me of something someone told me when I was at MIT. If a computer scientist designed the web, it would have been too complex and never adopted. As computer scientists we need to keep working to simplify, simplify, simplify everything we design and build.

Some facts to think about:

• Spring reached 10k downloads in one month
• 87% of Amazon API users use the REST over SOAP
• EJB 3.0 is borrowing a lot of ideas from Hibernate
• Google Talk is using XMPP
  

Principles behind the Agile Manifesto

I came across Principles behind the Agile Manifesto and loved these principals. I have worked on a number of projects that swung from formal to cowboy development. Regardless of the process these principals I feel will yield a good end result that developers can be proud of.

Montreal - Great City

My wife (Randa) and I spent a few days this week in Montreal helping my little brother (Nabil) move into McGill. I have to tell you, a fun city. We have been up there 3 times this year and always seemed to find lots of outdoor events by virtue of walking around the city. The nice thing about it is that people of all ages participate and it is never too crowded..

If you are up there remember to drop by Amir's and grab a chicken shwarma. It is the best I have had outside of the middle east..

To make a long story short, my brother is all settled in and we had a great time doing it...

Watch Me Change

Came across this website (www.watchmechange.com) and could not stop laughing.. A cleaver advertising campaign by Gap..

Welcome to my Blog

This is my first post.. more to come later