Business Focused Technical Advice
Last night I noticed a small screen flicker on my MacBook (white 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo). After looking it up on the internet I have found that a number of others have suffered from this problem. Issues go back a number of years. The problem has been associated with: a back light, an inverter and a battery software update [or lack of] (that I have read about). Of course the machine is just out of warrantee by less than a month - isn’t that always the way 
Perhaps in the current climate of financial meltdown, more talk of debt is not what you want to hear, however, it is probably more relevant now, as businesses need help saving money and planning for the longer term.
Actually they seem to be selling a great deal more than that. I’ve been reading the recent (not so recent) news of Apple’s sales figures. See:
There are a whole host of thoughts and processes on what you need to do to get things done. Indeed there is a great book called Getting Things Done, by David Allen. If you aren’t too busy getting things done, perhaps you may have time to read it. Along there same lines is the brilliant blog of Merlin Mann’s www.43folders.com. (For a distraction, check out his Inbox Zero talk.)
Source control, revision control, version control, call it what you will, but at least use it! For those of you who don’t know what it is, it is roughly a process in software development whereby changes to source code, documents, applications etc. are tracked over time, in such a way that it is possible to reliably reconstruct any previous or current version. For a bit more of a comprehensive explanation have a look at Wikipedia’s Revision Control article. This blog is really is a cry from the heart to those people in software development not using it to start using it for code management. If you do use it and you are using a conventional centralised system, then take two minutes to read about distributed revision control - it may not be relevant to you today, but its worth knowing about.
Lets get right to the point! I’ve setup a working VPS Centos 5 LAMP server in 128MB of memory and it hasn’t gone into swap yet. It typically runs in just over 100Mb of memory and performs really well. So I thought I’d share the process of setting it up in our blog.
Continue reading ‘Setup of a Linux Web Server in 128Mb of Memory’ »
In this article I talking about a number of large companies (often not technology based) that shun the use of open source desktop applications, and possibly some other back-office applications like databases. In my experience it is either standard policy not to use them at all, or hypocritically, not allow their use on the desktops, but use them for the likes of web servers, or server operating systems - especially as the likes of Dell, HP and IBM provide supported solutions with some form of Linux installed.
Continue reading ‘Corporates Shun Open Source Desktop Apps’ »
This is a very short post about software development that I hope will be useful to anyone that finds it. I wanted to put on our blog a five key checkpoints that help identify risks in a software development project, based on the more human aspects. Some of these items seem obvious, other less so. As my background is software development and software development consultancy, this list pertains to that discipline, however many of the ideas cross over into project management in general. Continue reading ‘Software Development Project Risks - The Human Side’ »
About six week or so ago I posted this question on the Linkedin Website:
Continue reading ‘What is the most cost effective way to process card payments online?’ »
I was surprised to be reminded that it was around 8 years ago that I first came across The Joel Test, and am still shocked by the number of teams involved in the production of software that would not come close to getting any where near 12 out of 12. What am I talking about? Well, Joel Spolsky came up with 12 simple questions in 2000, published on his (highly recommended) website Joel on Software; the answers to which give a great insight into whether or not you have the environment and processes in place to develop and deliver great software. All questions require a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response, and as a consequence taking the test takes no more than about three minutes. So what are you waiting for - take the ‘12 Steps to Better Code’ test!