Frank Carver's Punch Barrel

Jez Humble from Thoughtworks writes about the problems of deployment and the advantages of automating the process. Oh, and he also pushes their new deployment automation product

Deployment Pipelines: Revolutionizing Release Management

I make a lot of use of Wikis, and like to keep track of the development and usage of this technology.

• No Rest for the Wiki
• JISC Podcast 37: Keynote speaker hails the collaborative power of wikis (MP3, 10:37)

Looks like an interesting book to add to my reading queue “Balancing Agility and Discipline” by Barry Boehm and Richard Turner

A dynamic map of free WiFi access points in London Free Wifi in London…Mapped

While travelling on public transport, I quite like the idea of searching for restaurants, attractions etc. near the destination rather than near the current location, but that makes for some interesting challenges, too. More cities offer Wi-Fi on buses

Many successful companies working in the software industry always seem to need more good developers. Hiring technical people is not a trivial task, so I am always looking around for wisdom.

• Hiring the Rowing-Forward 30% by Bruce Eckel
• The King’s Shilling – Recruiting for ThoughtWorks

Every now and then I bump into some software which requires input of a Zip code. Unfortunately, a zip code in and of itself conveys very little information – with the possible exception of 90210.

I was happy to find via Mapping Hacks that there is an open, public file of zip codes with a bunch of useful attributes including city, state, timezone etc.

best of all, it is self-referentially supplied in a “zip” file

I’m sure that anyone who has travelled, particularly anyone who is unsure of power availability and who has to carry their own luggage, has been through the process of fretting about which power cords, adapters, rechargers and batteries to bundle along with today’s collection of electronic gadgets. So how about an MP3 player which runs and recharges without access to an electric socket? Best of all, one which is able to recharge other stuff too!

The ‘greener’ options in portable music and video players

Will Mobile Browsers Catch On?

I find that one of the saddest things about taking an Open University course is that all the work and thought that people put into discussions in the course forums are just thrown away at the end of the course. This seems particularly poor from a learning perspective, as some of the best sources of aid and information for new students would be students who have successfully progressed through the course.

Why think of this now? I happened on an interesting little web article related to a course (M873), but have no obvious way of sharing that information with tutors and future students on this course. This just seems a shame.

Oh well, maybe someone might make the connection if I post the link here

UX eye for the BA guy.

It took a while, but I finally got fed up with sending links to interesting articles and web resources to friends and colleagues. So I have set up this traditional “linkblog” to share what I find.

Sounds a great idea, but the challenge will be encouraging people who might benefit from what I find to actually read/subscribe to the thing.

Oh well, it’s worth a try.