Frank Carver's Punch Barrel

It looks like several people are actively trying to pin down the much-bandied term “cloud computing”, and in particular, to define what it is not.

InfoQ: Defining Cloud Computing

This last weekend I spent several happy hours entering details of my book collection into Library Thing after being prompted by reading about it on JHGHendriks blog. What got me doing this right now is that I finally got to try out my new CueCat barcode scanner, which makes the whole process a lot smoother.

So far I have entered about 600 books, and will continue with the rest (probably at least another 1000 or so) over the next few weeks. In the meanwhile, you can take a look at my library as it grows.

It seems as if the term SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) has become confused with the implementation technology (often WS-* web services). Some pundits are now trying to create a new term “WOA” (Web-Oriented Architecture) to describe a service-oriented approach using native web technologies such as HTTP, URLs and REST.

ZapThink have taken a look at these terms and their implications: WOA is Me – Another Acronym? WOA and SOA

I can’t decide if this is a good idea, or a bizarre attempt at box-ticking. An alphabet soup of acronyms to try and merge the laid-back world of REST with the world of business process workflow.

InfoQ: WfXML-R: REST based process integration

A thoughtful article about the failings of on-line advertising and some consideration of how to address these problems.

Why Traditional Advertising Formats Fail On The Web

(via gsiemens)

A really thought-provoking article about the use and/or necessity of names for tests. Read it and be prepared to reconsider your assumptions.

Jay Fields’ Thoughts: Testing: The Value of Test Names

It seems to be a fairly popular hobby these days to create software tools to support agile processes. There are a bunch of free ones, and some commercial ones. Here’s one which is theoretically commercial ($995/year) but is apparently offering the software for free “for a limited time”.

InfoQ: VersionOne announces V1: Team Edition

InfoQ has some analysis of the results of the 2008 agile adoption survey run by Dr. Dobbs.

InfoQ: Results of Agile Adoption Survey 2008

A couple of articles from InfoQ on the subject of scalability

InfoQ: Scalability Principles

InfoQ: Trading Consistency for Scalability in Distributed Architectures

A relatively routine, but still fairly interesting article about the advantages of using a Wiki for collaboration.

Linux News: Wikis: Wikis: The Crown Jewels of Collaboration

A nice little post about the irritating way that bug priorities seem to creep upward as a project progresses. I’m sure we have all seen this in action.

Software, abstract strategy games & other stories: Raising the bar on bug priorities

Shimon Rura’s Blog » Google AppEngine: What I learned building OracleBot

JJinuxLand: Python: Debugging Google App Engine Apps Locally

I didn’t get a chance to attend this talk, but it looks interesting none the less. My main problem with it is that I am still not entirely convinced by the use of Spring. On the other hand the dynamic reloading stuff is pretty cool.

The Impala Blog: JavaWUG BOF 37: talk on Impala Framework

I’m not certain what to write about this … (sorry, cheap gag)

Frank Trinidade makes some interesting points about the role of uncertainty and intuition in creative work such as software development, and the way that agile approaches can embrace such issues and use them.

Uncertainty « The Turning Point

InfoQ have jotted a few notes about the release of a draft specification for version 3.0 of the servlet API. From what I see in this article, I’m not sure I agree with much of the approach. In particular the idea of using annotations in the source code to define URL-mappings seems completely contrary to the principle of self-similarity and to the re-use of code generally.

I plan to have a think about this and write a more thoughtful and detailled blog entry, but here’s a link to the article in question.

InfoQ: Servlet 3.0 Features Spark Debate

A while ago I was given a fairly rubbish, low-spec USB camera, and it seemed that it might be useful/fun to set it up as a traditional web-visible webcam. After finding a driver on-line, I also looked for some free software to serve images and found the AbelCam WebCam Server. It has lots of features which I don’t use (yet) such as Pan-Tilt-Zoom and multi-camera support, but it does seem to do the job, and is free. Cool!

It’s generally considered as tough to recruit the best, most committed and most passionate people. One approach is to offer good pay in an attempt to tempt potential new hires. Another, radical, approach is instead to offer to pay people to quit. If this sounds unlikely, you need to read this article:

Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too – Harvard Business Online’s Bill Taylor

As an agile practitioner and consultant I have been participating in daily stand-up meetings for years now, with generally good results. Occasionally such meetings hit some speed-bumps (for example, one problem seems to be that the group of participants can become a bit too large, but splitting the group does not seem useful either). Such meetings are obviously personal and vary between teams and situations, but it was good to read an article (and comments) about effective stand-up meetings.

InfoQ: What Makes a Good Stand Up Meeting?

A nice article which goes throught the distro-selection process for running Linux on an “elderly” laptop. The final choice is interesting, but I’m not sure if it would still apply to my somewhat more “elderly” laptop. The one in the article has a 900MHz CPU and 384MB RAM, whereas mine is a mere 233MHz with some small amount of RAM. I might give it a go, though…

Installing Linux on an elderly laptop – Bods’s Blog | Planet Bods

Your On-The-Go Employees Need Mobile Broadband — Mobile Broadband — InformationWeek