I consider this a fatal flaw in the software since it leads to loss of data (at least in a visual sense) and might end up causing very weird formatting problems of a thread being viewed, at times distorting the information beyond comprehension.

For example, if somebody were to write “Could you put this in a <h1> tag. More text.” it would show as “Could you put this in a

tag. More text.

“. What a mess, huh? And this is a very benign example. I’ve seen people posting HTML code of forms in posts and comments!

Most people I have seen get confused. They don’t realise immediately that there is a <h1> tag there which is messing things up. They only see “Could you put this in a tag.” and go: Which tag? Why is “tag” in big and bold? And so forth… And yes, sometimes, even experienced ‘web people’ are surprised by this initially because of this unexpected behaviour. That’s bad user experience.

So whenever you see weird formatting next to text that doesn’t seem to make sense, remember: There is probably a HTML tag in there causing the problem.

The solution: Look at the HTML source. The content is right there, dutifully regurgitated by Basecamp, unfortunately un-escaped, and thus rendered by browser.

Tip: There are browser plugins that allow you to make a selection and view the source of only that part of the page. Using them will make it extremely easy for you to home in on the content you’re interested in.

Another thing to remember is that Basecamp also uses Textile for text formatting. So there could be additional HTML formatting inserted in the comment which might not belong there. It’s usually easy to figure that out though. If that doesn’t work, you can always ask the person who made the post to clarify and try to be careful next time.

A little over a couple of years ago, I was using a spreadsheet to track the work assignments to my team. It was cumbersome: others couldn’t see how I had assigned the work, when I was expecting what from whom, what the priorities were, and at times when the work load was high even exactly what was needed to be delivered.

With Deepak helping me out whenever I truly got stuck I wrote a basic application that all my team members could access. It had different user levels so that only I could assign work and a few other little bits that were non-standard back then. Since the application was running on a local server, load times were instantaneous and I didn’t have to worry about a lot of things. I did it over a few nights (totalling two working days I believe). Over the next few days after I let my team on it, I kept making small changes to help make things clear so that I would not have to provide information that I could put beforehand in the work list.

Then I stopped.

There weren’t many CF coders in our office so when I wanted some advanced stuff added, I had to get it re-done in PHP. Since the benefits of the application were very visible, I got the developer time easily. A few other teams tried it out to see if they could manage their work with it too. That was flattering.

Anyhow, back to topic.

Our time tracking system is written in CFML/MSSQL and hasn’t really seen many updates recently. The reports generated are no longer suited to our current needs. Though we are able to take things forward this way or that way since the data is there, it’s a pretty time-consuming way to do things.

Therefore, last two days I have been working on learning SQL and trying to remember the basics of CFML. And just as last time, at the end of second day, I have my first report ready.

It is still as fun as it was last time.

Best of luck guys!

• Google made a stupid mistake
• Eric Schmidt is a moron
• GoogTube
• et al.

What I find particularly missing are two core facts:

1. Google’s total IQ is probably more than the GDP of some countries (it’s not my line, I read it somewhere ages ago). They don’t make stupid mistakes.
2. Yahoo has been on a roll recently with some very cool, strategic buys that are pushing them hard into a challenging position and they have been making some very bold decisions to get there (eg: making yahoo mail source open).

So I ask, is this $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube more a stupid mistake by those who can do no wrong or a very capable strategic decision for a cash-rich company to deny one of its biggest rivals a fast-track into the competitive online video arena?

TinyDisk is a program from saving and retrieving files from TinyURL and TinyURL-like services such as Nanourl. It overlays a write-once-read-many anonymous, persistent and globally shared filesystem. Once something is uploaded, only the database admin can delete it. Everyone can read it. No one can know who created it. Think of it as a magical CD-R that gets burned and placed on a network.

Yeah, I know it’s not very useful in practical sense but as a concept, it’s a great example of out-of-the-box-thinking.

His latest Alertbox column titled “Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes” surprised me by its appearance; wasn’t expecting him to write on the subject this early. The introduction at the top really does make sense and clearly shows he understands the unique nature of blogs.

When I started reading the list of mistakes, I started nodding my head.

1. No Author Biographies: Okay, I’m guilty of this and i’m going to correct this immediately. My About page has needed the edit for a long time anyway.
2. No Author Photo: Guilty again but I don’t think this is going to change for me.
3. Nondescript Posting Titles: Not guilty.
4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go: Not guilty (mostly). However, though I agree that such links do indeed bring the usability of the blog down, it is usually taken for granted by the users. They want the commentary and not names to links and where they encounter strange blogs and do not trust the author, they indeed do take the necessary care before clicking.
5. Classic Hits are Buried: Partially guilty of this but largely due to the fact that I don’t know WordPress hacking yet.
6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation: Agree. WordPress provides categories though and therefore, not guilty.
7. Irregular Publishing Frequency: Very guilty. However, this is a slightly borderline thing. I don’t think that the publishing frequency is such a big usability issue. In a way, if you think about it, it does bring the overall usability down of a blog but is it so much that it be listed as Mistake #6 in Weblog Usability Designs Mistakes list? I disagree. BTW, is it even a design issue?
8. Mixing Topics: This is something that is slightly controversial. Perhaps partially true for a narrow segment, mixing topics is not really such a big usability issue with blogs. They are supposed to mix topics unless they’re subject-specific blogs. Most people who post different subjects on such blogs do it very intentionally and fully knowing that it’s going to be for the better of their blog and themselves. In a way, this is not much of a usability issue either, especially in light of the discussion in #6—the Categories feature that is in use in almost all blogs now very efficiently takes care of this issue.

But IMHO, #9 (Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss) and #10 (Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service) are nothing but pure advice on content. Whether or not somebody will be able to attribute a certain piece of information to me decades after I’ve written has nothing to do with the usability of my blog. Similarly, having a certain provider’s name in the URL of my blog has no effect either and is purely a non-affecting cosmetic that, if it makes a difference, does so only because of a psychological bias in the user’s mind.

This article is going to get a lot of press in the Blogosphere (heh) and I’m looking forward to reading other people’s opinions and rants.

If software is an art—and I think it is—then I must be the only artist in the world who advocates defacing his own work. But if ever there was a product designed for hacking, Firefox is it. Because Firefox is an open-source project, its lifeblood—its source code—is available to hackers the world over. And I do mean hackers. These guys ship software before they put on pants.

That kicked me. In a good way. BTW, ever tried asking the law enforcers on what they define a hacker as?

From a UI perspective, it contains three big improvements worth mentioning:

• Colourisation of quotes, signatures and URIs in Compose window. If you’ve ever read an email that shows you different colours for different ages of quoted text, you’ll realise that the moment you take this concept to the compose window, the intuitiveness and ease of replying increases manifold. Having it colour coded makes identification of various levels/ages of the message so fast and easy, once you start using it, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it!
• Subfolders of Drafts, Queue, Sent, and Trash now behave like their parents. You could always create subfolders to these special folders but they always behaved like regular folders. For example, if you saved a draft of a message and moved it to a sub-folder of Draft, you could not double-click it and resume editing. Now you can. It makes sense to work like this, and now it does.
• Filtering and Processing rules can be named. One of the things many people perhaps had problems with was that after creating rules, SC showed them exactly like that: rules. If you had two similar rules with subtle differences, you would either need to remember which one was which or open them up to verify. Now, you can simply assign an easy-to-remember name to each rule and drink some hot chocolate that will look good with that smile you’ll have when you do.

There are many other UI related small updates and fixes (some of them important) in this release among a host of other things. I’m so hoping Thorsten comes back soon and releases a Win32 build of it.

Sidenote: Colin bought a new laptop after his iBook had a bath. And because of that:

* tools/asus_mailled.sh
A new script to blink an ASUS laptop’s mail LED when there is unread mail.

Now you know which one he bought.

A lot has been written about Basecamp and about a thousand times as much as been written about Project Management. Though people call me an organised person, I manage my work and my team essentially by gut-instinct on how things/processes make sense. However, proper techniques do exist and surely, their use will only improve the efficiency of the work involved. The problem is getting to understand them and applying them to my specific sphere of work. The need is for some formal management training to serve as a bootcamp. The real learning is out here in the fields anyway, but at least I’ll know the lingo.

If you know of any sites that list tips & tricks on project management, especially in reference to Basecamp, let me know.