If you’ve worked in product management or consulting for any amount of time, you’re familiar with the estimation gremlin. I’ve always hated managing projects. For me, it’s too much whip-cracking and tattletaling, but it’s an unfortunate chore that I’ve been unable to avoid. If you worked on a project I managed, I’m really sorry. I was in a bad place then. One of the toughest skills a software project manager must have is the ability ...

I purchased my first copy of Adobe Acrobat (the PDF creator, not the PDF reader) back when it was in version 5. At the time, it was the best solution for creating PDF ebooks. I need many of the indexing features and annotation tools included with a pro level product so using a free PDF creator isn’t really an option. Adobe Acrobat versions 6, 7, and 8 didn’t include anything I felt I couldn’t live ...

Go directly to Source SAP Higher Education and Research developed a prototype that enables students to access their university’s schedule from their Facebook profile. In this blog we talk about the important role of Social Networks in student’s everyday lives, introduce an example application, and show you how we brought these two systems together. You’ll be surprised how easy it is! Make sure to visit the author of this post! <script src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/SapBiSource?i=” type=”text/javascript” charset=”utf-8″>

The pro version of Spyware Doctor is my top recommendation for spyware defense because from what I can tell it works better than anything else. There’s a free feature limited version of the app distributed with Google Pack, which recently placed 5th in the 2008 reader survey, but that version isn’t nearly as good as the pay version. With Symantec announcing its acquisition of PC Tools (makers of Spyware Doctor), I’m left wonder what will ...

I took a look at the Unconference schedule yesterday, apropos of Ontario Emperor’s post on his own foray into Unconference territory. Have you looked lately? There are a lot of interesting sessions. These stuck out for me: ...

OpenWorld is quickly approaching; it’s September 21-25, in case you don’t already know that. You’ll recall that last year, we used Twitter quite a lot to socialize, meetup and broadcast the sessions. We used Craig Cmehil’s eventtrack side project to consolidate the tweets and other social clutter (videos, photos, etc.) into a single stream of OpenWorld goodness. It worked really well, and since then, the Oracle community on Twitter has grown by tweets and bounds. ...

My landlord swung by yesterday to check on the progress of remodeling downstairs, and I used the opportunity to finally talk to him about what’s going on. He offered me construction work, but it sounded like the type of thing that would kill me. So, I told him I’d get in touch with the temp agency today to get some quick warehouse work. After perusing their website, I emailed them requesting an interview. I’ll call ...

The Conference Board:The leading index declined sharply in July, the second decrease in the index in the past three months. Building permits, stock prices, and weekly initial claims (inverted) made very large negative contributions to the index this month, more than offsetting positive contributions from the interest rate spread and consumer expectations. The six-month change in the index stands at -0.9 percent (about a -1.8 percent annual rate), up from the 3.4 percent annual rate ...

WSJ: More Broker Writedowns? You Don't Say!:The subjects are Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., and Morgan Stanley, and the shooter is Citigroup’s Prashant Bhatia, who lowered earnings estimates on all three due to the “difficult operating environment, characterized by lower client-related trading volumes and losses on hard-to-sell assets.”

Rating : 99% The Soul Still Burns! I have been waiting for Soul Calibur IV for the Xbox 360 for some time now. Namco's 3d "Soul" fighting games have been a staple of my video game playing since the Soul Blade hit the Fun Forest arcade next the the Space Needle. Then when Soul Calibur hit the Sega Dreamcast in 1999 it was the first must own game on Sega little system that could. Even ...

Yesterday, I quipped: Processing “I’m at the Green Dragon” is far easier than processing “I’m at 928 SE 9th Avenue, Portland, OR”. Unless you’re a GPS device. In which case, you and your friends should have no trouble finding each other. And lo, today via Mashable, I read about Garmin and uLocate teaming up to link your GPS device with your social network. I guess the WHERE Buddy Beacon service by uLocate allows you to ...

Yesterday, I quipped: Processing “I’m at the Green Dragon” is far easier than processing “I’m at 928 SE 9th Avenue, Portland, OR”. Unless you’re a GPS device. In which case, you and your friends should have no trouble finding each other. And lo, today via Mashable, I read about Garmin and uLocate teaming up to link your GPS device with your social network. I guess the WHERE Buddy Beacon service by uLocate allows you to ...

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. ~ Abraham Lincoln Coming across this quote forced me to reflect on my software work habits, especially for “throwaway” projects.

Just re-posting something from last night on Page One. Molly Bingham and Steve Connors screened their movie Meeting Resistance last evening for Louisville’s Metro Democratic Club. During the Q&A, Bingham was questioned by Brian Smith about whether or not she would consider moving back to Louisville in order to buy back the Courier-Journal, which her family owned for millions of years. The crowd roared with applause and yells. (Keep in mind that we’re Democrats– we ...

Since switching from PC to Mac, I’ve flirted with several desktop note-taking and organizing programs, including Yojimbo and Journler. In the end I settled on Evernote because, in my opinion, it is by far the most feature-rich of them all. If you’re totally unfamiliar with Evernote, it might be a good idea to read their Getting Started guide or watch the Overview Video. You’ll be glad you did, because the advice below will save you ...

Application Development Trends takes a look at the Linux Application Checker (AppChecker). The tool, which has been beta released by the Linux Foundation, tests application compatibility with various distributions. "According to Amanda McPherson, vice president of the Linux Foundation, AppChecker is not meant to give a 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' on a particular distro. Instead, it provides information needed to get the program running on each Linux version. Packages are checked against the Linux ...

Another McSweeney’s gem: The Lost 28th Chapter of Leviticus Explains the Rules for Riding Shotgun. “9 If a man loses the contest yet refuses to relinquish his seat, he will surely suffer. 10 He who fails to follow the commands shall offer his youngest daughter as a slave and honey-gatherer to his companion, and if he hath no daughter, he then must scoopeth out his wife’s womb with a melon baller and present it on ...

Three MIT students have been ordered by a US Federal judge to cancel their presentation at DEFCON in Las Vegas. The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) sued the students to stop the presentation of security problems with MBTA fare cards. In a special Saturday court session, they were ordered not to disclose their findings for ten days. The Electronic Frontier Foundation represented the students, click below for their press release. "The court relied on a ...

Steve Friedl has a comprehensive guide to the Kaminsky DNS vulnerability. Lavishly illustrated with packet dumps and network traffic diagrams, it explains DNS and what Kaminsky found in great detail. "This has been an exceptionally serious vulnerability because it undermines the very faith in DNS: this is at the core of the internet. Most experts believe that if you can't trust DNS, all else is lost, and we're of this same mind."

I’ll be stepping away for a few days to reboot my sanity (fingers crossed). I’ll leave you with this sweet nugget. I added Garfield Minus Garfield to my Reader way back in January due to someone’s tweet. If you’re not familiar, here’s the about: Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is ...