Unlimited vacation is a perk that has been making waves in tech and startup circles. At first glance it sounds great: if we are interested in results, rather than effort, why do we ask employees to work set office hours and only allow them a set amount of vacation? Why not assign them their tasks … More Why unlimited vacation can be a double-edged sword
It seems that we all want meritocracy, but do we actually know what it means? There are many interpretations, with radically different consequences. We should be careful what we wish for. Meritocracy is a commonly used term and it is usually assumed to be a self-evidently good thing. Broadly speaking, it refers to a system … More What does meritocracy actually mean? It depends…
What is difficult about Intranet Search? At one level, search may seem very simple – you give users a search box; look through the content on your intranet for matching items; and then present these as a list. Not only that, you can buy off-the-shelf search engine technology from various providers. Surely we can just … More Why is it hard to create a good Intranet search?
Let me get this straight. I have an an account for online banking, my credit card company, my corporate credit card, my savings provider and an internet broker. An account for the app I use to take notes, for the site where I publish blogs, for the CMS for my website, for my email account, … More How the hell did we get here?
Dear broadband provider, Once a month you send me an email to tell me that my latest bill is ready. “Your monthly broadband bill is ready.Simply log in to view your broadband account to view you bill.” Really? You couldn’t tell me what the bill amount is in the email, or attach the bill as … More Dear broadband provider, I’m sorry, I don’t want to have a relationship
Once upon a time, so the story goes, power over content was wielded by a narrow elite. You might write a great work, but never reach an audience, through the short sightedness of publishers. Thankfully, those days are over. The internet has changed everything. Now, success is determined by the masses, through their clicks, likes, … More The popularity machine
Including user experience in software development is now common practice in the development of consumer products, but many software development projects in the enterprise sector still fail to include it. Why is this?
Data visualisation has been a big trend in recent years. For a long time, I felt like it was something that I couldn’t do: I didn’t have the graphic design or coding skills to emulate the celebrated examples. But there was also something else: when I looked at them, I couldn’t figure out what they were … More Why data visualisation sucks (mostly)
I’d like to think that I have a good awareness of the phases of the Moon and the basic cause of them (the Sun lighting up one side of the Moon and the way the Moon moves around the Earth). However, helping my son with his homework, I was surprised to discover that I did … More Where is the Moon?
Any organisation that has a significant number of developers is likely to consider creating a development toolkit at some point. Toolkits are intended to make development faster, by allowing development teams to share common elements, rather than building everything from scratch. They aid overall efficiency by avoiding different teams doing the same work; allowing developers … More 10 Characteristics of a good development toolkit
Martin Colebourne 