My clients, friends and family probably all know that email is my favorite medium for long-distance communication. Unlike the telephone, it’s asynchronous, meaning we don’t have to be present at the same time to have a conversation. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone who works with computers has run into a problem and asked for help. But few people realize that how you ask for help can have a big impact on how quickly you receive a solution. Read the rest of this entry »

The traditional question for web designers to ask before starting a project is, what screen size should we design for? The answer usually comes from looking at a table of browser statistics showing the screen sizes that web users currently own.

The problem with this approach is that users don’t always size their web browser windows to fill their screens. Read the rest of this entry »

In The Mythical Man-Month, Fred Brooks distinguishes between aspects of programming that are hard because we don’t manage them well enough, versus aspects of programming that are inherently hard. This has stuck in my mind over the years as I’ve thought about how to improve my techniques. Read the rest of this entry »

I received one of the first batch of Apple iPads on Saturday, and played with it most of the weekend. I only got this for app development and will be giving it away in a few weeks, so it’s not mine to keep, but I intend to give it some real-world testing in the meantime. Here are my reactions so far: Read the rest of this entry »