Blogs

There is a company in Toronto that makes some pretty sweet microscopes and they have a sizable software development and manufacturing team. A few months ago I was visiting the company (I used to work there) and I noticed their new Team Rules poster next to the developers’ cubicles. I guess this is an attempt to foster a particular sort of team culture. What culture would this represent to you?

VisualSonics Team Rules

1. We have open honest communication; no held punches.
2. Discussions are about issues and ideas, not about personalities.
3. We challenge each others ideas, we never take it personally.
4. If a challenge becomes personal, we apologize, we accept the apology, and we move on.
5. We challenge ideas openly, debate passionately, then we get the best decisions.
6. We value the exposure of problems, it allows us to find solutions.
7. We always support the group decision unanimously; one decision out of the room.
8. 100% buy in = no unresolved issues = no politics.
9. This is not a democracy.
10. Issues, their action plans, time lines, and persons accountable must be documented.

I thought it was interesting that a lot of these rules are about consensus-building and decision making, but hidden away near the bottom (item 9) is a clear indicator that in fact they are not really that interested in consensus at all. Are these the seeds of a poisonous work environment, or the building blocks for a cohesive team? You decide. Are there team rules at your company? If so, what are they?

I recently was told about a great little program called Toad for MySQL by Quest, which basically takes MySQL Administrator and essentially slaps its features silly, then makes your jaw drop with its sheer brilliance. Best of all, it’s free! My favourite feature: data sync and schema sync. You can compare two databases (say a development database and a production database) and do a DIFF on the schema and data, and selectively migrate one to the other, without messing things up. Here’s a screenshot. See the diff in green:

I highly recommend this app for anyone doing MYSQL development.

Phil Haack proposed a very interesting method of stopping comment spam on bulletin boards, forums, and blogs. Hey calls this technique the ‘Honeypot’ Captcha.

The basic idea is that comment spam doesn’t generally execute JavaScript and doesn’t evaluate CSS. They also love form fields. So.. the idea is that you put a hidden form field in your comment form, and anybody that fills it out (ie spam bots), throw out that comment.

Its a smart idea. Some commentors pointed out that this might throw off people with screen readers who will have those fields read aloud. I’m not a JAWS expert but I have spent some time with it, and I don’t think it will read hidden fields.. Its fairly CSS aware. Other screen readers may get tripped up on this – not sure. I suppose you could help those people by putting a hidden label right next to the field: “If you are on a screen reader such as Windows Eyes, please disregard the following form field:”

I suppose its also a matter of time before spammers get wise to this somehow too. BTW If you are an ASP.NET user, he’s got some sample code on his site here.

Adobe’s MAX 2007 conference will be in Chicago from September 30 to October 3. I’m thrilled to be speaking at the event with Andre Charland on building Ajax applications in AIR. We’ll also be talking about Dreamweaver extensions, using the example of some Nitobi components.

Learn how to build rich and powerful user interfaces in Ajax for AIR applications with no JavaScript coding using Dreamweaver and off the shelf Ajax components from Nitobi. After this session, even novice developers will be able to add rich Ajax interactions such as spreadsheet-style grids, rich combo boxes, and dynamic trees. We will explain the usability advantages and potential pitfalls when migrating your web application to the AIR platform, as well as explore some innovative AIR projects, such as a SalesForce.com client, a lightweight project management tool, and a construction industry application.Â

When: Tuesday, October 2: 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm.