Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Guess what? It’s the obligatory iPhone post

Posted by Rahoul Baruah on July 22nd, 2008 under General  •  No Comments

Written using the WordPress application for the iPhone.
Quick summary: the 3G is great (especially as EDGE coverage was patchy at best), I’ve not noticed the GPS but the AppStore makes it.
Suddenly Safari is no longer the most used application on my phone.
Should you buy one? It’s both the best and worst phone [...]

With User Experience, the tiny details make a good app great

Posted by Rahoul Baruah on July 12th, 2008 under General  •  No Comments

NetNewsWire for the iPhone is great, but has a flaw that spoil it.

The User Experience is all wrong when you read an article.
Your eye starts at the top of the page, you scan down the page to read the preview, then you have to go all the way back to the top to tap the [...]

The Funny World of Advertising

Posted by Rahoul Baruah on July 9th, 2008 under General  •  No Comments

I saw the “Your life on your Blackberry” ad the other day.  Obviously designed to promote the Blackberry as a consumer device (because of the iPhone?) my first thought was “that’s the first Microsoft ad I’ve seen in ages”.  My wife’s first thought was “how dated was that?”.  
 
Let’s hope Microsoft do better with their [...]

User Interface design for the iPhone

Posted by Rahoul Baruah on July 4th, 2008 under General  •  No Comments

John Gruber finds a great example of iPhone UI design. Sometimes you
have to wonder what goes through people’s heads.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gruber/2635257578/

Microsoft Equipt

Posted by Rahoul Baruah on July 3rd, 2008 under General  •  No Comments

Maybe it’s just me but I think Microsoft’s branding is awful. “Equipt”
means you are getting two unrelated products with names totally unlike
the one on the box you are actually buying.

Whuffie

Posted by Rahoul Baruah on June 13th, 2008 under General  •  No Comments

Tara Hunt’s presentation from Fuel is worth a look - not short, but an excellent overview of how community-based networking works.  
 
http://www.slideshare.net/missrogue/making-whuffie

Going on an Information Diet

Posted by Rahoul Baruah on April 16th, 2008 under General  •  1 Comment

I recently went on holiday. To Spain. It was good.
Apart from it took me about four days to switch out of work mode. Constantly worrying about checking my mail. Has Basecamp been updated? What’s happening on Twitter? Given that I was only away for seven days, four days [...]

6 easy steps to deploy a Ruby on Rails application to Brightbox

Posted by Rahoul Baruah on March 22nd, 2008 under General  •  1 Comment

Ruby on Rails deployment is often regarded as a dark art. But the guys at Brightbox have made it simple with their Brightbox gem. I have recently moved three clients over - so I’m getting pretty good at deploying there. Here are the steps that I follow:
One:
Sign up with Brightbox and buy a [...]

The advantage of RSpec over Test::Unit

Posted by Rahoul Baruah on March 20th, 2008 under General  •  3 Comments

A while back, I wrote a post moaning about RSpec.
My basic point was that there is something that feels wrong about it, and at the time, I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Now I have been using RSpec solidly for a week, on a new project, I think I have it. It’s the syntax.
Everytime [...]

Why every small business needs an Organisation Chart

Posted by Rahoul Baruah on March 18th, 2008 under General  •  No Comments

It may seem stupid, given that 3hv has one employee, but I have just created my Organisation Chart.

Why?
Well how else can I swan about on a golf course like a real corporate executive? You’re not no-one until you’ve got an Org Chart.
Well, actually, there is a real reason for it. And it’s nothing [...]