Community Blogs

More than two years ago, I made a post on here about how I didn't get Twitter. It's one of the most popular posts I've ever made for some reason, which perhaps I'm not proud of. I been meaning to follow up on that for, well, at least a year, because obviously things have changed a great deal. My view was skewed in some respects because I never looked at it much outside of the context of technology circles. In its earlier days, Twitter was dominated by attention whoring tech pundits, and that seemed boring to me. These days, it enjoys more widespread use, but there are still some critical points that measure how effective it is as a communications medium, and furthermore, it serves different people different ways. That 80% of...

I do love a spirited debate. It seems that everyone I've had a relationship with suggests that I should have been a litigator because I love to argue. And hey, if practicing law wasn't 95% research and 5% arguing, I'd be all over that. That said, I think it's important to have a general awareness of the world, especially in business. A lot of techies and developers don't seem interested in that, unfortunately. Take this recent random Twitter exchange: someguy: Why is #Zune website www.zune.net made in flash and not silverlight?... @jeffputz: Why do people ask this question over and over? Because for a marketing site to move product you use what's most installed. someguy: well then they could have it done in both SL as...

This makes me laugh, in light of tech pundits who overstate the importance of Twitter. The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Jeff Goldblum Will Be Missed www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Jeff Goldblum The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Biz Stone www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Jeff Goldblum Read More...

I read a good post today about the silly wars that go on in versus debates, in this case the arguments about whether to use Webforms or MVC for ASP.NET . I kind of saw this storm coming when people started describing themselves as part of the alternative "movement" in the ASP.NET community. The truth is that MVC gets me really excited, for a thousand different reasons. My win comes from the fact that I feel like I'm no longer fighting the statelessness of the Web by conforming to a framework that simulates statefullness. Maybe I never really realized I was doing that. But the nice thing about MVC is that it has forced me to break down what I'm doing into simple actions. There are two benefits developing that I had not previously...

I just read the JJ Abrams essay in the previous issue of Wired . This essay really struck home about where we get joy out of life, and how we seem so eager to overlook it. This quote sums it up for me: "True understanding (or skill or effort) has become bothersome—an unnecessary headache that impedes our ability to get on with our lives (and most likely skip to something else). Earning the endgame seems so yesterday, especially when we can know whatever we need to know whenever we need to know it." That is true on more levels than I can describe. While the Internet has done so much to facilitate communication and bring people together, it has also managed to trivilaize knowledge and the process of acquiring it. I liken this to a suggestion...

I'm working with an automotive client that has a couple of data formats for some of their files.  One is a simple CSV format and the other is XML using .NET's XML Serializer (nothing fancy).  The CSV format is handy as it's easy for the engineers to quickly load it into Excel and view in a columnar format.  The XML format was implemented as a much more "full featured" version of the data and contains additional metadata to describe the data.  All of the maintenance of these files is very easy as we have a library for dealing with them. One of the issues that was found early on in the development of the library was that, being a global automotive company, the CSV wasn't always "comma separated"...

Read Hanselman's post on what happens when you break social contracts . I was part of a "panel" with someone at last year's IAAPA conference and trade show who is allegedly a "social media expert." I could barely get a word in, and he went out of his way to tell the audience they were stupid. (Perhaps this is part of the reason they haven't invited me back.) I love speaking gigs, but I was outright embarrassed to be on stage with the guy. I'm not going to dignify him with a link either. I could see the discomfort in the audience. Regardless of the circumstances, whether it be a small party, a confrerence, a blog or whatever, there are social contracts in place that you likely had no part in negotiating. That's...

I've poo-poo'd Twitter before, because I haven't found it to be anything other than another channel to keep up with, but I'll try being active about using it whilst at Mix this week. If I make meaningful connections (and find fun people to hang with at the Tao party), I'll officially change my tune and see the value. http://twitter.com/jeffputz Read More...

This will be my third Mix now, and what a strange road it has been for me. The first one I went to on my own dime, sort of, in that the conference was free but travel was my thing. That was a perk of just having a book published. Then the conference got super popular. I didn't go in '07, but I did go last year, on my former employer's bill. It was pretty spectacular, and I hoped that I would have the chance to go again this year. So I made it a negotiating point when I accepted my current gig. Especially given my move away from day-to-day coding and more into architecture, this particular conference seems like a great fit. I love that it's not a hundred code demos, too. Not that those aren't fascinating, but I like to be...

The new gig I started in December as the company's technical architect ("technical" to make the distinction that it's not "information architect") has been an interesting experience for me thus far. My experience at Insurance.com was excellent in so many ways, because the processes were entirely solid and my peers were rock stars without the ego. Getting laid-off from there sucked, but it also presented an opportunity to find something where I could lead processes and have that "enterprise" experience applied to a place that needs it. My new employer has been primarily a creative marketing endeavor for most of its history, and app development has been a smaller part of their business. Appropriately, their...