Digital Productivity Strategies for Developers

craigshoemaker — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:15:00 GMT

Our Guest: Jean-Paul Boodhoo

Our special guest this week is Jean Paul Boodhoo who is a developer, trainer, and author specializing in .NET and Agile development. When I first heard about JP’s summer where he worked while traveling around the world after giving away the contents of his home – I knew I had to have him share how he did it.

Truly Going Paperless

While very few of us will have an opportunity to have such a grand adventure as JP and his family did his techniques are something we can all benefit from. In this show JP shares how he uses the following services to be 100% mobile keep a paperless office:

Earth Class Mail: global PO box with options to send parcels to wherever you are in the world
Neat Co: scanning, storing and working with receipts
eFax: for faxing documents via email
Skype: Unlimited
LiveMeeting: with active speaker switching for video conferences
UltraVNC: for remote pair programming

Getting Things Done

I got a copy of Getting Things Done for Christmas and quickly became energized by David Allen’s concepts. I discuss in the show how I use custom Gmail accounts and a defined workflow to implement the tenants of GTD. Gmail’s labeling, search, archive and starring features make a great way to keep track of projects and next actions.

Further I use the service, 3mindme to implement a digital ticker file (see the book for an explanation!). Finally, to keep the accounts accessible I use SlickRun to map each mail account to a different browser so I can keep each account authenticated… works like a champ!

If all of this is foreign to you I suggest you get a copy of the book for yourself and find out why the GTD concept is so practical.

Update: Some listeners pointed out how easy it is to search multiple labels in Gmail. I posted about it here: Search Multiple Labels in Gmail.

The Secret to Great User Experiences

craigshoemaker — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:49:00 GMT

Today is a landmark day. I am uploading the 50th episode of the Polymorphic Podcast all the while I get to announce the beginning of our new podcast series at Infragistics, pixel8!

You're going to want to check out pixel8 because this show is all about the people and the technology surrounding great user experiences.

Now, I know what you are thinking...

You're a software developer, you leave the "pretty stuff" to the guys with the black turtlenecks and the felt berets; you don't do design. Ah, my friend, but you do!

We are emphasizing on "user experience" because it's so much more than graphic design and layout choices. User experience is about the look-and-feel, but also about performance, reliability, intuitiveness and a lot more. I like to think of it as the feeling someone has when they walk away from your software just as much as what they encounter while using your software.

So what's in store? Here's a quick run-down of the guests we've already lined up for you:

Scott Guthrie: Silverlight 2.0
John Gossman (WPF & Sliverlight Architect): Building WPF & Silverlight
Dr. WPF: Demystifying WPF
Josh Smith: Intro to WPF & WPF + MVC + Unit Testing
Jeffery Zeldman: Version Targeting - A Standardista's Story
Chris Wilson (Platform Architect for IE): Version Targeting - A Browser Maker's Story
Markus Egger: Pioneering WPF
Jesse James Garret: History of AJAX and New User Experiences
Walt Ritscher: WPF Wonderland!

Trust me... we're not stopping there!

Almost all of the above shows are recorded and are queued up for production. To satisfy right now here are the shows we are launching with:

Rick Barraza (User Experience Architect at Cynergy Labs): 8 Days, 1 Dev = MS Surface *Minority Report* Style in WPF - a must-see video!
Jeff Veen (Application Design Manager at Google): The Secret to Successful User Experiences
Brad Abrams: .NET Yesterday & Today
Grant Hinkson: CSS-like Control Over Windows Forms
Craig Shoemaker: pixel8 inagur8ion

Finally if you want to help spread the word, I'd love it if you helped pass along this promo.

So what is the secret to great user experiences? You'll find it at pixel8! (hint: Jeff Veen has a pretty good idea...)

Craig Shoemaker : software development

Digital Productivity Strategies for Developers

Our Guest: Jean-Paul Boodhoo

Truly Going Paperless

Getting Things Done

The Secret to Great User Experiences