Nick Bradbury

Hello, Gnomedex!

OK, I'm not actually at Gnomedex (here's why), but I still want to send my greetings to everyone there. I've attended Gnomedex several times, and I learned a lot each time (it's where I first heard about podcasting and attention, for starters).

And if you're there and happen to see a guy named Jack Brewster, stop and say hello. He works for NewsGator, and chances are you've been helped by him if you use one of our products. If you don't know what Jack looks like, take a gander at his new son. Jack looks almost exactly like him, albeit with slightly less hair :)

NewsGator Platform Roadmap (2006)

This week NewsGator founder and CTO Greg Reinacker posted a two-part overview of our company's roadmap. Part I provides the necessary background for part II, which talks about where we're going in the near future.

It's an ambitious roadmap - but so was the one he posted in 2005, and our company has met every one of the stated goals (along with a few more). It's going to be a fun and challenging year as we cross the next chasm.

Digital Identity Newbie

I haven't focused too much on digital identity, but I've been paying more attention to it lately. I don't know enough yet to post an opinion on the subject, but here are some recent posts about identity that I've enjoyed:

• Phil Becker and Eric Norlin: Top 5 Identity Fallacies: #5 Net 2.0 Can Happen Without Solving Identity, The return of the walled garden and Google's authentication vs. Microsoft's Live ID
• Dave Winer: Identity and Trust
• Kim Cameron: Facebook as a Background Check

Freedbacking?

At the "Users in Charge" session at last week's BloggerCon, Chris Pirillo defined the word "freedbacking" to mean "free feedback from software users to developers." Later in his blog, Chris asked users (better known as "customers") to use the word (or tag) "freedbacking" in any blog posts which give feedback to developers.

Chris, you know I respect you, but beyond self-promotion, what's the goal here? If it's to make developers listen, then I don't get it. Any developer worth his salt is already subscribed to keyword search feeds about his or her software, and any developer who isn't already listening isn't likely to hear users just because they use the word "freedbacking." So using the word "freedbacking" strikes me as superfluous.

What am I missing?

PS: Ironically enough, by using the word "freedbacking" here, I've made sure that Chris will hear this :)

We're Looking for a Denver Delphi Contractor

If you live in the Denver area and have the chops to build great Delphi applications, perhaps you'd like to come work with us?

As you can see from the job description, we're looking for an experienced Delphi contractor with proven UI skills to help take over TopStyle's development. We need someone who is committed enough to take charge of getting a major new version out the door (something I've been unable to handle due to FeedDemon's popularity). This job may expand so that you'd also help out with FeedDemon.

We're a great company, we've got a great team, and as my previous post illustrates, we have a lot of fun. If you're up to the task, we want to hear from you!

NewsGator Rocks with the Chili Peppers

I'm spending a few days in Denver this week to visit my friends and co-workers at NewsGator, which is something I should do more often. I'll be here again on August 18 - which as luck would have it is when the Red Hot Chili Peppers (one of my favorite bands) play in Denver.

At the company's "all hands" meeting this morning I suggested that a bunch of us go to the concert together, and asked for a show of hands of those who wanted to go. A surprising number of hands popped up - and they all popped up after NewsGator CEO J.B. Holston said that the company would pay for the show.

I'm working for a company that's paying for everyone to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I may never leave this place :)

BloggerCon IV Wrap-up (Thanks Dave and Niall)

BloggerCon IV concluded today, and the (un)conference exceeded my expectations. My thanks to Dave Winer for the time and effort he put into this event. I learned a lot and shared a lot at this BloggerCon - I leave knowing and feeling more than when I came.

I also want to thank Niall Kennedy for being an excellent tour guide and friend during my short visit to San Francisco. Niall showed me around the place, introduced me to people, and basically made my brief stay here a better one. Even if we end up competitors in this whole RSS thing-a-ma-jig, I think we can still bounce ideas off each other since we're both motivated more by the possibilities than by the competition.

BloggerCon IV

Most of the time when I attend a conference, I benefit more from the schmoozing/partying than I do from the actual panels. Truth be told, I usually skip the majority of the sessions, hoping to save my energy for the after-hours socializing.

So the biggest compliment I can give to BloggerCon IV is that I spent the entire day sitting in a chair listening to (and participating in) the conference itself. I know that some people sneer at the unconference idea, but my experience has been that it works - involving the "audience" in the conversation results in a far more interesting and unpredictable event.

My favorite discussion today was "The Emotional Life of Weblogs" (MP3) moderated by the brilliant Lisa Williams. Listening to fellow bloggers talk about how blogging connected them with other people reminded me why I'm in this business - to build tools to help improve peoples' lives rather than complicate them.

I also enjoyed the "Users in Charge" discussion moderated by Chris Pirillo, but I have to admit that I had to struggle not to blurt out my opinions as a developer (it's a user conference, so the users do the speaking). Why did I want to speak up? Because many of the people talking were techies, which is a big part of the problem. Less technical users believe they don't have the technical expertise to join the conversation, so developers end up tailoring their tools to meet the needs of power users since they're the ones that speak up. We need to create an environment where non-geeks don't feel intimidated, and power users need to help rather than hinder this goal.

What I'd like to see at a future BloggerCon (or Gnomedex) is an open, respectful discussion between users and developers. Even though public speaking terrifies me, I'd still be willing to moderate a session between users and developers if it would make the discussion less adversarial. So much of our society's future depends on technology that we absolutely must open the communication lines between those building the tools and those using them.

Start Coding Like a Cowboy

Given that I've been blogging since 2002, you'd think I would've written about software development many times. As it stands, though, I've written very few posts about programming. I think a big reason for this is because when I'm coding away like a madman, I don't blog (or do much of anything else!) - and when I'm not coding, I don't feel like writing about it.

But I'm in the middle of another coding frenzy right now, and this time I'm going to open the kimono by talking about a "memetracker" feature I'm considering for a future version of FeedDemon (screenshot). I enjoy memetrackers like Tailrank and Techmeme because they let me know what people are talking about, but I'd like to have a memetracker that looks only in feeds I'm subscribed to in FeedDemon. Not only would this inform me about popular topics, but it would also let me read multiple posts about the same topic at once so I don't have to read them one-at-a-time as I come across them.

So, given that I'm supposed to be a seasoned, old school programmer, you probably think that I first sketched out some ideas for how this feature should work, and then followed some sort of formal design process before coding it.

Nope. I went straight to coding. No design. No plan. No nothing.

Now, before you label me a cowboy coder, let me explain. See, many times I've followed a more formal design process, only to run into some unforeseeable problem that stops me in my tracks once I start coding. More often than not, my logical design fails to predict the irrational behavior of some external process or service. For example, I'm sure I'm not the only aggregator developer who scrapped his initial design after discovering that a huge number of RSS feeds aren't valid XML ("but I planned to use an off-the-shelf validating XML parser, dammit!").

Rather than face that torment, I'll often start coding away for the sole purpose of running headlong into the cruel wall of experience. FeedDemon's memetracker is a good example of this, since I've already had to start over due to problems that I couldn't have anticipated.

Here's the fun part: a week or two from now, after I'm comfortable that the memetracker is working as intended, I'll then throw the code away and start a more formal design approach. Cowboy coding is a great way to find problems, but it's no good for commercial software - you've got to write well-thought-out code unless you're willing to be buried in bug reports. So the goal here isn't to complete a feature quickly (although that's often a side effect), but instead to discover the gotchas up-front so you can design the feature correctly.

PS: I should add that I have no idea when this memetracker feature will make it into FeedDemon - it's still in the hacking stages, so it may be a while before it appears.

Anil is right about MS Office 2007

Anil Dash is right: MS Office 2007 is a ballsy upgrade. I have to admit that when I saw screenshots of the new ribbon UI, I thought it looked snazzy but didn't think it would make a difference. After all, one of the surest ways to make a minor upgrade appear more substantial is to change how the toolbars look - something that Office has done with every version.

But I've been using the beta for a couple of weeks, and I'm impressed. I wrote a few design documents with the new Word 2007, and I kept finding little changes that made a big difference (like how mousing over a style gives you a preview of how that style will affect the current selection).

Usability is the most important feature of any application, and the improved usability of the new MS Office is by far its best new feature. I agree with Anil that Microsoft has made a risky bet by so radically changing Office's UI, and it's a bet that will pay off.

PS: Anil is also right that Jenson Harris has the best Microsoftie blog - I read every new post he writes, a claim I can make for only a handful of blogs.