Two books got chance to be in my reading list:

1. The High Performance Entrepreneur, by Subroto Bagchi.
   Well, there is no golden rule which can bring success, and that’s fact! For all you need these books/talks is to keep you motivated, raised, working, rocking; else u may loose your aspiration in very early days. Thank you flipkart for delivering in absolute two days; you guys rock.
2. Software Product Lines: Patterns and Practices, by Paul Clements, Linda Northrop.
   I could not stop reading first chapter. These guys have put a new perspective to my thinking about product lines, they describe very well what is not a software-product-line and what actually it’s. Building a software and serving multiple clients is not achieved by a great software architecture, instead you should think from a perspective of a product line. Just started reading this book. The book describes concepts with relevant case-studies.

 

- Ankit
( Note: Guten Tag is everyday German greetings! )

Ever heard someone saying “this software sucks”… I love such moments. It makes me laugh, not for the user, but for the poor developer! Users are innocent, they are not concerned about technical details. A software is there to make life simpler and hide complications of a task. It’s your responsibility to make it intuitive and meet users expectation on first impression, rather showing unnecessary (modal) alert boxes or irrelevant (technical) details. You don’t need to be a Usability Engineer. Just,

• stand on users’ shoe and think what is annoying
• don’t take negative feedback as an attack on you and your beliefs.
  Rather it’s a feedback on your understanding about how much you understand your users. In short never reject/resist on feedback.

Nobody hates software more than software developers and nobody distrust software more than software developers. Scott Berkun has written a good post about why software sucks. ( I have heard software engineers saying that they don’t trust online money transactions. Heck !! Do you need President to meet you and ensure? )

Here is what I think you should target as first step:

• Any tasks that you think user should perform by reading Help/Documentation, MUST be automated.
• Even an single unnecessary alert box annoys. Features should be available with less no of clicks. Still this is very subjective matter to discuss. A simple guidelines is – only system errors or exceptions should raise alert-box, tiny information should be modal-less dialogs (or like balloon pop-up).
• users never read entire screen. Default values chosen or default selection of check-boxes makes big difference in a long run.
  E.g. while filling an online form a default selection of check-box “subscribe me for spam mails”. Who does read entire form before clicking submit? None. But it affects your reputation in long run.
• Never hesitate in picking a useful (cool, awesome, sexy, astonishing, amazing! ) feature from competitive software. Ask a simple question – Does it add value to your product? You won’t like this argument, but this is truth. The success of Web is a tiny ‘view source’ feature. Well, this is a fast moving industry where we learn from other, we improve over time. You never blame the world for borrowing tabbed browsing from Opera (originally by NetCaptor). It’s a matter of accessibility, and understanding what your users like and what they dislike is a key to success.
• Don’t recruit incompetent programmers, because a incompetent programmer creates two new jobs a year. If you have a few already, either trains them or fire them. (Sorry pals)

- ankit
( and finally, this is a 100th post on this blog. Happy Blogging! )

A: Almost 2-5 items a day, as I’m an avid Internet user. Let me list down where Acrobat Reader sucks:

1. The Adobe Reader 8 installer a massive 20.8MB setup to download and time consuming setup.
2. Version 5 was roughly fast whereas new versions are becoming more memory hungry and CPU intensive and version 7 is damn hungry. It takes almost 10-15 seconds to load!
3. Frankly speaking, I hate their patents listed in splash screen.
4. If a PDF file has high graphics it sucks further and application hangs for few seconds.
5. Seriously I’m looking for a replacement!

Hmmm! a serious problem that affects my efficiency directly. Let’s search for a better solution. Wow I got it as first result!

Foxit v3.0 is the answer to all my worries. It’s a free light-weight (only 2.98 MB) and amazingly fast PDF viewer and printer. A 19 MB PDF file when opened, virtual memory required by Foxit was just 10 MB against massive 23 MB for Acrobat Reader.

Even the installer is just an extractor and does not require specific permissions to install. Quite handy in cybercafe. Its user interface is same as Acrobat Reader and you won’t feel using a different viewer.

- Ankit