We've been using Unfuddle for a while and have been pretty happy with it, although we always felt that the built-in RSS feeds didn't have enough information. Recently they released an API, and so we decided to make a new Unfuddle Project RSS feed, using PHP, that displayed richer information like times, people, and comments.

To install, edit the settings near the top of the PHP page to use your domain name, login, project id, etc, then load onto a friendly local PHP server. It requires PHP 5 due to use of the SimpleXML extension.

One thing to note -- the file doesn't contain any caching mechanism because different PHP hosts have different things available. So feel free to add in caching support, or lmk & I'll upload a version with caching included.

unfuddle_rss_0.21.zip (3.62 KB)

So I ran across a 7-month-old blog post from Guy Kawasaki on how Truemors.com cost him around $12,000 to launch.

Basically, it's a straightforward site where people can submit news, rumors, buzz, etc. It's a modified version of WordPress, allowing anonymous posting, and it's nice looking. A few thoughts based on the article:

• Note how even though the post is "old", the message is still relevant.
• Note how 30-40% of his costs were on legal fees (!)
• Note how he didn't have to spend a ton of money on development -- he whipped together a simple, easy, user-generated content (UGC) web site by modifying existing packages. That's what we do for building social networks, and it saves our clients a ton of money.
• Note how he didn't do a big up-front plan -- he just did it. Then again, the cost was so low that it probably wasn't worth doing a large business plan.
• Note how the site took off due to his contacts and connections (and a bit of luck?), not due to any killer feature.

 

Next Open Coffee Club meeting is on January 23rd, downtown stumptown, at 10am. Meet up with other web-savvy folks and have a great cup of joe, too. A win-win!

Read more here: http://eventful.com/events/E0-001-004481519-5

And at www.opencoffeeclub.org

 

As an IT manager, you'll have team members who initially aren't able to get things done as quickly as you or other experienced team members can. A good portion of that productivity gap is due to their lack of your codebase, development process, etc. So one way you can speed their progress is to ensure that they have access to domain knowledge through a wiki, training videos, documentation, shadowing other programmers, etc.

There's an old joke about how knowledge is most of the battle.

There was a business whose expensive machine suddenly stopped working. Since the machine was vital to daily operations, they called in an expert to do the repairs. The expert looked at the machine, checked a few settings, pulled out a hammer, and rapped the machine lightly on the side. The machine instantly sprang to life and the business was able to move forward with its work.

The delighted business owner said, "Great, what do I owe you?" to which the expert replied "That'll be $100."

"100 dollars?" the owner cried. "But you were only here for 5 minutes! $100 for one swing of a hammer doesn't seem worth it."

So the expert quickly wrote up an itemized invoice and handed it to the owner. The owner reviewed the invoice, sighed, shrugged, nodded, and paid the expert his $100.

On the invoice were two line items:

Swinging the hammer -- $1
Knowing where to swing the hammer -- $99

One of the things I do is help new team members know "where to swing the hammer" by suggesting approaches, resources, or even the particular modules, files, & functions that they would probably be working with. I ease up on that direction as they come up to speed, but I feel it's valuable initially to help new people focus in on the problem and still get things done. I'm not robbing them of a chance to learn the systems, since I'm only providing a high-level suggestion, and they'll still be working on the code in depth.

Happy New Year folks. And, here's an interesting link to some Joomla! 1.5 performance testing. I find it interesting because

1. Joomla! 1.5 beta 2 was slower than good ol' Joomla! 1.0.13 RC
2. There were discussions of a number of PHP caching techniques which can be applied to any PHP system

The caching techniques covered were "file caching" (which sounded like filebased output buffering aka Cache_Lite_Output to me), Alternative PHP Cache (APC), eAccelerator and Memcache. xcache was mentioned in the comments but not tested.

So if you're interested in a quick overview & comparison of some PHP cachine techniques, go ahead and read the article ... I found it interesting that despite memcache's reputation, its performance fell behind other caching methods.

When search results are displayed on Google, the descriptive text below the page title is called the snippet. See example below:

 

Matt Cutts from Google recently videotaped a bunch of impromptu tech-oriented videos (I think he stole the idea from me <g>), one of which was how Google comes up with the snippet. Hint: it's not always your meta description tag, and sometimes it's even your DMOZ description! :/

You can view the video, or view notes courtesy of Eric Enge. I personally prefer to skim notes in 2 minutes instead of watching a 10 minute video, but that's just me...

I recently ran across three Facebook application generators that allow you to quickly generate a Facebook app from your existing Clearspring widgets, Widgetbox widgets, or Dapps (content feeds).

Clearspring's Facebook App Generator

Widgetbox's App Accelerator 

Dapper's Facebook App Maker 

Building a Widget inside an existing framework can be helpful for developers, as you can leverage existing APIs and distribution channels.

Thx to Mashable for the info. ;)

I thought about calling this entry "Don't Spend Two Hours to Save $20", but it lost out on the internal blog title poll. Both phrases are about how it's easy to end up spending hours & hours to avoid paying a nominal amount.

People who know me know that I like to talk about productivity a lot. Granted, I see the irony of me talking about productivity while I sit around writing blog posts, but anyhow.

Have you ever...

One of the things I've learned over the years is to not be afraid to spend a little money to save a lot of time. Assuming your time has value, it makes a lot of sense. So have you ever:

• Spent hours creating a program to do something, instead of buying a $25 piece of software that does all that you need and more?
• Used poorly-written, cumbersome free software to do your daily work, instead of paying $30 for a program that works really well?
  
• Saved $20 on a new tech gadget by trolling FatWallet and TechBargains for a week, sending in multiple rebates, asking store managers to price match, and/or driving back to the store to do a return/rebuy or price guarantee?
• Avoiding paying a $25 shipping fee on furniture or other large items by driving down to the store yourself, strapping the items to the top of your car, heading back home, unloading it, and carrying it into the room?
  
• Bought a cheap piece of crap to do something (a rake, a wrench, a garden hose reel, a heatsink) that required extra time or money to get it working correctly, and/or broke after a short while and required replacement?

...and so on. It's easy to get sucked into saving a little money, but unless you enjoy the time spent saving that cash, you should make sure to be aware of how you spend your time and ensure that it's really getting you somewhere. As programmers, we love writing software, and it's really easy to say "hey I can quickly write or build my own X for free!" I've done that a lot (and heard similar sentiments from other developers), and while it's fun writing little utilities and tools, they have a habit of taking longer than expected.

A Full Price Lesson

I had a friend back in Chicago who asked me to come with him to buy some stuff for his computer. I mentioned that he could save a lot by checking out various deals, and that different stores had different prices, so that he could buy his keyboard at one vendor, his antivirus software somewhere else, a mouse on Amazon, and then send in some rebates to save even more. I mentioned that he should keep an eye on bargain-shopper sites and only buy when items go on sale, do some online research to compare price-for-performance between different items, and other price-shaving tips.

After a long spiel on techie thriftiness, he promptly ignored me and dragged us into Office Depot, where he asked my advice on what a good keyboard, mouse, and antivirus vendor were. I told him, and he grabbed the items, paid at the counter, and strolled out.

Initially I was shocked at his cavalier attitude at paying full price, but then I realized that he was done in 15 minutes. Done! I'd still be driving around, cutting out UPC symbols, etc. a week later.

I still remember that experience whenever I start thinking about how I can save $10 on a hard drive by comparing 4 different drives at 5 different sites over the course of 2 weeks.

If you're not working, you aren't getting paid

I'm not saying you shouldn't try to save money, nor should you throw money away. Nor should you buy things you don't need if something free will work just fine. Nor should you avoiding writing your own tools.

I'm just saying that if your time is valuable, think about how your time is spent, and just be conscious of where your hours are going vs where they'd go if you spent an extra $20-$100. Over the past two years at DevelopmentNow, that really hit home. We do 100% project work here, so if we're not working on a client's site, we don't get paid. With that in mind, I felt more comfortable paying a little to gain a lot (of time). Especially in IT, there are opportunities to spend an extra $20 to save hours.

Examples from the field

For example, I set up an Unfuddle account for the company. Unfuddle is sort of like BaseCamp+Subversion+Ticket system, but it was ready to go instead of me spending hours (days?) setting up SVN, Trac, and other stuff for free. I'm also probably going to buy phpEd or some other commerical PHP editor. Why? Because I get a lot for that $100 or so, and I buy it & I'm done. I take a lot of screenshots, too, and need more features than Cropper + Ifranview currently provide, so I'll probably buy SnagIt for $40. Plus I order most things (including furniture) online & have it delivered right to my door -- not only does it save me time, but it's better for the environment than driving my car around.

Wrapping up

So...that's how not to spend two hours to save $20. If you get paid hourly, saving $20 via two hours of unpaid work carries a real opportunity cost, which is how you go about losing 20 (or more) dollars an hour.