I noticed an interesting post from Allison Beckwith about Project Planning Grids. She also provided links to Todd Warfel's Task Analysis Grid and Blink Interactive's Objects & Actions Analysis. All three posts centered around different grid styles & focuses, but they all discussed ways to map out the different objects/features of a project in an easy-to-understand grid, so that you can flesh out requirements, standardize vocabulary, and understand which items need to be developed when.

Allison & Todd's grids felt higher-level, and included color & position to denote schedule & priority. Blink Interactive's grid was more detailed & was perhaps a better way to ensure you didn't miss a requirement. I could perhaps see starting with Blink's grid to round out your featureset, and then a grid like Allison or Todd's for planning & priority.

At DevelopmentNow we do a lot of project work, so one of the first things we do is map out a project featureset into "chunks" and rough feature descriptions, then assemble them into a basic dependency & delivery list. One of the big aspects in project management is getting scope right, and since there's always a tradeoff between delivery time & overall features, it's important to make sure that you haven't forgotten a critical feature, and that everyone (including and especially the client) understands what will be delivered when. So I can see how the additional dimensions in a grid, along with colors, can help add additional contextual scope information without sacrificing simplicity.

FYI, Todd actually prints out his grids on huge (like 6 feet wide) paper, puts them up on a wall, and talks through them with clients, allowing the client to write on the paper, interact with it, etc.

Some sample screenshots of grids below:

I wanted to announce that the first meeting of Portand Open Beer Club will be Thursday, tomorrow night, at Bailey's Taproom in downtown Portland at 5pm.

Portland Open Beer Club is the same format as Portland Open Coffee Club. People interested in web, tech, or startups get together for a laid-back, agenda-free gathering, so that entrepreneurs and developers can chat, network, and grow. The main differences with Portland Open Beer Club is that:

1. It's Beer instead of Coffee
2. It at 5pm instead of 10am

Event link: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/450110/

Feel free to swing by, have a pint, & say hello! Of course, you don't have to drink anything to attend, and Bailey's has a number of other beverages and small plates available. We'll also probably be having Mexican food delivered there, in case anyone's in the mood for dinner.

Well, you can't really "roll back" commits per se, since Subversion remembers everything you've committed. But, if you realize that your current version of a file or directory is bad, and you need to restore that to a previous version number, you can do a svn copy like this

svn copy --revision 7  http://svn.yourdomain.com/svn/trunk/somefolder/myfile.php ./myfile.php

The above command will pull down myfile.php from version 7 of your repository and place it into your working copy. You can then check it in with

svn commit ./myfile.php -m 'rolled back to version 7'

You can also roll back directories instead of just specific files.

Office Live Workspace, the online document collaboration service from Microsoft, is now out of closed beta. It allows you to share and edit Office documents with others over the web, control permissions, and other online collaboration features. It also supports Firefox 2 on Mac OS X. You need Office to actually edit the documents (since editing occurs offline), but anyone with a browser can view and comment on the docs.

I've been using Google Docs for over a year now, and while it works decently, I sometimes miss the advanced features from Office, and it can be slow at times. I tried out Office Live Workspace this morning, and it definitely let me keep my desktop app experience. In fact, it felt mostly like WebDAV, albeit a slicker, better, easier-to-use version. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as all your editors have Office installed.

There's a web portion that lets me preview documents, and invite others to view and/or edit them. There's also an Office add-in that I installed, which added "Save To Office Live" and "Open From Office Live" to all my Office programs, allowing me to interact with the service. I was pleased to see that Offie Live stores the revisions of your documents across changes, but I didn't see a way to compare revisions. You can get email notifications of when someone edits documents, but there's no RSS feed. Anyone with a browse can comment on documents, but all the comments are just stacked on the right-hand side -- you can't position a comment over a particular item in the document.

I'm looking forward to when Live Documents comes out of closed beta, because that service will allow you to edit documents online, or using Microsoft Office or Open Office.

So, Office Live Workspace isn't bad. If everyone involved is a Microsoft Office user, it's definitely better than emailing documents back and forth. And you do get the full power of your desktop apps when managing documents, which is a big plus for power users or less web-savvy users. And since you can view and comment on documents using a browser, even non-Office users can contribute to a small degree. But the lack of online editing and robust features mean that upcoming services like Live Documents pose a real threat as the web world gets more cross platform and online only.

You can view more some screenshots of Office Live Workspace here.

Wikia just released an open source social networking extension to MediaWiki, allowing anyone with a MediaWiki install to let their users create profiles, upload avatars, message each other, and do other traditional social networking activities. There are already a number of open source SNS platforms, but this makes for a tempting starting point for any wiki-centric community site.

ReadWriteWeb has a longer overview.

Well, I've had it. I must get at least a dozen "please join my crappy network" invite messages each week from Ning networks. I haven't yet found a way to prevent them from "inviting" me, and all the emails violate CAN-SPAM in a number of different ways (no "unsubscribe feature", no physical address).

Their FAQ says

“To protect your privacy, only your friends and certain members of social networks you belong to can send you messages on Ning. If you’re a member of a network, the Network Creator and Administrators can send you messages and you can message them back. Further, if you belong to any groups, the Group Creator and Admins can get in touch with you. In order to send another member of a network a message, you’ll need to ask them to be your friend first.”

But apparently any Ning network can send me emails like "Come join me on Lame Group on SpamNetwork...".

Just this morning I got 6 different invites from "Members Only Network", all within the space of 10 minutes.

So for now I would suggest not joining anything on Ning until they address their growing spam issues.

Edit: Ok I found the culprits -- the spams were coming from some of my Ning.com "friends." *sigh* I knew there was a reason why too many friends was a bad thing.

SubText - http://www.subtextproject.com/

BlogEngine - http://www.asp.net/downloads/starter-kits/blog-engine/

dasBlog - http://www.dasblog.info/

FYI we use dasBlog here, but SubText & BlogEngine look interesting ...