October 2004

We always eat our dog food

October 19, 2004

Eating your own dog food is the imaginative term used within the computing industry to describe the act of using your own products. It’s obviously derived from dog food manufacturers who taste test their own products. How else would they know that it’s actually chicken and rabbit flavour? With that vile mental image aside, ‘dog [...]

Read the full article →

Paying to get less email

October 13, 2004

So, this Monday I began my Monday ritual. I loaded Thunderbird for the first time since Friday afternoon and pulled out a magazine to read while my connection downloaded 1800 emails at full speed. Now and then, I glanced up to watch my Mac’s beachball icon spin around merrily as Thunderbird’s spam filters went into [...]

Read the full article →

Ikea creates Ikea hate site

October 6, 2004

With a flex of its Swedish muscle, Ikea has created its own hate site. It’s a fascinating concept – why wait for someone else to do it when you can do one yourself! It’s obviously part of their new marketing campaign “Elite Designers Against Ikea” (http://elitedesigners.org/) which features the terribly chic ‘Van Der Puup’ and [...]

Read the full article →

Prototyping the easy way

October 5, 2004

When you’re at the very first step of developing a new product, it’s often helpful to create prototypes of the final application for evaluation. Sometimes a great idea on paper doesn’t work out in code or a good idea doesn’t gel well with the user interface. Some developers claim to hide themselves away in a [...]

Read the full article →