available

Failure is an option

I recently discussed techniques for reviewing projects to improve their likelihood of success. Underlying this is the reality that projects do fail often, at a greater rate than we'd like to admit.

Some failures are spectacular. After spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars over a period of years, nothing ever really works. The entire investment of time, money, energy, effort, and focus has to be completely written off. Those are the legends. The laughing stocks.

But it's a mistake to conflate failures and catastrophes. Most failures are mundane and much smaller scale. They result from changing … Read more

Mediocre money management

The financial software market is so competitive that there's really no reason to settle for a mediocre program; there are plenty of great ones to choose from. Unfortunately, jGnash falls into that group of programs that just don't cut it. Although the program works, there are many things about it that turned us off.

We got off on the wrong foot with jGnash immediately; it took an extremely long time to load, and once it was up and running, it had a huge negative impact on our system's performance. Our litmus test for personal finances software is … Read more

White iPhone 4 still on schedule but could see supply issues

Though Steve Jobs, after handing out free Bumpers to current iPhone 4 customers, assured users waiting for the white version of the iPhone 4 that the device is still on schedule to ship at the end of July, reports around the Web suggest Apple could see some major supply issues and availability could be limited.

Translated from Chinese newspaper 21st Century Business Herald, manufacturing issues for the white iPhone 4 are apparently related to problems with painting the glass surfaces of the device at the Lens Technology manufacturing plant (where iPhone 4 glass is processed, pressed, and painted).

According to Engadget, &… Read more

The 404 611: Where Wilson is a guest star on Miami Rice (podcast)

Wilson's meticulously groomed and highlighted hair is a constant topic of conversation on our show, and this morning we force him to tie it back in honor of so many evil movie villains from the '90s.

On today's episode of The 404 Podcast, we're wrapping up iPhone 4 news from the weekend, including reports of 1.7 million units sold, design backlash from left-handed smartphone users, and a new phone sex service that uses Apple's FaceTime video chat program to connect users to a live show.

Apple announced that it sold 1.5 million iPhone 4s … Read more

Xbox 360 Slim unveiled, available this week; $299

The Microsoft E3 2010 press conference has just wrapped up and the company finished things with a bang, debuting a brand new slimmer and edgy all-black Xbox 360 with a 250GB hard drive and built-in Wi-Fi.

More shocking, Senior Vice-President Don Mattrick announced that this redesigned Xbox 360 will be available in stores this week for $299. Also noteworthy was the mention of a "whisper quiet" operation, which is an acknowledgment to the current 360's loud jet-engine fan system.

Judging from our product shots, the slim Xbox 360 features an on-board digital optical audio out; a standard … Read more

iPhone 3GS retail availability Web tool

If you are interested in purchasing an iPhone 3GS, but are not sure about whether your local Apple store has any in stock, then the Apple iPhone 3GS availability Web tool is for you. According to the page:

The Apple Retail Store likely has your iPhone 3GS in stock. You can check the most up-to-date availability right here. Shipments of iPhone 3GS arrive most days, and availability is updated hourly. The 8GB iPhone 3G is currently available in all stores.

Select your state and then check the list to see which Apple Retail Stores currently stock iPhone 3GS.

You can … Read more

Free scalability & high availability cheat-sheet

Dzone just released a new Scalability & High Availability developer reference card as part of their cheat-sheet library. This latest guide was written by my pal Eugene Ciurana, a legitimate large-scale systems expert.

You can browse the guide below or download the free PDF to fully geek out.

Refcard #43: Scalability & High Availability

You should also check out the author's new book, Developing with Google App Engine.

As a side note, this is my first time embedding a Scribd doc in a blog post. So far, I think it's pretty cool. Any feedback is welcome.

You can … Read more

Google promises reliability for Docs, Calendar

Customers paying Google for Gmail are guaranteed the e-mail service will be available 99.9 percent of the time or they get a refund. Now the company has extended the promise to Google Calendar, Google Docs, and all the other elements of its Google Apps service.

"Today, we're announcing that we will extend the 99.9 percent service level agreement we offer Premier Edition customers on Gmail to Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Talk," said Matthew Glotzbach, director of Google Enterprise product management, announced on the promised Google Apps reliability on its blog Wednesday. … Read more

MySpace releases API for Data Availability

MySpace is set to release on Thursday the application programming interface (API) for Data Availability, a developer project that the News Corp.-owned social network announced in early May. Through Data Availability, participating social sites can let users synchronize accounts with MySpace profiles, importing public profile data like photos, interests, and friend lists.

Data Availability's formal launch partners are Yahoo, eBay, Twitter, and News Corp.'s Photobucket, but with the release of the API, any third-party site can have access to it. Authentication is handled through the OAUTH open standard, and controls have been configured so that a high … Read more

Sun: Selling more by giving more

Demonstrating, once again, that Sun is a true member of the open source community, the company just announced that

it will release the Solaris Cluster source code through the HA (High Availability) Clusters community on the OpenSolaris site. Sun is releasing the Open High Availability Cluster in response to interest and feedback from the OpenSolaris community. For the first time, developers will be able to participate in the evolution of the software itself, as well as leverage the open source cluster technology to develop and support highly available application services.

"Sun is releasing this code to the community to … Read more