For those who admire XP (eXtreme Programming) or are intrigued by it, here's a music video from a team who seems to have done it - and lived to tell the tale. Its a wonderful way to drive messaging within a group or company.
If you sift out the grammatical disruptiveness of the translation, you will realize that the latter part of the song is quite profound. Life is all about improving yourself, breaking out of self-imposed barriers for a better tomorrow.
Simple and inspiring. This song's been playing in my head all day long.
Google announced that it is shutting down its Answers service. Yahoo Answers, on the other hand seems to get more popular by the day. The chart below from hitwise says it all.
Yahoo Answers relies on the community to provide answers (like Wikipedia), whereas Google had researchers answer them. Look at which one was more popular: the wisdom of the crowds. This seems counter intuitive - getting an answer from an expert at a subject should be more valuable. The bazaar style prevails again.
I spent the better part of my weekend at the barcamp in Bangalore, held at the ThoughtWorks office. Day 1 had about 200 people. I haven't woken up this early on a Saturday morning in a long time, but I had to get there to book my speaker slot. Mine was the first presentation for the morning, on Web 2.0 Business models (or, where's the money, honey?). I was flattered when I saw the room full of people, and even more so when the organizers decided to move me (and my audience) into a bigger room to make place for everyone who wanted to attend. I had a great audience, so there was some discussion around whether online advertising is a really sustainable revenue model, what value propositions would really work, and whether we are looking at a Bubble 2.0 in the making.
Day 2 had lesser people, the "more serious crowd", according to someone. There were more informal gatherings, people hacking at something, blogging, podcasting, everyone airing their opinions. This is what you get if you get some geeks together on a weekend and give them enough food to eat.
Some interesting sessions I attended
Jon Boutelle's talk on building scalable web applications with ruby and s3
Marco's talk on Agile Software Project Management
Kiruba's talk on Proto.in
Card walls and Dancing by Deven Tolia
Building Ajax web applications using GWT
YourTube: Create your own video sharing site using OSS by Pradeep (motu)
One problem I commonly face at events is getting oversized T-shirts. I have a size L. Anyone who wants to trade a size M for a size L please let me know :)
A couple of sessions I attended deserve separate posts, those are coming up in a bit.
