Aardvark'd Review

I got my copy of Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks this week. This is the documentary that was filmed over the summer at Fog Creek Software , home of Joel Spolsky . Fog Creek hired a team of 4 interns to build Copilot (codenamed Project Aardvark ), a software package that allows for remote computer assistance.

I really liked Aardvark'd. It wasn't perfect, by any means, but the subject matter is esoteric enough that I can't complain too much. It did a good job of giving a flavor of daily life at Fog Creek. It also did a reasonable job of documenting the development process behind Copilot. It was interesting to see the negotiations behind the purchase of copilot.com, the user testing performed on Copilot, and the kinds of issues that the team encountered while demoing Copilot at a trade show. I also enjoyed the segments where the interns were interviewed about where software bugs come from, how programmers react to them, and how they eliminate them. Those scenes rang true to this professional developer, without being beyond the grasp of a layman. Finally, I liked seeing the excitement around the first sale of Copilot and the reactions of the interns as the left for the summer, knowing that their "baby" would continue to grow and develop without them.

In addition to covering Copilot, Aardvark'd also had some coverage of the Y Combinator Summer Founders Program in Boston. These segments were particularly excellent, especially the interviews with Paul Graham . In fact, I thought the segments were so good that Y Combinator should consider funding a documentary completely about the Summer Founders Program for 2006.

Aardvark'd did have some weak points. The main problem was the use of too much irrelevant filler material. The film was 80 minutes long, but I felt that there was only about 60 minutes of real content. Sure, it's nice to include a few clips not directly related to the subject matter, just to give the viewer a slice of life at Fog Creek. But Aardvark'd went overboard. It got tedious hearing about the cockroaches the interns found in the bathroom, the party that got shut down by the landlord, the debate over whether it was possible to jump out of the window to the next building, and (especially) the tomatoes growing on the balcony. One or two of these scenes might have been acceptable, but combined, it made it feel like the director was really stretching to reach the 80 minute mark.

Still, if you are the kind of person that would be interested in a documentary about 4 geeks building a commercial software product over one summer, then these weaknesses are easily overlooked, and I strongly recommend purchasing a copy of the DVD. Nice job Fog Creek and Boondoggle Films !

Comcast Still Sucks

We all know that the basic service levels provided by big, government-backed monopolies (e.g., cable and telephone companies) are terrible. If you call their customer support number, you will wait on hold for an hour before you get to talk to an unhelpful miscreant, and so on. Comcast fits this bill in every respect.

Still, sometimes these companies do cool things unexpectedly. For example, Comcast has upgraded the speed of my Internet connection twice this year, first from 3 Mbps to 4 Mbps, and then from 4 Mbps to 6 Mbps. So, after reading an article about Comcast last week, I was a little bit excited about a new service being offered, and gave Comcast the benefit of the doubt. That was wrong.

Last Thursday, the Wall Street Journal ran a front page article entitled, To Ward Off New Competitors, Comcast Builds a Mini Internet . The article talks about Comcast's efforts to beef up its On Demand service in order to compete with Internet video sources and phone company backed IPTV rollouts. The article didn't say much that I didn't already know, and generally gives Comcast much more credit than they deserve. One line did interest me, though: "In sports, it has NFL Replay, which shows highlights from football games played any given week." As a dislocated Cleveland Browns fan, the ability to watch the highlights of their games each week had appeal. So, this week I decided to try it out.

My first attempt to use NFL Replay was Sunday night around midnight. There were no games available. Comcast's website indicated that the games weren't available until Monday morning. So, tonight (Monday) after dinner, I decided to try again. This time I was greeted by a message that said "NFL Replay Blackout" with a 1 minute video clip attached. The video clip spent about 50 seconds explaining how awesome NFL Replay is, and how I should thank my lucky stars that I am a Comcast subscriber. The final 10 seconds of the video rapidly explained that while any NFL content is being televised on any channel, you can't use NFL Replay.

What. the. %$^@. I can't watch the highlights from the Browns game yesterday because the Monday Night Football pre-game show is on?! That's unbelievably lame. Comcast claims that they are offering services like NFL Replay to compete with Internet video sources. Well, guess what, Comcast? People like Internet video sources because they can watch what they like, when they like, and they don't have to put up with petty, bullshit restrictions like this. I look forward to watching you have your lunch eaten by the Internet over the next decade.

Dot-Con Job

The Seattle Times has published an excellent investigative report on the ridiculous business and accounting practices at InfoSpace during the dot-com boom. The report is quite detailed and spans three parts, but it's well worth taking time to read. What makes it especially interesting is the inclusion of company emails and voicemails that were obtained by subpoena. InfoSpace executives played a variety of shady games to boost revenues, engaged in schemes to bypass insider trading regulations, and inflated projections to an absurd level. The fact that none of these people have been investigated by the SEC, while Martha Stewart went to jail, is just stupid.

(The only part of the report not worth reading is the segment on "who lost", unless you want to hear from a moron who invested her life savings in Internet stocks or a day trader who is pissed that he lost $80,000.)

Recent ITConversations

This week I listened to three excellent ITConversations . (One of the nice things about having a 30 minute walk to campus is that it gives me a chance to listen to books and interviews.)

The first was Capturing the Upside with Clayton Christensen. He talks about his Law of Conservation of Modularity, which is about integration and where value lies. His comments on the upmarket disruptions, such as the demise of DEC are fascinating. His distinction between growth markets and growth business made a lot of sense to me. (Steel mini-mills are growth businesses, wireless communication is a growth market.)

Doug Kaye's interview with Joel Spolsky was interesting, especially since I've been reading Joel on Software for a couple of years. The interview is a whirlwind, but Joel's comments about listening to customers made me think. He pointed out that often customers don't really know what they want, and that very rarely will a customer suggest a breakthrough feature. I agree with Joel. It's important to treat customers with respect and to respond to their feedback, but you have to realize that not every feature request will really make sense. Sometimes when customers have a feature request, they are trying to fix a symptom, not a problem. There's no substitute for the overriding vision of an individual or small team.

Finally, I enjoyed Robert Lefkowitz's talk, The Semasiology of Open Source . Oddly enough, I was walking to my accounting class while he was saying that the open source community needs to focus on accounting just as much as it focuses on law. His talk is extremely well developed, and he raises interesting points about what really constitutes source. I won't spoil the ending.

IT Conversations

I have recently become aware that IT Conversations rocks. I heard about the site a few months ago, but didn't have an opportunity to listen to any of the conversations until recently. When my flight from New York to Raleigh was delayed 10 hours, I had plenty of time to listen. Then I listened to some more on the way back to Ohio from Durham. Now that I'm living off campus, I have about a 30 minute walk to campus, so I've been loading up my iPod with conversations. So far my favorites are Paul Graham , Ben and Mena Trott , and Tim O'Reilly .

Treo 600

For a variety of reasons, I needed a new cell phone before moving down to North Carolina for the summer. I tried to restrain myself, but ended up getting a Treo 600 from Sprint. Case has a deal with Sprint that gives me a discount on my monthly bill, so that's how I justified switching to Sprint (from AT&T Wireless) and paying more for a phone than a normally would have.

So far I'm very pleased with both the Treo and Sprint. I get a good signal at home, unlike AT&T Wireless, which was always on roaming. Sprint was able to port my old number quickly (only took 2-3 hours). The PCS Vision network (Sprint's data service) seems pretty fast. With the Treo, I can get email, chat on AIM, read RSS feeds, and browse the web easily. And the Treo is just like any other Palm, so I can sync it with Address Book and iCal using Palm HotSync and iSync.

The only major downside to the Treo is the low-res screen (160x160). It can be a bit hard on the eyes, but I'm not planning to spend hours looking at it each day, so I guess it's OK. The camera is also pretty crappy, but I don't really care about that. The lack of Bluetooth is mildly annoying, but since you can sync via USB, the only reason I would really want Bluetooth is to use my phone as a remote control during presentations. The Treo has a SD card slot, but unfortunately none of the Bluetooth SD cards are compatible with the Treo.

I've only had the phone and service for a few days, but so far I give the Treo 600 and Sprint big thumbs up.

Google IPO

Google filed for their IPO this afternoon. They are seeking to raise $2,178,281,828. In other words, e billion dollars. I recommend bypassing the media stories, and simply reading Google's S-1 filing yourself. It's actually quite engaging, especially the Letter From the Founders and the Risk Factors .

Weekend Update

I slept in late on Saturday and Sunday, and I think I'm finally over the flu.

Saturday evening Jason, Lynn, Dave, and I went out to Luchita's for dinner. I had the Steak Fajitas, which were good, if a little overpriced. I really liked the chips and salsa. It was good to get out of the dorm, and we had a good dinner conversation.

Saturday night a bunch of us sat in the suite, drank some beer, and continued discussing topics that we started on at dinner. We also watched a few episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is an absolutely brilliant show. Some people didn't really like Curb Your Enthusiam, but I don't think that they understood that it's not a "ha-ha" laugh out loud show. It's more of a "watch the screen between the cracks in your fingers as you recoil in horror" type of show.

Sunday I accomplished a fair amount of work (much more than I did last week, when I had the flu). Wrote up a project proposal, set up a CVS server for projects, and continued studying aspect-oriented programming. Jason and I finally watched last week's episode of The Shield, which I thought was good, but not as good as the first episode of the season. Parts of the plot were a little hard to follow. Plus, I thought the way Vic handled the gun-buy at the beginning of the episode was a little too half-assed, even for Vic. But at least we did get to see Dutch in top interrogation form.

DARPA Grand Challenge Photo Gallery

Nice photo gallery and commentary on the DARPA Grand Challenge over at lemonodor :

The 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge is over. The final standings are in. Every media report so far has focused on the fact that nobody made it to Las Vegas, and missed the fact that this was actually a historic, impressive display of robotics.

Mediachest

A new site called Mediachest has launched. It uses social networks to help you find friends that have books, movies, games, and music that you want to borrow. Seems like a good idea. It would be nice if I could get everyone in my dorm to sign up for Mediachest. :-) Here's my Mediachest profile .

Bigger Disk

LaCie has announced their Bigger Disk - 1 terabyte of storage in a 5.25 inch form factor. Firewire and USB interfaces. $1200. <Cartman>Sweet.</Cartman>

Notacon

Froggy just announced Notacon on cwru.general.

It's "not a 'con". Well, it kind of is. But it isn't. Kinda. Sorta. Not really.

It sounds like it's going to be a cool event, and if anyone can pull this off, it's Froggy and his staff . Spread the word about Notacon!

Sidenote: I didn't know it until tonight, but Froggy has a blog .

Infornography

The Lure of Data: Is It Addictive? [New York Times]

This is a very interesting article. I think there may really be something to this; I'd love to research it further for a psychology class. Of course, it's easy to read an article like this and interpret it in a way that fits you (just as you are more likely to imagine having flu-like symptoms if the local media report that there has been an outbreak of SARS), but I wonder if I suffer from this "addiction". (I doubt it is a true addiction, any more than eating high-fat foods is an addiction.) The pervaisive availability of technology has definitely shortened my attention span; if I am coding and get stuck on a problem, it is difficult to resist the urge to just check my email or catch up on my RSS subscriptions.

If nothing else, this article has made me think about my relationship to technology. I really need to work on increasing my attention span and improving my ability to Just Say No to technological distractions.

Kickass Video Chatting

(The original title of this entry was going to be "Videoconferencing for the Rest of Us," but "kickass" seems to be the 2003 version of "for the rest of us". Also, "videoconferencing" seems to imply business use, so I prefer the term "video chat".)

I had my first real video chats using iSight and iChat AV today. I talked to Jason from his office at Apple, and Andrew from his apartment in California. Everything worked spectacularly. I just clicked the video camera icon next to their names, waited a few seconds for them to accept the chat, and away it went. Audio and video quality was excellent. I think Apple possibly has a real hit on their hands, especially if they can get iSight under $100 by the end of the year.

ReplayTV Commercial Advance

Wired News claims that the next generation of ReplayTV may not include Commercial Advance or Show Sharing. I can't say I'm surprised, but they better not disable these features on my trusty ReplayTV 4504, or I'll be very annoyed.