Manda QoP

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a Google presentation in Auckland. It was a chance to catch up on the latest news from Google Apps and to also get a first look at an actual Chromebook. Chromebooks aren’t yet available (officially) in NZ and Ed from Google said that they’re due for release here early next year. If you can’t wait that long then Amazon are doing some good deals and you can pick one up from around US$350. If you haven’t already heard about the Chromebook, here’s the official info from Google . Chromebook Overview Uses Chrome browser as its user interface. Instantly boots to a web browser which can’t be closed as it’s the o/s. No gradual slow down as nothing is stored locally – it’s all online You can set up multiple logins on your Chromebook so that whoever logs in has access to their own Google apps Constantly up to date as apps are online and new apps are always being created Chrome O/S has built in security Built in wi-fi and 3G means you can...

One of my all time heroes died this past week at the age of 70.  A man without whom modern coding would not exist, and yet news reports have missed this sad event.   I sent the following email to NZStuff in the hope that some coverage will belatedly occur.  The younger iOS generation should know about dmr and what he did for all of us. --------------------- Hi, There's been a lot of press coverage over the death of Steve Jobs, and yes, it's very sad and he was a great influence to the way we use technology and was one of my heroes purely because of his passion for IT, but an even greater influence on computing also passed away last week and there's been no mention of his passing. Dennis Ritchie, aka dmr, the inventor of the C programming language, co-creator of Unix and all round nice guy passed away on the 8th October.  Without dmr there wouldn't have been anything for Steve Jobs or any other younger generation of developers and inventors to build new ideas...

I'm a great fan of Agile, Six Sigma and any other tools that make development, project management and profitability easier to achieve. I also believe that you should use the tools and not allow the tools to use you. You don't have to worship at the church of Agile in order to reap benefits from its various tools, and you certainly don't have to pick one style over another, pick, choose and combine - it's fusion methodology time. Let's use an analogy, cheese and crackers.   Some cheese is great on its own but is also great when put on a cracker, some cheese is useless on its own and is only really at its best when squished onto a cracker, in the same way we have various Agile and Six Sigma tools.  Some tools stand alone, like a really great cheese, and they can be used to add value whatever methodology you're into, examples that spring to mind are process maps and sliders.   To me, Six Sigma process mapping is the cracker that all companies wishing to do some p...

After getting my new phone last year, an HTC Desire, I’d been having great fun taking loads of photos with the camera, it rocks... I haven’t used my real camera since getting the phone, but then just before Christmas disaster struck.  Okay, maybe more of a minor inconvenience than a disaster, but I have a cure that others may not know about. The basic hardware layout of phones means that the camera lens cover is very prone to scratching whilst it’s in your pocket, and the phone is in my pocket all the time whilst walking the doggy duo.   And yes, I do have a scratch cover on my phone but for some reason, none of the covers go over the bit that really needs scratch protection, anyhoo.. one day I took a photo and oh noes, the image was in soft focus and somewhat blurry due to a scratched lens cover.  No more of the super clear, super resolution photos which look awesome.  I was sad.   L After a month or so of no more picture taking and quite a bit of...

Did you know, that in 2005 Volvo created a car for women, that was designed by women. What I want to know is, how they managed to find a group of women even more sexist against women drivers than most men are? The car has: No bonnet or any access to the car's internal workings (women don't need to look at all that scary stuff) An engine that automatically sends a message to the garage when it needs help (because we stupid, stupid women ignore those pretty lights on the dash board) Run flat tyres so you can get to a man to help you fix it (because we wouldn't want to break a nail changing a tyre now would we?) No water filler cap (because women don't like filler caps - something to do with nails again I think) - mind you, I quite like this feature as they put the water filler hole next to the gas filler hole - which is just  asking  for trouble now isn't it. Gull wing doors (okay, this is cool) Keyless, motorised doors so that when you have your hands full of sh...

If you tend to only read the local news, you may have missed the news that rhino poachers in South Africa are now being shot dead   This seems to be rather drastic but I bet it helps lower the poaching incidents and I think that this approach would work for recidivist drink drivers.  Here’s my plan (I’ll put it in place when I’m queen of the World): 1.      You’re caught drink driving.  Naughty, naughty.  You get a fine, a slap on the wrist, a GPS tracker and blood alcohol measuring chip implanted deep in your body where you can’t cut them out yourself. 2.      You don’t learn and/or think the rules don’t apply to you, so you go out for a few beers and drive home, maybe killing a few innocent people and lamp posts en route. 3.      Implanted trackers send signals to police that you are travelling at greater than 5km an hour (avg. walking speed) and your blood alcohol level is above zer...

Google, you rock!  The Navigation add-on on the Android is rather spiffing, especially now you've fixed it so that it works in NZ.   However, there is one wee bitty problem in the function where you can speak your destination, though it is proving somewhat amusing.  We've tried Kiwi, English, South African, Welsh and German accents, which all result in some interesting locations; only when we adopt a US accent do we get close to the right location.  Now as much as I enjoy playing around with accents, it can be pretty embarrassing in the car if other people are with you and you suddenly start talking like an American just to get your phone to understand you.  It just isn't cricket old chaps.  So any chance you could do a wee tweak to Navigation so that people can 'Speak Your Destination' in their own native accent?  That would be rather spiffing thanks.