Tom Hume

• Welcome to Eclim
  "That is where eclim comes into play. Instead of trying to write a java IDE in Vim or a Vim editor in Eclipse, eclim provides an Eclipse plug-in that exposes Eclipse features through a server interface".

  Disgusting.

  
  
  (tags: eclim eclipse vi sick)
  
  


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  Vecosys - a conversation about European startups
  
  
  (tags: brighton startup business biz)
  
  


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  Communicating Concepts Through Comics at kev/null
  
  
  We used comics to illustrate a proposal last year. Wasn't successful but was good fun, and got me thinking about doing this some more (particularly with the excellent Comic Life)
  
  
  (tags: comics ui design prototype concepts)
  
  

• DBMonster - The DBMonster User's Guide - Introduction
  "DBMonster generates as much random data as you wish and puts it into an SQL database."
  (tags: db sql test load stress)

• Founders At Work review
  I loved this book, mainly for the extremely candid stories of the early days of startups. Most histories of "the early days" miss out these completely-winging-it and personal-strife aspects...
  (tags: book founders software dev business)
• Jan Chipchase - Future Perfect: Expiry Dates Affecting the Perception of Validity
  "money that feels different when you’re down to your last ten Euro note"
  (tags: expiry dates money euros)
• Google should make a Linux
  "For people living in the real world, having a great network connection at all times day or night is a non-starter the minute the airplane door closes to fly you to your next destination."
  (tags: google linux)
• Science vs Faith
  (tags: science religion faith amusing)
• textually.org: Texts a better reminder to pay bills
  "...a service that will let utilities such as power and phone companies send reminders to customers via text message, giving them an opportunity to pay their bills before they lose prompt payment discounts or face other sanctions"
  (tags: text sms reminder)
• Design Quotations
  "If a major project is truly innovative, you cannot possibly know its exact cost and its exact schedule at the beginning. And if in fact you do know the exact cost and the exact schedule, chances are that the technology is obsolete.'' Lovely :)
  (tags: design software quote dev)
• Seven steps to remarkable customer service - Joel on Software
  (tags: support business)
• Preview 2: Highrise permissions and groups - (37signals)
  Permissions keep popping up in apps we're working on. They're a difficult place to balance flexibility and ease-of-use...
  (tags: permissions ui design)
• Mobile Marketing Magazine: God Goes Mobile
  (tags: god mobile sms reminders)
• Orange Cone: LoveM, a ThingM Technology Sketch
  (tags: lovem valentines tech)

Argh. We're rather busy at the moment so I've been concentrated on Doing Real Things For Clients rather than thinking and blogging. So it's remiss of me not to have mentioned a few things we've been doing that are really floating my boat. Apologies for the vagueness, I've signed so many NDAs over the years that I'm not really allowed to say anything any more :) I'll shout more here when I get permission, promise.

1. Some front-end work for a big handset vendor... which might even actually get launched. Seeing your stuff appear in the marketplace always feel nice :)
2. A prototyping project for a handset vendor;
3. A mobile ad campaign for a large cosmetics brand;
4. More distribution for mobile puzzles;
5. And last (but by no means least), we're working with Hotxt! I can't say much about what we're doing except: watch this space :)

Oh, and at last we relaunched our web site (cheers to Mr Ribot and the late Mr Andrews for their work on this). We're off to the lovely Murasaki tonight to celebrate endings and beginnings of a few projects: Flickr will record all.

• MobUser » Tech Tip: The Reality of RMS
  (tags: rms j2me midlet)
• RMS Delete Record
  (tags: rms j2me midlet)

• SMS Text News » 15 questions to Ed & Tom of secure mobile developers, Masabi
  "fp put out some good stuff so I think he can code". I take increasingly smaller amounts of responsibility for actually coding stuff round here nowadays. But cheers guys, much appreciated :)
  (tags: masabi me fp futureplatforms)

• Reporting a problem - Neighbourhood Fix-It
  Beautiful :)
  (tags: mysociety fixit neighbourhood)

• Vodafone caves in to Microsoft IM | The Register
  "The main difference between SMS and IM messaging is real time delivery, which 3G networks are more than capable of handling now with increased total bandwidth and lower latency."
  (tags: vodafone mobile im microsoft sms)
• textually.org: PetsCell. A GPS mobile phone for your dog
  (tags: gps pets mobile tracker lbs location dog)
• Clash of the Titans: Agile and UCD :: UXmatters
  (tags: agile ucd software dev design)
• THE AD GENERATOR
  Strangely hypnotic. One to be projected onto a wall at the next Rosehill event :)
  (tags: ad generator advertising flickr)

I've been meaning to blog about this for so long it's probably old news now... but Vodafone Betavine has launched. It's an R&D project providing a place for application developers to publish their great stuff to a community of testers or other interested folks... so should be a great place to find interesting titbits if you're that way inclined. I was dead chuffed to have a chance to contribute to the project at one of the early-ish planning meetings - the fact that Voda was going out there and asking for opinion in the first place was A Really Good Thing IMHO, and a breath of fresh air after the fairly closed "Via" programme they ran for developer relationships.

• Mike Rowehl: This is Mobility » Blog Archive » 3GSM Wrapup
  "The stage should be set for mobile to completely subsume the online world. But instead it’s the people from the online world staggering out into the sun and realizing there’s no one trying to grab the potential of the new medium and just picking up t
  (tags: 3gsm mobile web)
• Big Ball of Mud
  "While much attention has been focused on high-level software architectural patterns, what is, in effect, the de-facto standard software architecture is seldom discussed. This paper examines this most frequently deployed of software architectures: the BIG
  (tags: software dev design pattern architecture amusing)
• Size Matters
  "There are many things in life that I wish were bigger—lots bigger (hard disk, thumb drive, monitor, RAM, etc.) but classes and methods should not be in that list."
  (tags: software dev size)
• textually.org: The Shabbat phone for isreali soldiers, minimizes Shabbat desecration
  "Dialing and other electronic operations on the “Shabbat phone” are performed in an indirect way so that the person using the phone is not directly closing electrical circuits."

  An extreme example of cultural concerns impacting on technology...

  
  
  (tags: shabbat jewish mobile phone)
  
  


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  :: Artile
  
  
  "Photographic imagery can be applied to swimming pool and glazed wall tiles using this colour, fade and UV resistant process. After firing at very high temperatures the finished design is encapsulated within the glaze matrix giving the protection from lig
  
  
  (tags: tiles art decoration)
  
  


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  Subtraction: Writing and Sizing Twitter
  
  
  "Outside of the alteration in software posture described above, the text is the single most significant change between Twitter.com and Twitterific. Everything else stays the same; we are, in fact, dealing with exactly the same application logic on the bac
  
  
  (tags: twitter ui twitterific)
  
  


• 
  
  Interesting article about shihonage and its practicality
  
  
  (tags: aikido ma shihonage)
  
  


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  Using small multiples to get to "Aha!" - (37signals)
  
  
  "The cool thing about the images above is they’re scannable at a glance. If these were videos, you would have to watch each one in order to know what’s going on. The multiple frame view, on the other hand, gives you an instant overview."
  
  
  (tags: video ui thumbnail preview)
  
  


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  Scrum Log Jeff Sutherland: Kaizen Mind: Essential to High Performance Scrum Teams
  
  
  "You cannot move forward without eliminating impediments."
  
  
  (tags: scrum kaizen agile)