uhri.com » Business

2010 Groundhog Day Resolutions

y0mbo — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:14:58 +0000

This year for my Groundhog Day Resolutions, I’m taking an idea from Chris Brogan. Each year, Chris uses three words to guide and direct his focus for the year. For me, I chose these three words:

Deploy
Serve
Connect

Deploy

I’m full of good ideas. Have I ever told you I invented XML back in 1994? Too bad I never did anything with the idea; I could be rich like Al Gore after he invented that Internet thing.

I have these great ideas, but often don’t deploy them into the development stage. Those I do develop often languish in the last 10% of completion. I don’t deploy them into the wild. I think they stay there because I don’t like to ship imperfection, and it’s always imperfect.

How arrogant.

It’s better that I deploy something not quite right than to never deploy at all.

The story of Flickr is pretty interesting and relates to this, I think. The founders of Flickr, it’s said, were working on an online game. One of the features they created was a way for players to share photos with their friends. The photo sharing piece got such rave reviews by the players that Flickr became what it is today. The game? Discarded.

Had the team built their game and not deployed until it was perfect they would have their big opportunity.

So for me: I need to focus on deploying. It doesn’t matter whether it is a code project, website redesign or blog post; I need to ship earlier than I do now. Or, I need to ship. Period.

Serve

The church we attend here in Indiana does a Weekend of Service each fall. The doors of the church are closed and services are cancelled. The congregation goes out into the community and serves. The impact is amazing, both to the community and those who have served. I want to focus more on serving others; both outside and within my family. It is important to spiritual balance and well-being. It’s an example I want my boys to see and participate in.

Connect

In the next few months, we will be leaving Indianapolis and moving to Chicagoland. It’s a big step for our family just as it was a big step moving to Indy two years ago. There are many new things for us: New schools and friends for the boys, a new territory for my wife, and a new marketplace for me. It is primarily about meeting new technology partners, networking, and getting to know the community in which I’ll be working. In Indianapolis, it took nearly two years for my connections to start paying dividends in the form of referrals. I would like to reduce this time in Chicago. Surely, they can use a good freelancer there!

We also need to connect into a church, community, and neighborhood. We are moving to Chicago for the long term and I want to make sure we’re embedded and get to know those around us. I’ll be looking for ways to connect with others in my neighborhood, community, church and marketplace.

The specific goals

I read an interesting blog post at the Church of the Customer. Ben McConnell writes about creating a 1-page strategic plan in the form of an info graphic. He believes this allows you to visually see the Objectives, Goals, Strategies and Tactics that will move you forward. In the next few days I will create my strategic plan for "Deploy / Serve / Connect". These will then translate into Groundhog Day Resolutions I can monitor.

You can follow a special Twitter account I’ve created to document my successes: @2010_3words

BlogIN

y0mbo — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:47:50 +0000

Keynotes

I’m here at the Smaller Indiana blogging unconference, BlogIN. We’ve been through the keynotes, two break-out sessions, and are now in the third. I’m a horrible live blogger, apparently. Granted, I hosted a "Blogging 101" session, so I didn’t take many notes in that one. For the keynotes, Chris Baggot, Kevin Makice, and Douglas Karr talked about their blogging experiences. Here’s the few chicken-scratch notes I took in the keynotes.

Chris Baggott

Chris has been blogging since late 2000. His main motivations were, honestly, selfish: He felt he had ideas worth hearing.

Had some goals … you should have goals too.

Employees are 5 times more credible as bloggers than the CEO.

How do you measure conversion in corporate blogging. That’s the important thing.

Kevin Makice

(blogshmog.net)

Kevin has been writing a personal blog since 1999. Started doing this as a way to introduce the world to his son (or was it vise versa?).

He uses his blog to build connections with other people.

What’s great about blogging is that it connects lots of different people providing lots of different perspective. No one has the right answer and that makes it powerful.

Blogging is about transparency.

Need to understand that blogging is something that is a new medium. You should not be afraid to make mistakes and learn from the best.

Douglas Karr

Google is essentially the web.

Blogging is about spheres of influence We have different areas where we have conversations and things ripple out from there.

Analogy of Burj Dubai building – blogs are built on a wide base.

Some advantages of blogging:

Transparency
Consistency
Passion
Participate
Momentum – steady consistent effort.
Committee
Coordination
Measurement

Disadvantages to blogging:

Transparency
Time
Hypocrisy
Anonymity
Conflict
Measures

Why does he blog? For fulfillment and answering questions for other people. "Great podium to communicate with people I’m already connected to."

The Shane & Peter Inc. Entrepreneurial Interview

y0mbo — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:34:35 +0000

One website I read on a regular basis is the Shane and Peter blog. These gentlemen are entrepreneurs and when preparing a series of questions to interview other entrepreneurs, they asked their readers to comment on their own blogs as well. This was a post I started some time ago but busy-ness got the better of me. Here are the questions they asked and my answers.

What’s your personal mission statement?

I need to answer this question in two parts. There is a personal side and a business side that plays into the personal.

I believe that my personal mission statement is to “Love God and Love Others”. It’s biblical and comes from Luke 10:27. Most of the time I think I fail at this at least by my own expectations. I have those moments where I think “wow, did I treat that guy like a jerk.” I know this isn’t an all-or-nothing thing, but a continuum on which I am always pressing forward. Still I hold myself to a high standard.

The question is: can this also be reflected in a business setting? I believe that yes, it can. I think it is possible to provide services that solve business problems while still maintaining a level of integrity that shows my Christian world view. I can be upright in my business dealings while still making an income. That philosophy allows me to do both.

What’s the biggest mess you’ve dealt with this year?

As a software developer code is the biggest mess I deal with. Many times it is code written by others, but the biggest mess I cleaned up this year was my own. A client asked me to build a custom query to search their customer and vehicle records. By the time I finished it was 23 printed pages. It was a monster but it was fast. Unfortunately, I misinterpreted the spec while developing using a ClientId instead of a CustomerId. They weren’t interchangeable, it seemed. My mistake wasn’t noticed until testing and fixing the reported bug turned out to be a big headache. For whatever reason when I was making the change cut-and-paste didn’t catch all the references and I had to do add some joins to get it to work correctly. I spent an inordinate amount of time debugging and fixing the query. In the end it worked, but the actual cost for that component was about 4 times their original budget.

What current entrepreneurial efforts consume your time?

Getting my billables up for current clients have been the extent of my entrepreneurial efforts lately. I’ve gotten set up in my new office and I am just trying to get back up to speed for the new year.

As far as efforts upcoming, I’m looking into building my network here in the Indianapolis area. I got Book Yourself Solid, by Michael Porter, as a Christmas present and I plan on going through the book in detail to help me with my networking efforts.

As I’ve been surfing the internet recently I’ve found quite a few different resources all related to small business in Indianapolis. It’s pretty friendly here in terms of small business, which is great news for me. The opportunities are here, I simply need to take advantage of them.

Why do you do what you do? What inspires you? When do you get most excited?

I fell in love with computers during the summer between fifth and sixth grade. It’s been a love affair with computers pretty much since. Late in high school and early in college, though, I started taking an interest in journalism and writing. Once in college I lost interest in that field and returned to computers. In late 1994, I discovered the Internet and a niche that covered both a writing / publishing medium and computers. A match made in heaven! Seeing the cool things other people come up with as a solution to a problem gets me excited. I love seeing the results of a solution to a problem.

Boxers or Briefs?

That’s a rather personal question but I’ll take the middle of the road and say “boxer briefs”.

What do you do when you’re not programming?

I don’t do nearly enough when I’m not programming. I’m a Dad, so most of my non-work time is focused around being a parent. That means dinner, errands, soccer practice. I used to like watching movies but always feel like there’s a better use of my time. I like to read but in the last few years I’ve lost interest in reading fiction. I just need to find some new authors to read, or convince William Gibson to write faster.

What one thing made the biggest difference when getting started?

Again a two part answer.

First, The Wife. Had she not seen how miserable I was at the 9-to-5 and encouraged me to go independent, I probably never would have. Knowing I had the full support of my wife made the transition so much easier.

Second, being marketable. I started my own shop in August 2006 but that was after having interviewed with several other consulting companies in town. After those conversations, I realized my skills were marketable but I wasn’t compelled to make a switch in jobs for essentially the same thing I was already doing. I was comfortable where I was. Why switch? Knowing I could get some consulting gigs with my skill set set my mind at ease. Once I made the actual jump, the contacts I had made provided my first contracts.

What’s your exit strategy?

Since I’m independent, my exit strategy is to stop doing this when I’m tired of doing it. That’s the freedom of not having any assets on which I need a return of investment. I’ll just wrap up my work for my last client and shut off the lights, as it were.

What is the last thing that made you belly laugh?

Talking to my either of my sisters always cracks me up… we genuinely love each other and all have the same dorky sense of humor passed down to us from our grandfather.

Have you ever been in business before?

My sisters and I sold pet rocks at the end of our driveway when we were kids. Our dad still has the one that looks like him. In sixth grade I started a company with my best friend to sell hand-drawn pictures of semi trucks and computer programs (so much for niches). We had 0 sales before shutting down operations but it was fun dreaming anyway.

At what point do you consider yourself successful?

Success is a moving target for a business. As soon as a company is successful it needs to redefine what success is or it will die. For me, success would be having great customers that love my work and hunt me down to do work for them. I want the long wow, the place where I have impressed my customers over and over again leaving no question about who will help them solve their business problems.

What was your first experience with a computer?

My mom was a very wise woman. She signed her kids up for various different things to give us a chance to try out things we were interested in. I took a puppet-making class, had guitar lessons and a computer programming class. I remember thinking it was a dumb idea but she insisted that computers were the way of the future. Turns out she was right and I loved the class so much I took a second class that same summer. The classes were programming BASIC on Apple ][s. As a sixth grader we were introduced to writing programs in BASIC. While most of the class spend computer lab time typing in a program, I provided the source code and goofed off writing other programs during that time instead.

Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates in a jello wrestling match, where’s your money?

Bill Gates. While Steve is still considering the aesthetics of the Jell-O color, Bill will knock off his block like Windows has knocked off the the Mac UI.

Where do you do your best thinking?

I wish I could say it was something clever, but really my best thinking is done in front of the computer first thing in the morning. It’s usually then that I have let go of the things that worry me and can clearly look for the solution I seek. Back in the day I used to get my good ideas in the shower and anywhere else. But that also meant I couldn’t sleep at night. I had to change my habits to get some shuteye. Now I only think when I have to. Its pretty anti-entrepreneurial, don’t you think?

What does your average daily work / life balance look like? How much time do you work, play and sleep?

Lately, my schedule has primarily been based around our family. We recently moved to a new city and I’ve occupied most of my time with the details of making that happen. It means I haven’t worked nearly as much as before (a benefit of freelancing, I suppose). Before, I was working about 38 hours a week and then spending time running our boys to their events. I don’t play nearly as much as I should. Mostly I spend my evenings stressing about my “todo” list and how very little of it I accomplished that day. I need to lighten up. I sleep about 7 hours a night. Sometimes I powernap during the day.

If I could introduce you to anyone, who would it be?

I used to be a huge fan of the band Megadeth, but that changed while waiting in line by the tour bus to talk to Dave Mustaine. He was kind of rude to his fans, making demands like telling people they couldn’t smoke while waiting in the cold. I didn’t smoke, but that seemed like a pretty snobby request. After that I realized that everyone in the world is pretty much an equal: We’re all born, we live a bit, then we die. Where we go after that depends greatly on the choice we’ve made. So meeting anyone in particular doesn’t impress me much anymore. There are several bloggers out there that I respect very much. Someday, I’d like to run into them to chat. If I don’t, that’s fine with me too.

What stops you from giving up when you are frustrated?

A good night’s sleep. Once I hit a point of frustration, the best thing I can do is take a few hours to recuperate. Things don’t seem nearly as grim in the morning, and I have that fresh perspective I need to get things done.

If Chuck Norris and Steven Hawking had a baby (hey it’s my damn interview), would you vote for her for president?

No, I would vote for Ron Paul.

Halloween Photography Marketing

y0mbo — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 23:41:34 +0000

My sister was telling me about an opportunity she had recently to market her photography studio through an event at her church.

Each Halloween, her church puts on an event for the kids to come in costume and celebrate in a safe non-threatening way. Instead of going door-to-door to ask for candy, the kids go car-to-car instead. Each adult with a vehicle decorates the trunk of their car in a Halloween or Fall theme and hands out candy to the kids who ask.

My sister decorated her trunk as a photography studio. As each family came to her car, she offered to take a picture of the kids in costume. Using her photo printer — conveniently in the trunk — she printed off a copy for the parents and stuck a sticker on the back with her name, phone and address. Brilliant!

Next year, she should offer to email a copy to the parents instead. By taking two pictures, one with the kids in costume, and another with a piece of paper on which the parent’s email address is written, she’ll have an instant warm lead to follow up with as the holidays approach. Sending the picture by email also builds a rapport between her and the family for future business.

Good thinking, sis!

Advertising for Programmers: How I created my first ad

y0mbo — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 02:22:20 +0000

I am a software programmer by trade. As the owner of my own company, however, I wear other hats as necessary. Recently, I found myself playing the role of marketing guru and graphic artist when I placed an ad in a local niche phone directory. I don’t pretend to be an expert in this area, but here is the inspiration and thought process I went through to design the advertisement (and subsequently a logo) for my business. I hope this post will help other programmers see the process from a non-designer perspective. I have probably broken every rule in the advertising handbook, but I still say promotions was my favorite marketing class in college.

Preproduction

I placed an ad in my local Christian Business Directory, a niche, advertising-based directory. After hearing an spot on the local radio station, I called up the sales rep and signed up for an a 1/6 page ad. The ad I purchased is 2-3/8 inches by 4-5/8 inches. The rep told me the artwork deadline was two weeks away. Plenty of time.

About a week later, I fired up my copy of Inkscape. I was ready to Van Gogh the daylights out of this ad.

I stared at the blank screen.

I stared for ten more minutes. I moved toolbars around, then sat for ten more minutes. Not a single idea popped in my head. Flipping through the previous directory, I looked for inspiration. Nothing.

The only thought I could come up with was “I need a logo”. In the true spirit of bootstrapping, I haven’t invested in anything until I’m sure I need it; a logo was one of those things, even after The Dan offered to make one for me. It wasn’t something I was ready to invest time (or money) in. Part of me told me to try the ad without one. After all, my business cards looked fine without a logo.

I stared at the screen for a while longer.

I decided I needed to get away from the computer and sketch some ideas on paper. With my HipsterPDA in hand, I headed to the kitchen where my eldest son was having a snack. We chatted while I doodled. Not too long after that I was surrounded by a pile of bad ideas. I was about to give up and started looking anywhere for ideas. It was the box of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios that triggered some inspiration.

I liked the text with the large icons next to them, and started to sketch on a new card. The sketch I came up with looked like this:

The ad would end up nothing like this, but it was a start.

As I thought about circle icons and the text to accompany them, my thoughts evolved into using a circle as a logo. It might work, I though, but there were a few criteria I wanted to follow. I wanted the logo to be:

Memorable: Good logos can stand on their own, without the name of the company accompanying. The Nike swoosh, for example, is recognized by everyone. I wanted a logo that could stand on its own. After all, the company won’t be just me forever. Gotta think about world domination, baby!
Scalable: A lot of logos look great at large sizes but lose their appeal when shrunk. I wanted a logo that was proportional (circles are great for that) and would shrink to a 16×16 icon without losing detail.
“Tweak-able”: One thing I really love about the Chase llogo is how it is used in advertising. A logo that can be animated opens up all sort of possibilities.

Open for Business: 8 Things in the First 180 Days

y0mbo — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 13:10:29 +0000

Today marks the six month anniversary of Red Bit Blue Bit. That’s right, I’ve been in business for about 180 days. I wrote my thoughts on the first 30 days; now it is time for a follow up. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on business:

I’m glad to be open for business

A few weeks ago I was feeling frustrated with the sheer volume of stuff I needed to get done. More importantly, I was getting overwhelmed with the sense that nothing was getting done due to life. The Wife, wise in business, pointed out that most businesses die within the first year. She noted that being too busy was a great problem to have. That changed my perspective quite a bit. I thank God for the success I’ve had so far and I’m glad to have more than enough.

It’s scary not knowing anything

One feeling I had during recent months is that I don’t know anything. What made it worse was the fear that everyone would figure that out. I asked dumb technology questions that in the past I might have known and that led to quite a bit of anxiety. The realization that came after meditating about that was this: I just know different things. When I worked as software developer as an employee, my focus was on the technology. The past year-and-a-half saw a fundamental shift in what I was reading and learning – marketing, business planning and entrepreneurship. These topics were a necessity for starting a business, but made the transition back into contract programming more difficult. I had to play catch up to get comfortable with technical details again.

Do things only when necessary

A key to building a successful startup by yourself is understanding what is important and what is not. All of the things I really want to do have taken a back seat to ensuring the profitability of the company. My first business cards were made in Word without a fancy logo or font and I’m still using those cards. The Red Bit Blue Bit website is still a placeholder contact form because I haven’t needed anything more quite yet. I did design a quick logo recently, but it wasn’t until I needed it for an ad I was placing in a small directory. Gary K. Evans writes in Going It Alone about purchasing a fax machine the day a client needed to fax a contract to him but no sooner. “That machine lasted seven years, but it had to pay its own way first.”

Networking starts early

One concern I expressed in my 30-day post was in networking. The fear I had was getting out there and talking to people I didn’t know. I had that all wrong. Networking is about talking to the people I already know. Through connections and relationships I maintained, I have had work fall in my lap. Other work has come about because of outstanding customer service I provided. All of this has been surprisingly easy because none of it has been handing out a pile of business cards in exchange for the business cards of a pile of strangers. I have particularly found LinkedIn to be invaluable. It has provided passive communication with those I know in the industry. I see when they have changed jobs and that provides an opportunity to send out an email congratulating them on their career move. Communication is what networking is all about, so writing that email keeps us connected.

Be on top of invoices

My current contract stipulated my first payment within 15 days, and each following payment within 30 days of invoice. When 20 days came and went, I phoned my client’s accounts payable department. I dreaded having to make a collections call. It turned out to be nothing more than miscommunication between their contract people and AP. No one had bothered to let the good folks in AP know a special arrangement had been made. The check arrived three days later.

The transition to a new accounting system by the same client has not gone so well. Invoice payments have been late, so my further contracts will stipulate a service fee for late payment. I am hounding their accounts receivable department. Getting paid fast is a topic near and dear to many business owners’ hearts.

One quick note on electronic invoicing: There are many great tools out there for invoicing including QuickBooks, Microsoft Office Accounting (free Express edition!), and Blinksale to name a few. The one I chose was FreshBooks. Both Blinksale and Freshbooks were appealing but Freshbooks won out after a read a usability review of their site. The site is friendly and helpful. While its not built into a full accounting package, the ability to email invoices has been great. Electronic invoices cut out a week of delay in payment. I couldn’t be happier.

Accounting – ye thorn in my side.

Big Joe, my roommate from college, would probably shake his head in disgust. After all, he watched me struggle in accounting class and shook his head in disgust then. For some reason, I just don’t get accounting. But since I haven’t had more than 30 transactions in a month I can’t justify paying someone to do the books. Currently, I keep a cash flow statement spreadsheet I found in a Cash Flow post by Ryan Carson on 37Signals. I also keep good tabs on the checking and savings accounts at Chase. Its enough to get me by until my accountant runs screaming from the room after doing the taxes. Using a cash in / cash out accounting philosophy has worked well for me on the business side.

Hourly is bliss

With a flexible client, working hourly is a wonderful thing. During one 88-hour pay period before Christmas, I worked 40 extra hours to meet the project deadlines. That income will paid off during the holiday season when vacations shrunk my billable hours. I didn’t mind putting in the extra time to get the job done either. Some managers might say they don’t pay overtime because they don’t want their employees to be “taken advantage of”, but the truth is this: People will work overtime when needed but not for zero personal benefit. When an employer pockets the extra cash there is no motivation to miss out on family, friends and hobbies.

Freedom, sweet freedom.

As a slight paranoid, I was always worried when I needed to leave a few minutes early, schedule personal appointments or needed a quick powernap to recharge. Now I am free from that fear and it shows in my desire to get the job done through sheer focus. If my billable hours are short for the week, its no big thing. Coming and going on my own schedule is also a requirement to avoid being reclassified as a permanent employee of a company.

Conclusion

Overall, business has been going great. I think I’ll sign up for at least another six months. Wearing many different hats (sales, marketing, accounting (yuk), and development) has been exciting. I do enjoy the variety involved in running my own business.

The Alarming Failure of Software Projects

y0mbo — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 12:59:41 +0000

The State of Wisconsin has announced the cancellation of yet another IT project. This project, according to the Wisconsin Technology Network was a $42 million project. Fortunately (I guess), they halted the project after wasting only $23.6 million on the project. This is on the heels of a failed project by the UW system that cost Wisconsin taxpayers $26 million over 5 years.

In his book Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art, Steve McConnell reproduces a chart from Capers Jones’s book, Estimating Software Costs which I am reproducing below:

Size in Function Points (and Approximate Lines of Code)	Early	On Time	Late	Failed (Cancelled)
10 FP (1,000 LOC)	11%	81%	6%	2%
100 FP (10,000 LOC)	6%	75%	12%	7%
1,000 FP (100,000 LOC)	1%	61%	18%	20%
10,000 FP (1,000,000 LOC)	<1%	28%	24%	48%
100,000 FP (10,000,000 LOC)	0%	14%	21%	65%

The alarming statistic is that a large project is much more likely to fail. I’ve had my issues with Getting Real, but I have to admit that a 92% success rate beats a 65% failure rate any day. I can only imagine the complexity of systems like the FBI’s Virtual Case File, that cost taxpayers $105 million dollars.

While most of these projects are killed before the whole budget is spent, the total is still more money than most of us will see in ten lifetimes. The worst part is that the only entity big enough to built software projects of 10 million lines of code is the government, and they spend our money, not their own.

Quitting Time

y0mbo — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 14:00:00 +0000

I dug up an article I read last year as I was preparing to leave my job for the adventure of entrepreneurship. It’s the Top Ten Reasons People Quit Their Job. My favorite quote is near the end:

“Employees don’t quit their companies, they quit their bosses.”

An astounding thirty-five percent of surveyed employees said their managers were the reason they quit. They quit for reasons that could have been easily prevented.

My problem is much, much worse. I can’t get rid of my boss; he’s the president of the company. He watches *every* *single* thing I do, and offers his opinion on everything even when he doesn’t have a clue.

Entrepreneurs – Immigrants and First Generation Americans

y0mbo — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:00:44 +0000

I came across Immigrants big in tech startups, an article in the Seattle Times. The article discusses a study conducted by Duke University on the founders of tech startups in the last ten years. The study found that one quarter of technology companies founded during this time period had at least one foreign-born senior executive.

I found it interesting because the study challenges the perception that immigrants take jobs from American workers. While this is probably true in low-end, manual labor jobs, the study finds that these immigrant entrepreneurs bring more jobs to the economy.

As I was preparing to start my own company, one quick Entrepreneurial Quotient test I took was Should You Be An Entrepreneur?. Interestingly, the first question is “Significantly high numbers of entrepreneurs are children of first-generation Americans. If your parents immigrated to the United States, score one. If not, score minus one.” I found an article called Ethnic Entrepreneurship that backs up this claim.

My dad immigrated to the United States in 1969 after escaping from communist-ruled Czechoslovakia. He continues to practice medicine, even at the age of 73. But instead of practicing within a larger clinic, he has owned his own practice since moving to Medford, Wisconsin in 1973.

My youngest sister has started her own photography studio and also provides business consulting while attending school. She’s a busy woman!

It seems that our family proves these statistics true.

I think the motivation behind this is the knowledge that hard work for oneself can bring greater rewards than as a cog in the corporate machine. The ability to accept risk is also a great motivator. In my father’s case, the risk of starting a business was much less than the risks he took to escape.

BTW, I scored a 29 on that test.

Hat tip: Dharmesh Shah’s OnStartups blog.

Tools to Install at a New Client Site

y0mbo — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 13:58:20 +0000

Having recently started at a new client site I found myself sitting at a fresh PC. With an empty machine, I suddenly realized how many productivity tweaks I use. It was daunting trying to remember all of the tools that were seamlessly integrated into my workflow. By the end of the first day, I had most of the tools installed, but it was only when I realized I was missing them that I remembered what they were.

Here are the things I installed:

0. Dvorak keyboard. Four and a half years ago I learned how to type using the
Dvorak keyboard layout. It was nearly impossible to type at first – I forgot how slow it was to learn to touch type – but now I can type somewhere in the range of 80-85 wpm. The biggest benefit was physical: the new layout is less stressful and I no longer wake up in the middle of the night with tingling fingers. The Dvorak layout comes with Windows XP, and can be set up by going to Regional and Language Options in the control panel. Under the Languages tab, click the Details… button and add the installed service.

1. Mozilla Firefox. I’m not sure I can add any commentary about the Firefox browser which hasn’t already been said. So I won’t.

2. HotkeyControl XP. This utility allows you to set up keyboard shortcuts for just about anything. For me, I use it to map cut, copy and paste to CTRL+Q, CTRL+J and CTRL+K. In Dvorak, those are the X, C and V keys on the standard keyboard. One handed cut and paste beats fishing around the keyboard or having to use context menus any day. Hotkeycontrol 5 is made by Digital Miner and is currently $29.95. I’m using the freeware version 4.2.1, but I plan on purchasing the new full version eventually.

3. Notepad ++. This text editor has recently caught my attention and quickly replaced Metapad as my favorite. Notepad++ supports code coloring for supported file types, so it goes beyond the basic text editor. Its helpful when I need to look at a file but don’t need the whole IDE.

4. Custom VS Settings. In Visual Studio I have the ability to customize its interface to something less eye straining than the standard settings. I grabbed my basic settings from Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror and tweaked them from there. My Visual Studio settings file (in .zip) is available.

5. GDS. The ability to quickly and accurately search files is essential, so Google Desktop Search fits the bill. Best of all, it has a sidebar on which a multitude of add-ins can be included. The standard Scratch Pad, and the integrated Google calendar are the two I use most.

6. Firefox add ins. The strongest argument for Firefox, in my opinion, is its extensibility. There are a number of extensions I can’t live without as a web developer:

Web Developer. With just about everything I can think of for use in web development, this add on is simply the most valuable extension in existence. Personally, I find the validator links the most handy.
Auto Copy, when enabled, automatically copies selected text to the clipboard.
Open Source in Tab opens a page’s source in new tab. duh.
The Google Toolbar for Firefox adds the quickest way to start a Google search. I like the speel checker [sic ;-)], and the fact it shows the page rank of the current page I’m viewing.

7. SQL Prompt. Intellesense for SQL. This one I installed on a whim, but it has suddenly made my list. SQL Prompt 2 was bought by Red Gate to add to their suite of database tools. They found out, unfortunately, that the codebase they purchased wasn’t able to incorporate all of their ideas for the next version. So Red Gate decided to give away version 2 for free and write version 3 from the ground up.

Honorable mention

8. TimeSnapper. is, according to its website, is an automatic screenshot journal. I haven’t installed this one at my current client site, but I have used this when working from my home office. It grabs a screenshot at a predetermined interval and saves it for playback later. When working on multiple, random tasks, it is great for providing you a way to go back and figure out what you were working (or not working on).

9. Google Talk. Talk is Google’s instant messenger application. Its blocked at my client’s site, so I haven’t installed it. To be honest, I actually have preferred *not* having the interruptions during the day.

10. Simp. Encryption for Jabber clients like Google Talk are essential for the paranoid. Simp Lite is a free encryption tool for IM clients. Unfortunately, the log in Google is also encrypted unless you get a paid version.