A Dinosaur in the SoundCloud

It's been just a week and I'm loving SoundCloud. This will likely be the new outlet for my music.

Photoshop 6 on Linux Mint

I started playing around with wine this week and successfully installed my Windows version of Photoshop 6 (yeah, I know it's old) on Linux Mint 7.

So far it runs better than on Windows 7. Hmm.

Windows or Linux: Best Buy employees get schooled

You know a milestone has been passed when Microsoft mentions a competitor in its advertising. No, I'm not talking about Apple. This time it's Linux.

Okay, so maybe it's not "real" advertising, and it's the training material they provided Best Buy employees for the upcoming release of Windows 7. It's possible that some Best Buy locations actually sell computers with Linux on them, but not my local store. So why would a Best Buy employee need to know the advantages of Windows 7 over Linux?

Are Best Buy customers asking for Linux? Are they asking the Geek Squad to dual-boot their new laptops? Are they worried about games? Or is it something else?

Microsoft is misleading (err, lying, seems to be the popular term) in their material. And, if there's one advantage that Microsoft has over Linux, it's marketing. But I am having a hard time understanding this particular campaign. One thing to be sure of, now, is that shopping at Best Buy requires you to educate yourself ahead of time.

Trent Reznor on User Experience

Whether or not you appreciate the music of Nine Inch Nails, you have to appreciate what frontman, Trent Reznor, has been doing for aspiring musicians. His guerrilla, grassroots tactics in promoting his music is providing a way forward for a new generation of musicians. In a recent forum post Trent discusses, among other topics, the importance of a usable web site.

Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace - it's dying and reads as cheap / generic. Remove all Flash from your website. Remove all stupid intros and load-times. MAKE IT SIMPLE TO NAVIGATE AND EASY TO FIND AND HEAR MUSIC (but don't autoplay). Constantly update your site with content - pictures, blogs, whatever. Give people a reason to return to your site all the time. Put up a bulletin board and start a community. Engage your fans (with caution!) Make cheap videos. Film yourself talking. Play shows. Make interesting things. Get a Twitter account. Be interesting. Be real. Submit your music to blogs that may be interested. NEVER CHASE TRENDS. Utilize the multitude of tools available to you for very little cost of any - Flickr / YouTube / Vimeo / SoundCloud / Twitter etc.

He might be addressing musicians but, to me, he sounds like a UX evangelist speaking to an audience at an IT conference. A very cool IT conference, of course.

I warn you: some of the content may not be suitable for your workplace. Read the rest of Trent's post at http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?30,767183 (with caution! [ha]).

Are we engineers or craftsmen?

While the short answer for me is, "who cares?", this question has become a theme for application developers lately. Ajaxian ran an article today praising Ben Galbraith’s Craftmansship in Software. And just over a year ago CIO Magazine published 5 Things Grady Booch Has Learned About Complex Software Systems where reader, David Wright, instigated a lively discussion around this topic.

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? I can't help but think about one of Paul Gauguin's most famous paintings. Could it be that geeks are now developing a sense of spirituality?

Que sommes nous?