Status-Q

John quotes a nice extract from Dave Barry’s column about boring topics.

Paul Bissex writes about his desire for a Focus Follows Eyeballs system.

I once almost patented the idea of ‘Processing Resources Follow Eyeballs’, where the computer devotes most resources to the thing you’re looking at.

This came up when I was working on in-car systems. The idea was that a computer in a car might be doing all sorts of things which required lots of processing – recording video of your route, trying to read the signposts you pass, answering your phone, etc.

But it’s important that whenever you have to look at its screen, you’re distracted from the road for the shortest time possible. And so, when it sees your eyes moving in that direction, it should be devoting all of its power towards making sure the screen is up to date… and that any information you request by interacting with it appears as quickly as possible. When you’re not looking at the screen, it really doesn’t matter

I never patented ‘operating system scheduling based on the eye movements of the user’, so perhaps the best thing is to publish it here so nobody else can. 🙂

Documentation is something every organisation should do, but not to excess.

Whether it be an online user guide for a piece of software, or an employee guide for a pensions scheme, there are typically two problems:

• Most people won’t read it
• You have to keep it up to date anyway

And, often, keeping it up to date is much more hassle than creating it in the first place. It certainly feels like it, anyway, because when you’re fixing an old document you don’t have the satisfaction that comes from creating something new.

So my philosophy has generally been that you should have as little documentation as possible (and no less). The more you have, the harder it is to maintain, and incorrect documentation is usually worse than no documentation at all.

It struck me recently, though, that there is a rather wonderful aspect to blogs in this regard. The great thing about a blog entry is that it has a date prominently displayed on it. Why is this relevant? Because it’s immediately obvious when a posting may be out of date. You never have to go back and maintain your old blog entries, or check that things you said in the past are still correct. It’s understood that they’re perishable goods and may have an expiry date.

So if you want a low-maintenance website, perhaps the best model is to put the absolute basics as static pages and cast as much of it as possible as a blog. You may need to make special provisions for those who visit and need to find something – like having a good search facility, and referring back regularly to past posts which are still important – but in general, the more you can put in blog format, the more interesting your site will be, and the easier your maintenance task.

UK readers might be interested in this new offer from the Carphone Warehouse. It’s not anything new technically, but it’s an interesting, and appealing, way of billing for connectivity.

Basically, for £21/month, you get a phone line, all your national phone calls, most of your international phone calls, and broadband. I’m quite tempted to use it to replace my second phone line with something that will give me a backup broadband connection.

Anyone know a good router that will failover automatically when one network goes down?

John quotes a great story from today’s NYT. Where actually is the person who’s taking your order?