Category: Resources

Great New RSS Primer

I was on the phone with one of my brothers the other night. He’s a long time computer user and early adopter. Yet he is very early in the learning curve on RSS and weblogs, even though he does read mine from time to time. So now I have a useful resource for him as he starts to explore this space.

Great New RSS Primer.

Fagan Finder provides us with a Great New RSS Primer: Before you go any further, realize this: RSS is really simple. Just because it is an acronym doesn t mean that it s complicated. Don t get scared away, there s really nothing to it. I said it was an acronym, but depending on who you ask and what version of RSS you are speaking about, it may stand for Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary, or a variation on one of those. None of that matters to you anyhow

By dhenry@howdev.com (Daniel Henry). [Lockergnome s RSS & Atom Tips]

Small Pieces Loosely Joined for kids

Going to need this.

Small Pieces Loosely Joined for kids.

David Weinberger is one of the most cogent and original thinkers about the meaning of the Net and the impact it has, and can have, on our lives and our society. As one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, he helped define the impact of the web on how we conduct our business – personal and professional.

In his follow up solo offering, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, he attempts to present a unified theory of the web. It’s a terrific read and a book I have recommended to many friends and co-workers.

Today, while reading through my blog list, John Porcaro pointed out that there is a kid’s edition of Small Pieces. Weinberger originally created this version for his son (11) and it’s a wonderful explanation of the dynamics, the wonder, and the potential dangers of the web.

If there’s a child in your life in the 11-13 year old range (like my son Jason who’s 12), please show them this wonderful work. It can be read online or downloaded in MS Word format for printing. It will change the way they look at the Net and help them to appreciate the potential it has to change our world.

[Marc’s Outlook on Productivity]

Adding to my reading list

This is the sort of unanticipated problem with reading blogs creates. I have too much interesting reading in the queue as it is. Brad may have gotten some free time, but he’s going to cost me some of mine.

Notes: More Free Time Tomorrow.

Raj Arunachalam has cancelled his appointment with me tomorrow: he’s flying to George Mason to interview James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock.

I have owned seven copies of Buchanan and Tullock’s (1962) The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy in my life. I keep loaning my copy out to graduate students: “You haven’t read this? You must read this!” They keep liking it so much they don’t return it. So I go and buy another one.

[Brad DeLong’s Semi-Daily Journal (2004)]

After Action Review Toolkit

This is a nice process for running AARs together with a case study of AARs in action. AARs are a simple and powerful technique for discovering and communicating lessons learned. They work especially well in project-based environments. If they aren’t already in your bag of tricks, they should be

After Action Review Toolkit. Allison Hewlitt has posted a draft After Action Review Toolkit, which provides a practical step-by-step process for running these reviews. To quote: The AAR is a simple process used by a team to capture the lessons learned from past successes… [Column Two]

Complexity and design

If you think that technological systems are complex, imagine what that implies for the combination of technological and social systems. The socio-technical systems arena has been a rich vein that’s been mined in the organizational design and development world for decades. In general, though, that literature has been ignorant of the world of systems design (and vice versa, of course). These are some of my favorite quotes on the topic and it’s so nice to see that someone else has done the work of assembling them for me :).

On Complexity.

There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
— C.A.R. Hoare

These new problems, and the future of the world depends on many of them, requires science to make a third great advance, an advance that must be even greater than the nineteenth-century conquest of problems of simplicity or the twentieth-century victory over problems of disorganized complexity. Science must, over the next 50 years, learn to deal with these problems of organized complexity. […] Impressive as the progress has been, science has by no means worked itself out of a job. It is soberly true that science has, to date, succeeded in solving a bewildering number of relatively easy problems, whereas the hard problems, and the ones which perhaps promise most for man’s future, lie ahead. We must, therefore, stop thinking of science in terms of its spectacular successes in solving problems of simplicity.
— Warren Weaver

In our time, the technology of machines has drawn its inspiration from mechanics, dealing with complexity by reducing the number of relevant parts. The technology of government, on the other hand, has draw upon statistical mechanics, creating simplicity by dealing only with people in the structureless mass, as interchangeable units and taking averages. […] For systems between the small and large number extremes, there is an essential failure of the two classical methods. On the one hand, the Square Law of Computation says that we cannot solve medium number systems by analysis, while on the other hand, the Square Root of N Law warns us not to expect too much from averages. By combining these two laws, then, we get a third – the Law of Medium Numbers:

For medium number systems, we can expect that large fluctuations, irregularities, and discrepancy with any theory will occur more or less regularly.

— Gerald M. Weinberg

[Incipient(thoughts)]