Wow. The new Magic Mouse is beautiful.
When you look deeper, it’s another example of extreme subtraction…
No cords. No buttons.
By loosing the excess, the mouse gains functionality and capability. All of the sudden, lots of new worlds and possibilities open up. We have the capability for multi-touch and a (mostly) unrestricted canvas for rich interaction because [...]
I’ve been spending a lot of time over the past few years thinking a lot about simplicity. Simplicity is one of those things that we mention a lot in passing, but it’s also something that we don’t dedicate much effort to achieving.
We develop software where 60+% of the functionality is never or rarely [...]
Over the past couple of days, I’ve been pulling together a simple Information Radiator for CruiseControl.net. The idea behind the project is to use the power of visualizations to provide simple, visible, and informative displays that expose the current-state of your automated continuous integration builds.
I threw this app together very quickly a week or so [...]
Found on Wikipedia…
“In Jeet Kune Do, one does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.”
-Bruce Lee
Could your software use a litte Jeet Kune Do?
I just completed reading The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda. Without a doubt, this was an excellent book. There are ten laws in the book and every one of them is worth the few minutes that it takes to read through each chapter.
It’s almost funny that I read the book in only a couple [...]
On the project that I'm working on, we are currently tracking our sprints with index cards (on a wall gantt) and by daily/sprint/release burndowns in a spreadsheet. The wall gantt is the tracking that is used for our day-to-day tasks and the spreadsheet is used more as a communication tool for our external stakeholders.
Our team [...]
YAGNI as a development concept is a very powerful idea. The idea of making a decision at the last responsible moment saves money, effort, rework, and will often save sanity. The idea is very simple and bascially revolves around removing speculation. When we constantly think in terms of YAGNI, we are often mitigating one of [...]
I've been using Backpack extensively throughout the past couple of months and I've been very impressed with the simplicity and effectiveness of the service. One of the first things that immediately stood out was the effective use of blank space at the right times.
For instance, when I create a new page I have instructions that [...]
