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Communication is expensive indeed. I’m not talking about long distance minutes here (those are quite inexpensive these days). I’m referring to communication between people on a team and within an organization. Everyone agrees that good communication is essential, but unnecessary communication saps productivity.

Joel Spolsky hits the nail on the head with his aptly titled column in Inc. magazine: A Little Less Conversation. He writes mostly about the challenge of reducing unneeded communication in a growing company, but his insights apply to larger, more established organizations as well.

A study conducted by a group of Stanford Researchers proves what many have suspected all along: People who claim to be good at multitasking really aren’t that stellar at multitasking.

“They’re suckers for irrelevancy,” said communication Professor Clifford Nass, one of the researchers whose findings are published in the Aug. 24 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Everything distracts them.”

Maybe, for these folks, it’s time to turn off The Twitter so they can get some stuff done.

via slashdot

Harvest now has an iPhone application (built and distributed by Y Factorial). It’s really slick, and a welcome alternative to the browser based iPhone solution that came previously. I tested it out last week, and it worked great. Today, however, is a different story.

Note the 4 entries that need to be synced in the screenshot. No matter how much I shake my poor iPhone, those items just won’t sync with the server. Y Factorial notes that some users experience syncing problems, so maybe that is the case here. But, the comments in the iTunes store referring to the sync problem also talk about crashing, which hasn’t happened to me. The newness of this app doesn’t help matters as it seems there is little or no troubleshooting information available. At minimum, it would be nice if one could reset the app’s data file–just to ensure that a manually corrected timesheet doesn’t get hosed if the application successfully syncs in the future.

Update 2009-03-03: Y Factorial was super responsive, on this (see comment below). The log files from my phone may have been helpful, but I had been impatient and reinstalled the application. Anyway, reinstalling made it work, but I have not been able to replicate the sync problem again.

Recently, I discovered that one can hold a window while switching Spaces in Leopard. The window can then be dropped onto any other space. This, of course, isn’t the only way to move a window to another space. But, I like this better than dragging windows off the screen.

Here’s how it’s done:

1. Grab the window you wish to move by clicking and holding with the mouse.
2. Switch spaces directly (default: ^ Number Key) or with the arrow keys (default: ^ Arrow Key).
3. Drop the window on the desired space.

The movie below shows these steps in action. On my keyboard, using the arrow keys to switch spaces is cumbersome, so I usually use the ^ Number Key combination to switch directly to the space I want.

If you can’t see the movie above, you can download the Quicktime file directly.

For more tips, take a look at this Spaces tips screencast (the production values are much higher than my Quicktime movie).

Lifehacker demonstrates how to set up Quicksilver so that one can easily create new files–of any type. This is especially useful for anyone who has template files that they use on a regular basis.

GMail’s IMAP support has made a lot of people happy. I’m one of those happy people. I’m even happier now that I’ve configured Apple Mail and my iPhone by following this How-to on Proper Gmail IMAP.

This short guide picks up where the GMail help file leaves off. Basically, it walks you thorough mapping folders on your device(s) to the right server folders so that email ends up in the right places. It makes things work a lot better, especially if you are using multiple devices together with the GMail web interface.

Now that Leopard has been released, I’m going to order a new Macbook. Sorry PowerBook G4, you’ve served me well for many years, but its time for an upgrade.

As part of the upgrade, I took a quick inventory of the applications I use. In addition to the built-in apps such as Address Book, iCal, Mail and iTunes, there are several applications that have become necessities for me. When the new Mac shows up, I’ll be busy downloading and installing these popular applications:

• Adium
• CocoaMySQL
• Colloquy
• Firefox
• Growl and GrowlTunes
• NetNewsWire currently using an old version (2.0.1), will try the lite (free) version
• Quicksilver
• TextExpander
• TextMate and the Vibrant Ink Theme

Ruby on Rails is bundled with 10.5, so I don’t think there is much to do there–other than move my Rails projects. iTerm is nice when working on Rails, but it no longer seems necessary since Terminal is tabbed now.

I’ve been using Microsoft Office X since I’ve had the PowerBook and have very few complaints about it. So, I’ll probably stick with MS Office rather than spend the extra $79 on Apple’s iWork. I’m less positive about the other Microsoft product I use regularly, Virtual PC. There are one or two applications I need to run that have no Mac equivalent. Using Virtual PC has always been painfully slow for me. While Virtual PC will run better on a faster machine with more memory, Microsoft is no longer upgrading the product, so I think it is time to try something else. I’ll probably purchase Parallels or VMware Fusion as a replacement.

This list of applications was longer than expected and I’m sure I’ve missed a couple. I’ll update this post when I find out what those missing applications are. This will undoubtedly happen while I am franticly trying to complete a task on the new computer without the proper tool installed.

Joel Spolsky explains Evidence Based Scheduling (EBS), in detail, at Joel on Software. EBS, which is included in the latest version of Fogbugz, predicts ship dates based on individual developers’ historical accuracy in making estimates. Nice.

If you like GMail, but want to use a different mail client from time to time, you’ll be happy to know that GMail has added IMAP support. To get started, just enable IMAP in your GMail settings and follow the configuration instructions for your mail client.

The best part of this is that any labels used in GMail carry over to the mail client as folders. Folder actions such as copy and move also translate to label actions. For example, if one copies a message from their inbox to a folder, the label that corresponds to the folder name will be applied in GMail. If one moves a message from their inbox to a folder, the label will be applied and the message will be archived.

This is a nice feature for both mobile and desktop users of GMail. If you are currently using POP with GMail, you will probably be better served with IMAP.

Update: Lifehacker suggests a few improvements to GMail’s IMAP setup.

via engadget mobile :: engadget

Writing code without using version control is the equivalent of swinging on a trapeze without a net. Sure, if you execute each move flawlessly, you’ll be fine. But, one wrong move and you’ll fall to your death. Okay, coding mistakes rarely lead to injury or death–of the programmer anyway–but I think you see my point.

There are loads of version control systems out there. Subversion, however, is the weapon of choice for most people working with Ruby on Rails. If you are unfamiliar with Subversion, the Subversion book is a good place to start (print version available on Amazon). The first part of this book gives a good overview of what version control is all about, so those totally unfamiliar with the concept can jump right in.

As for Ruby on Rails applications, they can just be checked into version control like anything else. But, there some files and directories that don’t really need to be under version control. There is an easy, step-by-step guide on using Subversion with Rails at the Rails wiki. Following these instructions takes less than five minutes and will keep your repository free of extraneous files (e.g. log and temp files).

With your Rails application under version control, you can rest easy knowing that you have some recourse when your latest code update breaks everything. Just don’t forget to commit your changes on a regular basis or this is all for naught. Also, remember that the Rails generator scripts accept an --svn option which will automatically add generated files to your repository. This will save you the step of adding these files manually later on.

In addition to giving you a sort of coder’s safety net, using Subversion gives you the ability to automate application deployment with Capistrano if you wish. So, now you have two excellent reasons to get your application into Subversion. By the way, if you are looking for a place to store your repository, check out CVSDude. They offer several monthly plans, including a free one.