Lylo’s buy-on-sight album of the month

The hype surrounding Sheffield four-piece Arctic Monkeys is HUGE. It all reminds me of the arrival of Suede in 1992 and Oasis in 1994: gigs where everyone knew the words and the bands gracing the cover of the inkies before they’d even released a single Only this is about ten times bigger.

I know a good tune when I hear one and Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not is packed with them. Short, catchy, raw indie-pop songs with Alex Turner’s accent and lyrics (“Now then mardy bum. I see your frown and it’s like looking down the barrel of a gun“) adding extra freshness.

If The Strokes came from Yorkshire, this is how they’d sound.

Posted by Olly on January 25, 2006 Comments Off | Permalink

Agile Google?

Other than reading this post about code-sharing and 20% time, I know little about Google‘s internal software development practices. Do they have epic gant charts constructed from 40 sheets of A3 and sellotape covering an entire office wall? Do the engineers have to email their project manager every week (or, worse, every day) with half-day granularity time estimates and a progress report detailing their latest achievements? Somehow I don’t think so.

Google appear to follow the release early, release often mantra of agile software development. They release products early with a ‘beta’ tag and reduced functionality, then release updates containing new features at frequent (although not regular) intervals. Gmail is a perfect example of this. Even though Yahoo have also started to roll out the beta of their Gmail-rivalling web mail system, you get the impression that their development is somewhat less agile than Google. More Microsoft than Thoughtworks, more donkey than race horse.

Rather than working in agile utopia, it’s probable that Google operate a much more formal, regimented system which combines aspects of several methodologies. They probably have significant requirements specifications, design documents and their UAT phase will be long and scrutinous (although this would be the case irrespective of development methodology), but the simplicity of their products, their productivity and the way they listen to customer feedback is a clear sign of a belief in the underlying principles of the agile manifesto.

Any Googleites out there want to share their experiences?

Posted by Olly on January 23, 2006 Comments Off | Permalink

@media2006 compliant

It might be six months away but we’ve keenly booked our place at @media2006 (nice site, naturally. A clear:left design, I wonder?).

The line-up is fantastic, with the some big names from the web world presenting. Dave Shea, Molly E. Holzschlag, Eric Meyer, Cameron Moll, Andy Budd, Jeremy Keith… the list goes on. What’s more, the venue is only a 20 minute walk from home!

Of particular interest is CSS 3: Fact or Fiction?, Pixels, My Ass by Patrick Griffiths (who, we’re shocked to discover, doesn’t look like Patrick Stewart as we’d imagined) and Internationalisation: Awakening the Sleeping Giant.

We’re concerned that Dave Shea’s Strategic CSS Management might be a little unpopular. No reflection on Dave of course, it’s just that his talk clashes with England’s World Cup match against Trinidad & Tobago. Sorry Dave, duty calls but we’ll see you in the pub afterwards :)

Posted by Olly on January 20, 2006 Comments Off | Permalink

Flash of inspiration

I’ve always had an aversion to Flash for the following, fairly sound reasons:

• It’s proprietary software
• It costs developers a lot (£499 at the time of writing)
• SWF is not an open format
• It doesn’t comply with the W3‘s SVG specification
• Flash adverts, especially floating ones
• Flash intros

There are probably more.

Funnily enough, I’ve also had an aversion to websites which make exclusive use of Flash as well, simply because the vast majority of them are dreadful. My reasoning?

• Unintuitive, non-standard UI
• Animated menus (for which you wait, and watch, and wait before EVERY click)
• Tiny characters
• Unscalable font size

There are definitely more.

Of course, these annoyances shouldn’t really be so widespread. It’s just bad implementation, so I should really be moaning about those infamous befinned Flash developers of Shoreditch who think long and hard about the next media awards but not about the user experience.

But I’m not interested in doing that.

What I’m interested in is beatport.com. It’s a digital download service for dance music and the site is pure Flash. And it’s so nice to use. It kicks the ass of other digital download web sites (HMV, djdownload.com) which don’t use Flash. Admittedly these sites could be better designed but, as much as I hate to admit it, I’m struggling to believe you can get a user experience as good as beatport.com using HTML and CSS, no matter how much AJAX you load your pages with.

The main reason for this is audio playback. Clicking on a “listen now” link and waiting for WinAmp (or worse, QuickTime) to fire up a song snippet (usually with the artist and title missing) just doesn’t compare to clicking the link and immediately hearing the track whilst having fully hyperlinked track details displayed in the audio section of the page. Like the remix? Well click on the name of the remixer and see a list of all their tracks. Want to check out the label? Just click and their catalogue is displayed in an instant.

It’s a phenomenally good implementation and it has definitely made me rethink my opinion of Flash and ActionScript. I stand by the first list, but hopefully in time these problems will disappear as open formats reach a similar standard and level of support. But as for that second list, it’s starting to look badly out of date already.

Will it replace HTML and CSS? Of course not, but for multi-media-intensive sites I just can’t see any other alternative.

Now, about those Java applets…

Posted by Olly on January 17, 2006 Comments (4) | Permalink

i heart WordPress

I’ve just installed the brand-spanking new, AJAX-tastic WordPress 2.0 for this blog. I usually shiver at the thought of upgrading software — you know why — but this upgrade was just so ridiculously easy I had to tell everyone (well, the two readers of this blog at least). It went like this: Upload the files, visit a web page, done. As Jacko used to say before he went weird: “it’s easy as ABC.”

Never before have I used server-side software which has such a user-friendly and simple installation/upgrade system as this. Simple, clear, elegant. WordPress, we salute you.

Posted by Olly on January 4, 2006 Comments (1) | Permalink