Design Principles

Hacking with no technology

The typical image of a hacker is a kid hunched over his keyboard in the wee hours of the night staring at commands on his computer screen that unlock the secrets of the national government. But the woman sitting next to you at Starbucks fiddling with her digital camera could be just as dangerous. Read more »

Effective and affordable User testing

At the recent Web Directions South UX conference in Melbourne, Lisa Herrod, the Principal Usability consultant at Scenario Seven offered advice on usability testing with her presentation -- "User testing for the rest of Us". Read more »

Seven aspects of a great user experience

The spotlight at this year's Web Directions South UX conference in Melbourne was on user experience. Andy Budd, a designer and developer at Clearleft in the UK, contributed to the theme of the day with his presentation -- "Designing the User Experience Curve". Read more »

Interview: Simplifying Web app design

Following the Web Directions South UX conference in Melbourne, we interviewed Robert Hoekman Jr in an email on his presentation -- "Essential elements of great Web application design". Read more »

Mozilla: More bugs mean Firefox is more secure

The Mozilla Foundation is perhaps best known for its Firefox web browser, an open source offering that was first developed to go head-to-head with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Read more »

SOA: nothing new but difference matters

Gartner fellow, Daryl Plummer agrees that nothing is new in principle with SOA, but that the lower requirements for technical knowledge make all the difference in the world. Read more »

Debating the morality behind software development

IBM's Grady Booch says developers can no longer just dash off code without thinking about the larger implications. Read more »

Designing for voyeurs

Flickr serves out thousands of photos every day to users hanging out for a glimpse into the lives of other people. We talk to George Oates, the woman whose job it is to make voyeurism easier than ever before. Read more »

80% of software is no brain work: Ivar Jacobson

Efficiency, Code Reuse and Artificial Intelligence -- we sat down with one of the inventors of UML and the RUP to talk about how the software industry has to change in the next five years. Read more »

Prevent identity theft by avoiding these seven common mistakes

Identity theft may be on the rise, but you don't have to make it easy for thieves -- take steps to protect the personally identifiable information (PII) of your employees and clients. Read more »

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  • Staff Share a keyboard and mouse with Synergy

    Even in the era of virtualization, many IT pros (including myself) have a small army of computers sitting on, under, and around their desks. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Staff Android devs less than gruntled

    Yet more discouraging news on the Android front. Having hacked off its developer community by releasing updated SDKs to just a small group of chosen devs, Google has now given the brush-off to a petition that called for more to be given to the wider community. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Staff VMware shows how not to do it

    As a developer there will be a time when you ship a bug -- be it a stub that you left in, or a flaming, crashtastic segfault. The next time this happens and your bosses come baying for blood, point them in the direction of VMware, who this week gave the developer world a great example of how to ship a showstopper bug. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

What's on?

  • Club Builder: Captain Obvious vs the Crackpots

    In the case of the bleeding obvious, IBM says open source needs good designers; a claim is made that China can activate your phone to snoop on you; and we take a look at the Defcon conference.