The facet I admired most about the Microsoft corporate culture was an unrelenting desire to learn and improve. Every time I needed a support group (be it IT or dining) I would receive prompt service and a post-mortem survey to gauge my satisfaction. Likewise, the relocation department and intern organization also placed emphasis on similar data. This data driven success measurement was pervasive throughout the company. I strongly believe this empirical emphasis has paid dividends at the corporation (similiar mentalities can be found at Amazon and other corporations).

Microsoft Research applied this notion to the study of  software engineering as a whole In Exploding Software-Engineering Myths,   MSR explores a number of research projects carried out with the intent of applying cold empirical evidence to the field of sofware development.

A few take aways:

1. More Isn’t Always Better
   1. “It is more beneficial to achieve higher code coverage of more complex code than to test less complex code at an equivalent level. ”
2. Write Test Code First
   1. “The research team found was that the Test Driven Development (TDD) teams produced code that was 60 to 90 percent better in terms of defect density than non-TDD teams. They also discovered that TDD teams took longer to complete their projects—15 to 35 percent longer.”
3. Proving the Utility of Assertions
   1. “The team observed a definite negative correlation: more assertions and code verifications means fewer bugs.”
   2. And interestingly, “The research team believes that enforcing the use of assertions would not work well; rather, there needs to be a culture of using assertions in order to produce the desired results.”
4. Organization Structure Does Matter – a lot
   1. “Organizational metrics, which are not related to the code, can predict software failure-proneness with a precision and recall of 85 percent.”
5. Geographical Distance Doesn’t Matter – much
   1. Researchers asked engineers who’d they’d prefer to talk to when faced with issues: “Most people preferred to talk to someone from their own organization 4,000 miles away rather than someone only five doors down the hall but from a different organization. Organizational cohesiveness played a bigger role than geographical distance.”

Last year I was using an old Windows Mobile smart phone with an unlimited data plan. The mobile IE browser was complete garbage but it did offer one nice quark: free access to the Wall Street Journal.  Since the mobile WSJ site is so basic, I guess Rupert Murdoch decided it wasn’t worth charging for.

But what if I wanted to read the WSJ from my laptop… Visit mobile2.wsj.com, you’re instantly redirected to the main page and asked to subscribe. So here’s a little workaround:

1. Install FireFox 3
2. Install the Modify Headers  add-on
3. Restart Firefox
4. Go to Tools > Modify Headers.
5. Set the following fields
   1. Modify
   2. user-agent
   3. Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile m.n)
   4. [Leave Blank]
6. Click Save
7. Navigate to mobile2.wsj.com

Now Mr. Murdoch believes you’re using an antiquated browser and doesn’t mind you reading his content. Enjoy!

The internet is quickly turning into a presence aware medium. Rather than passively delivering content, sites are becoming interactive hubs of communication. Meebo Community IM , an in-page chat platform offered by Meebo (think Facebok Chat) , has gained a lot of traction lately. College Humor, C-Net, Mozilla, WB, and a slew of others have implemented the client. Other sites are rolling out in-house solutions.  The New York Times released their own client, TimesPeople and YouTube is doing a public beta of YouTube Real.

This trend is a good thing. It’s streamlining the way people communicate and share information.

Oracle buys Sun microsostyems for $7.4 billion. They’re acquiring a number of powerful technologies including Java and Solaris. But what I find interesting is the acquisition of  MySQL.

MySQL, the free open-source database, was purchased by Sun for $1 billion back in 2008 .  MySQL is a textbook example of what Clayton Christensen dubs a  “Disruptive Technology”. In The Innovator’s Dilemma Christensen talks at length of how lesser technologies, in low-return markets, have kept a steady upward trajectory eventually intersecting the major players (Oracle). This often times catches big firms off guard, only responding once it’s too late. MySQL is being deployed in more sophisticated situations, and could conceivably start to intrude on Oracle’s high end market. (Facebook is currently the largest deployment of MySQL).

Obviously the aquisition of Solaris and Java, at a bargain, was Oracle’s primary motivation. But MySQL was icing on the cake.

If the user has a problem, then the company has a problem.