This is one of the most revolutionary ideas about UI I've seen in quite some time -- and I first saw it years ago. It documents the theory of removing click functionality from navigation -- being able to open/close/use controls purely by mouse positioning.

I used to be a member of SFnet and of course the yahoo chatrooms before the former collapsed and the latter became spam-infested.

I've been thinking lately of how a system like this could be freed from the spam pillaging and how id could plug into the social network scene.

Here is a quick blueprint for a chat network 2.0.

Micropayments as validation

In order to get a chat identity you have to

Years of experience have made me believe that exploring unpopular solutions is a waste of time; if a solution has not been able to attract a community, there is usually a reason. For that reason, even knowing that NetBeans had a PHP editor, I stuck to Zend Eclipse like a well beaten spouse. Who cares if it freezes up, loses synergy with Subversion, looks like a brick and has gazillion options that look like they should work (refactor) but don't? Zend supports it and Zend knows best. But guess what? NetBeans doesn't suck after all.

^{click to enlarge}

I've been sniffing around domain driven developmen (DDD) and the Domain model for a while and frankly did not "get it"; where it came into focus for me was during my attempt to establish a non SQL based model for unit testing. previously I violated a lot of good advice by extending the hell out of active record table and record classes. What this gave me was a lower class count; what that took from me was the ability to create transport-independant functionality. Having the opportunity to start a project from stratch is relatively rare; it gave me the opportunity to establish best practices from day one, and therefore the responsibility of considering what those practices would be.

Books; can we live without them? Talk of the Nation is kicking this apart as we speak. I would first skip over the obvious social weakness that leaving no tangible artifacts of our collective knowledge would imply -- though I think this is a vital consideration. I also want to leave the generalized ambivalence that older people have towards computers -- this is a generational issue that will be gone quite soon. I just want to address book and digital interface as an informational construct.

HAL's revenge -- thanks Maace!

One of the personality traits that engineers often exhibit, and one that tends to drag projects down, is that they evaluate their projects using features as a benchmark of success. If their priorities were closer to the average customer it would be something like:

Two benchmarks crossed today: I have been able to generate INI files that feed directly into the core Zend_Forms construct, and I have been able to parse a CSV file and use it to populate my field definition tables. This means there is a direct train from the initial form/field spec to the entry interface. There are still a few dropped fields here and there but the overall engine works. This means I can drop my test forms and fields an use the real world data to drive the application.