Slavo Ingilizov

I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to how my computer is configured. I like to be aware of how things happen and why they do. Currently on a Windows system, the thing that irritates me the most is the Windows Registry. A nasty, unknown shared resource used by almost all applications and extremely hard to fix manually when corrupted. But it is a standard, so somehow I get along with it.

Anyway, installing programs has always been one of the worst experiences ever while setting up my work/fun environment, on any platform. Linux makes it easy for you to install distribution packages, but I still haven’t spend the time to figure out how to uninstall them. What happens to all dependencies that you didn’t note down when installing? Do they remain in the system?

Since program installation is usually the first impression that software makes in a user, I think every software developer should spend the time and make it as perfect as it can be. This is clearly not only my opinion, but in this post I wanted to mention two features of software installations in general that I find wonderful, and cannot figure out why there are people that miss to put them in.

1. “Don’t create a Start Menu folder” option

2. “Create a Desktop icon” and “Create a Quick Launch icon”

First, I have so many things in the Windows Start Menu, that I probably never open it. I don’t need more things there by default, and I need an option to control this when installing software. Second, I extensively use the Quick Launch toolbar, and if the installer puts an icon there for me, that would be great. Obviously the FeedDemon installer made me happy and the people from NewsGator did their job. Why don’t the others do it? Why don’t you do it every time?

Are you using Google Chrome? A while ago I talked about how this browser’s introduction into the market would affect the other players. I don’t know what’s the situation today, I only know they released a final 1.0 version and are out of beta. For me, the speed and user experience that I have in this new browser is unmatched. The only reason keeping me from making it my default are Firefox’s plugins. I guess once Chrome introduces a plugin system, they would have to sacrifice a lot of the performance benefits. Similar to what happened to Firefox. With one exception: we’re talking Google this time, not Mozilla. And probably most of you know that once Google decides to do something (another innovative way to try and rule the web), they don’t stop no matter what.

In short I’m saying Google have far more power and willingness to contribute to their browser than Mozilla had. But this is not why I started this post. I started it to share a really cool Javascript experience that these guys announced a while ago. They are exploring the nuts and bolts of the V8 framework used in Chrome to create wonderful applications. Here’s the site (make sure to open it with Chrome):

http://www.chromeexperiments.com/

And then some people say Javascript was dead and the future would belong to rich applications (to read: Flash and Silverlight). I so disagree.

You’ve probably already heard about the new interest-based advertising Google is launching. If you haven’t, here’s a link to the ReadWriteWeb article. The funny thing is, as an AdSense subscriber, I got a message from them today, and they marked it as Spam in Gmail. See for yourself:

Now the question is, are Google really spamming people, or their Spam filters are just a bit more than good?

A stupid question, I know. Especially after you are already reading this. But I’m fascinated about the fact that so many people I know still don’t read blogs on a regular basis or don’t use RSS or Atom or some other publishing protocol reader. For me, blogs are the primary way to stay informed about what’s happening in my communities, and the main news channel. They are also the easiest way for me to chill out and relax for a minute between two tasks requiring high concentration. A personal opinion on a topic is much more valuable than the 20-times-edited newspage on cnn.com or any other mass news site.

So, since I’m so passionate about this, what blogs do I read? Well, this post is an attempt to summarize a fraction of my Google Reader subscriptions, with explanations of why I read them. Hopefully this would shed some light on the topics I’m mostly interested in nowadays, too. Here’s the list:

47 Hats – Bob Walsh’s advice for independent software vendors (MicroISVs) and startups. Digests of news about the community, events and nice articles from all around.

A Smart Bear – Tagline: Startups + Marketing + Geekery. Jason Cohen, an entrepreneur and his takes on small business

Erik Sink – The definitive guide to the Business of Software.

Hacker News – This is a site that Paul Graham set up to get together a community of developers and provoke discussion about the things shared in the dev community in general. Something like reddit.com/r/programming.

How to Change the World – Guy Kawasaki, former Apple evangelist, currently a venture capitalist, blogging about entrepreneurship, providing tips and tricks.

Joel on Software – One of THE bloggers in the software development community. Former Microsoftie, currently owner of Fog Creek Software, doesn’t write much lately. Launched a developer community site together with Atwood called Stackoverflow. Rare but quality material.

Paul Graham – An angel investor in Silicon Valley. Created the Y Combinator project, writing very valuable essays on investment, especially VC and Angel. See Hacker News.

Seth Godin – the marketing guy. Top marketing blog. Ever.

Friday Reflections – a new storyline and a new thought each Friday. Author is Anand Shah. Unbelievably inspirational.

Coding Horror – comparable to Joel in software development. Jeff Atwood, Joel’s partner in Stackoveflow, again writing for devs. See Joel on Software.

Scott Hanselman – another prominent software development blogger. Lots of info, primary Microsoft.

Scott Gu – The Gu, Scott Guthrie, running the following dev teams in Microsoft – CLR and core .NET libraries, ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF, IIS 7, Visual Studio Tools for ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF and mobile. A must read for every Microsoft dev.

I can say I only listed the MUST ones. Except for those, I’m following about 97 more. Anyone who wants the full list, just drop a line. So what are you waiting for? Publish your list and let me know. What blogs are YOU reading?