Tech Stuff

The video is of a presentation done by Steve Sounders who now works for Google. He used to work for Yahoo where he created the YSlow for Firefox. He talks about how to make your page load faster for the visitor instead of the common part of how to generate the page on the server faster.

The other day a friend sent me a link to the below comic strip. I think this is the best one on the site, but there are definitely some other ones that will make you laugh.

Several months ago I finally got a second monitor. After a couple days I don’t know how I ever did it with just one. I believe I have become much more productive especially as I usually have remote desktop open on one of them. If you need some proof that it can help your productivity to help convince your boss to get you a second or even a 3rd monitor I came across the a blog entry by Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror. In the post he references a study at the University of Utah.

Researchers at the University of Utah tested how quickly people performed tasks like editing a document and copying numbers between spreadsheets while using three different computer configurations:

1. single 18-inch monitor
2. single 24-inch monitor
3. two 20-inch monitors

Here’s what they found:

• People using the 24-inch screen completed the tasks 52% faster than people who used the 18-inch monitor
• People who used the two 20-inch monitors were 44% faster than those with the 18-inch ones.
• Productivity dropped off again when people used a 26-inch screen.

Over the last several years companies have outsourced customer service and software development over seas to countries such as India. It has gone well for some and others not so well. I never had good luck with the Dell support that went to India. I woke up the other day, flipped on the Today Show on NBC and was shocked to see that Americans are now starting to find surrogate mothers in India. What is going to be next?