Agile + Scrum

Chris Brookins at Acquia turned me on to an Agile-friendly project management methodology (did I get that right?) called Scrum. I've been reading up on it here and there, and found an interesting blog, agilesoftwaredevelopment.com, that is running a four-part series on experiences starting a Agile+Scrum-based project. (1, 2, 3, 4)

The Agile Software Development site seems to have new content every day, most of it dealing directly with either Agile or Scrum. Good reading. Oh, and did I mention that the site is powered by Drupal?

Going VOIP

Konstantin and George have been working on replacing their phone systems for as long as I've known them. Recently Konstantin did a big write-up on his blog of the services he's tried; his successes and failures.

If you're trying to set up some sort of VOIP and use it as a replacement for your POTS phone, take a look at his article.

The User-Agent String: A History of Biblical Proportions

One of the last projects I did for Room 214 was build a tool for tracking what kind of browsers were hitting a site. With a database of several hundred thousand hits spread over multiple content types, I had a lot to work with. Now, every web developer groans when asked about browser detection of the "big boys" (IE, Mozilla, Safari, Opera). But in this case I had hundreds, perhaps even thousands of distinct user agent strings. It was awful. And it made me wonder what the history of these awful nearly-unparseable things was.

On the WebAIM blog, there is an explanation in the form of a Genesis account. And it was good.

Tools for Improving Online Information

Over at O'Reilly, Andy Oram has an interesting article on improving online documentation, moving it beyond a mere digital rendition of the traditional print media.

He suggests two tools which will, he thinks, improve the way documentation is done in an online world. Ready for them?

• Quizzes: Objectively measure the effectiveness of the documentation by gaining useful feedback.
  
• Bibliographies: Provide cross-referencing tools that can help build "paths" through available documentation. And make it easier for readers to contribute to building such paths.

Of course, it is no surprise that I think the second one is invaluable. I've been known to dabble in that area in the past.

I also just recently became maintainer of the venerable the Quiz module on Drupal.org.

Slashdot review of Learning Drupal 6

I just found out that Slashdot posted a review of Learning Drupal 6 Module Development. The reviewer gave it a 9/10 -- with his detracting points being a few typos in the text, and some stylistic differences with the Packt writing guidelines. Needless to say, I'm thrilled to get such a positive review on a site like Slashdot.

My 15 minutes?

It's been a busy few weeks:

• Dries Buytaert gave a favorable review of my Learning Drupal 6 book. A couple of other positive reviews also landed on Amazon last week while I was in Szeged.
• Surprisingly, the OpenLDAP book hit #1 on Amazon's Linux list! And right now it still has a 5-star rating.
• I've moved to Chicago and joined Palantir.net, one of the top-tier Drupal shops. I posted my first blog yesterday.

Now if only I could get the JavaScript book finished....