DPL Reading List – June 3, 2016
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week.
Increase Your Return On Failure (Thanks to Brian Zimmer for recommending this article) – “Failure is less painful when you extract the maximum value from it. If you learn from each mistake, large and small, share those lessons, and periodically check that these processes are helping your organization move more efficiently in the right direction, your return on failure will skyrocket.”
125 Easy Tweaks To Optimize Your Website’s Usability Today (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this) – “Whether you’re designing a website or mobile app, you’ll learn 125+ tactics to optimize its usability.”
The Evolution Of Services With Juval Lowy (Podcast) (Thanks to Doug Durham for recommending this) – “Juval talks about how services evolved back in the 2006 time frame into monolithic, unmanageable software and the swing to simplification that has led to the current microservices movement. Keeping services small and flexible is the key, to the point that you see service aspects appearing down in very fine grained parts of software: Integer as a Service? Great thinking from an experienced architect of how services continue to evolve!”
The Long Legacy Of The Floppy Disk – “The technology world may seem to be locked in an endless cycle of renewal – but not when it comes to the floppy disk. More than 50 years after the technology was invented it has emerged that the US nuclear weapons force uses the disks in the 1970s computer system it still employs. As it turns out the Pentagon is not alone in retaining an affection, sometimes born of technical necessity, for the humble disk.”
6 Tools To Help You Kickstart Your Morning (Thanks to Brian Zimmer for recommending this article) – “Thoughtfully designing your morning can make a total difference in your happiness, energy, productivity, and focus throughout the day. Here are six apps to help you make the most of your morning time, however you choose to spend it.”
New Microsoft Email Reveals Shifting Mobile Strategy, Claims Windows Phone Investment ‘Not At Risk’ (Thanks to Brian Zimmer for recommending this article) – “Microsoft recently announced further changes to its smartphone strategy around Windows 10 Mobile with further layoffs centered around the Nokia Mobile acquisition. Now that Microsoft’s retrenchment is in full swing many see this as the end of Microsoft’s mobile ambitions, but a new internal email suggests otherwise.”
Take Off Your Headphones And Listen (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “At first blush, an employee wearing earbuds seems a good thing. It signals the person has entered “The Zone,” a period of intense concentration and productivity that can only be achieved when vibing to music and drowning out his colleagues. The employee wearing earbuds has no time for your trivial People v. O.J. takes — he is hard at work (unlike you). But the externality of wearing earbuds in the office is decreased innovation, according to Ben Waber, an expert in “people analytics,” a nascent field of study homed on how to optimize efficiency and creativity in the workplace.”
