It's life Jim but not as we know it

There's a classic line in Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction". Two hit men, Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta), are on their way to a job where they could be dealing with as many as six guys. Jules says to Vincent that they should “get into character,” indicating that they each play a part when they go on the job. The job of hit man is nothing more than a career choice and they don’t necessarily define themselves within those parameters. That's great advice that every software developer and product manager should take note of. Put yourself in the position of the user and really role play the moment or the "day in the life". Better still - get out of the office and go on the road and sit with the user you think you are building software for. I say "think" because most people building software are kidding themselves that what they are building is good for the user.  Think like a movie star. You really need ...

Sony, Samsung, HP, Gateway - take note. You spend billions of dollars on research, development, marketing and advertising only to hand the keys to the kingdom over to a retail store and cross your fingers that the stores' happy elves will help your products will fly off the shelves. Oh dear. I went to Best Buy on Sunday - looking for a monitor for my office at work. If it's been a while since you've bought a monitor let me just say that now is an incredible time to get a great monitor for a low price. You should think about upgrading your existing monitor for an energy efficient LED model, they're as slim as a credit card, save space, look great. (OK - not as slim as a credit card - but pretty close). As with anything technical I'd done my research before I went to the store - had a specific size in mind, resolution, HDMI ports and I'd preselected a couple of manufacturers. I checked that the store had the monitors I'd selected, in stock. Should have be...

Frustrated that you cannot find Dropbox on the Amazon store ? No worries, getting Dropbox on your Kindle is pretty straightforward and works like a charm. To do this all you need to do is set up your Kindle to accept installation of apps from unknown sources and then download the dropbox.apk file from the secure (https) dropbox.com website. Here are the detailed instructions: Preparation Click the gear icon in the top-right corner of the Kindle screen  On the Settings window click the "More +" button then select the "Device" option. Turn on ‘Allow Installation of Applications from Unknown Sources’.  Close the Settings window. Setup Open the web browser, go to https ://www.dropbox.com/android , click Download App.  This will download the Dropbox .apk file When the download is finished, open the notification in the top left corner and select the file. You will be prompted to install the application.  Click the button. Once installation is completed,...