Here's the article, "The New Focus Group: The Collective ".

The point is that simplistic Return on Investment misses the point. The point is that marketing models aren't simple linear relationships between promotional dollars and sales.

I was all excited about the value of innovation and the source of innovation .

The …

I've received a steady flow of email on Building Skills in Python and Building Skills in OO Design .

Readers have located a number of mistakes. It's been easy to correct and republish these books on-line.

At some point, I'll have to start the Python 2.6/3.0 revisions.

In previous years, I had several email lists: my Yahoo! list, my Google list, my desktop. To figure out what to send, I had to merge the lists, which meant reading vCards, and CSV files. This is totally the sweet-spot for Python.

The Mac OS X Mobile Me has a …

For years, I've written documentation using ReStructured Text (RST). It's just one of several "lightweight markup languages ". For others, look at Markdown , StructuredText , Setext , among many others.

I generally use the rst2html utility that comes with Docutils . It works fine for small things.

I just read about the Sphinx documentation …

Check out Carol Johnson's book The Language of Work: Technical Communication at Lukens Steel, 1810 to 1925 . It puts technical writing in a bigger perspective.

The cool thing is dragging meaning out of a corpus of documents.

December 11th, the electric power went out here in the northeast, and stayed out until late on the 14th.

We have gas heat, gas cooking. But the furnace wouldn't run without AC power. So, I now have a favorite electrical appliance -- the blower on my furnace.:Apple-tab-span:``

Here's my strategy …

See Configuration Options in Code or INI Files? . Also, see Python as Configuration Language .

Here's some of the argument.

• Editing. Which is easier? Which is more expressive? Some say that Text (INI format especially) is easier -- but I don't see what. Python is just as easy as INI, and has …

Check out this StackOverflow "question": Does anyone have metrics on the utility of formal Unit Testing? . While -- technically -- it does have a question, it's more of a rant against formal unit testing than a proper question.

Here's the conflation comment. "I've worked with developers who never caught any errors in …

No one wants to be Rickrolled. I suppose it could have been funny, once, for about 15 minutes. I didn't think it was all that funny to begin with, but there it is -- a part of the lexicon. However, it remains obscure, and sometimes hard to explain to non-technical folks …

The Open Source Enterprise article in the November 15th InformationWeek is quite cool. Here's the "wow" quote for me.

Another way that open source code meets current needs is through lighter-weight integration than commercial vendors typically offer. By definition, open source code adheres to publicly approved standards. That means open …