Aaron Johnson Now with 50% less caffeine!

Links: 3-15-2009

• » Gravatar in Gmail » Jon Fox
  When is someone going to join email and social software in an OOTB application? Seems silly that I have to download a greasemonkey script or a FireFox plugin to get this behavior.
  (categories: social socialsoftware greasemonkey gmail )

• How to be a program manager - Joel on Software
  The exact form the functional specification takes may vary. All a functional specification has to do is explain how the program will behave. It doesn’t say anything about how the code will work internally. You start at the highest level: a vision statement, no more than one page explaining the gist of the new feature. Once that’s nailed down, you can develop storyboards… mockups of the screens showing the user’s progression through the application, with detailed notes showing how they work. For many types of functionality, especially UI-heavy functionality, once you have these storyboards, you’re done.
  (categories: programming design process development management engineering functionalspec )

• Entrepreneurs – Don’t Be Afraid of GDP Growth Rate
  The list of companies started during periods of negative GDP Growth include Wang, TI, DEC, Fairchild, EDS, Compuserve, Intel, Atari, CA, Apple, Microsoft, Amdahl, Autodesk, Sun, Compaq, Cisco, 3Com, Genzyme, EMC, Amgen, Lotus, EA, Adobe, AOL, Dell, Cisco, and Network Appliance. I know the startup story of many of them and it includes single-mindedness of purpose, frugality/capital efficiency, and more sweat than equity.
  (categories: startups entrepreneurship economy motivation )

• Google Friend Connect: Add social features to your site
  Rating widget, friend widget, create account widgets… Nice stuff.
  (categories: google openid opensocial widgets friendconnect )