Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development

By | October 18, 2004

Neil Harrison and James Coplien’s book Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development was released this summer and was reviewed today on Slashdot. I worked with Neil at Avaya, and I can attest that he was one of the many smart men and women with whom I worked during my tenure there. Neil was very knowledgeable… Read More: Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development »

USA on the Street

By | October 17, 2004

Whatever you thought this post would be about, given the title, you’re probably wrong. When I’m out on my bike, I always wonder about the spray-painted words and lines on the street. One of the most common, and yet most mysterious, scrawlings was “USA”. Often, I see “USA” painted on the street next to an… Read More: USA on the Street »

My Dream Vacation

By | October 15, 2004

I spent five wonderful years in Austin, Texas, in the late 80’s and early 90’s. While life there was mighty fine, just imagine if I could have been a contented resident of Austin, Minnesota. Instead, I’m left to dream about a potential vacation to Austin, MN, to see … the Hormel Spam Museum. Wired has… Read More: My Dream Vacation »

VoIP on the Cheap

By | October 10, 2004

VoIP Market Leaders Declare a Price War – Voxilla.com The recent drops in monthly rates for AT&T CallVantage, Vonage, and Broadvox Direct suggest that the consumer VoIP market is heating up and that these companies all expect adoption rates to take off at a much quicker pace soon. When the inflection point occurs, you don’t… Read More: VoIP on the Cheap »

Sphinx-4 Beta

By | October 6, 2004

A beta version of Sphinx-4, an open source speech recognition engine implemented in Java, was recently released. Sphinx development is centered out of Carnegie-Mellon University, with major contributions from employees at Sun, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, and HP and smaller contributions from individuals at UC Santa Cruz and MIT. Ideas that are unlikely to come… Read More: Sphinx-4 Beta »

Ssh, the Robots Are Listening

By | September 27, 2004

IBM is working with researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands to develop a system that listens in on calls received at a call center, uses speech recognition to identify topics that a caller is asking about, looks up related information, and displays it to a call center agent. Sort of like the… Read More: Ssh, the Robots Are Listening »