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The Myths of Innovation

emanchado — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:27:00 +0000

That’s the title of a really good book by Scott Berkun, the fella that was project manager for Internet Explorer when it could still be called a browser ;-) The Myths of Innovation is very easy to read, funny and has some food for thought. It dissects a bunch of myths about innovation and innovators, points out typical difficulties and dangers that innovators face, and analyses why these myths are common, why people like them, and why they are so handy to refer to the history and reality of innovation, which is of course much more complex.

One chapter that made me think a lot was chapter 7: “Your boss knows more about innovation than you”. It explores the relation between (traditional) management and innovation, and claims that managers can work against innovation if they just try to increase efficiency and keep things under control. In that sense, quality assurance engineers can be like those project managers, so I wondered a lot about my role and my duties with regards to innovation. On the one hand, you do have to control things that are being done and be conservative to a certain extent. On the other hand, innovation is such an important part of an IT company (particularly if it’s Internet-related) that you really don’t want to risk blocking or stifling it.

Fortunately, it also explains how to keep the workplace open to innovation, including things like having toys and “funny” things at the office. It turns out that they’re not there to spoil the employees, but to provide an environment where people feel free to “think different” and are not afraid of new ideas or to say what they think.

All in all, I think it’s a great book. Recommended!

Google translate WTF?

emanchado — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:21:00 +0000

Maybe that’s something you all already knew, and it’s just me that arrived late to the party, but this is hilarious. I hadn’t used Google Translate myself too much (if ever; can’t remember), but the other day someone mentioned some “funny” translations in some internal mailing list at Opera:

The first translation is… not correct, but somewhat close to the original. The Spanish text is “SOY FELIZ PORQUE CONOCI LA VERDADERA AMISTAD” (“I’m happy because I knew true friendship”) and the translation is “I AM HAPPY KNOW WHY THE TRUE FRIENDSHIP”. As I said, not really correct, but at least it’s somewhat close to the original. Check by yourself:

http://translate.google.com/translate_t#es|en|SOY%20FELIZ%20PORQUE%20CONOCI%20LA%20VERDADERA%20AMISTAD

If you add a couple of exclamation marks at the end, some strange things happen (only half of them are shown in the translation, as if they were escape characters or something). But the really hilarious thing is what happens when you add five of those:

http://translate.google.com/translate_t#es|en|SOY%20FELIZ%20PORQUE%20CONOCI%20LA%20VERDADERA%20AMISTAD!!!!!

!!!!!

In that case, Google Translate “translates” the same sentence to “KNOW WHY I AM HAPPY THE REAL MURDER !!!!!”. Maybe that means that for Spanish speaking people, friendship plus an adequate amount of enthusiasm means…. murder. Scary.

Comic hunting

emanchado — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:31:00 +0000

Some time ago (probably a couple of years) I learned about a couple of TMNT issues that I wanted to read. Yes, that means “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”. I never thought I would want to read a TMNT comic, let alone paying for it, but there you go. The reason why I wanted to read those issues were some amazing drawings by a very talented artist. Also, that apparently the story was much more “mature”. Presumably it just got the idea of four turtle-like creatures (anthropomorphising them in a somewhat natural way, a bit like Blacksad), and he added some amazing art to support the story.

The problem was, I had forgotten about the title of the comic and the artist name… and I didn’t have the bookmark (if I had had Opera Link at the time, that would not have happened; but I digress). So, a couple of weeks ago I got really obsessed with it, and I decided to look for it again. After a couple of hours to fruitless search, I finally found it. It was Soul’s Winter, by the incredible Michael Zulli (official page, Wikipedia), also author of “Delicate Creatures”, The Puma Blues and some work on The Sandman. Have a look at the art in the issues themselves.

Once I had the title of the comic, I started looking for it. Unfortunately, in the first couple of shops I tried, it was out of stock. Then I found it on Hill City Comics, and I decided to buy two more comics (some weird Indian-God-themed ones). The site doesn’t look completely professional to me, so I decided to pay via PayPal instead of giving my credit card number. However, I didn’t receive any information as to which address should I make the payment to. I waited for a couple of days just in case, and then I sent an e-mail, but it seems that the SPAM problems they talk about are really serious ;-)

I think I’ll pass on the telephone call, so I decided to just go to another shop. I won’t have the indian comics, but what the hell. The second shop I found is called MARSimport, and it looks much more professional than the first one. Also, they have “From Cloud 99: Memories Part One” from Yslaire, so I think that’ll compensate for the indian ones ;-)

I haven’t ordered yet, but I will soon. Wish me luck :-)

Adventures in the Internet

emanchado — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:14:00 +0000

It’s kind of funny. I created a twitter account many months ago. I never really used it, because I guess I didn’t see the point or something. During all that time, several people started “following” me (in twitter jargon), even if I had no content at all, nor plans to add any.

Just today and yesterday, three people added me, so I got kind of curious, and decided to login and have a look. I made a comment just today, about me finding it funny that so many people started “following” me, and someone replied. So I started “following” other people, and reading, and I have made a couple of more comments since. I’m not really sure I’m going to use it everyday, but now I have installed a really handy Opera widget for twitter, so this might be “the start of a beautiful friendship”.

Alas, not just twitter, but I also started using eBay (and, to a certain extent, PayPal) this week. Why? Because I have been trying to find one of the greatest PlayStation 2 games ever made, Ico. It’s quite hard to get in a shop nowadays, even second hand, because it’s an old game that wasn’t very successful when it was released. Now it’s a kind of cult game that you’re better off finding in eBay or similar, hence my sudden interest in using eBay:

Note that most of that is actually while being played, not videos. It looks like a film because it doesn’t have a HUD.

I have to say that the eBay experience was satisfactory: it was really easy to find what I wanted, it was easy to bid (special mention to the automatic bidding system, which I didn’t know, that renders the old bid monkeys kind of obsolete), and I won the item, yay! For the maximum money I wanted to pay, but still. I did have a couple of really weird problems with PayPal when paying for it, but it finally worked.

Another thing that just happened to me today is that I realised (stupid me) that Skandiabanken works like a charm in Opera. It was my fault for being so nazi with the cookies.

Finally, although not a website, I’m really amazed by the new Opera Mini 4.1 beta. These guys have managed to make a really awesome browser that works in any crappy mobile phone (and that means working around stupid limitations and bugs of tons of different models). Kudos to them!