On this happy day, I am most pleased to announce the launch of my own clothing line - “bitzwear”.
It’s about time I joined the ranks of many sports celebrities and hip hop artists and designed my own, signature wear.
So, if you’re young, cool, hip, smart and beautiful - get yours now! And get something for your friends too.
Available only from the official bitzwear store on the web.

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This post is a continuation of two previous posts: Solving the Measuring Paradox and If You Measure This Then Your Children Will Be Next.

When setting quantity-based goals or metrics, it is usually better to measure over a period of time that is long as possible.
Consider the following example: suppose you want to motivate developers on your team to resolve as many bugs as possible. So you start measuring the number of bugs closed by developer and set the following goal: each developer must resolve at least two bugs a day.
Here’s what will happen: Alice, a developer on your team resolves her second bug of the day at 2PM. By 4PM she already has a fully tested solution to her third bug. Alice, being the perfectly logical creature she is and aware of the goal you set, will not check in her fix but rather wait until the next day. This way she will make it easier for herself to reach her goal tomorrow as well. In fact, your developers will start accumulating these “spare” bugs “just in case”.
I’ m against the measurement tactics altogether, but if you have to id it, it is much better to define the metric for a longer term.
Suppose that instead you define the goal to be “40 resolved bugs per month” (I’m assuming 20 work days per month here). This way, your developers still have more of an incentive to work on bugs throughout the period, because “good days” (with lots of resolved bugs) will balance with the “slow days”.

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I finally caved and got the Flickr “Pro” account.
So now everything, old and new, is available here.

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That was fast.
Oren wins a beer correctly answering the quiz.
Not exactly what I had in mind, but the rules didn’t say anything about googling it.

Solution:
MySQL thinks that in my time zone (Jerusalem) daylight savings time starts on March 30th every year (which is not exactly true) and on that day the clock goes from 01:59:59AM straight to 03:00:00AM. So all the datetime values between 30/3 02:00:00 and 30/3 02:59:59 are considered invalid.

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Zoominfo is a website that exposes a database of companies and people. Zoominfo builds this database automatically by software that crawls the web and extracts structured data from unstructured web pages (for example, “about” pages in company websites and press releases) using natural language processing algorithms.
A while ago, I posted a little satirical “press release” about me, the CTO of pashabitz.com, purchasing a burekas from “sammy burekas”.
A couple of weeks ago zoominfo’s crawler reached that “press release” and now I am listed as the “chief technology officer of pashabitz.com”.

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As I’ve mentioned, I left Clarizen a couple of months ago.
Now about the new thing:
I joined a new startup company - Semingo.
During the past year I got certain that what I want to do right now is develop ideas “from scratch” in a startup environment. So when Sagie, who is one of the founders of Semingo and my friend from the army days invited me to join - it was a perfect fit.
The idea we’re working on is very exciting and the people on the team are very bright.
Oren and Tomer are also blogging from a few feet away (and more bloggers coming soon!!).
We’ve only just started but it’s been a lot of fun already.
About the product: all I can say right now is that it’s related to social networks (just because that’s what the press release says) and it’s as cool as ice (before global warming). Don’t worry, we’re planning to release soon, so you’ll be able to use it in no time (touch wood) - stay tuned!

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Flash:

Mitch:

And yours truly:

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I couldn’t find this all in one place, so, here’s how you enable developing and debugging an asp.net app under IIS7 on Vista:

1 Install windows features in “turn windows features on or off”. You need these things (which are not installed by default):
Under “web management tools”:
a. IIS metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility
b. IIS management console
Under “Application Development Features”:
a. ASP.NET
Under “Common Http Features” - check everything.

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I should’ve posted on this a while ago, but it’s been crazy lately. Better late than never.
A month ago I left my place of work at Clarizen. It’s not been long, but it was definitely a great time for me.
I learned a lot and had so much fun.
Most importantly, I had a chance to work with some very talented and wonderful people - Eyal, Eli, Dudu, Sasha, Asher and many many more.
I participated in the development since a relatively early stage in the product’s life and seen the release of the public beta.
Do take a look at what came out in the end - www.clarizen.com.

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Well, that’s just the exception to the rule, that only proves the rule. (My Father, when wrong)

A while ago, I complained about how measuring the wrong thing will just make things worse, in particular, how measuring things in software almost never works.
Recently, I read the earth-shattering news that “Transformers” beat the all-time record for first-week revenue by a non-sequel.
“Transformers” beat the all-time record for first-week revenue by a non-sequel.
“Transformers” beat the all-time record for first-week revenue by a non-sequel.
Hmm. Is it, like, good?
Does it mean Transformers is the best thing since (user-generated) sliced bread?
Is it just a sucky flick?
I don’t know.
Now, the interesting thing is: how did this ever become the news? Why don’t they say “Transformers is the best movie ever”, or “John Torturo as a ‘section 7’ agent is as brilliant as cold fusion”?
And another puzzle, for the advanced reader - why don’t you hear about top grossing movies over a year or ten years’ period? It’s always “first weekend” or “first week”.
Here’s why:
Movie makers are in it for the money, just like the rest of us. And over the last decade or so, there’s this one major obstacle in their little money making business. It’s called piracy. It’s easier to get an illegal copy of a movie than to get some water from the fridge.
In fact, I’m kind of thirsty now. But I’m not going to get that water. I’m too busy downloading Spiderman 4.
Oh, it’s not out yet? No problem. They got it on bittorrent already.
So basically, most money you’re going to make on a movie is in the first week or so. After that, everyone has already downloaded it from the internet for free.
Of course, the money people run the movie, not the…hmm…movie people. That’s because the money people give the movie people money to buy food, and the movie people, well, they don’t give the money people any money.
Now we have money people who run the movie and they want to make some money and they have to do it all in the first week. So they’re going to measure, you guessed it, first week revenue.

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