I just added the Google Voice widget to the blog.  I’m a little apprehensive about adding the ability to call a number directly on the site, but let’s see how it goes.

I’m going to tell you the tale of two software shops.  Both shops have incredible Engineers,  great Product Managers and excellent processes.  The only thing that separates these two shops is release night.  One shop knocks out the change in minimal time, the other is working through the weekend to fix issues.  This anomaly has nothing to do with platform choice, complexity of the stack or location.  The problem is universal across all of these.  The difference between these two shops, a release engineer.

Typically a release engineer is a person, or team of people, who are familiar with the build, deployment and configuration of a product.  This is important because one thing I can tell you for sure, your production environment is not exactly the same as your lower environment.  Even more sure is that your production support team has even less knowledge on how to trouble shoot release issues.  You absolutely need someone who is familiar with your configuration.

Unfortunately release engineers are somewhat of a luxury for many shops.  They are an unappreciated component of a successful software shop. If you can’t get the budget to hire one I have a suggestion that has worked for me time and time again.  Appoint one of your developers (and a backup) as the designated release engineer.  This makes on person solely responsible for the success of your pushes. 

There is a cost associated with dedicating on of your developers.  I generally find it amounts to 10 hours a week as the developer builds and defines the process, approximately 6 weeks total.  After that, maybe 1 hour a week to maintain the process.  It sounds like a modest investment, but it will pay off the first time you have 6 developers working all week to make a deployment successful. 

The last few weeks I’ve used two new technology offerings that I thought were just fantastic.  Here are my reviews:

Google Voice 

I received an invitation to beta test the new Google Voice feature about a week ago.  Basically Google voice provides you with a phone number, a local one at that, that you use to hook all your phones up to.  When someone calls this number you can configure your settings to ring your cell, work and home phone.  Setup was a breeze!

Additional features include VM notifications via text message, gmail, etc.  They also let you call out using the phone number.  You select a contact, click call.  The service first calls your cell, then calls the other party.  Very cool.  However, my favorite feature is the voice to text.  I’m not sure about you but I hate listening to VM’s.  I can scan an email a lot faster than I can listen to a complete VM.

There is some room for improvement.  The voice to text is sketchy at best.  I found that during some limited testing  the VM to text missed more than it got correct.  The other thing I didn’t like was the fact that when someone first calls you (read the first time) from a number the service asks for the callers name.  A few people I had test the service found this annoying at best.

I’m looking forward to more testing…

Verizon Fios

The other offering is from Verizon Fios.  Verizon just release a new set of ‘widgets’ available via its Fios TV service.  They added widgets for Twitter and Facebook along with a few others.  I was a bit skeptical at first.  I mean how easy could surfing your Facebook be using a remote?  To my surprise Verizon’s developers made it easy and intuitive. 

Now for the really cool thing.  Verizon is taking applications to develop widgets for its service.  I’ve signed up and will post again when I get the SDK!

Sorry, I just had to post these.  Too Funny!

I’ve recently found a site named dzone.com.  Dzone is a lot like Digg.com where you can vote articles up or down based on its merits.  What makes Dzone.com different is that it’s Technologist centric but not biased towards any one technology.  There are articles from Enterprise Architects, UX Designers, Developers, and IT Management (links are sprinkled with all kinds of views).  I have found more interesting articles here than anywhere else. 

It’s a great community and I would highly recommend that any serious technologist book mark this site, read it often, and participate in the voting and discussions.  Not to mention it’s a well designed site.  The Ajax scrolling feature is hot!