PCWorld recently ran an article stating that Firefox's new release cycle will fail. The rational stems from the idea that version numbers actually need to mean something. Unfortunately the business world strongly feels this is the case. Typically, IT organizations only allow minor updates to be pushed out to the users. With major version changes needing approval.

There is an upcoming shift in the way software is versioned. Chrome was one of the first major pieces of software to switch to the new model. With the shift to agile development, it was inevitable for software updates become more frequent.  Once updates become a norm instead of the exception does a major number version number still make sense?

Businesses will need to adapt to the changing world. Technology is always changing and for a magazine focusing on technology to make the suggestion that it shouldn't is a bit ridiculous. Someone needs to tell them not to be a Dodo Bird and to evolve.

I got home yesterday to see a good size box waiting for me. I figured it was a few last minute gifts I had ordered from Amazon. To my surprise, it was a Chrome OS CR-48. I had applied a few weeks back and never heard anything form Google, so it just arriving at my door was a pleasant surprise. I am sure over the coming months I will be posting more on Chrome OS but here are some of my initial thoughts.

I have been using the CR-48 for about a day now and I am finding that in general I really like it. Having an always connected long battery life laptop seems to fit right into my life. Chrome OS provides a great experience on sub-notebooks that other operating systems such as Windows tend to miss. Sub-notebooks tend to be fairly underpowered when compared to full laptops. This means that even power users are in reality unable to do much on their sub-notebooks besides surf the web. Since Chrome OS specializes in this over Windows, it makes Chrome OS the perfect operating system for sub-notebooks.

At this point Chrome OS is very rough around the edges. Flash is the biggest draw back on the CR-48. When you have a web site that is heavy in Flash, it causes the whole computer to run sluggish. I suppose this is to be expected, flash has never worked well under Linux. I am sure Google will push Adobe to fix this before official release. Plus it will mean that Linux will finally get a decent version of Flash.

The coolest thing about the CR-48 is the concept. Chrome OS commoditizes the PC. When a user picks up a Chrome OS PC they don't think what is under the hood. The user just knows that they will be able to do whatever task they wanted to do. What is even cooler is that the laptop doesn't even need to be owned by that user. The user's preferences and  data will just be there as soon as they login.

I am glad that Google is going about this revolution of the PC in an open manner. They are not trying to be the ultimate authority when it comes to what is on your PC or what you can do with it, as Apple would do. They are releasing the operating system as open source software, unlike what Microsoft would do. I think of all companies Google is the best suited to lead this revolution.

Sadly it seems Google Wave days are limited. Google is pulling the plug on their Wave service sometime after the end of this year. I was surprised to hear that Wave was not doing too well, I have used it nearly every day since I got private beta access to the service. There has never been a tool created on the web that could allow true real time collaboration and also auto documents the collaboration. Video conferencing can not hold a stick to Wave, video does not provide any useful record of the conversation or a way to pick it back up immediately from where you left off.

There are probably several reasons why Wave failed, however I believe the biggest is that Wave never hit its tipping point. The saddest moment with Wave is right after you first launch it, when you realize none of your friends are their. Wave is nearly completely useless without others to use it with. I got lucky because I work closely with several people across the United States, we saw Wave as the perfect tool to help us work together. I can imagine a lot of users are not so lucky and just couldn't find a use for Wave in their personal life. To combat this, Google should have integrated Wave directly into GMail. A user should have not been able to tell the difference between a Wave and an Email, except that in a Wave the other user could see you typing your message.

Wave really could replace about 80% of my emails, mainly the ones that are for debugging or brain storming. Their will always be emails that a Wave could not replace, like receipt from Amazon purchases.  Wave would revolutionize digital conversations within businesses. In order for that to happen however, Google would need to make a push for other services to be able to host their own Waves, like the current state of Email. Where I can send an email to anyone, even people outside of Google. Wave should have been explained as Email v2, and Google should have pushed it that way.

I'll be sad to see Wave disappear, hopefully Google has a good plan to bring the benefits of Wave back.

Nearly every software development shop worth its salt has some form of what is known as a code review and nearly every developer dislikes them. Most matured developers tend to like the idea of code reviews but given the choice, on there next commit they would likely opt to not send their code for code review. The reason why is simple, code reviews can delay the forward progress of the software and they take time. When you have other developers needing access to the library you just wrote it is hard to say we need to take a few hours to a week of our time to look over my code. I think we should be able to make code reviews better and into something everyone wants to do.

After a code review I often finding myself wondering was what was found worth my time and the reviewers time? Most of the code reviews that I have been apart of have had minor suggestions or more commonly code standards compliance problems. When you rummage through several hundred or a few thousand lines of code during a code review and all that is found is that you have a few extra blank lines or should change the name of a variable, it does seem like a bit of a wast.

I'm not saying that we should not care about those extra lines or any code standard for that matter. I'm a big fan of code standards, I think they help in the readability of code. I'm saying that there is a cost to code reviews, we have to weigh those costs against the rewards. When a reviewer only finds a few compliance issues, things that could be fixed by anyone that is reading through the code, it was not worth the time the reviewer spent reviewing.

So how do we make code reviews worth everyone's time? Simple, we change the intent of a code review back to what the actual intent was. Code reviews are put into place to find bugs. Bugs that would show up to an end user or other developers that are trying to use the code.

You may say, “well Cory that is what every code reviewer is doing, they are looking for bugs.” However that is not true, sure they are looking for obvious bugs like unassigned variables being referenced, but they are not looking for deep bugs. One of the most common bugs comes from input validation, and yet it is a bug that is often over looked in code reviews. This is because it is often difficult to tell exactly where input to a function is coming from and how much it should be trusted. Detecting multi-level bugs requires a reviewer to see how the multiple levels interact and the path of the code in correct and error states. This kind of review takes a lot of time and drastically increases the complexity of a code review. The sharp increase is due to the fact that we are moving a code review from a mostly passive practice to a very active process.

Obviously code reviews could not detect all bugs and there will be times when a code review will not find any bugs. From this active process of a code review you get a new found level of confidence. Bug counts will be decrease and actual development should increase. This confidence is how a code review pay for themselves.

According to Confused using social websites such as Twitter or Facebook can increase your risk of being robbed. It is even being said that using Facebook or Twitter may soon increase your home owners insurance. At first glance this seems pretty scary and is something that most people likely never considered.

Robbers want to rob a house when they will have the greatest chance of not getting caught. That means they do not want anyone to be home. These articles point out that when you post your ware abouts online, you are informing robbers. They could use the information that you are not home to go to your house and rob it. The first assumption is that your address is freely available. After doing a quick check of my computer illiterate friends on Facebook, I didn't find any with that information available. However, the robber could use your name and a phone book to look you up.

The other problem is robbers already have tons of ways to find people that are not home. Simply picking up a phone book and calling numbers in order and going to the houses that do not pick up. In fact the robber could get lucky and they home owner would have put a message on their voice mail saying they will be out of town. Robbers also know that nearly everyone works during the day. So they can simply go up to a house during the day and knock to see if someone answers the door.

If we look at someone who can guarantee is not home during a certain time, such as a news anchor who is live on air at a certain time each day. We do not see an increase in the likelihood of robber for news anchors versus the average person.

I'm not saying its perfectly fine to post your ware abouts online. I just want to point out that it is very doubtful it increases your likelihood of being robbed. I hope the smart people at the insurance companies actually look at some data and not just jump on the chance to charge more money.