Smiling profile pictures make a difference

At my company one employee took the effort to take a profile picture of every employee. He only took photos where people smiling, it took some time but within few weeks (100+ employees) it is done.

Then everyone was asked to replace their profile picture in hipchat/google apps/yammer to the one taken. Everyone agreed, and as a result I only see smiling faces in the apps these days.

It feels good.

Smiling pictures make a difference.

List of git branches ordered by most recent commit

Turning off all plugins in Janus

Using pasteboard from command line on OSX

pbcopy, pbpaste - provide copying and pasting to the pasteboard (the Clipboard) from command line. Here are few examples

Generating video with gource and ffmpeg

Gource is a software version control visualization tool, and with ffmpeg you can generate a video of your repo visualization easily.

Taking screenshot on Android devices

1. First of all you’ll need to download, install and configure Android SDK, along with the USB drivers.
2. Enable USB Debugging mode. You can do that from Settings -> Applications -> Development.
3. Connect your Android device to a PC via USB cable.
4. Go to the “tools” folder in Android SDK and start the batch file titled “ddms” to launch the Dalvik Debug Monitor Service. You should be able to see your device connected on top.
5. Under the “Device” menu, within the Debugger window, click “Screen Capture” or press Ctrl + S.

Amal's Guide to Storyboarding

A storyboard (in HCI) is a comic-strip-like set of drawings about what your interface does and how it is used to accomplish tasks in a real usage scenario.

A good storyboard should clearly demonstrate who the user is, the usage situation, and the user's motivations for using the interface.

It should show what the user can accomplish with your interface, but it needn't (and often shouldn't) show a specific user interface design.

Setting

• People involved?
• Environment?
• Task being accomplished?

Sequence

• What steps are involved?
• What leads someone to use the app?
• What task is being illustrated?

Satisfaction

• What's the motivation for the user?
• What's the end result?
• What need are you "satisfying"?

You can find here the full version of Amal Dar Aziz's excellent Guide to Storyboarding.