November 2007 - Posts

• “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold”

  This phrase, from a Yates poem titled “The Second Coming”, I constantly find running through my mind.  The poem is included at the bottom of this post for those that haven’t read it.  While the poem is basically about the end of the Christian era and Armageddon; I feel that this single phrase applies to many aspects of life in general. Being a software developer can be a bit frustrating when your software has to integrate with many services that you have no control over.  We all want to build our systems to be 100% robust and reliable but this goal is, unfortunately, unattainable.  We can however do our best to make sure we have the following items in place to support our users: 1>   A strong understanding that users want a product that “just works” and won’t tolerate a product that makes life more difficult. 2>   Knowledge that we can’t make everybody happy all of time, but the passion to try to do so anyway. 3>   A simple and effective means of communicating with users. I’ve worked for many companies in my career, some large and some small.  Working at Fuser has been great for many reasons but one in particular stands out for me.  In my experience it is very rare for a company to recognize when a software product has deficiencies and to take the time to actually correct them.  Over a period of time software decays just like everything else.  You add new functionality, make tweaks to improve existing functionality and eventually the code starts to become a tangled mess no matter how hard you try to avoid it.  Most companies will simply ignore the issue no matter how loud the development staff screams.  I think this happens because people that aren’t developers tend to think of software development as a very linear process, like adding a list of numbers. They simply can’t understand why money/time should be spent changing code that works. The reality is software development is very much a creative and organic process.  The code base for a product literally grows and morphs over time much like branches of a tree.  Trees need to be trimmed of dead and tangled branches to remain healthy and the same is true of software.  Luckily, the folks at Fuser understand this and we occasionally go into the code and make changes. Sometimes we remove pieces that are no longer needed, other times we restructure large areas to keep them running at peak performance.  The impact of this practice, on the product, is incredible.  We are allowed to spend most of our time improving the product instead of trying to work around issues caused by a decaying code base. “The Second Coming” Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? - William Butler Yeats, January 1919  Posted Nov 20 2007, 09:18 PM by zparticle with no comments

• Fuser Halloween Party

  We had a fantastic Halloween at Fuser with a decorated office, eerie food and fantastic costumes.     Betsy:   Eric:     Jeff:     Jenny Lynne:    Kevin: Lindsey:    Payal:     Roque:   Sonia:     Zach:   Posted Nov 12 2007, 04:27 PM by Emily with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Betsy, Payal, Eric, Zach, Jeff, Jenny Lynne, Fuser Team, Kevin, Halloween, Roque, Lindsey, Sonia

• Fuser is now faster, better and more fun than ever.

  Ever since we released Fuser we have received tons of great feedback from our users.  Whether you had ideas on how things could be improved, what additional services we should support or just wanted to let us know you thought Fuser rocked, we’ve been excited and grateful to hear from you.  Thanks for helping us make Fuser an awesome product!   Since our last release in September, we’ve been focused on improving Fuser’s speed.  While we’ve got more work to do, we’ve made big strides already and our latest version is now live so you can see how we’ve done.  You won’t see big changes in Fuser’s look, but you should experience a lot more zip in Fuser’s feel. Even though we’ve focused most of our efforts of speed, we also wanted to add support for some of the services our users have requested most.  You can now add your .mac, Juno and Earthlink accounts to Fuser!    So check it out!  Log into www.fuser.com with the Fuser ID and password you’ve already created. As always, we are listening.  Let us know what you want to see in Fuser or how Fuser could improve.  Interact with the community on the forums, comment on the blog and send us email, we love hearing from you!   Posted Nov 08 2007, 07:43 PM by Emily with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Releases

• Halloween Teaser

  We're still waiting on the pictures of all of Fuser at the Halloween party, but while we're waiting, here's the only picture I have from the Halloween Party:   Any guesses?  Posted Nov 06 2007, 05:51 PM by Emily with no comments Filed under: Halloween