He forgot the actual blockers. Potential ones are good but what about the ones that you are currently facing. To me, that's the most important part of the scrum. If your 15 minute standup is, for some reason, shortened to 5, cut the rest out and go with what people are blocked on.

Blog it and tell him to subscribe to your blog if he wants daily updates. That way, you're only spamming the ones who wish to be spammed.

In an ideal world, maybe a worker would just be able to crank out code and never, ever poke their head out of the office.

But this is reality.

In reality-land, your #1 job is *always* communication, because the man/woman who doesn't communicate will be the first to go at layoff time.

You'll get a lot further in your career if you control expectations of your deliverables, then deliver what you said you would deliver (or hopefully, more) along with a good presentation/demo, and then remind them again of what you've delivered come performance review time. All of that means documenting your efforts.

I make it a habit to write out specific stories and draw low-res mockups of what software I intend to deliver before I deliver it. Then, I make sure that I can tell a story with my software, featuring named roles ("Mary is the supply chain manager, she wants to see which supplier is best at delivering nailguns"). I present it to my management and also provide a Camtasia recorded demonstration so that they can take it forward. Finally, I make sure that my own performance review notes include pointers to these demonstrations which I keep out on my internal blog page.

It's worked well enough that a lot of others in my department are following suit and has consistently ensured very good performance rankings year after year. You don't have to be the best presenter to do this either. You just need to be able to follow and read back your story.

Step 1. Become Godlike ....

This points to a discoverability problem, something that just about every Microsoft product, including Windows 8 suffers from.

Too much stuff is hidden below seventeen layers of menu or worse, particularly in Windows 8, forces you to move your mouse to some magic corner of the screen to access. It's a huge time waster for beginners. Trying to figure this out on your own is a pain, particularly for people on a tight deadline.

RTFM or take the expensive community college class to learn how to use software efficiently is not an answer in 2013. Consumer software has to be as discoverable as the idiot simple iPhone is (well, was, but that's a rant for another day). That's where the bar is now, like it or not.

....except for people who would consider buying a new version of it.

Fact is, it is too damned expensive and there are cheaper, actually free versions of stuff that do the same thing.

Word processors/ spreadsheet makers/presentation makers are commodities now. Honestly, I've been using LibreOffice for 4 years now for my office presentations where "everything has to be in Office format" and no one notices so long as I actually save the documents in Office format. Even Google is getting into the act now that they bought Quickoffice.

Yes, it's a decent enough product, but really MS should just give it away at this point. The days of people paying a premium for Office are over.

Well there's Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer's mom, and Bill Gates' mom.......and that's about it.

So, Microsoft's been scroogling us all along. Funny how these things work out.

This is Microsoft's huge problem. It's like the have complete idiots in their marketing department.

"I know, let's call the THIRD generation of our XBox product, the ONE!"

"Let's brand two completely different platforms (three actually) under the Surface name!"

"Let's have Programs and Apps kinda be the same, but different."

So much facepalm lately for MS.

Apple is generally very good about reacting to bad press. Witness the stolen clock image and how quickly they settled up with the company they stole it from.

I'm betting that they pedal backward on this too and eventually release as a single season. I give it about 2 weeks.

Same here. I use Kindle's Lending library quite a bit. The other thing this is competing against is just plain public library lending through Overdrive.

One of the best kept secrets in New York is that all residents of New York *State* can get a New York City Public Library Card. http://nypl.org/
NYPL has one of the richest ebooks collection for lending around. Works great through Overdrive with Kindle.

$10/month is too steep. I would reconsider if the price came down to a yearly subscription of $50.

Bullshit. We don't think about the cloud by name, but I can guarantee you that people who have their life in either Apple, Microsoft or Google's cloud service definitely give thought to which phone will be easier to use given that their stuff is there. I know I certainly did, as did other members of my family. In fact, it was a deciding factor in most cases, particularly among people who are buying 2nd and 3rd smartphones.

The game now isn't the devices, it's the cloud. Google v. iCloud v. Microsoft Outlook+XBox+whatever else. These days, the device is just your entry point into your cloud of choice. One of the missing pieces I see is book content. Microsoft already made an investment in Barnes and Noble. Today, Amazon announced the MatchBook program which provides either a free or $1 e-book for certain Amazon physical book purchases made as far back as 1995.

This has to sting an already reeling Barnes & Noble. I'm wondering if Microsoft is going to white knight them as well and add another piece to their cloud puzzle?

If you have Android, Tasker works great for this sort of thing. Simply set it up to trigger a profile based on your GPS location.

Parsing please.......

Is this "Google Now" serving 25%......or "Google" now serving 25%.