Had a great talk with a senior consultant @Lab. He told me about a group at a major bank that’s getting into Agile and loving it.

He recommended Jira and GreenHopper plug-in to manage the process.

JIRA combines issue tracking, agile project management, customizable workflow, and a pluggable integration framework to increase the velocity of your software development team.

Starter packs of 10 licenses are only $10, so you can’t lose.

This is an unsolicited endorsement.  I’m not making a penny off this, but if anyone wants to send me some, I’m OK with that too.

Hey everyone,

Early this morning, Grim and I had to take down all affiliate vendors, leaving only the vendors at our store in Shark active.  This is because of some Linden Lab bugs that we have no control over that cause security issues.  Recently, there has been a large increase in the number of blog posts from the more dubious parts of the Second Life community about how to scam any affiliate vendor, which would of course include ours.  We found out this morning that one of those holes was being exploited, which forced us to act immediately and without warning so that this person could no longer get any Petable products they wanted for free.

After looking at the many options available to us (including having only a small number of approved people able to own affiliate vendors or Grim and I having to place all affiliate vendors for people), we are deciding to work on a back-end monitoring system that will allow us to compare the products that people actually pay for contrasted with what has been given out.  Anyone who is discovered to be exploiting these Linden Lab bugs will be banned from owning affiliate vendors immediately.

We definitely regret having to take down the affiliate vendor system without any warning, but hope that you realize how crucial it was to do so.  Grim hopes to have the new affiliate vendors done by tomorrow, but it will depend on what other Linden Lab bugs he runs into in the process.  There is a way that you guys can help, though.  Linden Lab has a system called JIRA where you can vote for bugs and features to help them know what people care about.  Something that will fix these issues has been there since 2007, and has never been addressed by the Lindens.  If we can get a large influx of votes toward this issue, the Lindens will hopefully take notice and work on this issue.  Grim and I would ask that as many people as possible go to this ticket and vote for it.  To do so, you have to log in with your Second Life account (it is a page on secondlife.com, so it is safe), and then click the Vote link.

Thanks for your help and your patience as we work on this tracking system.  We will have the new version out as soon as possible.  While the affiliate system is down, food and all other products can still be purchased at our main store in Shark.

A beta version of the next Confluence release is out. And guess what — it’s got gadgets. This is pretty cool, so I’m jumping the gun and telling you about it right now.

It’s still just a beta release: Confluence 3.1 Open Beta. The announcement is on the Atlassian News Blog, along with an invitation to try it out. So I got myself a copy and put some gadgets onto a wiki page.

Now, the gadgets I chose are perhaps not the most useful. The most usual business case would be to add gadgets published by other Atlassian applications. For example, you might want to add a gadget that displays some information from another Confluence site or from  JIRA, Bamboo, FishEye or Crucible. (Those are other applications developed by Atlassian, the company I work for.)

But for me, the fun bit is that I can add the gadget that I created and blogged about 8 months ago.

The same 2 gadgets in 3 different applications

Here’s a screenshot of a Confluence wiki page with two gadgets. One is mine, displaying an up-to-date list of recent blog posts about technical writing from WordPress.com. The other gadget was created by Donna, our support diva, showing recent entries in a Jive discussion forum. (Click the image to enlarge it.)

Gadgets on Confluence wiki pages - oh, and in JIRA and iGoogle

Here are the same two gadgets on my iGoogle page:

Gadgets on Confluence wiki pages - oh, and in JIRA and iGoogle

And here they are in JIRA:

Gadgets on Confluence wiki pages - oh, and in JIRA and iGoogle

How do you add a gadget to a Confluence page?

Your Confluence page can display two types of gadgets:

• Internal — These are gadgets published by the same Confluence site as where they are displayed. Typically such a gadget would display information sourced from the Confluence site, such as an activity stream or a search function.
• External — These are gadgets published by another Confluence site, or a JIRA site, or even something totally different like Remember the Milk, a hamster in a wheel or a pet monkey.

If your gadget is external, the Confluence administrator needs to add the gadget to the list of available gadgets before you can add it to your Confluence page. This needs to happen only once for each gadget.

To make an external gadget available in your Confluence site:

1. Log in as a Confluence administrator.
2. Go to ‘Confluence Admin‘ and click ‘External Gadgets‘ in the left-hand navigation panel.
3. Paste the URL of your gadget into the field labelled ‘Gadget Specification URL‘. The URL should point to the XML file that describes the gadget.

For example, take a look at the URLs for the two gadgets in my screenshots above. The URL for the WordPress gadget is:

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/117695765658379330528/
WordPress-dot-comRSSFeed.xml

And the URL for the Jive forums gadget is:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/download/attachments/203394872/forums.xml

Friendly warning: I’m just using my gadget as an example here. It’s a total hack, so please don’t insert it into any Confluence sites that matter! You’ll get all sorts of weird display problems, plus potential security issues too.

To add a gadget (external or internal) to a Confluence page:

1. Create a new page or edit an existing page.
2. Put your cursor in the edit box where you want the gadget displayed.
3. Click the ‘Insert/Edit Macro‘ icon  in the toolbar.
4. You’ll see the ‘Select Macro’ popup window. Enter some text into the search box at top right, to find the gadget you want.
   
5. Click the gadget you want. You’ll see a preview of the gadget. Most gadgets also offer you some options to configure the gadget, such as width of the display, background colour, etc.
   
6. Change the settings if you like, then click ‘Insert‘.
7. Save the Confluence page.

Extra authorisation step (OAuth)

Some gadgets require extra authorisation, to reassure the publishing server that it’s OK to send its data to the server where the gadget is displayed. Gadgets use an authorisation protocol called OAuth. There are two parts to the authorisation, one performed by the administrator and one by the person adding the gadget to or viewing the gadget on the page.

1. The administrator needs to set up the OAuth relationship between the gadget publishing server (called the provider) and the displaying server (called the consumer). This authorisation step needs to happen only once for each site. Once you’ve authorised one server to send information to another server, then you can add multiple gadgets from that server. For example, let’s say you want to display JIRA gadgets on a Confluence page. Your JIRA server needs to trust your Confluence server. So you’ll need to add Confluence as an OAuth consumer in JIRA. To do this, you will give JIRA the URL of your Confluence server. The instructions are in the JIRA documentation.
2. When you add a gadget to a page, you will need to authorise the display of information under the authority of your user ID. Similarly, every user who views the page will need to authorise the display of the information under their user ID.  The authorisation lasts for a while (a week or so, unless you revoke it). The gadget will display a ‘Log In and Approve‘ button. When you click the button, you will go to the login page of the site concerned. Log in and then approve the gadget’s access to the server’s information. Now you’ll see the gadget information displayed. There’s a full write-up in the Gadgets documentation.

Phew, I’m glad we’ve got that out of the way!

Would you like to try it yourself?

The Confluence 3.1 beta release is out, so you can hack away. If you’re very brave, you could even write your own gadget and put it on a Confluence page!

Dentro de las herramientas de seguimiento de errores existe un amplio abanico que va desde las más simples, o más centradas en su funcionalidad original, como Bugzilla o Mantis (ambos OpenSource), hasta las más evolucionadas como Redmine (OpenSource), JIRA o FogBugz (ambos comerciales), que complementan su funcionalidad original de seguimiento de errores con un conjunto de funcionalidades adicionales, que les permiten saltar un nivel y convertirse en herramientas con las que poder efectuar el control y la gestión de un proyecto.

TRAC (OpenSource) es originalmente un sistema de seguimiento de issues, esto es importante porque se posiciona no como un sistema orientado principalmente a la gestión de bugs, como Bugzilla o Mantis (aunque luego hagan más cosas), sino que busca ofrecer los mecanismos básicos para poder efectuar la gestión de un proyecto, y en este sentido se aproxima a lo ofrecido por JIRA o FogBugz.

TRAC es flexible, no impone ninguna metodología, simplemente ofrece un conjunto de herramientas para que se puedan hacer las cosas, algunas de estas herramientas son:

• Sistema completo de gestión de Tickets, que permiten establecer y asignar las funcionalidades que se desarrollarán en el proceso (nuevas características, errores, tareas…)
• Wiki, como repositorio común de información/documentación para el proyecto (estructura del proyecto, dónde están los servidores, cómo configurar los entornos, guías de estilo y codificación…tooodooo)
• Integración con el sistema de control de versiones (Subversion y Git…entre otros)
• Roadmap, o calendario de versiones, que permite ver el grado de avance y cuándo se preve que sean liberadas las nuevas funcionalidades
• Timeline, o lugar en el que se registran y se pueden revisar todas las operaciones realizadas en el proyecto desde el cambio en una página del wiki hasta el último commit en el repositorio de código.
• RSS como mecanismo de seguimiento en casi todos los módulos de TRAC
• … otras muchas…

Solamente con estas características sería una herramienta interesante ya que ofrece varias cosas importantes en un proyecto:

• Medio de comunicación con el cliente, en todo momento puede ver la marcha del proyecto.
• Punto común de recogida del conocimiento asociado al proyecto.
• Información al momento de la situación del proyecto en cada momento.

Pero lo que caracteriza y diferencia fundamentalmente a TRAC del resto es su sistema de plugins, o mecanismo que permite extender TRAC todo lo que permita la imaginación y lo convierte casi-casi en una plataforma, y el soporte de la comunidad al mismo. Una lista completa de los pulgins disponibles para TRAC puede encontrarse en Trac Hacks, y una lista un poco más corta:

Gestión de usuarios

• Administración de cuentas (AccountManagerPlugin)
• Autenticación HTTP (HttpAuthPlugin)
• Integración con Active Directory (ActiveDirectoryAuthPlugin)
• Integración con CAS (TracCasPlugin)

Integración de la administración con Subversion

• Integración de administración con SVN (SvnAuthzAdminPlugin y TracSvnAuthzPlugin)

Extensión del sistema de Tickets

• Gestión de campos personalizados (TracCustomFieldAdminPlugin)
• Gestión de workflows para tickets (WorkflowEditorPlugin y Workflows personalizados)
• Dependencias entre tickets (MasterTicketsPlugin)
• Soporte para la estimación de horas en tickets (TracHoursPlugin, TimingAndEstimationPlugin, EstimationToolsPlugin y SchedulingToolsPlugin)

Integración con otros sistemas y extensiones

• Integración con Hudson (HudsonTracIntegrationPlugin)
• Integración con Git (GitPluginForTrac)
• Integración con Agilo-SCRUM (AgiloForScrumPlugin)

Otros

• Gestión de parámetros de inicialización de TRAC (IniAdminPlugin)
• Personalización del Timeline (TimelineCheckinFilterPlugin y TimelineUserFilterPlugin)
• Sistema de Tags (TagsPlugin)

Interoperabilidad

De todos los plugins existentes para TRAC el más interesante de todos es el XML-RPC Plugin porque expone al exterior toda la funcionalidad de un servidor TRAC para que pueda integrarse con cualquier lenguaje y para cualquier cosa. Por ejemplo se podría:

• Construir un sistema simplificado para la entrada de tickets-bugs solamente con los datos estrictamente necesarios.
• Realizar la alimentación inicial de issues en un proyecto a partir de un MS Project
• Generar la descripción inicial de tareas a partir de una definición funcional decente
• …

y todo ello en el lenguaje y la forma (desktop, web…) que mejor nos venga. Espero poder terminar en breve TRACdrops, y poder disponer de TRAC desde Java con toda su potencia de una forma simple…

Think of this as being environmentally conscious in regards too the Second Life Grid.

One of the biggest problems I’ve learned with the lag issue are users wearing objects that are loaded with heavy scripts that aren’t really needed anymore; notably resizing scripts.  Prim hair, prim skirts, shoes, body part attachments (like boobs and penises), and so on use scripts that are using initially, and then never used again.

The issue is being tracked on JIRA, SVC-3895 so please VOTE!

Sure, these scripts help users who aren’t really keen on how to build and edit things, and it’s a necessary evil for items you get that are ‘no modify.’  But once you have your item all properly re-sized and set up, you don’t use the re-sizer script anymore, but it’s still sitting there (often the script exists in EVERY PRIM in the object you’re wearing, which compounds the problem) and it’s still running taking up resources from the region you’re hanging out in.

I also find these re-sizing scripts annoying since if you happen to accidentally click that object you’re wearing (especially hair, prim skirts, or your boobs) you have to deal with the stupid menu that appears, and then see a useless time out message about 30 seconds later telling you that your time us up.

So please, be consciously aware of simulator lag issues, and to help save the grid, GO NAKED!  Don’t wear items that have these scripts that bog the sim down. If at all possible, try to REMOVE the offending scripts once you have it altered to how you need it, since you really don’t need the script anymore once you have it properly set up for your avatar. Even if the object is (no modify) it still may be possible to remove the scripts.  So as long as your object is copyable (or you still have the original box you unpacked with the original copy still in it) you should try to lighten the load you cause on the simulator by removing excess scripts you’re not using.

Also STOP WEARING SPAMY OBJECTS.  I swear to gawd this is my biggest pet peeve.  Why is it that 90% of all the items people wear, have to {llSay(@#!$@#$!$#)} some meaningless stupid inept bullshit no matter now mundane and pointless the action is?  I really don’t need to know that someone is touching your boobs (or has touched anything), or has spanked your ass, or even the really mundane bullshit like how someone is sitting on the sofa.

It is extremely asinine to see this crap because so many content creators for some FUCKING reason believe this is needed; when most people on SL already know how to read and write, and they CAN roleplay/emote/cybersex/netsex on their own… you’d THINK. But all this crap really does is ADD TO THE LAG to the simulator you’re hanging out in.  Then we have those ridiculous language translators which fall into the same category.  It’s annoying and it just adds to the lag.

I also recommend using Emerald Viewer to help ligten your lag-footprint on the grid. Emerald has a lot of built-in functions that make many scripted objects people wear obsolete.  Such as radar HUD attachments, Emerald’s Radar if fucking AWSOME!  Also Emerald has recently added an Animation Overrider (AO) so you really no longer NEED to have an AO attachment anymore.

Less scripts running on your avatar, them smaller footprint you load on the simulator you’re in, the less LAG you incur on the simulator, and the grid at large.

One of the things I did recently was to take even my nude avatar lookset, and removed exesses prims and scripts I just don’t need if I’m not really using them, and still preserve my hot avatar’s appearance.  I even took my new penis, removed all the scripts in it, and removed all the extra prims off leaving only the “soft” sculpted shape and the penis head, plus I don’t bother wearing the HUD for my penis if I’m don’t plan on using it, but just show off.  So if I do plan on using my penis, I’ll just wear the full functional one if I’m going to dance on the poles, or if I get hired.  Otherwise there’s no point in me wearing the full functional penis if I don’t plan on doing anything with it, other than to have it hang between my legs all day.  Makes sense dosen’t it?

Back in July, I was lamenting that I missed Atlassian’s Stimulus Package. It’s back (thanks Brian!) and with a vengeance: their Starter “program” provides $10 licenses for full blown Atlassian awesomeness (JIRA, Confluence, Crowd, Bamboo, FishEye and GreenHopper), and you can also purchase support. Additionally, JIRA 4 is out.

OpenSocial will be integrated in issue management tool Jira 4.0 released by Atlassian tomorrow; http://j.mp/1vhnWL

Often the problem in development projects, especially those that involve many people and parties, is that a lot of the information and knowledge about current discussions and decisions is merely captured in emails. Emails, however, are merely chronological and often contain many strings of thought. New thoughts are copied into new emails with new mailing lists. Parallel communication takes place with different people. In the end, the aggregation of the insights is nearly impossible and individual employees need to be assigned to collecting and documenting this information again. This is clearly inefficient.

The advantage of Google Wave is that multiple people can work on one Wave about a single topic and do not need to order their discussion in chronological order. Additionally, a clear change history can be used to track changes – and more transparent than with emails. Another point is that the information is centrally hosted for everyone to see and edit. It’s not concealed in individual mailboxes.

These advantages can also be found in JIRA, an issue tracker I am currently working with again. While Google Wave is not available yet and will be mainly focused on non-business use, the advantages described above can already now be used with tools such as JIRA.

I do not want to be unfair to the brilliant work of the Google Wave developers. It’s preview promises far more: real-time collaboration, inclusion of maps, editable in real-time, a great user interface with a people-centered approach and much more. But at the same time it will not have workflows included – it is not designed as an issue tracker.

I would hope that the JIRA developers and the community around it takes notice of the great stuff Google is doing and takes some inspiration for their own roadmap. This would ease project and knowledge management greatly.

For more info on Google Wave you should really watch this video:

After a couple of days of running into dead ends, I am finally able to drive JIRA via its SOAP interface sanely from something other than Java in an effort to automate small, repetitive tasks that are best left to tools. Without going into the details of what is it that I needed to get accomplished (which is not the key point of this post), I wanted to share a bit of the experience before I close shop for the day.

First, check out Igor Sereda’s presentation on JIRA Client, which offers many insights on general client-side JIRA programming. Second, have the JiraSoapService javadoc handy. Given the usual needs I deal with, I use Python quite a bit, which has served me very well for nearly the last 10 years, and it’s the workhorse of my tool development. But in this case, I ran into problems at almost every turn: SOAPpy cannot deal with dates, and ZSI ran into some issues as well. So I went to Ruby and jira4r (navigator, source). Amazingly elegant, it hides all the SOAP stuff from view, producing ridiculously compact code, and so far, working flawlessly.

Martin always knew I would end up diving into Ruby

Update: check out soapUI (download).

Atlassian is currently running a promotion for JIRA 4.0 for users to trade in their bug tracker for a free version of JIRA 4.0 (10-user licenses)

Beside keeping track of bugs and change requests, JIRA can also be used for

• Project Management – Track, allocate and report on project tasks with real-time statistics
• Technical Support /Helpdesk – Escalate cases, monitor response statistics and manage team workload.
• Agile Development – Estimate, allocate and track your iterations.

For those that haven’t tried using JIRA, here’s a good opportunity to try out the full enterprise edition of JIRA with no cost!

For those are using JIRA, you might want to share this information to your colleagues who are still using Excel worksheets, Bugzilla or other tools to track issues.

Here’s 10 more good reasons why you want to consider this attractive offer now.

For more details on this promotion, you may check out Atlassian’s website.

And here’s a quick preview on the new features to be launched in JIRA 4.0

The post The Tool is the Method generated a lively discussion. Whether you agree or disagree with the post, you are likely to find the experience reported by Rod McLaren in Jira, Greenhopper, Lighthouse: tools vs practice in Scrum of interest. Here is an excerpt from Rod’s post:

Our biggest problem with Jira/Greenhopper was that it isn’t as well-aligned to our developing practice of scrum as we needed it to be. The tool got in the way of our learning the practice, and started behaviourally skewing our view of scrum (‘The chosen tool becomes a factor of the first order in determining not “only” how Agile (or any other software method) will be practiced, but what mindset will evolve in the course of the rollout’). We were trying to fit scrum to the tool we had, and were talking more about how to use the tool well than we were about whether the sprint was going well.

I don’t know that the debate tool v. method could or should be resolved here. Absent resolution, the perspective on the subject Annie Shum expressed in Tools, Behavior, Culture is quite a good one to keep in mind:

In thinking about tools in the context of impacting large scale cultural changes, one can’t help but immediately think about the computer/digital computing.  By all definitions, a computer is a tool – in fact, I would venture to characterize a computer as a “universal tool” that can, in theory, perform almost any task.  Moreover, I can’t think of any other tool that can surpass the computer and digital computing as the most disruptive transformation agents of our society and cultural shifts in the 21st Century.

Jowell & Randy, llegaron por primera vez

a Mexico, donde fueron recibidos por cientos de fanaticos

conglomerados en el aereopuerto Benito Juarez de

la ciudad capital de Mexico.

El duo se encuentra en Mexico

como parte de su primera gira de promocion

con motivo de la salida de su nuevo album “El Momento”

-”No nos esperabamos esto,

de veras que es nuestra primera ves aqui y no sabiamos que

iba a ser tan grande este recibimiento”

Comento Jowell sorprendido a la llegada al aereopuerto mexicano.

permaceceran en el pais por una semana

en donde haran 4 shows en las ciudades del DF y Veracruz.

Vielleicht hat es der ein oder andere schon bemerkt, ich habe mich heute damit rumärgern müssen:

Im Internet Explorer 8 ist es nicht möglich Modale Panels (<rich:modalPanel…/>) zu schließen. Der Fehler, der angezeigt wird, meldet ui.pack.js sei nicht implementiert.

Ein entsprechender JIRA-Artikel wurde angelegt: https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/RF-6437

Also, solltet ihr auf den Fehler treffen: Ihr habt ihn nicht verursacht oder einen Fehler gemacht…