When I wrote about the Broken Window Fallacy in Software Development a while back, it appears that there were a number of misunderstandings.

• First, there is a fundamental difference between the economic Broken Window Fallacy and the "ghetto-ization" that comes along with the sociological/psychological aspects of the Broken Windows Phenomenon. I've already covered that difference.
• Second - and much more importantly - that doesn't mean you should never rebuild something!

I simply believe that you should be selective in your choices.. Every day you spend rebuilding something that works is one day that your competition has to catch up or get ahead.

That said, there are a number of times where rebuilding might make sense... but consider it carefully. Before you do anything else, just STOP. Don't go any farther until you ask yourself one question: "What's the goal here?"

It seems like this question is being kicked around more and more lately. If you're active online at all, you've seen people talk about it. If you've been to any web conferences, you've heard people talk about it. If you're in any type of social media, you've caught everything you might want to know. It seems like every group, organization, and everyone who dreams of social media success is asking...

So... is Facebook good for your business?

Probably not.

Not the answer you expected huh? You thought that as a PHP developer active in the space, a connector who's happily introducing friends and colleagues, and someone who's neck deep in social media would say the exact opposite.... well, not quite.

There are many scenarios and business for which a Facebook Application just doesn't make sense. For example, if you run a neighborhood bar with a group of local regulars, having a one doesn't make much sense. If you run a basic news site or blog, syndicating your content to Facebook doesn't require your own app. Don't waste your time.

Maybe it's a part of the DC culture or maybe it's the overall direction that things are going - I don't know - what I do know is that there's one question that seems to be coming up repeatedly in a variety of circles:

How can we use technology for good?

Personally, I consider that there are two different "goods" out there:

First, there are the Little Goods. Helping out a friend, meeting a customer's needs, and holding a door for someone are all little things that just about anyone can do to make things better for someone. If you do them enough, I think you can change the world one person at a time.

But on a different level, there are Big Goods. These are things that require action from larger groups of people and they affect larger groups of people. The outpouring of support for the US after 9-11, the huge amount of private contributions to accountable organizations to help other people, and just about every blood drive I've ever seen.

Almost a month ago, my highly esteemed former colleague and the dotProject tech lead Adam Donnison asked an interesting question on his blog:

I'm often amused at the store people put in statistics. Forum post counts, bug counts, code commits, even lines of code are often touted as being indicative of some worth. The trouble is they are all very misleading. And what does it mean anyway?

When you're involved in a project of any size - Open Source or not - it's a question you have to consider. There are literally dozens of hundreds of articles on different ways of measuring someone's contributions:

Lines of code might work... but are you rewarding overly verbose or inefficient code?

Number of commits might work... but a single changeset could be a spelling fix or a small piece of functionality or an entirely new module.

Number of forum/mailing list posts... but being friendly or even unhelpful (or being in a flamewar) can skew this number without adding real value.

I generally don't use this space to get quite this personal, but after an enlightening conversation yesterday and this being Christmas Eve, I figured "why not?"

In a gross overgeneralization, one of the problems with an engineer mindset like mine is that we tend to follow formulas. We learn early on that formulas work, they're predictable, and we know how to interact with them. While I consider my ability to improve to be one of my most valuable talents, I find myself falling into formulas now and then in my personal life, but hadn't thought about it much in my professional life. So the conversation yesterday struck me. Here's the other half (and the important part) of the conversation:

I realized that when I give you specifics you stick to them

it's best to not give you specifics have you figure it our and let you have the room to explore and be creative

I need you on your toes

well...being a leader is finding what's best for those around you, although it might for a little while be tougher on you and on them

you are welcome...and it's what's best for all of us. I have to know that you can make the best decisions in my absence based on you not on just on what I would do or the guidelines provided...that's how the right decisions will be made

In the past few weeks, I've seen a ridiculous amount of resumes. From friends, contacts, job applicants, and lots of other people in between and almost without exception - and I mean this with the best heart possible - they suck.

Some are misleading and/or false.  I know someone who lists his college experience starting from when he were accepted and ending when he failed out.  Conveniently enough, this is four years... while it's not an outright lie, it certainly does imply that he has a degree.

No, I'm talking about the quality of the resume itself.  While I'm not a resume pro, I've been interviewing more and more candidates in the past few years and I know what annoys and appeals me.

First, read your resume.  Does it make sense?  Is there anything that makes you stop and re-read the line to understand it?  If so, re-write it.  Clarity never hurts.

Next, what about the grammar and spelling?  Are your verb tenses correct?  I'd wager that almost everything on your resume happened in the past.  ;)  Have you run it through a spell checker?  I expect a few spelling errors on blogs just due to their transitory and time-sensitive nature.  Your resume is not the same.

I admit it, I'm spoiled...

I've been using Firebug for I don't know how long but at BarCampDC this year, my eyes were really opened. That's when Russell Heimlich taught us that Firebug could be used for far more than just inspection... it could be used to live-edit the css and html of a page and see the results in realtime. Since I've picked this up, the previous edit, save, reload, groan, repeat is gone! It has become stunningly simple to edit a site, figure out the proper spacing and alignment, copy, paste, validate, done! It's been such a wonderful and effective solution that just works.

Well, almost... because then there's Internet Explorer.

IE7 works about what you'd expect and tends to behave. Other than a few issues with alignment, it honestly isn't too bad. My only criticism is that Microsoft took so long to get it out.