Scratch

Jose Jesus Perez Aguinaga and his commenters turn a browser window into a notepad.

ᔥ Jon Mitchell

When maintainability and reuse just don't matter

Andrew Binstock reports on a agile software development project with the ultimate timebox: the re-election of Barack Obama.

To sort through the massed tangle of conflicting requirements and desiderata, the team did the Agile thing: It put Post-It notes on a wall and called back the users to identify features that fit these criteria. Did the feature contribute directly to getting the president reelected? And would it be needed in 12 weeks...?

But still cute

Aaron Souppouris gets a quick look at the XO-4 convertible at CES. Dan Lyons isn't impressed.

We now have an actual hundred-dollar computer. Loads of them, in fact. They're called smartphones and tablets. Many can be had for well under a hundred dollars.

This is more than can be said for the XO machine, which even now, eight years after [Nicholas] Negroponte first dreamed up the idea, still costs a lot more than a hundred bucks.

That's right. Nearly a decade into this they still can't hit their original price point.