Arturo Calvo - Blog

Many people are experiencing mobile data shortage  or higher phone bills since Facebook decided to auto-play videos  on our walls  by default . If you have a 1Gb/month data allowance and every time you check your Facebook wall you play a couple of videos for 10 seconds, you'd better upgrade your data plan... or use this simple trick . You can disable the "auto-play" option or leave it enabled when you are connected to a Wi-Fi network following these instructions. ANDROID 1) Open your Facebook app and click on the menu button (top-right corner) 2) Go to App Settings 3) Click on Video Auto-play 4) Select the  Off or the Wi-fi only  option IOS 1)  Open your Facebook app and click on the menu button (top-right corner) 2)  Go to Settings 3)  Click on Videos and Photos 4)   Click on Auto-Play Videos 5)  Select the  Off  or the Wi-fi only  option DESKTOP 1)  Open Facebook on your favo...

A Linux version of Google Drive is still on the giant's to-do list , and many of us believe that it will never be released. The best alternative I could find is Grive , an unofficial open-source client developed by a former Google Drive developer. Combined with a package called  Grive-tools , which provides GUI support, it is all you need to have your files synchronized on your favorite operating system. Remember that Grive is an unofficial Google Drive client and installation is at your own risk. I followed these steps to have it running on Ubuntu 14.04 : 1) Click on the Start button and go to "Software & Updates" 2) On the "Other Software" tab, add the following source deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/thefanclub/grive-tools/ubuntu utopic main 3) Open a new terminal and type sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install grive-tools 4) Click on the Start button and go to "Grive-Setup" 5) Follow the setting up instructions That's...

Many times we tend to make premature decisions just because a generic process dictates to do so.  However, early decisions are hugely risky and often result in work that has to be thrown away. Similarly, if we delay the commitment beyond a limit ,  then decisions are made by default, which is generally not a good approach to making decisions.  That  limit is called the last responsible moment (LRM). Scrum process favors a strategy of keeping all our options open until the LRM, i.e.,  when  the cost of not making a decision becomes greater than the cost of making a decision . See this figure extracted from Essential Scrum . At the beginning of a development effort is when we have the highest levels of uncertainty. Scrum and Lean Startup processes help us to reduce all forms of uncertainty with validated learning , so that our knowledge about the process and the product grows over the time. According to the LRM principles, we are de...

The Pomodoro Technique is an efficient time management method that breaks down work into 25-minute intervals (called pomodori ) separated by 5-minute breaks in order to improve concentration and mental agility. During these pomodori, the user has to focus on a single task. You cannot check your emails, chat with your colleagues or answer the phone until the next break.  Every four pomodori you can have a long break (30 minutes). Let's be honest, we all have troubles managing our time . You are working on your code and suddenly you receive an email that makes you lose your focus. Not to mention if you have smartphone or Facebook dependency. Task switching is not efficient, having short breaks after a high-concentration pomodoro is. I have been using the Pomodoro Technique together with Scrum, where time tracking is not acceptable , but leveraging team members' performance is always welcome. The results are very positive.  My colleagues hesitated at first, but o...

The goal of User Experience Design is to enhance customer satisfaction by improving the interaction between the customer and the product. You can follow some best practices that normally lead to a better performance. However, this is not an exact science, and most founders would love to know how their customers are actually interacting with their product. When the product is web-based, there is a technique called Mouse Tracking  that records the mouse movements, clicks, scrolling and keys pressed when they are visiting your site. It's actually like being behind your customers when they are browsing your website . I have been trying out Mouseflow , one of the leading mouse tracking tools in the market. After signing up ( free plan with 100 recordings/month), I just had to add a few Javascript lines of code in my target page (index.html in arturocalvo.com ). The results are incredibly positive . I was able to see how dozens of users were interacting with my ...

I have been evaluating some cloud-based management tools for Scrum teams, with a special focus on tech startups with 10 employees. These are my thoughts. JIRA AGILE.   $20/mo. Free 7-day trial. PROS.  This is the most professional project management tool that I have ever tried. Especially adapted for Scrum or Kanban, Jira Agile will guide you through the process of creating your product backlog, launching your first sprint and getting relevant charts and reports. The dashboard looks pretty much like Trello, drag&drop driven with a nice look&feel. Limitless options for managers to set up the project, team and to get the most out of Scrum framework. Jira Agile has its own app store. Very easy to scale and combine with other Atlassian tools such as Confluence. CONS.  Perhaps it is too complex for a startup that just needs to launch experiments and make their MVPs evolve rapidly. Some features are not really relevant at this stage. Moderate learning curve for man...

Sometimes, when we are deploying an app to Google App Engine from Eclipse, something goes wrong (connection is lost, process is stuck,...) and the transaction is never completed. In those cases, when you try to redeploy, you normally get an error message: Conflict Another transaction by user XXX is already in progress All you have to do in order to undo the transaction and go back to the initial status is: 1) Open the command line on Windows 2) Navigate to the SDK bin  folder on Eclipse. It normally looks something like this: C:\Program Files\Eclipse\plugins\com.google.appengine.eclipse.sdkbundle_1.8.7\appengine-java-sdk-1.8.7\bin> 3) Type the following command, where the last parameter is the absolute path to the war folder of your GAE's project: appcfg rollback C:\Users\Arturo\workspace\Dialective\war 4) Use your Google App Engine credentials when requested. And that's it! --  arturocalvo.com   --