A Documentation Cautionary Tale.

Heroku, a platform as a service (PAAS) cloud service provider, was caught with documentation that described software that subscribers weren't getting.

In this documentation bait-and-switch, Heroku's documented a technology that they'd removed from their product because it didn't scale with their increasing customer base.

Eventually, they had to admit that their documentation was about 2 years out of date, which they chalked up to "focus on new products". They burned their own clients, and their potential future clients, by showing themselves to be untrustworthy.

There is a warning there: documentation is a type of advertising. It had better describe what customers are paying for!

How does the brain process language?

I like Lifehacker. It, like anything, can be hit and miss. Today, though, they hit gold with this excellent article about how the human mind understands language.

Some cool takeaways: the 5 most persuasive words in the English language, the secret to effective questions that will produce useful answers, and the psychological impact of "is".

Check it out!