One of the benefits of where I live is that I get to see both the River Ness from the rear of my house, and the end of Ness Islands. The Highland Council have recently taken to upgrade Ness Islands and make it a more attractive place to visit – for both tourists and residents.

I was, however, quite surprised to see a little truck parked near the end of Ness Islands earlier this week:

There is a cobblestoned area at the end, which I thought was going to be repaired (although the last time I visited Ness Islands everything seemed fine there). Still, I was pleased that the council was taking care of the place, and it’s always nice to see workers pottering about keeping things tidy.

But today, on top of the cobblestones is this:

A column with a twist in the middle, resting on the ground. Apparently, this is one of a series of commissions from local artists to create seating, bridge balustrades, a new landscaped meeting area and three gateway entrance features. I guess this is in the latter category – and when one uses the term ‘feature’ in this context, it means ‘not a bug’. It seems that we’re now getting the Windows Vista version of Ness Islands.

More about the art on the islands can be found here.

Those who regularly visit this blog – and I think there’s a least one of you – might ask why I’ve not posted recently. A simple answer: I’ve been too busy writing a Rails application with a SOAP interface to a PHP application, then wrestling with the stupid P3P protocol that only Internet Explorer seems to care about.

I’m okay now. Deep breaths.. Here are some tracks of the day for the past couple of days, nicely selected at random by iTunes:

• Speedy J: Pepper
• Ayria: Substance
• Courtney Love: The Plague
• Lush: Desire Lines
• Paul van Dyk: Nothing But You
• Stina Nordenstam: Little Star
• Cocteau Twins: Eperdu
• Cansei de Ser Sexy: Music Is My Hot Hot Sex
• Rosalie Deighton: Lie To Me
• Abraham: City For Us
• Moloko: Downsized

When Shopify launched earlier this year, it was the first to provide sellers with a serviced on-line store. That means no mucky software upgrades to perform. All of that is handled by the Shopify staff. In return they take a commission on the value of the sales.

But what is truly great about Shopify is its simplicity. It’s incredibly easy to customise, and whilst its feature set is limited compared to other shopping cart systems it should be sufficient for thousands of store owners.

But today I’ve had it with the Shopify community. Or more specifically feature requests. It’s time for people to ask themselves “do I really need this feature?” Constraints are a blessing to on-line stores. As more options and features are introduced to a store, it becomes more difficult to maintain – both for the developers and the store owners. Plus, if you provide a more complicated, feature-ridden, on-line store to shoppers, there will be less sales.

Adding more to Shopify reduces the value of Shopify. Instead it takes Shopify away from one of its niches and towards becoming a behemoth like Zen Cart, X-Cart or osCommerce. That would be a really bad move.

If you don’t believe me, read these:

• First Rule of Usability? Don’t Listen to Users
• Choices = Headaches
• The Paradox of Choice
• A serious point for ignoring users

We were talking with someone yesterday about the politics behind the issuing of newsletters: when you’re working in a political organisation publicly available information is seen as a measurable performance indicator. Often the quality of production of such information is more important than its content. Indeed, it’s often perceived that the value of an organisation is realised in the production of associated documentation. That’s because producing documents is easy, cheap and easily measurable.

The Highland Council is, by its nature, publicly accountable. Various organisations and committees are duty-bound to publish the results of their activities. Here’s a screenshot of the available minutes from the City of Inverness and Area Planning Applications Committee:

Spot the problem.

Jason Calacanis resigned from AOL yesterday, following the departure of AOL’s CEO Jonathan Miller. Jason’s company Weblogs Inc., was purchased by AOL last year, and he had continued to run it. Most recently, he’d taken over the management of Netscape, which was relaunched earlier this year.

Robert Scoble asks if there are other companies that might ‘land Jason’, but remarking that “if I were in his position I’d start something new”.

Too true. Working for someone else? Ugh. Be bold. Take risks. It’s the only way to live.