The MOUSE Squad Wire

There are all sorts of explanations out there about how to make the most of “Web 2.0″ technologies. One of the most exciting developments on the Web is the ability to have information from websites come to you instead of you going out to websites to see what’s new. I use Google Reader to keep track of about 40 websites–not just the sites themselves, but sections that interest me. For example, I get headlines about Education from the New York Times, eSchool News, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy and my tech news from the Unofficial Apple Weblog and the Official Google Blog. My point? It’s like your own personal daily newspaper–but better, because from within a single website, I can email things to friends, save clippings and post to my own weblog. Here’s a great video on how to set things up. Are you using RSS? A fan? Afraid? Sound off in the comments, oh and of course, you should subscribe to the Wire’s feed.

It’s mostly been behind the scenes, but we’re working on new features for MOUSE Squad eLearning. We have several people working on the website–which creates a problem–what if folks are working on the same file? What if someone adds a new section while I’m working on another section? How do we make sure that the project stays in sync?

The answer is: version control–software that keeps track of files, changes and different releases of the project that we’re working on. You probably wouldn’t want to work in a word processing program without an undo button and version control is to a web development project what the undo button is to Microsoft Word. Version control makes collaboration much easier–even possible.

Though we still have a ways to go, we can cross one more item off of The Joel Test. We’re using CVS for source control. We have lightweight specs in our wiki, and are working out a better process for builds.

If you’re thinking about a career in computer programming, or work on websites, version control is a term you’ll want to have in your vocabulary. What other terms would you like to learn? Let us know–we’ll write a “So what’s with?”