Check out his latest post. I'll discuss that soon. The previous three were ads and on the entire first page (which covers back to early november) only a few posts are actually worth reading and that's because the Yale talk is split into several. I know it's tacky to complain about free content so I'll stop. Instead I'll do what I planned from the start and discuss why I think Joel is becoming more irrelevant.

I have two possible theories. The first is that he's written so many great, amazing articles on software and software project management that he's covered everything he can. That's a possibility. I know that I don't have nearly the skill or knowledge to put out the body of work he has.

The other is a little more dire. That he's getting old and not realizing it. I only just clued into this one as I read his latest blog post.

First, he says nothing. He vaguely wanders in one direction before backtracking a little, then he turns around in a little circle and stays where he started with no statement being said, other than a quick jab at Google for hiring a lot of people. (The not-so-subtle subtext being that if you're hiring that many people they must suck.) It seems like the entire post was just a weak excuse to write that last paragraph. Getting into the bar code scan market is hardly a bad move for Google. Sure, "the world" may not have been ready for it before but now with Facebook that wants you to use your cell phone, Twitter, Sandy, and other web apps asking you to as well along with iPhones coming out and normal people starting to wander into the "mobile market", market pressure will eventually force telcos to release some of their stranglehold on pricing and hopefully soon we'll have the kind of mobile market japan enjoys. (And by then they'll be a decade ahead elsewhere and the techies here will still be envying them.)

And the Japanese buy things with their cell phone. They take photos of the bar codes and it charges their phone account the same way it could a credit card. Bar code / cell phone interaction isn't the future Joel it's the present. It's just not in North America yet. Google's trying to bring it here and I think that's good. No one wants to peck away at a long url, do Google searches to find products, etc. They want to take a photo of the bar code and have a web page with product reviews and customer comments appear immediately. A third party web site that they can trust, not the manufacturer or retail sales website. It would make buying a new tv or monitor or headphones any other expensiveish piece of equipment a lot easier and you wouldn't need to worry about being scammed by a salesman. And Google would serve you ads.