TECHNOLOGY: update your web pages quickly

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/07/eleven-lessons-.html

Eleven lessons learned about blogging, so far
* Marc Andreessen
* Jul 10, 2007

***Begin Quote***

Fifth, writing a blog is way easier than writing a magazine article, a published paper, or a book — but provides many of the same benefits.

I think it’s an application of the 80/20 rule — for 20% of the effort (writing a blog post but not editing and refining it the quality level required of a magazine article, a published paper, or a book), you get 80% of the benefit (your thoughts are made available to interested people very broadly).

Arguably blogging is better because the distribution of a blog can be even broader than a magazine article, a published paper, or a book, at least in cases where the article/paper/book is restricted by a publisher to a limited readership base.

This of course assumes that you’re not trying to make a living writing magazine articles or books, or you’re not trying to get tenure as a professor by publishing peer-reviewed research papers.

***End Quote***

Clearly, a blog is a light weight way to update your web pages quickly. Stale content on a web page is the kiss of death. Blogs are really nothing more than a web page with content rolling out like “toilet paper”. (A deliberately chosen metaphor.)

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TECHNOLOGY: More on Seattle taxpayers

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

CONTINUING THE DISCUSSION ON MLPF

>But, I say pity the poor soul who thinks that America’s only wealth is
>measured in tax dollars.

It’s not that I think America’s wealth is measured in tax dollars. That’s a negative measure; it’s the load on the vitality of Americans. The sand in the economic engine. The friction. Tax dollars are a measure of how much is REMOVED from some American’s investment account. Taxes are opportunities that can never be taken by the original earner. If you earn 100k from MLPF or Alba earns his 100k from JibberJobber AND you each lose 50k to taxes, then you and he can NOT invest in my latest get rich scheme — color coded name tags for families at wakes to tell who’s from what side of the deceased’s family. It’s a real winner!

Seriously, taxes deprive you and Jason from using your 50k as you see fit. Invest it, spend it, throw a party for all the MLPFers, or give it to your favorite charity. It’s YOUR money. It’s STOLEN from you at gun point. It’s nothing more than other people robbing you to use the sweat of your brow to feather their nests, reward their friends, and punish their enemies. The “good works”, that incidentally they use the illusion of legitimacy to do, hides the fact that they are using the proceeds of theft. Why if I steal your 50k and give it to the Salvation Army, do I go to jail? But the gang in DC steal your 50k, call it taxes, give a bureaucrat a job, throwing a bone to some purpose or other, and we’re all supposed to applaud them for the “service”? The hidden problem is that whatever you were going to do with your profits doesn’t get done. It right out out the Economics 101 “the broken window” fallacy. Society is a net loser when wealth is used to fix the broken window because it was NOT available to do something else. We see the window, but we don’t see all the effects of the action precluded. So too, we see “Seattle” but we can’t see what it precluded!

There’s a reason that taxes are compulsory. No one would pay them if there weren’t.

Gooferment “sells” us “services” that we don’t want at prices we can’t afford. Compare it to the “free market”. Not some of the nonsense where an industry is “regulated”, but a real free market, like the computer hardware market. If you want to “sell” me a service, then you have to satisfy my needs. If I’m in the least way dissatisfied, I have choices. If the gooferment “sells” me a service and I’m not satisfied, there’s nothing I can do.

>America’s greatest asset is attitudinal.

America’s greatest asset is the liberty that allows us to “be all that we can be”. We are the beneficiaries of a lucky happenstance of the American experiment. The Classical Liberals have freed us from oppression by Kings, Churches, and random gangs of thugs. They given us the “invisible hand of the marketplace”, the “division of labor”, and “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”. They weren’t perfect by a long shot, but they gave us a huge start. We’ve, like the Prodigal Son, squandered or birthright by being lazy. Lazy in our thinking; that gooferment could give us something for nothing. Lazy in our complacency; that we need to always reinvent ourselves to take advantage of opportunity. Lazy in our faith; faith in our own abilities, the honesty of our fellow men, faith in the universe that gives us all we need. We’ve allowed gooferment to take over charity (i.e., welfare), education (i.e., indoctrination), and basic slew of other stuff!

Sorry, but we’ll have to disagree agreeably on the value of Seattle’s innovation. I’d be looking for the “hidden opportunities” that the “Seattle innovation” precluded.

fjohn

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TECHNOLOGY: pity the poor Seattle taxpayers

Monday, July 9, 2007

Responding to an MLPF comment about Seattle Schools using tech in educational themes.

***Begin Quote***

>Now that is innovative thinking and the administrators of the Seattle Public Schools should be congratulated!
{Extraneous Deleted}
>What say you?
>Jay Deragon
>Social Networking Strategist

*** end quote ***

I say pity the poor Seattle taxpayers who had their wealth stolen so that some highly paid bureaucrats could mess with other people’s children all at the point of a gun. (Don’t pay those taxes and see what happens. Don’t send your children to gooferment skoolz and see what happens.)

Sorry, but making happy videos and playlists isn’t education. It’s glorified babysitting and brainwashing. There are hungry people around the world learning in the pressure cooker of poverty to “eat these kid’s lunch”. In a day and age, when we should be first in a whole bunch of categories, we’re last in just about everything that matters. (We may be tops in “I felz gud abut myself”!)

Congrats, you have to be kidding us.

No, I think that we as a society in the USA have “really screwed the pooch”. We, deluded by our politicians (No one can say we don’t have the best money can buy!), have a track record of bad decisions. Just to name a few of our mortal sins: The Civil War, All the various Wars to <insert favorite slogan> creating the American empire, Leaving the Gold Standard, Creating the Federal Reserve, Permitting the Income Tax, Prohibition, Social Security, Creating the ‘dole” of New Deal programs, Bombing Hiroshima – Nagasaki – Dresden, Gooferment Education, War on Poverty, War on Drugs, Medicare / Medicaid, and countless venial sins.

IMHO “our” action plan, that of the USA, should be to: end the “dole” (i.e., welfare to individuals and companies); end “public” education; return to honest money; bring the troops home from the 170 countries becoming like Switzerland and instituting a MYOB foreign policy; and cut the gooferment down to a tenth of what they are today by getting back to strict Constitutional interpretation.

See empires can’t sustain themselves.

As innovative Power Forum members, we should be able to see where the future is taking us and not just “go along for the ride”. The essence of “seeing the future” is to be able to avoid the pitfalls. Else, we are nothing more than the Delphi Oracle with a neat tool (i.e., the crystal ball). We can tell people what’s going to happen but we can’t change “their destiny”. I think we can. But it calls for some “heavy lifting”. First is, at the very least, to be judicious with our “congrats”. If I was going to give kudos to anyone in education, it would be those in the “home schooling” movement. They are demonstrating success. Then maybe I’d look to the private and parochial schools who educate in direct competition with the gooferment’s free education. They are demonstrating success. Then, maybe I’d look to the various “bees” (i.e., the National Spelling Bee; the National Geography Bee) who are seeking to make “learning” kool. Then, I laude people like Bill Cosby, Walter Wiilliams, and others who are castigating the culture of “being dumb is kool”.

No, I’d say that is NOT innovative and we should NOT send Seattle congrats. Sorry to be the bearer of an opposing point of view. Wish I could be funny and make a joke. But this is “funny”. Not “funny haha”. But “funny sad”.

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TECHNOLOGY: GOOGLE mucked up authentication

Sunday, July 8, 2007

One criticism I have of Google, and it’s pretty severe, is that they have made a mess of authentication. Gmail, Google Accounts, and Gwhatever each with their own userid password combinations has one more than one occasion wasted a ton on my time. Throw in their acquisition of BLOGGER and it’s a total mess. It feels like it’s checking old cookies. Sure I can nuke ALL cookies and muddle around until I get it working, BUT that means I lose all the preferences and stuff set up for other sites that have done nothing wrong. If there is one thing that keeps me from imbibing in the google kool aid is their continued mucking up of something as simple as sign on. They also have taught me with their mucking up of the Google Desktop Search tool that the entire web20 paradigm is the suspect because you’ve lost control of what’s running and what it does. Although the recent acquisition of MusicMatch by Yahoo is that buying software, oh excuse me “licensing” (what “barbara streisand” is that), is no guarantee of software stability. It just demos that you can run a stable production environment on a WINDOZE and WEB20 as an OS ain’t much better. To me it proves the worth of Open Source. And, Linux. At least your sunken monetary cost is zero and you have a lot less to complain about.

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LINKEDIN: One size really doesn’t fit all needs

Sunday, July 8, 2007

FROM A MESSAGE I PLACED ON LINKEDIN INNOVATORS

*** end quote ***

I was playing with Jobster and really really didn’t want to spend a lot of time rebuilding my resume in my profile. I did it in LinkedIn, and it literally to a huge amount of time effort and attention. So what we really need is what I call a “sausage to pig” creator. Put in a resume on one side and the “sausage to pig” would create your profile on LinkedIn, Jobsters, and all the other “resume building” sites. It could be nothing more than making a resume an XML file.

The insight came in realizing that I, as many others I’m sure, have multiple resumes. I have several base resumes that I have customized in the past for SPECIFIC opportunities. If the purpose of a resume is to induce a conversation about a specific job to begin, then you want to highlight accomplishments relevant to that job. So for example, when I’m helping a newly minted turkey (i.e., the person just axed from “their job”), when we get up to creating their “marketing collateral” (usually a resume and cover letter), I counsel the “less is more” philosophy.

I like the idea of a sparse resume with three things on it — the (reader’s) objective, last three positions which each have three significant accomplishments designed to induce conversation, and education.

My modest insight is that if you use LinkedIn, or any other site as your resume, then you can do that customization for specific opportunities.

Argh!

One size really doesn’t fit all needs.

*** end quote ***

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TECH SERVICE: MUSICMATCH swallowed by YAHOO!

Thursday, July 5, 2007

***Begin Quote***

From: Customer Care, Musicmatch
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2007 10:56 PM
To: reinkefj
Subject: Important Information About Musicmatch

Important Information About Musicmatch

Greetings Musicmatch Customer:

As you may already know, Musicmatch is now part of the Yahoo! Music family. The same team that brought you Musicmatch products and services over the years has been working hard to bring you the next generation of world-class music services and software. As part of this integration, Musicmatch services will be discontinued on August 31, 2007, and Musicmatch customers will have the opportunity to migrate to the Yahoo! Music Jukebox.

Migrating is free and takes only a few minutes to complete. If you have a Musicmatch Jukebox Plus key, it will be upgraded to Yahoo! Music Jukebox Plus at no additional cost. If you have a balance in the Musicmatch Music Store, it will be transferred to Yahoo! Music Unlimited for the purchase of music downloads.

What You Need to Do

Migrate before August 31 by following these steps:

1. Go to the Musicmatch Migration information page
<http://newsletter.musicmatch.com/rdr/?Rn190380101,1903801,74356739,19038010
1> .
2. Click “Update Now.”
3. Download and install the latest version of the Yahoo! Music
Jukebox.
4. Once installed, start the Jukebox. You’ll be prompted to
begin the process using the Migration Assistant.
5. Follow the instructions on each page and make your
selections. For more information on a topic, click the FAQ link.
6. During the process, we’ll transfer your:

* Account information
* Local Library settings
* Musicmatch Store credit
* Plus key (if applicable)

PLEASE NOTE: You MUST have the latest version of the Yahoo! Music Jukebox to get the Migration Assistant. If you already had Yahoo! Music Jukebox installed on your computer prior to receiving this notice, please click here <http://newsletter.musicmatch.com/rdr/?Rn190380101,1903801,74356739,19038010
1> to get the latest version.

Yahoo! Music Jukebox is the best of Musicmatch Jukebox, plus much
more:

* Play music, import and burn CDs
* Manage your entire digital music collection
* Listen to free LAUNCHcast Radio
* Access our 2 million song catalog (twice the catalog size of
On Demand) with the Yahoo! Music Unlimited service (additional fees apply)

Click here
<http://newsletter.musicmatch.com/rdr/?Rn190380101,1903801,74356739,19038010
1> to start the migration process. View the Frequently Asked Questions
<http://newsletter.musicmatch.com/rdr/?Rn190380102,1903801,74356739,19038010
2> for more information.

Thanks for supporting Musicmatch over the years. We look forward to delighting you with exciting next-generation music services and software for many years to come.

The Yahoo! Music Team

Please do not reply to this message. You received this administrative email as a result of a Musicmatch purchase or subscription.
For more information about how Musicmatch, a Yahoo! company, uses your information including the use of web beacons in HTML email, please see the Musicmatch Privacy Policy

Yahoo! Music Musicmatch is located at 701 First Avenue Sunnyvale, CA
94089

***End Quote***

First of as an old drafteee, anything that starts off “greetings” doesn’t engender a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Second, my musicbox play is a piece of software. Are they telling me it ain’t going to work anymore.

Third, Yahoo is what I call a zero support organization. I avoid them for just that reason.

Argh!

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TECH SERVICE: officially close Yahoo! Photos on Thursday, September 20, 2007, at 9 p.m. PDT

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Email from yahoo photos.

***Begin Quote***

——————————————————————————–
From: Yahoo! Photos [mailto:directmail@yahoo-inc.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 8:16 AM
To: reinkefj
Subject: Yahoo! Photos is closing — Action Required

Dear Yahoo! Photos user,

For some time now, we’ve supported two great photo sharing services: Yahoo! Photos and Flickr. But even good things come to an end, and we’ve decided to close Yahoo! Photos to focus all our efforts on Flickr — the award-winning photo sharing community that TIME Magazine has called “completely addictive.”

We will officially close Yahoo! Photos on Thursday, September 20, 2007, at 9 p.m. PDT. Until then, we are offering you the opportunity to move to another photo sharing service (Flickr, KODAK Gallery, Shutterfly, Snapfish, or Photobucket), download your original-resolution photos back to your computer, or buy an archive CD from our featured partner (for users of the New Yahoo! Photos only). All you need to do is tell us what to do with your photos before we close, after which any photos remaining on Yahoo! Photos will be deleted and no longer accessible.

Of course, we hope you’ll join us at Flickr (you can even use your Yahoo! ID), but we also realize that Flickr may not be for everyone. In the end, we want you to find the service that’s right for you, and we hope you take some time to learn more about your options before making this important decision.

Please give us your decision by Thursday, September 20, 2007, at 9 p.m. PDT. After that time, any photos remaining in Yahoo! Photos will be deleted. Click here to make your decision, or review a list of our frequently asked questions.

Thanks for being a part of the Web’s largest photo sharing service — we hope to see you over at Flickr!

The Yahoo! Photos team

Please do not reply to this message. This is a service email related to your use of Yahoo! Photos. To learn more about Yahoo!’s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! Photos is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.

RefID: lp-11393112
***End Quote***

So I go there but am totally blocked from seeing what photos they are talking about?

*** begin quote ***

Yahoo! Photos is Closing

We’re sorry. Yahoo! Photos is closing on September 20, 2007 so we are no longer accepting new accounts or allowing users to upload photos if you don’t already have photos in your account. We’ve decided to focus all our efforts on Flickr – the award winning photo sharing community that Time Magazine has even called “completely addictive”. Why not head over to Flickr for a look?

*** end quote ***

You can’t find out what photos they are refering to. Oh well. Another reason why the web isn’t perfect.

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TECH SERVICE: GRANDCENTRAL goes to GOOGLE

Thursday, July 5, 2007

GRANDCENTRAL goes to GOOGLE

***Begin Quote***

——————————————————————————–
From: GrandCentral [mailto:support@grandcentral.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 3:08 AM
To: reinkefj
Subject: GrandCentral is now part of Google

July 2007

We’re now part of Google!
We wanted to let you know that GrandCentral has been acquired by Google! We’re particularly excited about this because it ensures that not only will we have the resources to continue to bring you even more innovative communications features down the road, but that we will be able to continue to offer you the service, with many features for free, for a long time to come.

We started GrandCentral because we wanted to create a service that puts users in control of their voice communications and not the other way around. As you have discovered, with GrandCentral you get all of your phone calls through just one number that never changes and you can link and ring up to six phones when somebody calls you. But that’s just the start. You can set different rules for each caller (some ring all your phones, others can go straight to voicemail), create personal voicemail greetings for each of your callers, and even check your voicemail on the web with all of your messages in just one inbox. We’ll even save your messages for as long as you want.

Have you ever tried to save a message on your cell phone but it gets deleted after a few weeks? Or have you wished you could hear your voicemail messages while they are being left like you used to be able to do on your old home answering machine? Have you ever been on a call on your cell but wished you could switch it to your desk or home phone? How about having a filter to weed out unwanted telemarketer calls automatically? With GrandCentral you are in control and can do all of this, and this is just the beginning. As part of Google we’ll be able to create even more unique features to let you control your calls the way you want.

Many of you probably have questions about what happens to the service now that we’re a part of Google. We’ve created an FAQ–which will answer most of your questions, but a couple of highlights:

Our priority now is to ensure that you, our current beta users, continue to have a great user experience. While we scale the service, we are moving to an invitation-only model for new users. If you’re a registered user today, you can invite five of your friends to join. In addition, GrandCentral will continue to remain entirely free as we work with Google to add capacity, work out any kinks, fix bugs, and add a ton more great features. We hope you continue using the service and send us feedback about anything we can do to improve it.

Thanks for your support so far. We’ll always work to earn it.

Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet, GrandCentral Founders

——————————————————————————–
Moving Your GrandCentral Account to Google
Don’t worry, the GrandCentral service won’t be interrupted as a result of the acquisition by Google – you don’t need to do anything, and your account and service will be transferred over to Google. As part of this acquisition, we are transitioning to Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. If you’d rather not maintain your account as a result of the acquisition, no problem: you can choose to discontinue your account any time before August 1, 2007 and your account won’t be transferred over to Google – we’ll delete your account and all related information. To discontinue your account, email support@grandcentral.com. We will contact you at your registered email address to confirm your deletion request before completing it.
©2007 GrandCentral Communications, Inc. 48389 Fremont Blvd., Suite #110, Fremont, CA 94538 unsubscribe

***End Quote***

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LINKEDIN: consulting firm I own on my resume?

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

FROM A QUESTION TO ME

*** begin quote ***

From: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
IT Professional
Greater New York City Area

Current:
* Sr. Business Analyst, Infrastructure at Wyndham Worldwide
* President/CEO at JLS Technology USA

Past:
* Project Manager, Infrastructure at IncentOne
* Regional IT Project Manager at Iron Mountain Inc.
* Sales Counselor at Circuit City

Date: June 30, 2007
To: John Reinke

Can I put the upstart consulting firm I own on my resume? If so how do I list it in conjunction with my current FT job?

I would like to update my resume and was wondering if I can put my small consulting firm on my resume? I have done some contract work through my consulting firm but am apprehensive because i don’t know if its taboo to do, or if it has enough “OOMPH” to list on my resume.
I’m the President of the company but would this be frowned upon by recruiters, looking at it as padding my resume?

Thanks for all your help and advice in advance!

*** end quote ***

Dear X,

Well I don’t see why not? I did. Even it before it was more frequent.

I was reluctant to be “president”; I like “owner / consultant”.

I think it is important to differentiate your “daytime” and “night time” duties. You don’t want it to look like you are “short changing” your daytime employer. You also want to avoid the the appearances that you are “competing” with your employer.

I know a tech exec who moonlights as a CICS coder. I knew a security exec who did fancy banisters for staircases. I knew a CEO of a major ad agency who moonlighted as freelance writer to unwind at night.

So, LinkedIn presents some interesting challenges. You can’t customize it like a resume for a specific opportunity. So it’s one size fits all.

Argh! Tough call. My advice is to put anything that is a significant adder that doesn’t detract from your value.

I’d include President of the Little League, Library, or ASPCA for a decade. But, I’d omit the President of your AA, KKK, or Democrat/Republican chapter for the same decade.

l8r,
fjohn

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TECH SOFTWARE:

Saturday, June 30, 2007

FROM AN MLPF EMAIL

>Re: FLASH: Hoovers seems to be making a move into LinkedIn’s space
>Posted by: “vmwusa_2000”
>Sun Jun 24, 2007 8:55 am (PST)
>Nice job on the blog, by the way!
>And thanks for capturing the screenshot for us…

Vincent,

Thanks for the kind words. But, my blog is more of a whine. :-) Sort of like “Do Not Go Gently Into … ” as performed by Rodney Dangerfield. :-) I’m “raging”.

On a technical note about the screen capture, windoze users are often frustrated by capturing screen shots. As was I, until I found a free utility that makes it trivial. Gadwin Systems Print Screen 4.0 at http://www.gadwin.com/download/ is my “silver bullet”. (It’s free, so I’m not getting out of this message other than the satisfaction of helping my fellow human. And the acclaim at being a big fat old but TRICKY turkey.) So I use the PrintScreen button to trigger the GSPS software, edit the resultant JPEG with MSPAINT (i.e., cut the appropriate part, drop the old file, get a new file open, paste the good stuff in, and save it). From there getting the JPEG onto the BLOG is trivial. It’s then accessible to the millions of MLPF readers. If anyone needs further help, feel free to contact me on or off list and I’ll try to create a better explanation. Usually just knowing that there is a solution is enough for people to try to find that solution, their own solution, or a better solution. That is, if you think something is impossible, it is (AKA learned helplessness?).

I’m sure there are faster, better, easier, but I doubt cheaper solutions.

With being around you (i.e., VW creates the MLPF and genre), there’s no doubt that this is a very minor contribution to the whizdum wars. But we all do what we can to spread light.

Again thanks for the kind words,
fjohn

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