TECH: “LINKEDIN” … a good tool … but there are some process issues

Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Imagine my chagrin when I thought that I nailed a bug in LinkedIn, but was wrong!

My vampire process detected a “silent” change. Someone had shifted up a position. Immediately I was on the hunt for the “missing” record. I visually compared my two lists. And found the “lost” one.

Ahh hah! I had proof of them losing a contact’s record. I complained to LinkedIn support, and notified my counterpart.

A return email from the contact, told me he had nuked me to “eliminate my messages to him”.

How embarrassing!

Now, if he had been amenable to some question, the I would have like to ask him:

(a) What do you expect to get out of LinkedIn if you don’t want to have a conversation?

(b) How does nuking it prevent me from emailing you? Not like I am going to forget your email address. IF you had responded “buzz off”, I certainly would have honored your request. If I wasn’t on top of my game, you’d still be getting my email.

(c) I sent you exactly one personally addressed individual message. Politely, offering some ideas and extending an invite to engage in a networking conversation. And that is “too much” email. What are your expectation in networking?

Now, I am still undecided as to the value of LinkedIn. All though I did sign up for an upgraded plan, it has yet to show benefits. But, I’m hard headed enough to keep trying. I know those benefits are in there somewhere.

I did take away some lessons.

Lesson #1: Investigate the entire list to confirm that there is more than one defect. If I had done that, I’d have been more suspicious if I found every thing else was right. I jumped to a conclusion.

Lesson #2: Try to extract what people’s expectations are up front. Perhaps this fellow thinks that LinkedIn is like the yellow pages.

Lesson #3: LinkedIn’s removal process is flawed. (a) It’s a manual request. (b) It’s “silent”. They mess with my data and I don’t know about it. (c) They have a bug since it didn’t take it out of the search result set that showed him still in my contacts.

Hmmm, jury’s still out.

1 Comment | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Running a batch file … one of 72 commands … one in the middle did NOT execute?

Monday, August 7, 2006

Strange!?! If I wasn’t watch it fail I’d not have believed it. The ones if front and in back all fired. Rerunning the batch job worked perfectly. Hmm. Ghost of Bill Gates!

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: One of my website “goes bad”

Monday, August 7, 2006

http://home.comcast.net/%7Ev2y2r0n27rhj6y/TURKEY/index.htm

It displays correctly in IE, but not in Firefox or Opera. It used to?

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Many search algorithms are flawed

Saturday, August 5, 2006

They don’t parse a search string with a blank in it correctly.

Here’s an email that I send a lot of sites:

To whom it may concern:

I think you may wish to reexamine your search code. I publish an ezine for my fellow alums of Manhattan College. Hence, I visit a lot of sites and do searches. My search string is “manhattan college”. When I executed it at XXXXXXXX, it searched as if it was “manahattan or college”. I see this behavior a lot. Just thought I’d call it to your attention.

Fjohn

I get many interesting responses. Some actually say thanks and fix it. The bigger the site the less likely it is to get fixed. Interesting common oversight.

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: What is a blog?

Wednesday, August 2, 2006

http://community.eons.com/blogs/index/17146

***Begin Quote***

What’s a blog?

A blog is like an online journal that allows somebody to share their thoughts with the public in the form of blog posts. This page shows recent posts on whatever topics are of interest to the author.
***End Quote***

I’m not so sure that this is the best definition. But, it’s a good start. Currently an internet blog is a collection of DIKW of one or more people around a topic or theme.

I would assert that when it is done by one person alone. It becomes a “personal web log”, a plog! It then is an online journal of sequential musings, ramblings, rantings, or opinions about one or more topics. It does have privacy issues. For example, in my blog, I say I am “lazy”. Does that make it so? How would a potential employer, family member, friend, or acquaintance react to something in my plog? Can I assume an identity in a plog that isn’t really me? Remember Ghandi’s thought about “departments of life” and spillover. Interesting?

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: “EONS” a site for old folk has an obit search that’s broken

Wednesday, August 2, 2006

http://www.eons.com/

I track news of Manhattan College alums. It interested me that perhaps this might be a resource I could use. Unfortunately a search with “manhattan college” fails with a ruby error message. Searching for a well known obit by name returns no result. Maybe the dbs aren’t loaded yet? Hmmm. Maybe the “what I want to do before I die” section will work better.

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: PLAXO syncs email address books for you

Saturday, July 29, 2006

You may wish to consider Plaxo. It is a free internet service that sync address books between different people who “know” each other. In exchange for the information you share with them, which I am sure they have various ways of making a profit on, you not only get up-to-date info on fellow Plaxo “members”, but you get a usable web-based address book which is a backup of the address book on your computer. It will even sync multiple machines. I have found it a great tool. Some call it “Faustian”, but:

(1) They are upfront about they reuse data. Everyone does it but are not honest enough to admit it.

(2) I seeded my address books with fake people (i.e., my non-computer literate elderly uncle complete with an isp email address). If spam was to show up in the email boxes for my “fake people”, then it could have only come from them. And, I’d rat them out to the inet community. If it sounds like “trust but verify”, it is. I did a few tours in security, so I am very skeptical of stuff on the net. Wanna see my tin foil hat?
FWIW

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Open Source & Open Standards … the nerd’s way out of the licensing swamp!?!

Friday, July 28, 2006

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/07/four_big_ideas_about_open_sour.html

***Begin Quote***

The architecture of participation beyond software.

Asymmetric Competition.

How Software As a Service Changes The Points of Business Leverage

Open Data. One day soon, tomorrow’s Richard Stallman will wake up and
***End Quote***

I’m not sure I’d say it that way. Here are the dimensions that I would use.
(1) “Open Source” kills the expensive software license business model. Think Open Office as opposed to Microsoft Office. The BSA can take a hike.
(2) “Open Standards”, the xmil-izing of the planet, kills locking people in by holding their data in a proprietary format. An example is how OPMLs have launched RSS readers with easy transfer of reading lists between readers. Think of your Outlook Contacts  exported into a series of VCF files and import into any contact manager.

(3) “Participation” allows an ordinary store of data (e.g., book titles) to be developed into a store of knowledge (e.g., what do others think and say about a particular title). If there was reputation, then it’s be wisdom (i.e., who is knowledgeable about the topic).   Think Amazon as opposed to Barnes & Noble.

(4) “Service” that satisfies any user’s need at a reasonable price can be turned into a lucrative revenue stream. Think Mozy as opposed to doing your own backups when you remember. The more transparent you can make it then bigger the hit. It doesn’t even have to be cheaper. Think GoToPC as opposed to Microsoft’s Remote Desktop.

(5) “Micro payments”, that is the ability to charge a hundreth of a cent for something, will blow the lid off the marketplaces of content or service. Notice that suing the Customer like the MPAA is doing is so counter productive that it has to be a jugundo blunder.  If I had a virtual credit card that would allow me to pay hundredths or a thousandth of a cent, then I wouldn’t care about paying for certain services or content. Then, when you get a million page hits, you are not depending upon advertisers.

(6) “Crypto” is over due. My email should automagically establish a private conversation with my counterparts. It could allow, for example, bank statements over email with zero risk. It could put spammers out of business. The ISPs have to help support the key exchanges. People can exchange keys personally to jumpstart the process. Lame attempts like Vangard’slogon change wouldn’t be necessary.
IMHO

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: VWBBie (Verizon Wireless Broad Band)is getting bad press.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/07/verizon_unlimited.html

***Begin Quote***

unlimited

***End Quote***

Interesting that “unlimited” is really limited!

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: VANGARD changes its logon!

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

***Begin Quote***

Protecting your information is very important to Vanguard. Over the next few months, we’ll be introducing significant security enhancements to better safeguard your information on Vanguard.com®. These changes will help ensure that only you—or those you’ve designated to act on your behalf—can access your information online.
***End Quote***

They’re basically splitting the  logon and password screens and putting a user selectable picture on the second page. I guess if you don’t see your animal, then you’re not supposed to put in your password. I don’t understand how this prevents a man-in-the-middle attack. It does prevent a dumb phishing but not a sophisticated one. If you present yourself at the phish site, it can quickly open a connect to Vangard, present you credential, take the screen, show it to you, and you’ll give them your password. It’ll probably take a day of a good coder’s time to beat that one. And, it breaks all teh login tools that people, like me, currently use. ARGHH!

2 Comments | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »