Everyone deserves an assistant

I've been trying out Sandy, an interesting little (somewhat intelligent) virtual assistant. The account setup is free, and then you get a special email that you can send to Sandy and she will email you reminders and other items that your prompt her to do when you send emails to her or cc her on emails to someone else. Sandy also connects to Twitter and SMS (phone). I'm a big fan of AI like things so I'm interested in how this app works out. If you are the kind of person who likes to have their own personal assistant..but can't afford to pay for it, why not give it a try? I do wonder, if it works well, can I nominate her for an award?

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A day at the office

This is one of those times, when you just come across something funny and you just have to share it. Read this story about a guys first day at the office and see if it tickles your funny bone. I can safely say this has never happened to me, but you know you company might be getting a bit too big if...

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Keeping It Simple

Here's a great article by Brad Bollenbach about simplicity. I especially like his comment that "simple is not easy". I love the philosophy, but it takes a lot of pratice to simplify, to make things easily understood. Especially as we grow older and learn more about the world around us or specialize in certain areas, we may loose touch with the simple things in life. I have often found myself doing things the 'hard way', but sometimes this is the only way, after I have finished a project, that I truely learn. Very enjoyable indeed.

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Never do an excellent job

Have you ever finished a wonderful job on a project, and felt very proud of yourself, only to realize that no one ever really recognized you for it?

Perhaps everything in the project was flawless. Sure burps crept up on you, but you attacked them with a vengeance and handled them before they got out of control. There was high risk but you handled it with finesse. You received a customer complaint and used your finely tuned relationship management skills to turn it into a new business opportunity.

If you are consistently achieving a high degree of excellence, eventually you may fade into the background and become un-noticed. Typically, those that are noticed, are where the problems are, the failed projects. Sometimes a person is recognized for re-vitalizing an already known 'failed project'. But if you have a high number of successful projects, sadly it may go un-noticed.

People only see what is put in front of them, many never bother to look at the intricate details unless there is a problem. Thank about it. Were you one of those students in school that always got good grades, and stayed out of trouble? If so, how often were you heard on the PA system, "Jack, please come to the office for your student of the year award?". Compare this to how often did you hear the names of those in trouble.

The sad truth is our society and the media often point out the problems (it is interesting and "juicy") but seldom point out success. We are almost conditioned to fail before we can be recognized.

What can be done about this?.. Well one idea is to keep a log of yourself and your accomplishments. add to it the positive feedback of colleges and clients as they occur, and then
when you need to pat yourself on the back or you are having a bad day you have something to refer back to. In the meantime, be sure to gauge you efforts carefully, and be loud to broadcast your sucessess.

My thoughts on Pay Per Post and PageRank

In a previous article, I warned about passing pagerank for money. This was before I was finally accepted into PayPerPost. I'm not saying I've changed my opinion, but I continue to wonder are the advertisers paying for the link or for the google juice they hope to gain from it?

It gets even more interesting because anyone can easily report a 'paid' link to google and once this occurs you may get a lower page rank. Plus many sites like PayPerPost require you to disclose your post



The rational for this disclosure is known as word of mouth ethics.

What it means, is now anyone with an axe to grind, can search for people disclosing their posts and submitting this info to google to lower your page rank.

Furthermore, page rank continues to be a factor for many pay per post syle systems in order to
be initially approved. But once you are approved, and have a lower page rank, will you get banned if/when you page rank drops to 0. ?? I certainly hope not ! But maybe advertisers will not pay you as much because the little green bar they see for your site isn't as full as they would like it..

As an aside, I have seen no evidence that suggests that the PR indicator reported to the google toolbar or from other sites, actually has any large effect on your traffic or your SERP (search engine results pages). If you have a lot of good content, and readers, I think you will still get a fair amount of traffic from search engines including google.

My advice: Give it a try and see for yourself. It is nice to earn some money to get paid to blog. If your PR is already low, you don't have much to loose. But Google does make an important point. I use google myself, and I don't want searches for "process improvement" to give me irrelevent results. So I would suggest to make sure that the website you are linking to is relevent to the keywords inside the hyperlink.

What choice would you make?

1) Write a blog assignment and get paid for the link but a low PR value from google

2) Don't take on paid blogging systems, and hope you do get a good PR value over time.

Firefox..You web browser of choice?

There has been large debate on the web, a fight over which is better Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer? Most people who use Internet Explorer, do not do so as a "choice". It is shipped automatically with most computers, and most computers shp with Windows. People get on, can do there web browsing, it functions, and they never try anythinng different. Some people like to switch things around and try new things while others will maintain the status quo until there is a 'pain' to change. If you are still using Internet Explorer, and have never tried Firefox. Might i suggest giving it a try?

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Tips to Bypass compulary web registration

I spend a lot of time searching the web, researching new stuff or trying to find answers to questions, and trying to learn how to do new [geeky?] like things

More often then not, I am increasing presented with a "Registration Required" screen before I can access the information I am looking for. Of course once you provide your email address to these services, they then proceed to add you to there newsletter and sending your email.

So you think this "might" be the file to answer your questions, but it takes you an extra 10 minutes to sign up for their system, verify your email address, and finally get the document, and hopefully it is what you were looking for. Yes, it's a pain, but I can't be too hard on these folks, even I ask people to subscribe as well :-)

Here are some tips to avoid this if it happens to you

1) Got Firefox?, if so, I suggest installing the BugMeNot Addon. This add-on lets you easily pull from a pool of existing "fake" username and passwords to access the content.

2) View Google's cached search results. Often results that require you to register on a website
are available in Google's cached results. So if you found a page from a google search look undeneith for the cached link



3) Sign-up for a special email with Yahoo, Google, etc to use specifically for such registrations.
This is especially usefull for small business that can share 1 address just for this type of thing, and "spammy" type stuff can go to it without bothing your own pesonal Inbox. You will have to check this periodically to find the registration link to activiate your account. This makes it a little more tedious then the first 2 options.

Watching your online personna

We all make mistakes, and I am certainly NO exception to this rule. However, I am not a largely public figure, and my mistakes are not made widely visible.

Temptation can be a very powerfull thing. In my role as a sysadmin there were sometimes requests for me to perform perhaps unethical activites. For example, installing software we did not have the approperiate license.

It can take years to buld a reputation, but only minutes for it to be trashed. You mistakes can easily be spread all over the internet for anyone to see with a simple google search.

In a previous post on Managing your online identity, I dicussed how important it is that your internet presence or image is clean. The more popular your services, the more clients you have. Just like a large co-operation you need to keep an eye on your public image to ensure it cannot hurt you. Often the bigger you are (or your company is) the more opinions people will have and the more scrunity you will be under.

Let us take for example this wiki about Dr William Heyward. Here we find a very dedicated individual with multiple degrees including Johns Hopikns and a very impressive work history. Certainly, we must acknowledge and apprecaite the work and effort this man has put into fighting the ongoing AIDS epidemic, including his formation of Quattro Clinical Research devoted to ongoing research of infections diseases

As I am sure you are aware, the formation of any new venture requires startup expenses and perhaps the attraction of potential investors. One can rest assured that any investor would want to research Dr Heyward, his company, and his activites before potentially providing the necessary funding.

So let us suppose someone does a quick google search of someone's name. This might reveal many details regarding a person (eg: William Heyward). Not all of the results might be flattering comments. Regardless of whether or not it is even the same Dr. Heyward who worked as the V.P. for International Clinical Research with VaxGen, Inc. and and spent over 20 years working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .

And even if should such search results reveal this is same William Heyward, and reveal this man's mistakes. Is it really fair? Remember there are always 2 sides to every story.

Now let me ask you, if you made a mistake, and it was splured all over the web with no references to the good you have done, would you try to rectify it? Could you figure out how rectify it? Is trying to fix your reputation/image ethical. I do not have all the answers but I try not to judge others until I have all the facts in front of me, and I hope others do the same.

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