Jame Healy - ... managing performand ...

Oops: Unintentional Anagram

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:00:23 -0800

I was just proofing my last post and came across an unintentional anagram in a fictitious store name: "Crazy Al's Shoes"

I swear on a stack of Bibles that this was unintentional. If you don't see it, I'm not going to point it out to you.

If you saw it right away, you should have spent more time in Sunday School as a child...

Technorati tags: Anagram

Email signatures and business cards...

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:50:20 -0800

I have a couple pet peeves I have to get out there:

Phone Numbers in Email Signature. There are two parts to this one. The first is when you are going to the trouble of using an email signature for some lame witticism or quote, then the least you could do is also put more complete contact information. Maybe your message has been forwarded and I don't have your email, or maybe I need to call you.

The second part is to put a "1" in front of your phone number. Why? Because more and more people are receiving email on mobile phones. If you are out of state/province/area code, then I'd like to just highlight the number in your signature to call you (while driving). They're usually rendered as "hyperlinks" in the message.
Email Addresses on Business Cards. Don't get me wrong. My business card, and most these days have email addresses on them. That's great. But when you go to the trouble of putting an email address on your printed business cards, then at least commit to checking your email once or twice a week.

All too often when dealing with a small merchant of some kind, like a tailor, shoe store or other small business person, I am given a business card with some wacky email address like ShoesRUsVancouver@ (insert dial-up network provider here: CompuServe, AOL, Yahoo or even GMail). Often this is accompanied by some crazy web site address like:

http://www.someDialUpCompany.com/~crazyalsshoes/backtoschoolspecial.html

If online marketing (including email) is important to you, then at least follow through with it and take a little pride in how you present yourself. Your store has a nice storefront, and you keep it very tidy... apply that to your online presence. And if you don't know how: Hire that smart kid next door for $5.35/hr to help you get a domain, and maybe even to monitor your email for you.

In terms of signatures I use multiple "new message" signatures depending on who the recipient is. Above is an example of one (and yes, now you know how to get a hold of me). I use a much more simple signature for replies/forwards (left) so that it takes up less real estate (but still provides needed information).

Just my two-bits. Any other "best practices" for signatures?

Technorati tags: Email Signatures

Pandora's Tray...

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 23:36:20 -0800

This is very cool.

I've hit a musical listener's block (the equivalent of writer's block, except that I don't know what new music to explore). The solution is Pandora, where I can throw the name of an artist or song that I am in the mood for and it will leverage the Music Genome Project to find music of similar ilk, then play it for me in a virtual online radio station.

Anyway, that probably isn't news to you, but check out this free application that I found on Jeff Sandquist's blog. If you use Pandora you'll probably notice that you have to keep a browser open to listen to the Pandora online radio. With "Pandora's Box" though you can minimize Pandora to your application tray.

Here's the catch: Our Irish Friend (software developer Daniel Mackey from Cork, Ireland) discloses that there is no connection with the Pandora people. The problem is that funding models Pandora uses are either ad-supported or subscription-based.

Here's the solution: Pandora should get in touch with Daniel and work out a licensing arrangement so that some sort of subtle pay-for-use version is available as well as a version that maybe pops small ad bubbles in your task tray. Don't get me wrong, this defeats the purpose of keeping it off the screen, etc., but you have to respect the fact that Pandora has costs in running this great service. If you're not willing to pay the $3-$4 per month for this service, then you should be able to put up with the odd ad.

By the way, I am now looking at the Squeezebox (on the right)... very cool looking, and it plays Pandora content directly.

Technorati tags: Pandora, Music Genome Project, Pandoras Box, Daniel Mackey

McAfee SpamKiller ... not a big fan...

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 11:40:21 -0800

I'm not a big fan of McAfee SpamKiller. It came pre-installed on my Dell Dimension E520 and I've since uninstalled it.

I've kept the other aspects of McAfee's security suite, including SecurityCenter, VirusScan and Personal Firewall, but the SpamKiller product is (was) killing me.

Every time I opened Outlook it would take anywhere from 3-5min to scan new email for spam before opening the interface. The image on the left is what I would get to stare at for those 3-5min.

You try dealing with that when you've got to send an important email, and you have had the bad fortune to actually have received mail since the last time Outlook was open.

I'd be interested in others' reaction to this product, but for now I'm quite happy without it.

I'll stick with Cloudmark... it works well for me.

Technorati tags: McAfee SpamKiller, Cloudmark Desktop

Yaletown, Marina (by Josh Dunford)...

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:57:22 -0800

Yaletown, Marina, originally uploaded by joshdunford.

Love this shot... my new desktop background.

Good work Josh.

Blogging overdone... and better use of categories...

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:36:40 -0800

Love this video, and it is so true too. I've been monitoring my ~150 feeds lately and with the exception of news feeds of various types (business, finance, world news, etc.) I'm starting to get tired of some of the so-called "A List" bloggers (see parody here) and the sheer volume of posts (sometimes dozens and even over a hundred per day) that have questionable value... to anyone.

When I first started subscribing to a number of these feeds there was interesting information, even "late breaking industry news", but recently there have been full soap operas being played out... emotional rants, hurt feelings, tearful apologies, geez...

Something I'd like to propose is that people subscribe more "surgically" to specific categories/topics/memes (whatever you want to call them), and that bloggers start to use these to self-filter their own dialog.

Of course few bloggers would post to their "pure drivel" category, but it would be a nice way to save a few precious minutes each day while reading my feeds.

Now, I'm hardly practicing what I'm preaching here, but I'm working on changing JameHealy.com such that you CAN'T subscribe to the main feed, but rather than you can ONLY subscribe to specific memes that I am publishing. A little experiment to be sure, and I'll let you know how it goes. Unfortunately I'm not certain a log of other platforms will allow for this type of customization, but I'm fairly certain I can do it with my Drupal-powered site.

Technorati tags: Blogging, Drupal

Everyone kissed and made up...

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 15:34:13 -0800

An example of how some of the elite bloggers air far too much dirty laundry. I've taken the liberty to briefly sum up the encounter that thousands of feed readers were privy to a couple weeks ago:

Scoble: You guys don't love me enough... link to me damn it!

Calacanis: "You're acting like a spoiled jerk."

Scoble: You're right, I've been a jerk. Sorry.

Of course the actual dialog spanned only a few days really, but with countless comments and even "updates" to each post it actually had a pretty significant effect on the so-called blogosphere.

I think Robert and Jason would both agree that if bloggers want to increase their journalistic integrity and the respect of their readership this type of emotional outbreak needs to be curbed (or better, eliminated). Robert Scoble quite obviously learned from this and everyone in the end is still friends (<sigh>). I recognize that part of Robert's "charm" is his unbridled enthusiasm, eagerness and passion for technology, but what has made his blog and others so engaging is not *just* the reporting of late breaking news, but their unique perspective on it, being industry experts and veterans. Lets see more of that... its the reason we subscribed in the first place.

UPDATE: I was just looking through Robert's own link blog (rss) this afternoon and noticed that he was quoted here as saying this:

"I used to say that among the top signs your tech blog is boring would be that you posted a cute cat photo."

Scobleizer (February 12, 2007)

Touche! I looks as though I have inadvertently proven that my blog is boring! ;)

Technorati tags: Robert Scoble, Blogging

FolderShare is invaluable...

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 19:00:21 -0800

It seems that I've been using FolderShare for almost two years.

FolderShare is (now) a Microsoft product that facilitates "over-the-web" syncing of files/folders between Windows devices and even between users. (Here is "How It Works")

I started looking into it to keep my home computer sync'ed with my work laptop. That way I could have copies of documents to work on at home. It worked okay, but seemed to have problems as my "My Documents" folder was huge (7GB).

Well, I'm still using it and loving it, and more since I figured how to make it work better: Instead of sync'ing my entire "My Documents" folder I only chose select subfolders that were important such as "Personal", "Business", "My Zinio Library" (which has all my downloaded Zinio magazines), "My Weblog Posts" (which contains all my draft and posted publications from my Windows Live Writer).

I'm going to start exploring ways that I might be able to:

Sync Preferences. Maybe syncing specific sub-folders in my "Application Data" folder (i.e. C:\Documents and Settings\%User%\Application Data). Is this a bad idea?
Sync Media Types. For instance try to sync only my iTunes Audiobooks and Podcasts, since there is no easy way to manage podcast subscriptions across multiple devices.

A few things I'd love to see them work on (though I haven't seen any updates in almost two years) is:

File Type Filtering. That way I can specify to sync a folder, but filter out unwanted file types (or maybe sync only specific file types).
Last X Modified/Created. Syncing only the last X number of files by "modified" or "created" date. That way I can choose to sync only the last 400 photos, rather than syncing more than 40GB of photos. Maybe this could also be by file size (rather than by number of files) so you can specify to sync the last 20MB of recently added/modified files.

I now there are other options out there, but this one seems to do very well for my purposes and is very cost effective (it's free).

BTW - It also supports sharing with authenticated "friends" or even remote web access to the files (assuming at least one of your devices is online).

Technorati tags: FolderShare

Greenspan fanboy!? ...

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 02:50:15 -0800

So I was looking up the URL for The Economist magazine today for this post, and came across this URL (www.TheEconomist.com).

Someone is obviously petitioning for "Economist of the Century" honours (not that this really exists formally), but get in line, there are already nominations for:

Anyway, good luck Alan ... enjoy your retirement.

Technorati tags: Economics, Alan Greenspan, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman

I love my Zinio...

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 02:49:06 -0800

So I've really come to love my Zinio. So much in fact that I read my magazines on my work desktop, my home desktop, my tablet computer and even my wife's laptop.

Because annual subscriptions are usually significantly cheaper through Zinio (due primarily to the eliminated processing costs as well as shipping and delivery) I find myself subscribing to far more magazines than I normally would.

An example of my subscriptions:

BusinessWeek (currently 88% off cover price)
Cycle World (currently $12/yr)
FHM (ahem) ... it was cheap okay!? ... but doesn't seem available anymore. Instead you can order 16 different language versions of Maxim.
Foreign Policy
Harvard Business Review
PC Magazine
Popular Photography & Imagine
Sporting News

Some of the best features though of Zinio are:

It is an *exact* replica of the print version of the magazine including inserts, fold-outs, etc.
Everything is hyperlinked, including the table of contents (to each respective story) and even web URLs.
It works with the TabletPC so that I can annotate (i.e. "mark up" and highlight) the pages.
My magazine library is consolidated and portable. And as a result of this and being digital, it is searchable. This is particularly great with periodicals such as Harvard Business Review (and FHM! :)
You can order single issues of magazines without subscribing.
Using it with FolderShare allows me to see any of my subscriptions on any of my Windows systems.
The"viewer" is free, and you can try some free magazines.

Unfortunately one publication that they apparently can't digitize (or haven't obtained the rights to) is "The Economist". That would absolutely make my day.

Another thing to look at is PressReader for newspaper subscriptions...

Technorati tags: Zinio, Magazines, BusinessWeek, FHM, Harvard Business Review

I'm a big fan of Kathy...

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 22:59:45 -0800

I'm a big fan. This blog is well thought out, well written and does not suffer from the knee-jerk, me-too reporting of a lot of other "big name" bloggers (yes, that includes the so-called "A Listers").

Kathy's writing is current and meaningful... and I'm not even a marketer (per se) and certainly am not a software developer that is directly concerned with user interface development or even "creating passionate users" directly.

The thing is that her findings and thoughts are applicable to a number of different areas of life, love and business. Why do I say that? Well, there is a such thing as taking "life patterns" that are observable and discernable from various disciplines and applying them to your own. My point is that some of Kathy's thoughts are applicable to the most base of human interaction.

Buy you'll need to read her to understand what I'm saying.

A little something of her "bio":

Kathy Sierra has been interested in the brain and artificial intelligence since her days as a game developer (Virgin, Amblin', MGM). She is the co-creator of the bestselling Head First series (finalist for a Jolt Software Development award in 2003, and named to the Amazon Top Ten Editors Choice Computer Books for 2003 and 2004). She is also the founder of one of the largest community web sites in the world, javaranch.com. Kathy's passions are skiing, running, her Icelandic horse, gravity, and her latest favorite thing--Dance Dance Revolution.

Anyway, consider subscribing to her feed: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/

Technorati tags: Kathy Sierra, Creating Passionate Users, Headrush

Google Reader Mobile thoughts...

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 01:33:44 -0800

I've become a big fan of Google Reader's mobile edition that I've started to see some additional areas for improvement.

In the past few months, they've improved quite a bit already, but a few extra features would be very helpful. For instance:

Mark all as read. From the reading list view (including tag list and subscription list) it would be nice to "mark all as read" rather than to continue to press the "pound"/# button to mark each set of 9 feed items as read.
Share this item. From an individual post view, I'd love to be able to share the item (i.e. send to my shared items list) right from my mobile. I would even go so far as to say that mapping this feature to the # button would be more useful than the existing "mark as unread" feature mapped to that button. In my opinion, the primary reason for marking as unread is so you can review it later... well, we already have the "star" feature fort that.
Mobile Trends. It would be interesting (although not particularly important) to track some mobile statistics on the trends page. Like how many items I read from my mobile, time of day, etc. It is interesting because as these stats roll up it will help commercial blogs ensure that their content works for mobile users too. Case in point: I purposefully avoid reading my Gizmodo or Boing Boing feeds because they have so many (interesting) photos... I save that for my laptop/desktop.

Just a few thoughts...

Technorati tags: Google Reader

Google Reader crashes IE7...

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 22:29:11 -0800

UPDATE: It seems Justin has fixed it.

Seems this is not just a problem for me, but for about a couple dozen others too.

Unfortunately I understand the Google team is skiing this week (according to Mihai), so I may have do without for a few days.

Oh well...

Technorati tags: Google Reader, IE7, Google Ski Trip

Passionate staff... (and how to measure the passion...)

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 15:19:48 -0800

Kathy says that the question, "How can I get my team to be passionate about the company?" is irrelevant. I agree.

In fact she goes on to explain:

If I own company FOO, I don't need employees with a passion for FOO. I want those with a passion for the work they're doing. The company should behave just like a good user interface -- support people in doing what they're trying to do, and stay the hell out of their way.

from Creating Passionate Users by Kathy Sierra

It is about creating an engaging environment for the team to excel in what they love. Probably easier said than done. I do however think this is actually an outcome of a personal brand-centric organization though.

BTW - I also like her four questions to measure someone's passion for their *work*:

When was the last time you read a trade/professional journal or book related to your work? (can substitute "attended an industry conference or took a course")
Name at least two of the key people in your field.
If you had to, would you spend your own money to buy tools or other materials that would improve the quality of your work?
If you did not do this for work, would you still do it (or something related to it) as a hobby?

Read her entire post here: Don't ask employees to be passionate about the company!

Technorati tags: Kathy Sierra, Creating Passionate Users, Organizational Theory, Management Theory, Personal Brand Development

Web 2.0 in under 5 minutes...

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 12:42:06 -0800

What an interesting video. Do yourself a favour: If you are even remotely interested in what "Web 2.0" is about and have four and a half minutes to kill, watch the video below.

I saw this while reading Michael Eisenberg's blog today, and agree with his comment:

"...anyone involved in the Web 2.0, participatory Media and in grassroots democracy, should find this video interesting. Most of the world is not yet aware of how the new participatory web is shaking up every part of our life from business to politics, to media and religion and even raising kids."

-- Michael Eisenberg ("Thought Provoking Video", February 4, 2007)

The original YouTube post can be seen here, or you can watch below.

Credits: "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us." by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Kansas State University

Technorati tags: Michael Wesch, Web 2.0, YouTube, Michael Eisenberg