Help Me Blogger, Help Me Get A Post On My Blog

Posts have been blowing up left and right.  Ironically, if you can read this, perhaps things are back to normal.  But perhaps not.

 

It would seem that the switch to New Blogger didn't quite solve ALL the problems yet.  I know that at least two posts bounced.  I don't yet know about the others.  Suffice it to say that I didn't fall off the face of Earth.  Blogger did... for a little while, anyway.

 

Hopefully, you new readers that came to see my new and exciting formatting and brand-new posts didn't run away screaming.

You Never Get A Second Chance To Make A First Impression

I may be an old fart (not really, but I'm definitely no spring chicken, either), but I always am staying up on my resume, because, well, you never know.  Here are some intelligent resume tips.

 

The terrifying reality regarding your resume is that for all the many hours you put into fine-tuning, you've got 30 seconds to make an impression on me. Maybe less.

It's unfair, it's imprecise, and there's a good chance that I make horrible mistakes, but there's a lot more of you than me, and while hiring phenomenal teams is the most important thing I do, I'm balancing that task with the fact that I need to build product and manage the endless stream of people walking into my office.

But here's a glimpse. I'm going to walk through the exact mental process I use when I look at a resume. I don't know if this is right or efficient, but after fifteen years and staring at thousands of resumes, this is the process.

Rands In Response came up with this list.  I consider it to be pretty well done.

 

I've reviewed untold numbers of resumes, which makes me now expert.  Most of my resume-writing chops comes from writing reams of resumes over the years.  I practice.  These seem like pretty good nuggets of advice to me - and I use similar ideas when I write my own res.

How To Create a Successful Web Community: The Video

Here's an interesting video involving some of the most successful web communities.

 

At the CommunityNext conference I moderated this panel with the founders of six very successful web properties:

1. Akash Garg of hi5

2. Sean Suhl of Suicide Girls

3. Max Levchin of Slide

4. James Hong of HotorNot

5. Markus Frind of PlentyofFish

6. Drew Curtis of Fark

For this you can thank Guy Kawaski's excellent blog, How To Change The World.  Here's a guy that I've been reading for EVER, for God's sake, but only in the last couple of weeks did I realize that he had a blog.  Lucky me.  Thank you, Guy.

 

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  It's also an excellent way to learn.  The above mentioned entrepreneurs represent some of the best.

 

 

 

and Google Said, "Let There Be Light!"

...and there was light...

 

In a speech Friday night to the Annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference, Google co-founder Larry Page let slip with a truth we all suspected:

"We have some people at Google [who] are really trying to build artificial intelligence (AI) and to do it on a large scale…It's not as far off as people think."

Yep, you read that right, Google is trying to build real AI. The worlds most dominant online company, with the largest conglomeration of computing power the world has ever seen, is trying to build artificial intelligence, and according to Page it isn't that far away either.

Where?  901am.com.  Hat tip:  Fark.

 

Everyone, I mean, EVERYONE who has read anything about Google in the last few years, and I've made enough posts about Google for them to merit their own label, for God's sake, knew this was coming.

 

I just hope that I'm on their good side.  I think that I might be.

 

But... To Serve Man... it was a cookbook, you know.

 

 

 

Your Parrot Wants A Dictionary

I have two(!) parrots at home, and neither of them can do anything like this one.   Slackers.

 

Parrot uses 950 words to converse with people

Corin says: "An African Grey Parrot called N'kisi has a vocabulary of 950 words and can 'communicate' (as opposed to repeat). He has a sense of humour as well.

 

He uses words in context, with past, present and future tenses, and is often inventive.

One N'kisi-ism was "flied" for "flew", and another "pretty smell medicine" to describe the aromatherapy oils used by his owner, an artist based in New York.

When he first met Dr Jane Goodall, the renowned chimpanzee expert, after seeing her in a picture with apes, N'kisi said: "Got a chimp?"

Paging Boing Boing!  You have a link on the white courtesy phone!

Check out their link.  Seriously, it's very interesting.

 

I read this, and all I wanted to do was post this:

 

I had to.

 

Gmail For All

I haven't posted anything about Google in a while, so I thought that I'd mention that Gmail is no longer invitation only...finally .  How long have I had a gmail account, again?

 

I know Google could change their mind again, but it seems that Gmail is finally open to everyone.

If you don't live in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and Japan (Gmail is already open there), go to gmail.com and see if you can create a new account.

 

Courtesy of the Google Operating System Blog.  Seriously, I have no idea where I find this stuff.  No lie there.

 

And speaking of our Googalian overlords, perusing the web yet again, my eyes briefly skimmed through a blog post by Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and gym-rat-geek hero (which means that I can't help but like him):

 

In looking at Google's public technology discussions, it appears that a thin client, distributed computing future is exactly what they are expecting.

Google has created and continues to expand huge datacenters around the world. From whats been written, they contain tens, if not hundreds of thousands of processors all clustered and networked together. They are connected to each other via fiber, and are in turn connected by dark and lit fiber to every and any internet peering point they possibly can.

Its a critical distinction that they only have fiber to peering points rather than having direct access to homes. First, in a world with net neutrality, it means Google has the fastest access to common points connecting to the last mile than anyone else. More importantly, it throttles how much bandwidth they can deliver to the home. You can lead a 10mbs stream to a peering point, but you can't make the ISP drink it. Sure it will pass through, but there are no quality of service requirements at that peering point. Google can put some beautiful HD content out on their servers, and it will be perfect.. until it gets to the peering points, at which point it loses all its priority and becomes just another packet. Which is the downside of net neutrality. Google can't buy their way to having their packets given priority, so those who expect big bandwidth video to the home from Google Video... as both Google and I mentioned in this post, it aint gonna happen the way things stand today.

That said, Google is in a unique position with their datacenters and infrastructure to dominate thin client computing and everything they are doing seems to point in that direction..

 

Check out Blog Maverick.

Basically, he's saying that Google is THE WAY.  Obviously he's paying attention.

 

I'm old enough to remember when broadband was THE WAY and was going to change everything.  I remember the first time I used a Netscape browser to open my documents in a Windows operating system by mistake.  I even remember the first personal computer that I really used on a regular basis - it was a Bell and Howell computer, which then ran using an Apple operating system, pre-Mac, pre-Apple II, pre-everything.  Apple doesn't licence out anymore, but I remember using it regularly.

 

These days, though, are all about Google.  They are, quite obviously, doing things that nobody has any business doing, which I've posted about on several occasions (hint: check the Google label in the sidebar), and apparently have no qualms about continuing to go strong to the hole.

 

Google.

With great power comes great responsibility.  The world is watching.  Don't let us down.

 

Stan Lee rocks.

 

We're Sorry, We Regret The Error

Someone had an idea that I thought of but did nothing about years ago and ran with it.  Finally, a news site devoted to media errors, of which there are a shocking amount.

 

Regret The Error reports on corrections, retractions, clarifications and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the media.

 

That's at regrettheerror.com.  I feel certain that they will have a virtually unlimited supply of material; besides parsing actual newspapers and legitimate media for errors, the website could exist forever by reading and commenting on the factual basis for any book written by Ann Coulter.  Not that she's ever admitted a mistake.

 

Where did I find this glorious Internet nugget?  That's right.  Rants In Your Pants.com Stupid Site Hall Of Fame.

 

I've been around.  I hold onto ancient website links for safekeeping.

 

 

 

 

Kiva.org

I had heard about this website quite a while ago, but for some reason, I didn't remember it and link it.  Fortunately, I ran across it again and am determined to correct my error:  featuring - Kiva: From their About Page:

 

Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you've sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

 

Now, I haven't tried kiva.org yet, but I intend to do exactly that, and you can bet that once I do, I will blog the experience for everyone.  Kiva has had some remarkable press, but then again, so have quite a few other organizations... some of which turned out to perform, well, quite poorly in the end.  I won't post links to those examples, but unless you've lived under a rock for the last three decades, you can probably pick a few busts.

 

Needless to say, microfinance sounds like a wonderful idea whose time has come.  Become an international financier!

 

 

 

Google...Ten Years Ago

View Google on the other side through a time machine.

 

Here's a picture of what Google looked like in 1997, courtesy of the Freakonomics Blog .  Messrs. Levitt and Dubner's blog has a soft spot for me in part because I read the book and loved it, in part because I'm an economist at heart, but probably mostly because I'm a freak.

 

It's crazy how far we've come.  First, Stanford.  Next, the world.  Consider Google a lesson on how to stick with a good idea.

Blogs And Comments

Taking a look at my reader logs for the last several days, it would seem that quite a few more people are taking a notice of my blog lately, which, as you might guess, makes me smirk uncontrollably.  Hopefully you are all enjoying my ramblings and are taking the opportunity to look around. 

 

One suggestion, though - if you read, and you like what you read, or if you have a blog of your own, please feel free to leave a comment.  I tend to take a look at pretty much everyone who has a blog that mentions it somewhere on my pages.  Think of it as a cheap and effective way to blog network.  Show me yours and I'll show you mine.

 

So to speak.

 

So comment away!

 

Most Overlooked Tax Deductions

The remarkably dependable Consumerist comes to bat for you and reminds you about tax deductions that you should NOT miss.

 

1. State sales taxes.
2. $250 educators' expenses.
3. College tuition.
4. Student loan interest paid by mom and dad.
5. Out-of-pocket charitable contributions.
6. Moving expense to take first job.
7. Military reservists travel expenses.
8. Child-care credit.
9. Estate tax on income in respect of a decedent
10. State tax you paid last spring.
11. Refinancing points.
12. Reinvested dividends
13. Jury pay paid to employer.

 

Kiplinger's published this first.

 

This seems like a fine time to post this as well; here's the information on the Telephone Excise Tax Refund that a shocking amount of American taxpayers will be able to get this year.  Please don't just let this slide, follow up.  Additional information on this refund is all over the Internet.

 

Radical Changes To POW

Hello all!

 

Well, I've finally made some radical changes to this blog.  The formatting is different, the pages are different, the page is friendlier, I believe.  Here are a few highlights.

 

- Formatting.  As you can see, I've switched to a 3 column format and some new fonts, thanks in part to Hoctro's Place.  His lessons on his web page cannot be underestimated.  His post, and templates, can be found here.  Many thanks, kind human.  Of course, I have made some modifications.  I'll make more, and when the template is done, I'll post a permanent link to it.

 

- Labels.  Labels have been added, and others deleted.  Now, also, if you click a label that has more than twenty post contained within, you can go to older posts with the same link by the "Older Posts" link at the bottom of this web page.  Navigation!   What a concept.

 

- Translation.  I have switched to the venerable Altavista Babel Fish utility, which is on this page.  This will translate posts without having to go to another website.

 

- Charity.  You will also see on this page that there is a charity box, allowing you to chose a charity that you'd like to donate to through my blog.  The charities will change frequently, so check back just as often!  This service is possible through NetworkForGood.org. 

 

Other big changes are coming, so look for them.  Please, leave me a comment about the format changes, or make suggestions.  I do write this blog mostly for me, but it's for you as well.

 

Fix Those Finances

Our good friends at Lifehacker have come out big for your personal finances again.

The Simple Dollar weblog ran a series during January called 31 days to fix your finances, tackling finances one step at a time so that by the end of one month, your money ducks should be sitting in a nice, streamlined row.

Oh, Gina.  How we love you.

Check out The Simple Dollar for the details.  They managed to squeeze together a mess of posts into one cohesive unit.  Now pay off that Christmas spending.