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Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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RSS 2.0 Validation With Enclosures
Mitch Byers on 'Tell Me About Yourself'
Mitch Byers on Memory Triggers for Job Interviews
Picture the Process
Zimbra PIM: The Chandler Killer?
PalmOS Turning Japanese
Bush Takes Responsibility for Blunders
Find A Human
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Test Repost
Ok, one more post for testing purposes. Sorry.
mp3update: Right-o. That worked.
RSS 2.0 Validation With Enclosures
I had some errors in my RSS template, but after futzing around with it a bit I got it to validate at FeedValidator. The enclosures aren't showing up in FeedDemon, but this might be some kind of caching issue, since I retrieved the entries before I fixed the invalid enclosure tags. I don't feel like playing with it any more right now so if you see the enclosures in your RSS reader please let me know.Mitch Byers on 'Tell Me About Yourself'
This is Part 2 of the job transition series Mitch Byers is recording for KERA 90.1 in Dallas, TX. You'll be hearing, and seeing, more of Mitch in the coming weeks as we get ready to support his business and professional publishing efforts.Mitch Byers on Memory Triggers for Job Interviews
This is a test entry to check some template changes to support podcasting. The attached MP3 file, Byers_Memory_Triggers.mp3, is a 3-minute segment recorded by job transition consultant Mitch Byers. Previously aired on NPR affiliate KERA 90.1 in Dallas, TX, this is part of a series on job transition skills. Mitch is good. Have a listen.Picture the Process
Australian process guru and ontological coach David Buchan has begun using flickr and, as is usual with David, has begun to brainstorm specifics on how it can be a tool for improving the way we work. This would not have been an interesting conversation a month ago, but with Yahoo! buying flickr a stable future seems much more likely for the online photo service. I like Davids three points at the end, addressing what are likely to be common objections to his idea.Using photos to job memories
Shawn Callahan extols the virtues of using photos to remember what has happened on a project.
Remember the last time you sat down to flick through a photo album and see the photo of Uncle Johnnie (substitute your own relatives here) building the sand castle with little Katie and you instantly recollect the story of how Johnnie got incredibility drunk that night and fell into the bonfire. The next morning he vowed to be a tea totaller. The same story recollecting effect can be created in your organisation with each each project you undertake.I really like this idea and agree that flickr is a good solution. If you're reluctant to start a photo archive today it may be because you are thinking...
- I don't have time to categorise everything so that I can find it again - well, flickr uses tags which are quick and sorts by date using the information from the digital camera itself. Photos of a project ar relevant to the people that were on it. They will remember the categories/stories themselves. For others it really doesn't matter so there is no need to invest the time
- I don't have time to take good photos or I'm not a good photographer - who cares? You want to capture the moment as it was, not as you thought it should be portrayed.
- The rest of the world will see us or the client will wonder why we are taking photos rather than doing work - injecting some humanity into work is always a good thing. And the rest of the world? Perhaps you will inspire them.
Terry Frazier at 12:25 PM
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Zimbra PIM: The Chandler Killer?
The Flash demo of Zimbra is quite interesting, but then demos always are. After years of hype the Chandler project of the Open Source Applications Foundation still languishes at release 0.5. Can AJAX, eXtreme Programming, and other techno buzztrends overtake the open source uber-PIM and deliver a challenger to Outlook in our lifetime?
Calendaring seems to be the barrier. E-mail and search are pretty standard. But calendaring, and sharing calendars, is a real bear when the Outlook-driven corporate world is involved. Im not at all sure iCal is up to the challenge, but we have yet to see a truly robust iCal app. [Link via Judith Meskill]
Zimbra is open source, AJAX-enabled email, calendaring, and collaboration
What I like about Zimbra is its open sourceness (natch) and its intelligent approach to information presentation as applied to email and calendaring. Think Gmail but with tight integration with a web-based calendar, and with a lot of neat little information integration bells and whistles â like generating a contextual menu from a phone number in an email with an option to place a VoIP call. AJAX is no mere hot buzzword here but is well applied such that mousing over bits of data can generate tooltip-style boxes with related information, such that rolling over a date will pop up any items on your calendar for that day, e.g. Also slick, it understands relative terms like tomorrow or next Tuesday and will popover relevant calendar details for those terms. Whats exciting about this is that it eliminates a sizeable portion of the need to keep switching back and forth between panes, interfaces or applications to access information youve always felt should be available to you from right where you are.
Terry Frazier at 9:37 AM
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Wednesday, September 14, 2005
PalmOS Turning Japanese
The softer side of Palm, PalmSource, has been acquired by Japanese software company Access which offers a mobile internet platform for PocketPC, Windows Mobile, and other operating systems. They seem to have limited support for PalmOS 5, but no demos that I could find.I hope this means we'll get a decent third-party browsers for Palm devices soon. The Blazer Web Browser is dreadful. Access NetFront looks good, with intelligent support for graphical web content and helpful tools for developers.
Japanese company buys PalmSource
OKYO, Japan and SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ACCESS Co., Ltd., (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 4813), a global provider of mobile content delivery and Internet access software, and PalmSource, Inc. (Nasdaq: PSRC), provider of Palm OS®, a leading operating system powering next generation phones and mobile devices, today announced they have signed a definitive agreement for ACCESS to acquire PalmSource in an all-cash transaction valued at USD $18.50 per share of PalmSource common stock , or approximately USD $324.3 million (approximately ¥35.9 billion). ACCESS' USD $18.50 per share offer represents an 83% premium for PalmSource stockholders based on the market closing price of USD $10.09 on September 8, 2005.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Bush Takes Responsibility for Blunders
Is this the first time Bush has uttered the words "I take responsibility"? I don't recall ever hearing them before, at least not in the context of a mistake. He didn't seem to have his heart in it, but it's a good first start at acting like a leader. Too bad it's taken six years for him to do it.
Bush Takes Responsibility for Blunders - Yahoo! News
"And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong," said Bush.
Terry Frazier at 6:58 PM
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Find A Human
Zip past those annoying Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems using the Find-A-Human Quickbase by Paul English.What does this mean? IVR is the insidious way big companies avoid talking to you. Hire some woman with a robo-voice and get her to record layer after layer of idiotic droning that changes depending on which button you push. Of course, it's always prefaced by "Please listen to this entire message as our menus have changed." The menus have never actually changed, they just want you to wait on the phone until you get frustrated and go away.
Paul's Quickbase has direct bypass sequences for more than 75 companies. Better, if you discover the bypass sequence for a new company you can add it. Here are a few samples:
- Delta Airlines (utterly clueless) - Say "agent" four times - every time it asks for a response from you
- Dell Customer Service (an oxymoron) - option 1, xt 7266966, option 1, option 4, option 4
- DISH Network (clueful) - press "0" during menu
- Comcast (unnaturally clueful) - Customer service, but an IVR wants your number first.
Terry Frazier at 2:02 PM
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