I always enjoy reading Dan’s blog. The man consistantly has good leadership focused advice.

Today’s article was very timely for me, as I am have been challenged with motivating some of the team who truly feel they are only doing busy work.

From the article:

Talented leaders always define meaning and explain purpose.There are no menial tasks as long as tasks have meaning.

via Seeing the Secret of Engagement « Leadership Freak.

I guess there is a clue for me. I must not have been explaining the purpose behind some of their work streams. Anyone that knows me I really don’t go in for “busy work” and think it is WORSE than a waste of a time. A waste of time just uses time on non-productive activities. Busy work wastes time, human potential, and creates momentum toward…nothing.

If you are interested in building and refining your leadership skills, Dan’s blog is a good one to read.

This make me nauseous. I am literally sick ot my stomach reading this article. Not only because of the insane way the “judge” did his job, but also because I know that very few people will understand the implications and why they should care. (How many of you did anythign to protest SOPA?)

After a series of one-sided hearings, luxury goods maker Chanel has won recent court orders against hundreds of websites trafficking in counterfeit luxury goods. A federal judge in Nevada has agreed that Chanel can seize the domain names in question and transfer them all to US-based registrar GoDaddy. The judge also ordered “all Internet search engines” and “all social media websites”—explicitly naming Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Google—to “de-index” the domain names and to remove them from any search results.

via US judge orders hundreds of sites “de-indexed” from Google, Facebook.

 

One of the commenters makes this point:

…You control ICANN, well I am sure we’ll just ignore it, same with DNS. If America wants to control the Internet, that’s fine but it will be like China. You’ll control your own little corner of it and the rest of the world will continue to enjoy internet freedoms.

I am sure that there are TONS of people in China who are JUST FINE with the government controlling all they see and do in the Internet. It is for THEIR benefit and they are happy about it.

Are you one of those people?

“Destiny is for people who are too lazy to create alternate timelines.” – R. Stevens, Diesel Sweeties, 10-05-11

John Dvorak is one of those tech writers I love to hate. A lot of times I think he is full of self importance and unable to write objectively. In fact, in an article I link to below I still think he makes outlandish statements and is incorrect on his assumptions. However, I am blogging about the article for a reason. He makes the point that Google is shutting down services and sites with what appears to be very little effort put into making them successful.

From the article:

Also disconcerting is the fact that few people reading this column will have only heard of half of the discontinued products. This is very reminiscent of the Yahoo! shutterings; the closures get more publicity than the launches, proof of an abject failure in marketing communications. Who knows what potential is being squandered?

via Google Goes Yahoo! | John C. Dvorak | PCMag.com.

Here is a partial list of recently shutdown Google properties:

 Since Page began his rampage, a few of the products now gone include Knol, Google Bookmarks, Google Friend Connect, Google Gears, Google Search Timeline, Google Wave, Buzz, Google Health, Google PowerMeter, and Google Toolbar for Firefox.

I hope some startups see these and find a way to make viable products out of some of these. Google friend connect was one of those features that I would love to see someone bring back.

Good list from Men’s Health. I particularly like these:

7. Pointedly praising something unusual a person owns or has done will make you appear far smarter in his eyes than a 10-minute discourse on world events.

8. Yes, speak softly and carry a big stick. But don’t mumble. And don’t swing the stick.

 

via 40 Unwritten Rules to Live By.

Over the years I have dabbled and worked at software development. I have managed websites, software projects, and system configurations. Technology has become more flexible and accommodating on many fronts. This is especially true of software versioning tools. I won;t get into the differences between the types or how each work in this post. I want to introduce you to “Unfuddle“.

They have plans from free to $99/month. If you work on small projects or small teams, it is a valuable service. You can’t beat the benefits you get for the price. I use a free account to manage all of my small, solo projects and sites. I have created a few smaller accounts when working with a team. I have never used it in the enterprise, but  I have used SVN (which is one of the types of source code repository types they support. (The other it GIT, which I have not used yet).

Here are a couple of screenshots:

I am not an affiliate or make money from promoting their service in any way. I just think they are a huge benefit for me and may be useful for other people to know about.

SOPA == BAD

Seriously. This is one of those laws, that if passed, will later be looked back at as a clear marker of when American freedom passed a tipping point. If the government does this, we can only expect a lot more of the same.

This is not a “left wing” or a “right wing” issue. It’s a human issue. Do some research and see what other’s are saying.

Matt Cutts:

Here’s what I need:1. Take a few minutes to learn about the SOPA/E-PARASITE/PROTECT IP bills. They’re really bad bills.2. Take five minutes to call your Congressperson on the phone. If you live in Texas, Michigan, Vermont, or Iowa, this goes double for you.3. Get the word out. Tell your friends on Facebook, Twitter (maybe a hashtag like #stopsopa), or Google+. If your parents live in a different state, ask them to call their Congressperson too.

I would really, really appreciate the help. If you’re the kind of person who reads my blog or follows me online, I’m pretty sure the more you read about SOPA, the less you’ll like it.

If SOPA becomes law, it could stifle the innovation (and jobs) that the technology industry creates. That’s why Facebook, Twitter, Mozilla, Google, Yahoo, eBay, AOL, LinkedIn, and Zynga all oppose SOPA. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue–Red State thinks SOPA is a bad idea too.

I could go on and on (and I’m sure I will in the future) about the abuses that these bills would allow. But for now, I need your help. Please call your Congressperson right now and explain that this bill overreaches and would do serious harm to the internet. Thank you!

Jennifer Mercurio:

…SOPA/PROTECT IP forgo even this slight due process. These bills lack the provisions requiring the providers to put the material back up following a counter notice. Instead, the incentives are for service providers to keep the content down. Furthermore, a court order via a judge could require payment processors and ad networks to cut off service, before sites are convicted of any wrong-doing. The accused would then need to defend themselves. In other words, the impact of the bill is that they are found guilty before their day in court.

Bottom line is this; read the bill, understand the impact, call your congress critter and tell them why they should vote against it.

In my constant quest to balance secure, highly available, and accessible storage capacity for my home and small projects, I recently bought an Iomega device.

First, I have not been a fan of Iomega in many years. They had some neat technology back in the nineties but their reliability was pretty crappy. Sometime since I last used them and now they were purchased by EMC. I decided to give them a new look.

I really don’t feel like making this an actual product review, so I will just hit the highlights.

Pros:

• Size
• Cost
• Easy to set up and use
• Built In Torrent Downloader
• Built In Media streamer that works with all of my devices

Cons:

• Can’t easily upgrade the capacity
• Seems to get too hot and that worries me
• Amazon S3 backup only allows you to back up one share

I came across this article about how the movie “the Fighter” took only 3 days instead of the normal Hollywood 35 days to shoot the fight scene. I think it is a good illustration of a principle I came upon awhile back. Doing it is often faster and better than faking it. From the article:

“All these filmmakers insisted on a month+ to film the scenes because conventional wisdom says that’s the “right” way to do it. But sometimes conventional wisdom is more convention, less wisdom. And that’s when it pays off to take a questioning attitude and challenge assumptions….”

The article also links to a video showing a comparison of fight scene from the movie and a real fight it was depicting. Good stuff.

How “The Fighter” show it’s fight scene in 3 Days

I finally bit the bullet and bought a new primary home PC. I have a vSphere server, a home NAS, and many devices, but only one primary “personal PC”. I bought a mid range HP a couple of years ago that served me well. I did as I always tend to do with personal machines. I started out with the basic box and upgraded video and RAM. Added in speakers and a web cam, and voila’, I had my box.

Last weekend I logged on, browsed the ‘net a for a few minutes and got up to eat breakfast. When I came back, it was off. Dead. No POST, no sound on power up…nothing. Dead machine.

I had been looking at Mac’s for a few years, even though I was by no means an “Apple fanboy” I did see that their products LOOKED good and seemed to be focused on simple usability. I decided to go to my local Apple store and give them a look.

After about 30 minutes of playing with one, I left the store with my new iMac.

Here are the tech scores:

Mac OS X 10.6.6

Intel Core i7 @ 2930 MHz

Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 5750

8192 MB System RAM (Score: 162)

- RAM Speed: 5171 MB/s

CPU Tests (Score: 704)

- Floating Point Operations/Second: 304596064

- Integer Operations/Second: 551707712

- MD5 Hashes Calculated/Second: 1002442

Graphics Tests (Score: 532)

- 3D Frames Per Second: 1002

Hardware Tests (Score: 53)

- Primary Partition Capacity: 881 GB

- Drive Write Speed: 106 MB/s

After only a few says I can tell you I am very impressed and happy with my purchase.