Month: September 2005

Thursday, 15 September 2005

Reflections on Bush’s New Orleans Speech

by Garrick van Buren 3 Comments on Reflections on Bush’s New Orleans Speech

I do agree with Bush the one of the few organizations capable of handling a logistical nightmare of a natural disaster the size of Katrina is the Army. The other one is Wal-Mart. Next time don’t turn them away.

Three notes to President Bush;

  1. Good job on not giggling during your speech. I’m sure it took a week of practice. Also, you did a good job holding back that ignorant, mocking, smirk.
  2. Unfortunately, you’ve run out of political capital around 9/11 or WMD. Stop talking about them. Unless you can convince us Al Queda is connected to Katrina.
  3. Another hurricane like Katrina won’t hit New Orleans again, there won’t be another terrorist attack like 9/11. Don’t spend too much time looking backwards to prevent it from happening again. Look forward and plan systems that will prevent all disasters. Not just the politically sexy ones.

I’m torn, should the people responsible for making a mess be responsible for cleaning it up? Maybe. I believe you did your best, and your best caused this mess. So, I think someone else should be responsible for the clean up and rebuild. You’ve got a bunch of other stuff to wrap up anyway (Iraq for example).

One final thought, everytime Bush says ‘citizens’ he should say ‘we’. ‘We’ is more representative of the impact the New Orleans has as will have on all of us. I know Bush doesn’t want to impose any discomfort on ‘us’. His keep-America-at-arms-length attitude makes me think leading a nation makes him uncomfortable. But, that’s his job. Maybe if he thought of it as clearing really big brush from a really big ranch.

Laptop Killing TV and Stereo

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Laptop Killing TV and Stereo

I had a post on my personal blog about wanting my favorite movies and TV shows available as digital downloads, rather than DVDs. Looks like I’m not the only one considering my laptop the all-in-one media and communications center. PSFK points to an article on British youth not owning televisions. I picked up a Tivoli iPAL this weekend to replace the bulky 5 CD stereo system we haven’t turned on in months (because there’s no line-in jack for the iPod).

How to Blog for Higher Search Engine Ranking

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on How to Blog for Higher Search Engine Ranking

Blogging, aside from being one of the easiest ways to publish online, is also one of the easiest ways to increase search engine rankings.

Search engine spiders like Google’s GoogleBot expect websites to change and be updated frequently. Blogs are (or should be), so the spiders come by more frequently. Once the spiders are at you’re weblog, they look for keywords in 4 places:

  1. Window title (in the window, above the address bar)
  2. URL (in the address bar)
  3. Article title
  4. In the article itself

WordPress, the weblog system I prefer, sets the window title and URL from the article title. Then, it’s just a matter of writing a title representative of the article and writing an article worth reading.

Listing your category archives and recent articles as links in the sidebar automatically increases the keyword count on the page – automatically increasing your google juice.

Wednesday, 14 September 2005

Multiple Languages, Same Message – A Reason for a Comment-Cast

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Multiple Languages, Same Message – A Reason for a Comment-Cast

When I was developing WP-iPodCatter, it seemed straight-forward enough to tie WordPress’ enclosure detection with the Comments RSS feed to create a comment podcast, or comment-cast.

I didn’t have a personal need for this feature (so it’s not as fully developed as the others) but I thought it’d be neat and it was easy to do.
Plus, the thought of a podcast with distributed hosting, on topic, created by fans of another podcast seemed like an interesting way to bring the threaded comments to audio.

Then, listening to Mike’s latest Sex and Podcasting, Katrina – multi-language podcasts, I realized that’s not the interesting bit.

Here’s the scenario, I publish a podcast. You take it, translate it, record it into a language you know well, and republish it as a comment to the original.

Subscribing to the comment feed will automatically deliver the translated files as fast as they’re published.

Could be helpful. Could cause more and bloodier wars.

Ad Agencies are Paid to Make the Uninteresting Interesting

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Ad Agencies are Paid to Make the Uninteresting Interesting

After the MIMA Online Communities Salon tonight I overheard;

“Ad agencies are paid to make the uninteresting interesting.”

Reminded me of something Hugh said;

“For marketing hand-made cheese that was matured in sixteenth century stone cellars, blogging is a no-brainer.
For marketing Velveeta, it’s trickier. Maybe impossible.”

The sleight of hand ad agencies perform is brevity. Even lame Velveeta can be cool in 30 highly-controlled seconds. Unfortunately, one-night stands are not how people get married. Blogs, podcasts, and other online communities, are permanent, direct, on-going, cumulative, relationship-building tools. The hand-made cheese matured in 16th century stone cellars is a commitment. Like a blog. Like a lifelong relationship.

This is the difference between making the lame interesting and making the banal interesting.

But you know that.

Tuesday, 13 September 2005

Stinson Auto and the Loose Hubcap

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Stinson Auto and the Loose Hubcap

The last week or so, I’ve noticed an odd squeaking coming from the driver-side front tire. Shows up a little over 20mph and it gets louder the faster I go. Not a good sign. Turn the wheel left or right at any speed and it completely disappears. Nothing.

I had to stop by Stinson Auto anyway to pay for the brake job and alignment they did prior to this noise appearing.

After driving a couple of blocks, Eric the Mechanic tightened the odd plastic, threaded nuts on the hubcaps. Yep, that was it.

On The Federal Government Only Running Military and Post Office

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on On The Federal Government Only Running Military and Post Office

I’m grabbing a late morning coffee at the Dunn Bros in downtown St. Paul. Like all Dunn Bros, this is a great place for eavesdropping (surpassed only by the Nicollet Mall location).

The gentlemen next to me are have a very in-depth political current events discussion. Considering the low number of good coffee shops between here and the Capital, I suspect politics is their day job.

The gentleman in a blue tie is going off on both parties and doing a fairly decent job of articulating the seeming contradictions in their respective positions. Though he completely misses the parenting-style analogy in George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant. After this, Blue Tie declared the federal government should run the military, the post office, and that’s it.

I’m not comfortable with how short his list is, so I’m starting my own. My list makes 2 assumptions:

  1. Internally, the Federal Government should only do things difficult for individual states to perform separately.
  2. Externally, the Federal Government is the America’s representative to the World.

That being said, I believe the Federal Government is responsible for the following:

  • Foreign Relations
  • Interstate Commerce
  • Protecting America’s Geographic Borders
  • Protecting Citizens’ Equality
  • Disaster Recovery
  • Monetary Policy
  • Social Security
  • Education
  • Health Care

According to the World’s Smallest Political Quiz, this makes me a Liberal Libertarian. Probably because I answered ‘maybe’ to 40% of the questions and the quiz is published by Libertarians.

Monday, 12 September 2005

How Not To Hire Someone

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on How Not To Hire Someone

A while back, Fast Company published Keith Hammonds’ Why We Hate HR. Like myself, I’m sure you have some remarkable ‘Everything was going great, then HR…’ stories. Whether it’s ridiculous, time-wasting hoops (asking candidates to complete an application even though you have their resume) or just not doing a simple Google search on a candidate (Microsoft Recruits Eric S. Raymond). Both of these examples betray a dysfunctional disconnection between HR and the rest of the organization.

This excerpt from the letter ESR posted exemplifies HR arrogance (emphasis mine):

“Your name and contact info was brought to my attention as someone who could potentially be a contributor at Microsoft. I would love an opportunity to speak with you in detail about your interest in a career at Microsoft, along with your experience, background and qualifications.”

If this was a cover letter, the candidate wouldn’t have a chance. A complete boilerplate message without any thought or tangible specifics as to why it was sent. Yet, not only is the recruiter unfamiliar with candidate’s qualifications and background (otherwise this letter would not have been sent), they take for granted that the candidate wants to work at Microsoft. Plus, it’s exactly opposite how Google is recruiting.

With company benefits continually cut, employees having to supplement employer-based health insurance, and staff directories as fluid as football rosters, this assumption can’t be made.

Until organizations can again provide the stability and security they once promised, it’s a seller’s market or a Free Agent Nation as Dan Pink calls it.

Here’s an example of a low-risk, mutually-respectful hiring process

  1. Ask existing employees who they’d like to work with
  2. Do Google search for those people, make sure they have a presence online. Read their blog’s archives.
  3. If it looks good, bring these people in for a couple of smaller contract projects or invest an equivalent amount of time getting to know them.
  4. If it’s still looking good, understand how you as an employer can improve their situation. Sometimes this is money, sometimes it’s about everything else in the compensation package.
  5. At this point, you’ll both know if it’ll work or not.

A few years back, the company I worked for described their hiring process, similar to this, as “deliberate.” That description stuck with me. It was one also of the best places I’ve worked for.

This is what Seth Godin means when he talks about dating your prospects. Give the audio from Seth’s London Marketing Soiree a listen for more. Thanks Hugh