Archive for May, 2007

Dell’s laying off 10% of its workforce.�

Since I have an office full of them, I guess that means I’ll be chatting it up with India more often about Dell Computers� - loudly, clearly, repeating, again, loudly.�

Or I guess I could go to my local� Wal-Mart and chat it up about Dell computers, loudly, clearly, repeating, again, loudly.

Disclosure: None of these are affiliate links.� This is not a post for me to make money.� I have purchased lots from this vendor and it’s gone well.� They took returns with no hassles, so I don’t mind linking to them.

What bothers me is when I go into a business and see folks struggling to� use 17″ CRT monitors to try to do work 8 hours daily in programs like Excel.� � The monitors will be� 0.28 or worse pitch, making eye fatigue a clear factor in their work.�

While it simply makes my work-day better to have a big set of monitors to do my job, people are making pretty good cases for imporoved productivity, and in stories� here, here, and here..� Mary Czerwinski has some fascinating research on� multitasking, displays, and interruptions� that I encourage you to read over.� � I especially liked the Diary Study of task switching article� and the work on Characterizing Productivity Benefits of Very Large Displays.�

Apple would very much like you to buy Cinema Displays.� Know this, read the Pfeiffer Report� (which Apple Funded)� on the topic - it’s well done.�

So anyway, www.saveateagle.com has a sale on Dell Monitors, including some terrific 19 and 20-inch ones.� They have the Dell 24″ monitors I use, which are really nice, for $649, and the 19″ for $209.95.� Either of these are sweet IMO, especially for the price.�

I rarely post in my blog just because someone else posted something in theirs, or because of a great new newsletter entry, but this has to be an exception - it hit home so well.� Jakob Nielsen’s latest Alertbox, titled “The Myth of the Genius Designer” nailed it and I hope many of my clients and clients-to-be have a chance to read this.� I plan to carry a few copies around with me (fully credited and URL’ed, Jakob) to hand out when the black turtlenecks and severe glasses enter the room.�

Nice job.

I was tagged by Bill Slawski in a Nerdiness quiz meme where he scored a measly 65 - or “low rank nerd” … so I pushed up my glasses, took off my wrist braces and stumbled up to the challenge!

Eighty-freaking five. High-Nerd. Woah. I was thinking like mid-grade. Thank GOD the quiz didn’t ask me if I owned a metal detector (I have a nice one), programmed IR emitters by hand to control devices (I have),� or re-wired any X-10 devices to do odd things ’round the house (I have a secret box)

Now I’ll meme-tag a few others. Answer honestly.. I did!

Jason Bartholme
Guy Kawasaki
Jeremy Zawodny
Carolyn Shelby

(the quiz is really quick BTW.)

I received this postcard� in the mail today….

The purpose?

To tell me that the Seiko repair center had received my watch.�

… a small suggested revision:

Dear Mr. Clark.

We received your watch in good condition.�
It is under warranty, so we are repairing it no charge.
You will receive it shortly.

Thank You.

Seiko Repair Service

By the way:� Kudos� To Seiko - they fixed this watch for me fast, gave me a battery, and didn’t charge me a dime.� And I don’t think it was under warranty at all.� A local jewelry store wanted $50 just to open it, and charged me $5 to tell me that.� I sometimes wonder why I even try to do business locally.

The Kentucky Attorney General’s Office is scrutinizing criminals’ use of online space to see if it violates terms of criminals’ parole, citing concerns about potential encounters that use social networks. MySpace released information Thursday about registered sex offenders who had accounts with the site. The attorney general’s office has not released any information about who the 68 people are or where they live.

In April, Attorney General Stumbo held a press conference about the new Kentucky law requiring the state’s 6,245 registered sex offenders to register their “electronic mail addresses and any instant messaging, chat, or other Internet communication name identities” with the Kentucky State Police Sex Offender Registry (Senate Bill 65 sponsored by Senator Ray Jones II of Pikeville). The new law allows online companies, including social networking sites, to cross-check its members against the KSP Sex Offender Registry. Kentucky is one of six states, along with Arizona, New York, South Dakota, West Virginia and Virginia, that require sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses or other online identities with the state.

Good luck Mr. Stumbo. I hate what some of these creeps do as much as anyone, but this one is going to be pretty tough to do anything about., I wonder how in the world this will be enforced. One can drive through any neighborhood in Lexington and join 3-4 open networks from your car on a laptop in the space of half an hour. The best solution is always going to be with the parents.

So why don’t we quick pretending to be high-tech whiz kid politicians and spend that money on dealing with root causes of the behavior itself, educating parents on the issues, and teaching families how to secure their Wifi?

Like many Kentuckians, I’m ashamed to be in the same state as this.� At least this provides a sliver of comic relief.

A post at wired blogs� has a fair number of entertaining comments.� Zachary Lynn posted lots of information about a visit.

And on Zachary’s entry you’ll find this terrific view of Adam and Eve…. before they partook of the forbidden fruit and learned that they were naked, er, robots.�

Shoppers will be able to compare the Camry and Accord to the Saturn Aura� and, shortly, to the new Chevrolet Malibu as well.� You’ll even be able to test drive all of the cars right there at the GM dealership.� Automakers have long had difficulty standing out in this crowded segment - recently dominated by top Japanese nameplates (including the best selling� Camry, built just a few miles from my location.)

But now, you’ll be able to look over all of the cars without the very dangerous proposition of having one of these customers pop in to a Toyota or Honda dealership to check them out.� Perhaps they’ve taken a page from web marketing and landing page design (never, ever let your visitor slip over to another page or site.)

It’s a gutsy move, and I think, the shape of things to come.� It sure is better than Free Hot Dogs or Clowns.

CompUSA officials said the company plans to “increase the number of products in some key growth areas to serve tech enthusiasts, professionals and businesses. It is testing a format in which part of the store would be specifically for small and medium business customers.� Officials said they would stock more products aimed at business users, including bringing back a commercial laser printer, a dot matrix printer and point-of-sale machines. They also plan to hold free seminars for small business owners in the stores.”

God Help� Us.� I’ve never been in a CompUSA where the sales staff could help with basic, consumer-grade products, let alone business-critical tools or seminars.�

I know, I’m hard on CompUSA, but someone needs to step up and be remarkable in this space, why not them?� � Who needs another computer K-Mart?

It’s long been my opinion that hourly consultants who work on-screen most of the time are plagued with a lack of billing consistancy, losing both money and client confidence.� I see this all the time with sub-contractors, and in forums I’ve read there are few who demonstrate a consistant methodology for recording the time they spend on client projects.� So, for years I’ve struggled with ways to improve my recording of client work.� End of the day.� End of the hour.� Little reminder beeps.� You name it.�

The one thing that has made a huge difference, and that I recommend for you too is to purchase a 2nd LCD monitor, and dedicate it to Quickbooks Weekly Timesheet.� � Don’t use it for your email.� Don’t pop up windows there.� At the start of the day open Quickbooks, Open the Weekly Timesheet, Select yourself, and leave it there … all day.� � If you’re running multi-user version, each of your employees can do the same.� The costs for a 17″ high quality LCD and cabling is less than $200, which you’ll probably recoup in a couple of weeks.�

If you don’t want to run Quickbooks on the system all the time, you could use this with Intuit’s Time Tracker or MC2 anywhere’s web-based system � too.� With this, you could just run Firefox in the 2nd monitor and be done.� �

PS: Occasionally exit quickbooks so your backup system can pick it up.