Just to get this out of my system, I’ll tell you what I think of the current crisis in the monetary system. It starts off with a fictional story, and explains why we need to get rid of the monetary system, and why you should have physical gold in your safe.
Tag: opinion
Getting a high Google Quality Score.
The past week, I’ve heard some collegues talking about tweaking websites so that they will show up in Google search results. A lot of people actually try to figure out how to “fool” the Google search engine, and actually make a living writing books about it. The strange thing is, that a lot of people want to be the “I feel lucky” link in Google even when the search query hasn’t got anything to do with the content they’re providing.
It’s actually a funny discussion, because this behaviour which “makes use” of the system, actually breaks it. Suppose a lot of people figure out how to get this done. Now, whenever you use Google, your first page of search results will actually contain stuff you’re not looking for. After a few tries, you’ll get tired of this and start using a different search engine.
Mine are real.
As Seth Godin pointed out, “Organizations will work tirelessly to de-personalize every communication medium they encounter.”
Just to let you know, all my mail is hand typed, including the “Kind Regards” and my name at the end. You may find it silly, but I think it shows that you care. I always think about my greetings, and I even try to vary them every now and then. Having a default greeting underneath every mail, wether the content of that mail requires it or not is just plain silly.
Almost just as silly as the disclaimers people put in the mail, thinking that it has any legal value, or even thinking somebody actually reads those.
Next time you receive a mail from me, keep in mind that my greetings are actual, meaningful, honest greetings, personally written from me to you. You may have noticed that I am never “yours”, because then I would be “truly” lying.
And yes, it als gives me an opportunity to leave them out, or tone them down. You’re allowed to check your mail now. Go and feel special.
Anything you say…
…can and will be used against you.
I got an email with a great link to a blog post containing 2 links to great presentations on why you should never talk to the police, even if you’re honest, or want to help, or have an alibi, or whatever. Never, ever answer any questions, no matter how trivial. Although this is an American presentation, it definetely applies to a great extend on Dutch and probably a whole lot of other European laws aswel.
Thanks to Pim for sending me this link. I really enjoyed the talk by Professor James Duane, he is a great presenter and a very articulate speaker. I’m jealous of the people in his class, it must be one good teacher.
Censorship: here to stay
For those of you who think that media and information are free and uncontroled, guess again. Lately I have been seeing more and more incidents of large corporations hiding information, and even telling other people to hide it for them. I think this is plain wrong, and the guys involved should have been fired or punished otherwise.
If you have information which is of interest to the public, and somebody is making you sign a paper with which he can force you to shut up, you should think twice (and then not do it). Not because of the money, not because of the information itself, but for the sheer principle. Information should not be controled in that way. By anyone. It is dangerous.
No Exclamation Please
Some developers nowadays still think that putting an exclamation mark in their log entries adds to the visibility of their entry. When other developers notice this, they will add even more exclamation marks so their log entries are even more visible. I compiled a few examples of bad log entries and some pointers for you to improve your log entries.
Conform Specs is not enough
Like any good software company, when a project starts, we sit down with the client, and talk about what we can do to help. The result is usually a more or less complete SRS (Software Requirement Specification). The SRS serves as input to the design fase (we usually already have an architecture sketch when the SRS is made) and those two documents are used to brief the developers and keep everybody posted on what to build. If all done correctly, this should then result in a perfect piece of software right?
How Norton Fixes it’s Software
As you may know, Norton and Symantec were originally rivals in the anti-virus software market. Then, Norton bought Symantec and the two anti-virus products merged into Norton Anti Virus. Yes, I know, I’m talking PC here. Bare with me on this one.
BusySync vs Spanning Sync
Google calendar is the new “Cool” in the calendar world. Or at least, the guys at work seem to think so. For me, a 100% online calendar is not always a good solution, because I can’t take it with me. Getting Google calendar to sync with iCal would help, because that syncs to my phone and iPod. I tried BusySync and Spanning Sync to do this. One of them succeeded.
Sell a Name or an Image?
The new marketing “trick” seems to be to give a product a nice name, which sounds “expensive” and “design” like. So the marketing boys come up with a nice name. Compaq for instance has been using “pressario” for a while now. But when I say that I have a “pressario”, do you really know what kind of computer I have? Do you know which computer to buy when you hear my praise on my great new computer?