Knowledge Work

Over at the TECHWR-L list, one of the members is getting set to deliver a talk on technical writing as a career to a group of home-schooled high school students, and asked for advice.
After answering the questions, I realized I had just written a pretty good blog post!
1. What students can learn now to […]

Brian Livingston’s “Windows Secrets” newsletter is one of the few industry publications I subscribe to; he’s a no-nonsense techie who keeps abreast of Developments You Should Know About.
Well, here’s a Development You Should Know About: Microsoft has started cramming spyware into their automatic “security” updates, and concerned users now have a great, free alternative to […]

Jerry Toomer retired from a 25-year career at Dow Chemical in 2003. But today he’s back at work, having found a consulting job through an employment network designed specifically for older adults, YourEncore.com.
‘I don’t see myself as a retiree,’ says Mr. Toomer, a 57-year-old organizational-development expert in Indianapolis. As part of his new responsibilities, ‘I […]

I haven’t used a Mac regularly since 1996, but about a month ago I found myself in a techno-trance state, in the Apple Store in SoHo, New York City, swiping my AmEx card to buy one of the new Intel-based MacBooks.

(I was driven screaming back into the arms of Apple by a hauntingly awful experience with a late public beta of Microsoft Vista. I’ve transitioned quickly in the last few weeks to using the MacBook as my primary work machine, and I haven’t looked back.)

My new MacBook 1.83Ghz (512MB RAM, 60GB HD, $1099 at the Apple Store in NYC) arrived ready to go right out of the box. It was unusually well-equipped with pre-loaded software; not just a Web browser (Safari), e-mail client (Mail) and a host of related tools, but a licensed copy of Apple’s powerful and cool iLife multimedia suite, plus 30-day trial versions of iWork and Microsoft Office 2004.

From the time I broke the seal on the box and unpacked the cute little beast, I was up and running in about ten minutes… the first clue that I was in for an experience that was very, very different from my last ten years in the Wintel Wilderness.

That being said, if you are of the geekly inclination, you’re going to want to make some additional tweaks and purchases to optimize your Mac-using experience, especially if you have to continue to collaborate with colleagues who are tethered to their Windows machines. So with that in mind, here’s what I’ve learned in the first month of owning a new Intel-based Mac and fitting it out so that I can still work with my Windows peeps.

…EXIN has launched a new Service Quality Management Certificate based on ISO 20000. This Foundation Certificate in Service Quality Management will also become part of a new learning track for the Service Quality Management consultant.
This track consists of ITIL Foundation, Service Quality Management Foundation, a new ITIL Service and Process Improvement certificate and a new […]

Vista. The term stirs the imagination to conceive of beautiful possibilities just around the corner. And “just around the corner” is what Windows Vista has been, and has remained, for the past two years. In this time, Vista has suffered a series of high-profile delays, including most recently the announcement that it would be delayed […]

Many independent developers eventually find themselves in a situation where they must negotiate a contract for the first time, such as for a publishing deal. And many developers are taken advantage of on their first deal because of a lack of basic negotiating skills.
This article will attempt to give you a general understanding of how […]

If you’ve just been appointed technical lead (of anything), take ten minutes to read this.
Perhaps the most difficult job to do on any software development project is that of Technical Lead. The Technical Lead has overall responsibility for all technical aspects of the project - design, code, technology selection, work assignment, […]

When a small consulting company in Chicago was looking to hire a summer intern this month, the company’s president went online to check on a promising candidate who had just graduated from the University of Illinois.
At Facebook, a popular social networking site, the executive found the candidate’s Web page with this description of his interests: […]

I have a spare laptop of recent vintage around the house, and had some time on my hands this weekend–Carrie was working; I, uncharacteristically was not–so I downloaded and installed the public beta of the much-delayed and rescoped “Longhorn,” the operating system that Microsoft is now calling Windows Vista.
I’ve also installed the public betas of […]

Jakob Nielsen (guru of all things web-usability-related) did a salary study, and here’s what he found (as reported by ZDNet.com):
1. Entry-level staffers were paid unrealistically high salaries during the bubble, when dot-com companies were desperate to hire any warm body that walked in the door
2. Experienced staffers were also paid more during the bubble, but […]

Tarus Balog of the OpenNMS Group is a little exercised, and justifiably so, about a new crop of firms that see “open source” as nothing more than a marketing buzzword:
Open source software development is not just about providing the source code for your application. It is much more about building a community around a shared […]

Problems with the balance between the demands of profit-driven corporations and peoples’ need to live a satisfying life won’t be cured by policy statements and procedure manuals. That isn’t where the causes lie. They’re inside peoples’ heads: obsessive achievement drive, ambition gone mad, laughable greed for money and power, and blithe disregard of anything not […]

Why work 8 hours/day for someone else when you can work 16 hours/day for yourself?
So you want to be a consultant…?

How? Talk technical-sounding rubbish. If it works for new-age airheads spouting ignorant garbage about quantum physics, it can work for you, too:
I’ve been to quite a few consultancy presentations where all kinds of jargon and graphs are flashed up on the screen. The consultants will drop terms like “inverted blade-center uptime matrix” into the presentation […]

Most of management theory is inane, writes our correspondent, the founder of a consulting firm. If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead.
The Management Myth (Atlantic magazine, June 2006; subscription required)

Dan Geer is an extremely well respected security expert. When he worries about something, people listen.
One of the things he has worried - and warned - about is the danger represented by IT ‘monocultures’ - the situation that arises when everyone uses the same software, for example, and therefore everyone shares the same vulnerability […]

Recent e-mail thread, names redacted and text lightly edited to protect the innocent and/or guilty:
from: [email protected]
to: Barry
Hi Barry,
I am looking for an information architect for [gigantic investment bank] in NYC. Please e-mail me your resume and hrly rate and I will get back to you. XML and investment banking are a must.
****
from: Barry
to: [email protected]
bcc: friendandcolleague
Hi […]

Successes or failures of employees in the workplace can be traced to what kind of father they had, a psychologist argues in a new book.
In “The Father Factor,” Stephan Poulter lists five styles of fathers — super-achieving, time bomb, passive, absent and compassionate/mentor — who have powerful influences on the careers of their sons and […]

From the latest issue of New Scientist magazine (subscription required) comes an article entitled “Change the way you see the world” (and it will):
We love our maps. At first glance, people are shocked by them: the shapes look familiar, yet everything is absurdly distorted. Without even thinking, they have learned something about the world they […]