After Hours

The title comes from Alan Reiter’s recent article, “Amazon Fosters Emergence of ‘Digital+Physical’ Sales”. I completely agree with the premise: there would be considerable utility in being able to access content in multiple forms even for a modest upcharge.

When Amazon first launched its Kindle, I put together a handful of thoughts on the idea. I also commented towards the end that bundling the digital and physical would be a powerful approach. This was two years ago and there hasn’t been much movement on this front.

It’s still true that you some texts are eligible for the Amazon Upgrade. This feature enables you to access electronic versions of the physical book you purchased for a small fee. Aside from expanding the number of books that are upgradable, it seems that this service is mostly forgotten. The idea was good but it fell short of being really useful. The problem, of course, is that you have to be online. Further, similar online services were launched, such as Safari, which provide online access to a lot of books, though they are typically technical. As well, Safari is subscription based (per-month or annual payment options) which might be less price competitive in the long run.  That said, if you belong to a University or corporation, it is possible the enterprise purchased a site license giving employees/students access.

The most obvious connection is to merge Amazon Upgrade with Kindle. Given the lack of information on the issue on Amazon’s site, that hasn’t happened and it doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon.

It would incredibly useful to have Kindle, online and physical access to content, especially for those of us in a technical or education field. Kindle certainly provides the most flexible access to content. However, neither the Kindle nor it’s larger sibling, Kindle DX, is the best format for all texts, especially high-resolution, color-dependent graphics. While book images and graphics are typically sufficient, the online environment can offer much greater resolution and even significant improvements in annotations (publisher, author or everyone generated). This includes inline errata which, for technically oriented books, could prove invaluable. (Ever tried learning a new programming language from a book with grave errors? Math texts with wrong answers or conclusions?) From an educator’s point of view, access to online content would enable graphics and passages to be clearly displayed in the classroom for discussion.

For the record, I don’t think the Kindle is key in this endeavor. Ultimately having online access to and third party storage of your media means less to personally manage and that is the attraction.

I do understand book/music/video publishers’ concerns about lost revenue: purchase a hard copy, get the digital access, sell the hard copy to a friend for a reduced rate. I have read more articles than I care to count identifying the need for these domains to develop a business model that meets the needs of the times but I have yet to see one suggested that really addresses the problems on both sides (comments welcome if you know of one). Maybe it just comes down to publishers taking a hit on their bottom line. I haven’t really thought this through.

In any event, as Reiter discusses, the opportunity is ripe for the change. Hopefully a solution, good for both producers and consumers, isn’t far from emerging.

When I upgraded to a new version of WordPress a conflict occurred between my theme and the new engine. I finally figured out how to at least get in and establish a new theme. I’m working to get the old theme fixed and back in use.

The theme I was using was a modification of the k2 theme. I didn’t really do it in an optimal way which meant I couldn’t simply upgrade k2 itself. This will give me a chance to correct the problem.

So it goes.

Update! Alright. After having initially resolved the problems, I finally found a little time to sit down and craft a post. Trying to reach the dashboard, more problems surface. So, after some time, I’ve managed to get enable the default template and things mostly look normal. But I’m too agitated to write. I’ll get back to it.

– Hal

At CCSC-CP 2008, the keynote speaker was Robert Martin, the president/CEO of Object Mentor, Inc, as well as author of a numerous books and articles. The main thrust of his talk was that code needs to be developed in an agile manner with testing to be the forefront activity. This was motivated by stories of “rotten code” that is typically solved by management’s response to the developers “beating the drums of redesign”. Martin has been in the software business a good while and has had considerable exposure to software projects of, what my guess would be, almost all varieties. So, certainly, he speaks from experience.

By the end of his presentation, though, I personally didn’t feel that I had learned much or heard anything that I haven’t heard or read before. In fact, I would say that there wasn’t much Martin offered that couldn’t be found in books that have been stocked by most Borders for years. The theatrics of a seasoned speaker aside^*, his address seemed to be received very well by many in the audience. I would assume that students found his content novel or perhaps at least an independent validation of what they were exposed to in their classes (oddly, though, the students in attendance of such events are probably not the ones that need the validation).

But why would the professionals in the audience derive so much pleasure from the talk? I would hope that they found nothing groundbreaking in his message given the content consisted of mainstream topics that have been around for roughly a decade. It must be the presentation style.

So what makes a successful conference keynote? It seems that you need to either provide the audience with information they find novel and relevant or you need to find a way to resonate. Success in the latter approach seems to be the conference equivalent of a Sunday sermon.

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There are two questions I am asked routinely by (typically prospective) students:

1. Should I pursue a certification in X?
2. Why would I pursue a degree from a university as opposed to a tech school?

With respect to the first questions, a recent article by Warren Wyrostek on InformIT discusses issues with certifications. The problems span from the simple mechanics – vendor-centricity, inability for certification processes to truly measure competence and continuous renewals on the part of the certified – through more economic reasons for why the certification bodies will struggle.

The bottom line is that a certification is worth pursuing if it is immediately relevant to a specific job position for which you want to apply. Of course, this gives rise to the question of how often is it relevant. To understand this some I did a few searches on Monster.com (date: 2008-03-19) in the categories of computer services/hardware/software, internet/e-commerce and IT/software development with no region specified :

• Searching for “ccna” yielded 1021 jobs.
• Searching for “MSCE” yielded
• Searching for “a+” yielded 1114
• Specifying no keywords resulted in 5000+ jobs

After filtering the overlap by searching for positions requiring two or all three of the certifications, the count for such positions involving at lease one of the certifications was 1115. (Searching for “ccna msce” resulted in 22 position, “ccna a+” resulted in 134, “msce a+” resulted in 14 and “ccna msce a+” resulted in 3.)

I also examined random positions in each search to get a feel for whether the certification was desired or preferred. I wasn’t able to nail down a sense of percentage by visual inspection (there were too many jobs) and trying to use the search to discriminate between the two proved difficult since there are various ways to state that certification is required. It’s worth noting too that the jobs requiring A+ certification were primarily entry level help desk positions and something most graduates of a university would not pursue (though they may take such a position if other opportunities were not available to them).

I address the second question roughly by explaining that the program offered at Penn State provides a considerably broader set of experiences with one of the primary goals being graduates that are adept at critical thinking, are adaptable, operate will in the presence of significant ambiguity, can pull from a diverse exposure and able to be life-long learners. Technical schools tend to focus on a specialized set of skills over a specialized set of environments which may become obsolete over time.

While graduates of a tech school are able to find employment, they often can only advance so far. Organizations expect staff in the upper level positions to have obtained degrees at reputable universities or colleges. Though I don’t know for certain, the rationale is probably based on the intent of the university education. They want some sense of measure that the employees in positions making critical decisions for the organization are prepared for such tasks.

I’m still trying to organize my thoughts on this latter question. There are many nuances that require further thinking. I’ll get back to it before long.

I am probably jumping the gun with this post but I haven’t written anything in a while and it’s a rather immediate topic: the interview of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg by Sarah Lacy at SXSW 2008. Identified as a disaster by many accounts, others found it to be an unfortunate occurrence, even Zuckerberg himself.

What concerns me more is the reaction of several (perhaps many but I didn’t search long enough) that identified the situation as a revolution, a changing tide of the way conferences are executed. In an article on CNNMoney.com, Dan Fost used the term “Conference 2.0″. This is probably the start of a buzzword war and we at large will be the casualties. But more importantly, I am concerned the event will spark a notion that this is the way of the future and conference organizers should heed the call. I haven’t seen much discussion regarding this or similar concerns and I hope that eventually more sources will offer balance to the topic.

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Windows Live Messenger can be embedded into a web page. This feature seems to have arrived in November 2007 based on the flurry of blog activity.

Embedding a messaging window is rather simple. To do so, you just need to change your Web Settings for your Windows Live account. Once you agree to expose your Messenger status, you can then select one of three embedding choices: full messaging client, a button or just an icon. The details are available from Microsoft but it pretty much just a matter of copying the generated code and pasting it into your web page.

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