Aggregate of all Contributors' Posts

Recently I helped direct and produce a biographical documentary. Here’s the equipment list I used:

• Canon XHA1 video camera
• Camera tripod
• Boom pole
• Directional mic with windscreen (dead cat)
• XLR cables
• MiniDV tapes
• Macbook Pro w/ iMovie and iDVD
• Dell Laptop with photoshop
• Epson flatbed scanner
• Radio Shack 3 channel audio mixer
• Sennheiser condenser microphone with stand (for narration)
• External 1TB drive
• Mediawiki
• Royalty free music (http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/)

Do I know anything about film making? Not really. I did read a bunch of books. And I watched an awful lot of documentaries to get ideas. Special thanks to Tyler T. for the technical advice!

T. Boone Pickens will be in Salt Lake on September 11th to discuss his plan around moving the US off of oil dependence.

Find more videos like this on PickensPlan

My new friend Francesco Santini is translating a select number of my posts into Italian for his blog. If your Italian's better than mine, you could read my post and all of Francesco's at http://www.fundraising.it/. And to any of my Italian readers I'll repeat what I said to Francesco: "If you ever need a token American to speak at or attend a nonprofit or marketing conference in Italy, I'm your

Ok, now for some more really exciting stuff.

A few months ago we started kicking around the idea of starting a blog for a few reasons:
1) in order to bring knowledge to our members
2) In order to enhance our online presence
3) In order to increase our membership base

We’re excited to announce that the blog has finally come to fruition. We have enlisted the help of the professional community and beginning this week expert bloggers from the areas of finance, venture capital, law, personal finance, real estate, and other areas will be posting about whatever they feel would be important to young finance professionals.

We are also looking for more bloggers so if you would like to be one of our bloggers or know somebody who would like to be one of our bloggers please let us know through the contact page.

In addition, we are looking for an in kind sponsor to help with the website. If you or anyone you know would be willing to help me add a few more features and maintain the site please let me know.

Startup Princess - a mentoring organization for women entrepreneurs is holding a conference called TOUCHPOINT this month. I’m (Janet Meiners Thaeler) one of several mentors who will be available to meet one-on-one with attendees. Kelly is a good friend and she is doing an incredible job leading networking groups for women who own businesses.
Here are the other details:
When: Friday, September 26, 2008 8:00 am - 5:00 pm

Where: Miller Innovation Center SLCC Campus
9690 South 300 West
Sandy, Utah

Cost: $99 if you register before Tuesday, September 9th.

Heather Madder will be the keynote speaker, speaking on: “Living as a Creator, with Limitless Capacity” 9:15 AM to 10:10 AM and there are other workshops on creating a business plan and other topics relating to running a business. Read all about it and I’ll see you there!

The system we're building at Kynetx includes a domain specific language that uses rules to create JavaScript programs that get sent down to the browser. I've documented our decision to use a domain specific langauge and our choice of Perl in other posts.

When I started this project, I was reading Mark Dominus' book Higher Order Perl and started using his HOP parser to play around with. One thing led to another an before you know it I had a full blown language parser in HOP without giving much thought as to whether or not I'd made the right choice.

I found the HOP parser to be pretty flexible, but it has it's quirks. More importantly, I didn't like the BNF specification format and so I was constantly trying to keep the spec and the implementation in sync. Better if I could just use the spec as the implementation 'ala Bison. Don't get me wrong, this is a great book with lots of wonderful ideas, but I wanted something else for the parser.

As I added more and more features to the language, it got to where I'd dread making the parser changes. Recently, I decided I had to significantly beef up the predicate expressions and thought it would be a good time to change out the parser as well.

A few months ago I picked up Christopher Frenz's Pro Perl Parsing in anticipation of just this day. Reading through it illuminated my choices and ultimately, I picked Damian Conway's Parse::RecDescent, a recursive descent parser over the other contender, Parse::Yapp. The reasons for my choice were partly esthetic and partly a trust in Damian. The main thing I was after was a parse spec that I could read and compile and RecDescent seemed great in that regard.

The biggest downside of RecDescent is that there's no associated Lexer. For most things that's not a big deal since terminals can be specified as regular expressions. The place where it really bit me was comments. Removing comments is trickier than you'd think because you don't want to process "start of comment markers" inside any quotes. With a lexer, that's easy; without one, it's more problematic. Writing the regexp to remove comments took me a while to get right. I ended up using a modified version of the solution given in this FAQ. The problem with most solutions, including Regexp::Common, which has a language comment module, is that they don't account for comment markers in quotes.

All in all, rewriting the parser was a good exercise and I'm happy with the choice of RecDescent. Here's a sample production from my file:

decl: VAR '=' VAR ':' VAR '(' expr(s? /,/) ')'
      {$return =
       {'lhs' => $item[1],
        'type' => 'data_source',
        'source' => $item[3],
        'function' => $item[5],
        'args' => $item[7]
       }
      }
    | VAR '=' 'counter' '.' VAR
      {$return =
       {'lhs' => $item[1],
        'type' => $item[3],
        'name' => $item[5]
       }
      }
    | VAR '=' HTML
      {$return =
       {'lhs' => $item[1],
        'type' => 'here_doc',
        'value' => $item[3]
       }
      }
    | 

This production for decl has three alternates. Each has a separate return value (a hash) that represents the portion of the abstract syntax tree created for that part of the input.

If you decide to give Parse::RecDescent a try, here are some resources:

• The Parse::RecDescent documentation
• The Parse::RecDescent tutorial
• The Parse::RecDescent FAQ
• An O'Reilly getting started-style tutorial
• An example showing SQL CREATE TABLE statements

Reading the documentation and the FAQ thoroughly is highly recommended. There's lots of little tricks that can make your job easier.

My job, replacing an existing parser, was made easier by the fact that I'd previously built a pretty thorough test suite in Perl for the parser and some related modules. So once I got the language spec pretty much complete, I started running the tests and correcting errors as they cropped up. In a few hours, I'd solved all the problems and was confident my parser was ready to go. Definitely the way to go.

At any rate, now I've for a shiny new parser that I can go modify. Fun!

Tags: kynetx perl programming+languages parsing

  

Worlds Largest Diet Coke Can, originally uploaded by digitalthom.

I took this picture at some road side gas station in Idaho. Couldn’t pass it up. I think they must be the biggest soda cans in the world.

Today, I found an article written by Frank Peters (from the Frank Peters’ Show fame) that I thought was very well written.  I’m sure that I have written about this topic before, but it seems that the message has yet to penetrate to entrepreneurs across the US.  What is the message?  Here it is in Frank Peter’s words:

I don’t love Executive Summaries; it’s just me being smart-alecky. But I hate business plans even more; no one reads business plans. Why? Because there’s no time; I’m not that interested at that point of first contact, and I’m not alone. I don’t know anyone who wants to see your business plan.

Knowing that we (who’s the we? me and my angel peers) are too busy for a long business plan, the ES plays the critical role of sparking our interest.

Here are a few of my Do’s and Don’ts

1. It can only be 2 pages. This is a great discipline for you; tell your story succinctly and cover all the essentials in just a front ‘n back handout. Why only 2-pages? I already told you! We are constantly looking at applicants’ entreaties for funding. We want to see something that either fits our interests or doesn’t, and we can tell in just 2 pages.

Click here to read more…

Frank does a great job explaining in detail the importance of writing an effective executive summary — all I can add is a simple, “amen.”  :)

Baddest Bike In The World, originally uploaded by digitalthom.

This is one monster machine, the Suzuki Hayabusa. Very cool. Crappy lighting, sorry, phone cam sucks.

- Taken at 12:46 PM on September 04, 2008 - cameraphone upload by ShoZu

The other day a friend of mine told me he had just finished reading a good book. Then he stopped and, almost apologetically, said, “Well, actually, I didn’t read it. I just listened to it.” Just listened to it. It’s interesting that many people feel that listening to an audio book is a less genuine experience [...]

Behold, this is what Redmond is using to combat the effective and clever “I’m a Mac” ads. It’s bland, forgettable, and awkward — outside of the Spanish subtitles and quick shower scene.

I really like Seinfeld, and I’m a Windows XP user, but this is more Bee Movie and Office Paperclip style than anything else. Too bad.

I recently lost $6,000 of revenue scheduled for November.

This week, a very good friend on the east coast lost his senior-level job, as did dozens of his colleagues.

Last night I learned another neighbor/friend, a controller at a medium-sized company, lost his job he landed about 18 months ago.

CNN reports this morning that “84,000 more jobs lost in August,” bringing unemployment to 6.1%, and total jobs lost in 2008 to 605,000.  Let’s just assume each job loss has a family of a spouse and 2 kids behind it, which means that 336,000 people were affected in a very personal way this month, and 2.4 million people have been affected in a very personal way this year.  Not to mention extended family, friends, creditors, etc.

For me, I know what I need to do - find ways to replace that $6,000.  This is a normal thought for me, since I don’t count any money until it’s in my bank account.  When I had a real job I never thought about this kind of thing, I would just sit fat and happy waiting for my paycheck to hit my account every other week.  It was pretty comfortable.

In my comfort, I had done no preparation.  When the paycheck stopped coming, and the bills continued, I realized I had done nothing to prepare for the dreadful and inevitable day.

If you own your own business, or do contracting or freelancing, you know what you need to do. 

But if you are sitting fat and happy at work, like I was, getting those nice, secure paychecks, let me suggest you do something critical:

Make a list of companies you would like to work for.  Right now.

Get out a sheet of paper (or an excel spreadsheet, so you can then import them into JibberJobber), pretend you just got let go (your boss died, your biggest account just imploded, your project finished, your job got offshored… there are hundreds of reasons why it will happen to you), and think about where you would have any interest in going now.

This is a brainstorming activity, so put EVERYTHING you can think of.  Put names of your current customers, vendors and partners.  Put names of companies outside your industry, companies in the same business park you work in, companies right down the road from where you live.  You can cross companies off later, but you never know what network contacts come out of the company names you put on that list. 

If you have a list of 50 companies you have any interest in, you’ll be way ahead of most people as they start their job search, filling their pipeline. 

You have a pipeline. If it is empty, you’ll feel the pain when it comes time to use it.  One friend has a full, active pipeline with relationships he’s been nurturing.  He’s ready to rock and roll in his job search.  The other friend? I don’t think he’s done anything for his career management, and his job search will likely be longer than he wants.

Fill your pipeline. 

This post is sponsored by Linsey Levine of CareerCounsel. Linsey Levine is a Career Counselor, Career Coach and Resume Writer with a passion for helping people create conscious career choices and connections that are aligned with their values, talents, interests, and unique strengths. She helps clients get unstuck; get clear, get focused, and get moving - toward successful career and life management goals. Linsey Levine is a JibberJobber Career Expert Partner.

One of the things that has been on my mind since I attended the Gnomedex 8.0 conference was how social media can positively and negatively affect the FundingUniverse brand.  Now, I realize that “social media” is a very popular buzz word these days — everyone (& their dog) is talking about social media and I’m trying to decide if the buzz is justified or if this is a fad similar to podcasts and other new media.

Some of you might be asking… what is Social Media?  I’m no social media expert, but I’m referring to the following platforms:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Company Blog
• iPhone & Facebook Applications

Facebook just released a post stating that they will be gradually releasing the new design to all over the next week. This announcement comes late, as I had originally announced the new design to go out to all on August 27.

The new design has been both loved and hated by many, but has shown significant improvement since launch. It will be very interesting to see the response as all 100+ million of their users embrace the new design. Most of all, this should come as welcome news to developers, as they no longer have to support more than one design in their applications. All developers should now be able to start planning fully for the new design.

In addition to this news, it will also mean that permanent session keys will be dissolved (one week after the rollout), meaning it will be harder for external websites to log users into Facebook to authenticate and communicate with the API. It will be interesting to see, as they roll this out, if they also introduce Facebook Connect live to all next week to resolve this problem fully.

I recently interviewed Jason Alba, CEO of Jibberjobber.com about how to prepare for public speaking or webinars. Jason has presented for MarketingProfs.com and impresses me with how clearly he explains ideas and presents.

A good presentation will often lead to getting hired for future engagements and other goals (and in Jason’s case, sell his book).
Here is a summary of some of his points about public speaking:

• Never apologize for yourself. You are the expert (even if you don’t think you are). You developed the credibility over the years and you are who was asked to speak. Own that.
• When asked questions - give short answers. No more than 30-60 seconds.
• If you will be asked questions by a moderator, ask for them ahead of time so you can craft your answers.
• Make a cheat sheet of your answers - not word for word - just 2-3 bullet points.
• Come up with a short introduction about yourself.

At the end of your presentation be prepared to do a wrap-up statement. If you’re on a panel, the moderator often says something like, “is there anything else you’d like to add?” You don’t want to go blank or say no. This is your change to say why what you’ve just taught matters to the audience. In Jason’s case - might make the case that you need to manage your own career because no one is going to care about it like you do.

You’re basically quickly going over your main point and motivating people to care and/or take action. This would be a good time to mention further resources on your web site or blog.

What are your tips or how have you become a better public speaker?

This really seems to be a busy day for PR/media relations goof ups. Rule and tips number two and three come courtesy of the Utah Democratic Party.

Rule #2

Always double check your facts, in fact, for something that could go national, triple check your facts. The Utah Democratic Party thought it would be a good idea to attack Gov. Palin for her affiliation with a supposed anti-Mormon religion. The rub here: the religion is not, in fact, anti-Mormon, and she hasn’t gone to the church in about five years. Come on! We’ve got to do better than this, these are amateur, semi-pro mistakes!

[Link to KSL story and link to official news release from the Utah Democratic Party]

This gaffe leads me to media relations rule #3.

Rule #3

Always have the person you are quoting in a release or statement or media brief, whatever, review his or her quotes. This seems like a hassle sometimes, but trust me, it will pay off in the end in a variety of ways.

The Chairman of the Utah Democratic Party told the Salt Lake Tribune that he hadn’t seen the news release that was sent out by the Party. Really?! Maybe the Utah Dems need to go find a new director of communications.

I really hope this isn’t the future of the PR industry, if it is, we’re all in trouble!

Okay, it seems odd that this needs to be written, there have been plenty of public goof ups, but apparently some of us haven’t been paying attention to the media — including members of the media:

Rule #1

Make sure the mic or camera is off before saying something slanderous, embarassing, critical, offensive, or that could otherwise get you into hot water. Yes, we all have opinions, but sometimes those opinions are best kept to ourselves.

[Read more here, here, here, here and here]

I was recently asked if resume writers were worth it, or if they would just give you a 1-2 page document that you could come up with on your own.  Let me share an experience with you.

After I got laid off, over the phone, I was asked to stay one more week to transition the new guy back as president.  There wasn’t much transitioning to do, since he had been the president about 18 months earlier, so we just had a few meetings here and there.  Plus, we were like “two bulls in a china closet,” or however the saying goes.  

I spent much of my time getting ready for my job search.  I looked, and looked, and looked some more for my resume.  Not sure why I did that, wasting a few hours looking for something that was at least six years outdated.  But is was like some old security blanket I was looking for.  I finally gave in and downloaded a template from the internet that I could use to start over.

After hours of tinkering around on this very, very short document I sent it to a few trusted friends. These were all people who were qualified to tell me if my resume was good or not.  Hiring managers, experienced professionals and executives, and even an HR professional from one of my last companies.

They all said it looked GREAT!  And it did look great.  It was shiny, squeaky clean, free from grammar and spelling errors.

And, it was IMPRESSIVE!  You should have seen the titles:

• General Manager
• CIO/VP
• IT Manager
• Programmer

Okay, the last one isn’t the most impressive, but hey, I thought I was hot stuff to have those first few titles on the resume.  Since I moved from a small town (Pocatello, ID) to a larger city (Salt Lake City), and I was hoping to go from a small IT company to a larger company in Salt Lake, people would be able to figure out I wasn’t the General Manager of GE, or American Express, or eBay, or something like that.  I had a big title at a small company.  And that was the problem.

Why?

Because I was applying to jobs with the following titles:

• Business Analyst
• Project Manager
• Product Manager (this was my dream position)

When HR and recruiters saw my resume, they had to ask:

And I got put in the garbage pile.  My success rate (number of interviews secured / number of resumes sent) was really, really pitiful.  Like, 2%.

A resume writer would have interviewed me, tried to understand who I was and what I was looking for, and changed the resume so that my past job titles WOULD NOT have hindered my ability to get an interview.

Months and months and months went by, with no income. I forfeited thousands of dollars of income  Just a few hundred dollars, invested in a resume writer, could have changed that.

Is a professional resume writer worth it?  I believe so.  A good resume writer will deliver MORE than just a one or two page document. Click here to see resume writers who have partnered with JibberJobber. 

This post is brought to you by executive resume writer and career consultant Louise Kursmark. One of the leading career experts in the U.S., Louise has written 20 books about resume writing, interviewing, and executive search strategies. In her private practice, Louise works directly with senior executives to craft powerful marketing messages and methods for swift transition to the next exciting opportunity. Her passion is helping people “tell their story” in a way that is compelling, memorable, and relevant.  Louise Kursmark is a JibberJobber Career Expert Partner.

For at least five years now I’ve been looking for a means whereby Alden Keene could predict the potential fit between a cause and a sponsor in cause-related marketing campaign. A matchmaking tool, if you will. I approached at least a half dozen professors and researchers and the answer was always some variation on a theme of “yes we can survey people, but what we really need is a theoretical

Hey Gang: I got the following email from a student at Stetson University who’s looking for some help on some research she’s conducting on cause-related marketing ads. Here’s the contact information if you can help: eschiff@stetson.edu. Warm regards, Paul Jones, President Alden Keene & Associates I’m looking for print ads (appearing in magazines and newspapers preferably) with human

Last week I was trying to track down why I have an unusual spike in views on one of my blog posts.  I presumed that someone with a greater audience had linked to the article.  I never found that link, but I did discover that I have been cited on the great source of all knowledge - Wikipedia.  Yes it is buried in a foot note - but alas I have left my mark on history.

A few months ago I came across a piece by Jeff Nolan, titled Incrementalism and “The New New Thing,” which struck poignantly at a raw nerve. He called attention to the incrementalism gripping Silicon Valley despite the flush amount of capital available for startups. Much of the attention and hype has surrounded social networking and Web 2.0 startups but each new entry is a slight improvement over the previous. But only discontinuous, quantum leap innovations create disproportionate value. So what’s next?

Umair Haque’s An Open Challenge to Silicon Valley put it in even stronger terms as he labels the current crop of Web 2.0 startups and their incrementalist approach “trivial” and “banal.” I certainly could see the banality of the Web 2.0 echo chamber. Say a company creates a service for users to share picture slideshows online. The next competitor provides a widget for picture slideshows with better transition effects. Then the next entrant will provide the ability to incorporate simple audio effects into slideshows.

Haque’s answer to “what’s next?” is to challenge revolutionaries or entrepreneurs to solve bigger problems. What are some huge problems facing this world? Haque mentions skyrocketing food prices, unstable financial systems, and a worsening energy crisis. To this list I would add terrorism, a deteriorating and increasingly costly healthcare system, global warming, and war.

Pieter van der Heyden - Sloth

The incrementalism Nolan and Haque decried is alive and well. Petty, self-appointed social networking gurus argue about the incremental virtues of Identi.ca over Twitter, Facebook over Myspace (NWS-A), FriendFeed over Twitter, Twitter over Facebook, and countless other variants of this rock-paper-scissors silliness. The other 99.9% of the world’s population couldn’t care less.

At the time I read Nolan’s and Haque’s posts, I was mired at SocialOptimize creating social networking applications for clients. My former partner and I collected exorbitant dollars per hour for our work but I felt as if we drastically overcharged for our services. I came to realize that what we produced were inconsequential products that added little to no value to the economy and society. Even the companies that employed SocialOptimize derived scant value from the apps we delivered. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy games and distractions as much as anyone but these apps constituted neither good games nor good distractions. They were merely companies’ halfhearted and “me too!” attempts at having a presence on social networks. The companies didn’t really even want these apps; they just got caught up in all the Web 2.0 hype.

As an investor, I’ve always been a contrarian but my entrepreneurial endeavors started to look like a vapid run with the herd. Haque’s and Nolan’s posts landed profound psychological kicks to my posterior. So I immediately interrupted my usual programming and have since been obsessed with searching for opportunities to address bigger problems.

My search for meaning has turned out to be fortuitous and delightful. It has taken me many months as I tried to vigorously filter noise from signal, short-term cash grabs from sustainable opportunities. Opportunities never appear scarce; the trick lies in carefully identifying and selecting the ones I can have the most impact on and the most fun with.

So I was ecstatic when I decided to join Design Engine Lab, a leading industrial design firm, as partner and chief strategist. Industrial design is an entirely new world to me and I’ve jumped in with complete enthusiasm. I am steering the firm gradually away from servicing clients and toward developing our own internal products and spin-off companies.

We have designed a new, patented interface technology that we will first apply to the lighting market. Our technology has the potential to curb energy usage drastically wherever it is installed. Some of Haque’s big problems are beyond the scope of my circle of competence, but global warming is one which Design Engine Lab’s greener and cleaner technology can have a very positive impact. Our technology will also affect the delivery and efficacy of healthcare, another big problem, by mitigating the environmental risk factors attendant in hospitals and other healthcare facilities. Our technology will be used in hospitals across the United States and that specific segment alone represents a multi-million dollar market.

We’re also forming a joint venture with another company to develop a portable landing zone that will dramatically improve the success rate of emergency extractions of injured people via helicopter. I’ve accompanied helicopter pilots on test flights and have received nothing but the most eager feedback. I’m very excited about this product because it will actually save lives in the real world.

At Design Engine Lab, we conduct serious play looking for ideas that have global implications. Sometimes, that means huge ideas requiring complex execution. But we also engage in what I coined Bite-Sized Innovation®. Small does not have to mean incremental if the result is drastic. We attempt to make small changes that lever up to create huge consequences. Some of our upcoming medical device projects will reflect this Bite-Sized Innovation model. The best part of all this is the intensely joyful feeling of play that permeates all our brainstorming and experimentation sessions.

I don’t want to stray too far from the software world. So I’ve been fortunate to have also gotten involved with Sendside Networks as a consultant helping with research, marketing, business development, and fundraising. Sendside is creating technology that will change the way companies communicate with their customers. It is a highly risky strategy as we are trying to forge a brand new category in the Enterprise 2.0 market. But highly risky strategies are the ones that capture or create enormous value if executed well. In this case, the risk is vastly mitigated by a fantastic executive team and boards of directors and advisers filled with quality individuals. The team is the primary reason I wanted to get involved in the first place.

Without giving away the recipe for the secret sauce, Sendside has the potential to replace a sizable portion of the physical mail stream. In our vision, at its most revolutionary extreme, only junk mail and parcels will flow through the mail stream. Successfully bringing about this vision would make Sendside one of the greenest companies in the world, lightening the global burden on our forest lands forever. I have to give a shout out and thank my friend Jeff Barson, Sendside’s evangelist, for turning me on to this opportunity.

I’ve been lucky to have had the luxury of putting a halt to my daily grind to look for game-changing opportunities. I was especially lucky to have come across the two thought-provoking and ego-shattering pieces by Haque and Nolan. Umair Haque wrote in the end of his post that he’d put his money where his mouth is and advise five organizations trying to solve big problems. Umair, if you’re reading this, please get in touch with me. If not, I’ll be in touch shortly.

Lindsey and I have been blessed with many genuine friends — ones that make us laugh, can celebrate our accomplishments, and extend considerate help.

This week, while visiting one such family, we discovered that they’ve been dealing with some “friends” that reputedly became envious and judgmental of our friends’ recent good fortune. For shame — time is too precious to waste on such superficial friends.

With that in mind, here’s my proven guide to ditching and avoiding fake friends, so you can better enjoy your days in the sun. (more…)

Joseph Scott, developer at Automattic, posted that Wordpress.com has recently broken 4 million total blogs. He further mentions that it took just 4 months to go from 3 million to 4 million. Assuming the rate isn’t exponential, it will just be end of December when they hit 5 million blogs. What would be even more fascinating is to know how many self-hosted blogs on Wordpress are currently running. (This blog is a Wordpress MU install)

Wordpress seems to be no Facebook, but perhaps as projects like BuddyPress take off and people begin to virally create blogs and content with their friends it will get to that level. Where Wordpress still has left to compete is with microblogging sites like Twitter - perhaps, with the large user base that they currently have we could see this happen in the near future.

I’m preparing for a presentation on virtual job search and career management tools.  These might include specific job boards, other other sites.  I have some ideas on what some great online tools are (the image on the right **is** subliminal messaging ;), but I’d like to hear from YOU what you think is GREAT, and what is ROTTEN. 

This survey is just one page, where you put in two greats and, if you want, two rottens.  Now’s the time to praise or vent… please click here (or click on the monkey below) and let me know which online tools you love and which you loathe!

Thanks!

This post is brought to you by Valerie Pendergrass, Greatness Guru and founder of The Next Step Coaching & Consulting.  Valerie understands that greatness is borne of honoring an authentic self and bringing ones inner gifts to the surface. She works primarily with those in career crisis and/or at a career crossroads and specializes in aligning inner being with external objectives.  Valerie supports her clients to Aim high, Achieve High and Not Settle because life is too short to just have a j.o.b.  Valerie is a JibberJobber Career Expert Partner.

I don’t share well with others.  It’s something that I had to learn over time…A LOT of time.  Growing up in Iowa, I was the oldest of six (unless you count Miguel who was a foreign exchange student from Spain who brought the total to seven).  Growing up in such a large family definately has its advantages but it has some cons too.  Dinner time for example, was a true test of the strong and fit.  If you didn’t like what was served, no one was going to look longingly at you and ponder if something else could be fixed.  If you didn’t like it, you didn’t eat.  And if you LIKED what was served, it was a race to pound it down because seconds were only reserved for the people who finished first.

A few years ago my wife (who was the baby of her family and had just one older brother…whoah) noticed that I always ate my fries first and asked me why.  It took me awhile to figure out why, and then I remembered.  In my family if we went out for dinner we would usually be alotted a hamburger for each of us and then communal fries to share.  If you ate your sandwhich first, there would rarely be any fries left at the end.  But if you ate the fries first, you still had a full sandwhich in the hand.  It was a clever ploy that worked, but it took years and years of experience before it was perfected.  Once my other brothers and sisters figured out what I was doing, my scheme failed and I got about as many fries as the next guy.

As a Capitalist society we have been programed to eat the fries first.  Phrases like ‘Survival of the fittest’, the ‘early bird gets the worm’, or ‘I gotta get mine before you get yours’ dominate the business vernacular.  The problem with this mindset is that it creates a win-loss scenario and a negative environment where you kill or be killed.  However a quiet Revolution has been slowly building over the last decade and businesses who were once fierce rivals have started to lay down their battle axes and work together.

The most recent of these was a joint venture that was announced last month between Chrysler and Nissan.  Once bitter rivals, these two monster corporations are joining hands to produce and sell cars…TOGETHER!  This kind of cooperation was unheard of years ago, particularly any kind of agreement between a Japanese and American manufacturer.  However, both companies realize the strength in the other and the opportunity of cooperation.

The bottom line is that companies who choose to find companions versus competitors are going to be in a power position to grow.  The old models of market share and market domination are diminishing as markets continue to shrink in a world wide economy.  Corporations that will truely flourish in the 21st century will be those who seek opportunity across multiple industries and with multiple partners.  These businesses have learned to use their strengths which allow other companies to leverage theirs.  So reflect on your own business.  Are there opportunities to work with your competitors?  Are there joint ventures that could give you a strategic advantage over the rest of the field?  Having the courage to seek new opportunities in this growing Revolution just might give you the edge you need to beat the rest of the field!

*Joel Nielsen is a Venture Consultant with Funding Universe.  Commentsbe sent to jnielsen@fundinguniverse.com

As a funding consultant I often see a harmful trend among aspiring entrepreneurs, namely; the desire to raise money for their business without even attempting to create their business.  Big Problem

I would like to offer a path to would be entrepreneurs that though seemingly difficult will actually make their trek to business success much easier than the alternative.

1.  As all businesses provide either products or services, make sure that product or service exists before you attempt to raise money.  This is especially applicable in the case of software or immaterial technologies.  If you do some research you will find that the majority of companies that are at the top of this industry, had development complete and at least several thousand customers before they raised money.  You should do the same.

2.  One of the primary reasons for going into business is to create monetary value.  If this is truly the case then it is probably a good idea to do some of this before you go looking for other peoples money.  Granted this may take time and a lot of sweat and tears, but it usually provides a better living than soliciting funds for ideas.

3.  With a product and some revenue you are probably in a good position to raise money.  At this point you probably also have a few years of experience under your belt.  This may surprise you coming from a person that makes a living trying to help people secure equity funding, but at this point your best bet if you are looking to grow your business is to acquire some debt.  Why, you may ask.  Answer, because why would you want to give up ownership in your business if you don’t have to.

4.  Here comes the part you have all been waiting for.  Sure, in some cases, about 10% to be more precise, entrepreneurs will want and need to raise some equity funds.  When this is the case make sure you do your homework.  You will want a friend and advisor not just a money hungry partner.  If you do it right, you could be the next Google.  Just remember that it’s not for everyone so keep it real.

The summer Olympics, which just ended, reminded me of a personal experience during the 2001 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.  Since this was in our hometown, my wife and I really wanted to go to an Olympic event, but we didn’t have a lot of money.  Tickets for medal rounds of any event were very expensive, so we purchased tickets to go see the men’s figure skating event as it was one of the more affordable tickets.  Obviously my wife won the debate about which event to go see!  During this preliminary round, we were able to watch about 24 skaters from different countries.  Some skaters had fantastic routines and it was easy to see who would be the finals.  Their ability and skill were noticeably better than others, even to the untrained eye.  While this event was not my first choice to see, I did gain a greater appreciation for the talents of others, especially since I knew I couldn’t skate very well.  It made me think about how much we truly rely on others’ skills, talents, and expertise to accomplish tasks and especially to make good things become great.

During the event, there was one particular competitor who was not as strong of a skater in comparison to his competition.  Not too far into his routine, he did his first jump he fell to the ice.  You could hear the crowd gasp as he went down.  The skater got up and continued his routine, only to fall again a few moments later.  The noise from the crowd conveyed their sympathy for this man.  Yet again he arose to continue his routine but fell again and again.  At this time, the crowd was almost silent.  Everyone felt so bad for this person who had trained, practiced, and dedicated so much of his time and energy, only to have a night of almost utter disaster.  When the skater slowly arose from this final fall, his body language was as easy to read as an elementary school book.  He was ready to quit.  I think the entire crowd was reading his mind as if he were saying, “I can’t go on.  This is embarrassing and I should just quit.”  At that very moment, the crowd began to clap and cheer to encourage and motivate the skater to complete the routine.  It was a unified effort and you could literally feel the ‘human electricity’ in the arena.  There is no doubt in my mind that the skater felt the energy and was inspired to go on.  He finished his routine, without any more falls and showed the crowd that he was an Olympic athlete who pushes through to the end, no matter what!

The moral of this story is individually we might have a great talent or skill that makes us the top performer in our department at work, or in this story, the best in our country, but we can’t make it alone.  Not only do we need the help of others, but the help needs to be a unified effort.  If we can increase the level of unity and teamwork in our organizations, there is no doubt we can improve the commitment and resolve to accomplish great things as teams.  From the sidelines we can inspire others to keep going,  overcome the obstacles, and persevere until they reach their goals.

While diving through several pitches this past week, I was reading a very interesting blog that I thought could benefit all PR professionals. For the link, click here.

Basically, bloggers like all media, should be treated the same. Read their previous posts, make sure you have some thing of relevance to share with them, and overall be friendly and professional. The days of the nameless blast emails are long gone. In today’s Web 2.0 World, connection is still key. No one likes junk mail or spam. Everyone likes an email or pitch that has their name on it and why the pitch is important to them.

As PR professionals we should have a sense of excitement in what we’re pitching, a sense of urgency, and most importantly, a sense of professionalism.

By Josh Berndt

I had a friend send me a list of these questions today. some are repeats from previous posts but there are several new ones. Enjoy!

Logic Problems

a) 8 Steel balls, 1 heavier than all the rest. Use a Balance Scale to determine the heaviest ball in the shortest number of tries.

b) Find how many trailing zeroes are in the product of 100! (100 Factorial).

c) Replace each letter below with a corresponding number from 0 to 8. Each Letter can only be matched to one number (ie, all of the E’s would be a 3, and that would mean that no other Letter could be a 3). The following addition problem should work after you replace the letters.

   S  E  V  E  N
   S  E  V  E  N
+         S   I   X
-----------------------
 T W E N  T   Y

Programming Problems

a) Write a function that takes an array of integers from 1 to 1 million, with one number being duplicated. Determine which integer is a duplicate, accounting for speed and efficiency.

b) Write a function that takes an array of integers from 1 to 1 million, with one number being missing from the range. Determine the missing integer, account for speed and efficiency.

c) Write a function that takes an array of an number of integers. Determine the largest contiguous sum, meaning given any two integers in the array, what is the highest sum? Given an array such as Array(1, -5, 3, -3, -9, 2) the highest contiguous sum would be 5.

d) Write a function that takes a string as a parameter and determine the first unique character in the string. In other words, given the string “sissy” the answer would be “i”. Afterwards, how would you optimize the function.

e) Pseudo-code the Ball Clock problem, determining how many cycles it takes for the balls to end up in the same position in the queue tray. Afterwards, how would you optimize the process if it were to be hit thousands of times on a given interface by thousands of users. If you have come up with a pure brute-force method, how could you optimize it further to shorten the processing time?

I just heard someone explain that there is no such word as “irregardless.” That is wrong. Of course the word exists. People use it all the time. He should have said that it’s an improper word that should not be used under any circumstances, except to make the point that it’s not a proper word, [...]

There are rumors that Facebook has been working on their own Wordpress plugin for Facebook. This is troubling for those of us developers that are developing for Facebook Connect, as it shows that Facebook could in one sweep, wipe any developer writing for the Facebook Connect platform out without any advanced notice. It only appeared that in the past, this type of thing only happened on the Facebook website itself, as Facebook has a right to, but I’ve seen it myself with my own development on Facebook Connect today.

Fair enough. I like competition, although I’d love this to be a community effort. So, since we know Facebook is working on their own Wordpress plugin for Facebook, and we know Facebook isn’t willing to divulge their code yet. Since I’ve already devoted 20 or so of my own hours to the exact same project with no knowledge from Facebook, and am just now learning that Facebook was working on this behind the scenes incognito with no involvement from the community, I’d like to release my own plugin to the public, under the GPL v2.0 today, in the hopes the public can help with development and further building of this plugin, as a community, not just under Facebook’s roof.

It’s very troubling to see Facebook develop on external apps outside of Facebook like this - it only shows that Facebook is not afraid to encroach on other developers’ projects and that any one of us is at risk of having a useful project, our time and effort (I had no intentions on making money from this), wiped out in an instant. Sure, Facebook has every right to compete, but the least courtesy of notifying developers it already knows would be competition. With such a Wordpress plugin this also encroaches on Six Apart’s announced integration with Facebook Connect, and puts Facebook in direct competition with Six Apart instead of making it Automattic’s problem.

It’s my sincere hope that Facebook decides not to continue such projects internally, but instead contributes to existing projects if they must do so. Facebook should in no way be competing with the developers that use their platform without warning, or risk us not being willing to contribute such things in the future. Let’s work together on this Facebook - how about a “we need help” board, or an “internal projects” board so we can know what you’re working on in advance. In this way we can work with you instead of parallel to you and hours spent doing so won’t be wasted. Or how about a little nudge to people like Six Apart saying, “we may just have to compete with you on this in the future” so their own time isn’t wasted with the integration.

Why should I keep building external web apps that integrate and send users to Facebook if Facebook is just going to replace my web apps in the end anyway?

So, I’m going to release my code here right now in hopes we can make this a community project - it requires you to set up your own app for your blog under the Facebook Developers site (just set your callback URL to your own website’s URL), and you must take your application key and enter it into the admin section. Only developers of the Facebook app itself can login through Facebook Connect until Facebook launches (one more advantage Facebook has over us developers - they know when they are launching, and therefore know how much time they have to develop these things, another reason to leave it to us developers in order to keep it fair). To install on your blog after doing so, just unzip the folder in your plugins folder, and activate your plugin under the plugins section in Wordpress. After that, any Facebook user will be able to leave comments, under their own authentication, Facebook avatar, and name without having to re-enter it each time. We’ll be integrating this more in the future - if you can help please let me know! My project is a community project, not owned by Facebook, completely owned by me and you for the benefit of the community.

You can download it here.

You can see it in action on my test site, http://socialmediacast.staynalive.com - check out the Hello World post to see the existing comments. Note you will not be able to log in to Facebook Connect on that site because you are not a developer on the app for that site.

Now, I know I ranted a bit - it’s late, but I hope this makes some sort of sense. Am I out of line here? Should I just scrap my code completely and let Facebook do this? Is it a wise move for Facebook to keep making external apps like this that integrate with Facebook? What’s the best way for Facebook to approach this? I welcome your comments below.

It has been an interesting week in Politics.  The Republicans finally nominated a woman to the Presidential ticket.   Gov. Palin looked great at first.  She attacks corruption (a full time job in Washington D.C.).  She hunts, she can shoot and gut her own moose.  If the Bubba vote will ever go to a women, Sarah Palin is the one.

Now many of the political pundits on the left are attacking Gov. Palin, claiming that she is a hypocrite.  The attacks, however, are likely to backfire.

First, the several pundits from the left assert that Gov. Palin abused her position by trying to get her former brother-in-law fired.  He is a state trooper in Alaska and allegedly threatened to kill one of her family members, drives while intoxicated and used a TASER on her 11 year old nephew.  (The officer apparently has a long history of misconduct).   If those facts are accurate, who is going to blame her even if she did intervene?  If a police officer threatened to kill a member of my family and used a TASER on another, you bet I would try to get them fired - no matter what my position was.  I just hope she would intervene likewise for a similar situation that did not involve her family.  I think "troopergate", as some on the left are calling it, puts a very human face on Gov. Palin and will make her more attractive to voters.  Of all of the candidates she appears to be willing to do the right thing regardless of how it may look politically.

Second, the media has revealed to the whole world that Gov. Palin's 17 year-old daughter is pregnant.  Like it is any of our business?  The news media will not even publish the names of most teenage criminals.  Would you rather know about Ms. Palin's pregnancy or that the 16 year old down the street has been convicted of rape?  Despite this, young Ms. Palin is now front page news.

Some of the pundits have argued that the unplanned pregnancy shows that her family values stand is phony and that she is not a good parent.  So now parents are responsible if their children make a mistake?  I did not hear any of these same people arguing that Hillary Clinton was unqualified because her husband keep his pants zipped.  She claims, after all, to be a feminist and made it clear when her husband ran the first time that the allegations of adultery were not true, because she would not stick around if they were.

Rather than showing Gov. Palin to be a hypocrite, I think that the situation actually bolsters her social conservative stance.  He daughter got pregnant - ok.  How did she handle it.  Did she take the easy way out and rush her daughter to an abortion clinic.  No, her daughter is planning on having the baby and marrying the father.  Add to that the birth of Gov. Palin's son, who has downs syndrome, and it looks like the Governor's family has faced the two most common reasons for abortion and voted for life both times.  It is pretty clear that the Gov. practices what she preaches - a rarity in politics these days.  (The position also contrasts pretty clearly to Senator Obama's statement that he wants abortion to be legal so his daughters would not be "punished with a baby" if they ""make a mistake".)  Gov. Palin's family did not take the easy way out.

Going after Gov. Palin on "troopergate" and her daughter's unplanned pregnancy is a dumb strategy for those who support Obama.  Many voters, women especially, are going to warm to a woman who will take a political risk to address domestic violence head on.  Likewise, a lot of voters will have had a wayward child and will not warm to the argument that they are bad parents because their children made a mistake.  If Obama is smart, he will come out and clearly state - this is none of our business and we should focus on Gov. Palin's record.   Otherwise, the negative statements of the leftist pundits will be attributed to his campaign. 
 

I mentioned earlier I was going to announce a big change this week. I’m “on the move“, as Jeremiah Owyang would put it. Today was my first day working full time at a new Silicon Valley startup with offices here in Utah, where I will be leading their Social Product strategy moving forward. I am phasing off my regular consulting, and moving to this new Entrepreneurial effort in helping them grow.

At the moment, I can’t reveal much more, other than the fact that we’re building the next era in Interactive Entertainment on the iPhone. The company I’m working with right now started out as a client of mine, and I liked their product so much I decided it would be worth helping them out full time. I believe fully that we are going to change much of the way you watch TV today. We will be launching most likely next week, and you can follow the Twitter account @MediaMyWay to catch our launch announcement and follow our updates (I’ll also point you there from my Twitter account when we launch - we’ll announce it there first!). Other Twitter accounts you can follow for updates and “clues” are @JustintheWhitt, @Romay, and our CEO, @BradPelo.

How will this affect the other stuff I do? In reality, not much is changing, other than what I do full time. I have received permission to keep SocialToo.com going part-time, as it has, unless it takes off. Expect some very cool things to come from SocialToo in the near future - we’re working on a completely new design and a really cool new feature that will be released in the next couple weeks.

As far as my blogging and book-writing is concerned, I see nothing changing, and I intend fully to continue blogging regular, unbiased articles that I feel inspire and educate. I will disclose where necessary if I feel my current employment has any influence in what I am writing. I still hope to continue writing in other capacities as well, as long as speak as I’m asked to do (I’m speaking in Dallas next week to the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, in fact - come see me speak!).

So, keep watching the @MediaMyWay Twitter account, and you can also follow this blog and I’ll be sure you’re aware of the latest of our happenings (we’ll have a company blog here shortly, which I’ll let you know about). In the meantime I’ll keep posting regular, educational, and original content as I always have and always will. “Stay” Tuned!

So over the last couple of months, I’ve started to run a little bit. When I was in Japan, I ran around the city, when I was in D.C., I ran around the city. I wanted a way to track my runs, and I found out about the Nike+ system that includes a foot pod [...]

Google just released their new browser, Chrome. You can read all about it, comic-style, on Google Books.

I just downloaded it. I’ll let you know how it goes

Since I was on a roll with my blog, I thought I’d also talk about the most recent technology that changed my life.

Night light…
Heated Seat…
Heated Water…
Pressure Control…
Heated Air (For after…)
Settings for Him, Settings for Her…

It’s Perfect!

We were playing Apples to Apples the other night and the green card “Perfect” came up. My wife, knowing my experience with my new toilet seat, put down the card “My Bathroom” and I instantly declared her the winner.

You can see more here:
Swash Intro
and
This one’s really funny (warning…you’ll see some bum’s)
I bought mine here (It’s significantly cheaper than anywhere else online).

Enjoy!