A Little Break from Cyberspace (well most of it)

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In 6 days it will have been a month since I wrote a post to brown-paper. Not that nothing has been going on it was just good to step a way for a bit. The time without this radiation machine sitting on my legs has allowed the hair to grow back to it’s full glory. I have been trying to enjoy the down time while looking for a new job. Once I do get back into the swing of it, it will be 100% and I will be looking back whistfully wondering why I didn’t better utilize my time to re-energize. Beyond the job search (and some tweets) I have limited the amounted the time I even have my laptop open. It’s been nice! Over the last couple weeks I have been able to replace the computer with the XBOX. Gone are the days when I could stay up till 4 am playing video games. Unfortunately the great hand eye coordination I used to boast about is no longer with me. But I have been having fun getting trounced online playing MLB 2K9, Resident Evil 5, and StreetFighter 4. The StreetFighter Intro is probably one of the most artistic and abstract game intros I have ever seen. Check it out:

Beyond the late nights of geekdom I have been spending my days reading on the beach, golfing, bowling, running and biking. Not having the computer be the center of my interactions has been great. And to my suprise I was still relitively well informed on events (I didn’t give up twitter). The disconnection has also helped to generate new refreshing ideas. Some of these are the tactics from “How To Get Good Ideas” , a very good book written by Jack Foster.

Lastly, one of the things I have been enjoying the most are sunsets. I live pretty close to the beach; everyday I would walk in my door from work and more often than not I would be struck by the late day sun over the water. I have been making it a point to go watch it on the beach. One day I was inspired to bring my camera. Before I get to the pictures, I just want to say it was it nice, but now I am back. If you have the opportunity to change your routine for awhile, it is well worth it. More posts to come very soon (MLB.TV, SXSW, CoolIris and more):

What Are Your 5 Favorite Sites?

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Being out in the field looking for a job is certainly a change of pace. Over the last 3 years I can’t count the number of interviews I have been a part of. In the last 6 years I probably been on the other side of the table a handful of times.

I went in for an interview last week and everything was going pretty good. In my opinion any interview should just come across as a good conversation for both parties. Not one side asking questions and the other one answering them. I felt we were having a good conversation that was flowing and painless. The hour we spent talking seemed to fly by. Towards the end of the conversation the interviewer asked me a simple question and I dropped it! It was something so basic, something I have asked candidates hundreds of times. A question that you ask just to get a sense of a candidates web savvy, “What are your 5 favorite sites?”. And I dropped it! I remember stammering out, “ESPN of course…”. The one site any employer would rather not hear, “The World Wide Leader” in killing productivity. I think I also threw out Mashable.com but for the life of me I can’t remember anything else I might have said.

Even as words were coming out of my mouth I knew this was a question I should have a very easy answer for. After the interview later into the evening I was still thinking about the botch and actually trying to answer it for myself. The patterns in which I consume information have shifted. In the past I would have 9-14 bookmarks and maybe 10-15 rss feeds to go thru on a regular basis. But when work starts piling up the last thing I had time to do was go and peruse sites. I would bookmark, star, tag, digg and add to delicious. But then the list of tagged items would be long and over the course of time the list of must visit sites and rss feeds grew unmanageable.

It took me awhile, but then I realized, I don’t have 5 favorite sites! I still get information, links and opinions, but it is not necessarily from an aggregate site like Digg. Instead of being directed to content that is surfaced by general popularity, I have chosen to be influenced by individuals that I respect and trust. Twitter, and the people I follow has somewhat replaced my need to subscribe to any particular site. And the content that the individuals do surface tends to have a more direct connection with my interests versus most popular. A lot of the times I am connecting with the individuals who are writing the content for the sites we visit. For example I follow:

Andy CarvinAndy Carvin

NPR NEWS

Ken WheatonKen Wheaton

Writer for Ad Age

JeremiahJeremiah Owyang

Sr Analyist, Forrester

NASANASA

NASA

Kevin RoseKevin Rose

Founder of Digg

Pete CashmorePeter Cashmore

Founder of Mashable.com

Michael LebowitzMichael Lebowitz

Founder of BigSpaceship

This is a good cross section of news, science, advertising, social media, and technology trends. And for the most part these people are pretty consistent with engaging thier audience. Not that it is necessary, but you will watch or hear about stories on twitter before I see the article come out from AdAge (who I also follow) or NPR. Twitter has cut down the amount of scanning I need to do (but don’t have time for) by 60%. I obviously still do explore on my own, and if I had to pick 5 sites (after much deliberation) they would be:

Adobe Labs

http://labs.adobe.com/

QBN (News Today)

http://www.qbn.com/

Slate Magazine

http://slate.com/

The Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Mashable

http://mashable.com/

“American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” in Action

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PresidentObamaSince Barrack Obama took office in January I had been following his qeues on the stimulus package. Coming out of the holidays the economy did not look any brighter, and I think real concerns of job loss started to hit home. So I watched and listened even more intently to the daily updates and pundits on what they thought was going to be in it, whether we needed it, who was going to fight it etc. We’ll fast forward to Feb. 12, my fears became reality, I was laid off from work. Three days later Feb. 17th a massive (although some think not massive enough) stimulus bill was passed. What this meant, I had no clue. Even when I called the IRS and Dept. of Education, they didn’t know. It was too early.

Well today one of the other people laidoff shot out an email to the group. In it are the details of how part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is being used to help unemployed Americans. Personally, this helps me out a heck of a lot more than giving anymore money over to AIG! If you are unemployed, or know someone who is recently, please send this information:

On February 17th, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (HR 1) to help stimulate the US economy.  A major component of this new law created temporary changes in COBRA and the employer’s obligation under COBRA.  I have spoken with Conexis and they are working feverishly to send out instructions for employers.   They should send you something by next week.  The new policies become effective March 1st and plan employers have until April 17th to notify eligible COBRA beneficiaries of the changes.  At this time I wanted to let you know the latest information about this issue:

1) I have written a short summary of the changes on my blog:
http://www.benefitscafe.com/blog/2009/02/economic-stimulas-and-health-insurance.html

2) The US Department of Labor sets policy for COBRA and their guidance info is here: http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/COBRA.html also, I found the “COBRA Premium Reduction Fact Sheet Helpful.”
http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/newsroom/fsCOBRApremiumreduction.html

3) The IRS has sent out some guidance on how employers recoup the premium that they pay on behalf of eligible COBRA beneficiaries here:
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=204708,00.html

All of this is happening very quickly and this impacts every company in the US with 20+ employees. DOL and the IRS are trying to figure out what to tell people in order to comply and how to adjust their automated payroll tax collection system.  The COBRA administrative companies (Conexis, Infinisource, etc.) are trying to figure out what to tell their clients. Payroll companies (ADP, Paychex, etc.) are trying to figure out how to change their systems to integrate the credit on the 941 forms.

Live Tweeting (no, not the Oscars)

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This weekend there was a lot of discussion about who would be tweeting at the oscars, what peopling where saying online. Last weekend it was the same thing with the NBA All-Star game (particularly Dwight Howard for Adidas). Well Monday night I followed a live event although not as sexy.

Sitting on my couch at 1:44 am, thinking I shouldn’t have taken that 3 hour nap at 7pm; my mindless ESPN watching was interrupted by a tweet from @NASA: “OCO launch update: Liftoff is now set for 4:55 EST. Catch it on www.nasa.gov/ntv“. This was a lot more interesting than watching the rerun segment of sportscenter for the 4th time straight.

OCO Launch on NASA tvOCO stands for “Orbiting Carbon Observatory”. The mission as described on its site is to: “After launch, the OCO mission will collect precise global measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists will analyze OCO data to improve our understanding of the natural processes and human activities that regulate the abundance and distribution of this important greenhouse gas…….” So I shot off the TV and started intently watching the 320 x 240 feed. The video was not that great, but the audio was perfect. The system checks and pre launch activities added to the excitement. I tweeted a couple comments about the activity. Then I twitpic’d a shot of the lift off. To my suprise someone re-broadcast my tweet. Then it dawned on me to see if other people where following the launch. I went to Twitter Search and was suprised at the amount of people who where following it. There were people who were watching it online as well as people who were able to see it overhead. It just made the entire event that much more exciting. Check out the NASA search results here.

Launch command after failureUnfortunately, what you will hear about the project is how it failed…About 3 quarters of the way thru the launch, launch command called for the contingency plan to be implemented, “Nobody leave the room, nobody call out.”. A little while later they say that, “The faring did not separate from the spacecraft”. A press conference will convene in 2 hours…The excitement of the event was immediately replaced with a feeling of disappointment. I think my emotions were heightened (good and bad) because of sharing it with these other individuals. Unfortunately the mission failed. Unfortunately not enough people pay attention to what NASA does (we pay for this!!!). One positive, we have access to watch events like this.

One other interesting aspect of this whole event. Some people will read up on the events and news of Monday’s launch. It is a unique experience to follow it live as it happens. I will be watching more NASA launches in the future. Hopefully more people watch these events. Hopefully more of them will be successful. #FAIL!

Update: Launch Archive and Press Conference

I have attached the video of the launch for your viewing pleasure. I have also included the follow up press conference to why the mission failed.

Part one of the briefing.

And if you are still awake. Part 2 of the briefing.

Twitter’s “Suggested User” Feature

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twitter screen capture

I was directed to an LA Times technology blog by a @jowyang tweet. He called attention to the fact the article explains why the rankings on Twitter have been shifting drastically. Twitter has been incorporating a new feature called “suggested user”. When an individual signs up on Twitter one of the first things they are presented with upon completion are suggested users. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams explained that, “The reason we created this feature is because lots of people sign up to Twitter but aren’t following anyone, so we’re trying to help get them started”. The feature has been live for over a month and has featured accounts like:

  • The UK newspaper The Guardian. Within that time frame the Guardian has grown from 4,000 followers to 66,000 followers. Over the last 2 weeks the Guardian has been adding followers at an increase of 300% over the previous 2 weeks.
  • TechCrunch, a startup and tech news blog network, went from 41,000 to 111,000 followers.
  • The NY Times increased its base by 6x’s and is at 145,000 followers. All of this information is garnered from the LA Times post, you can read it here.

Reading this two different thoughts came to mind. One, Twitter users are upset. And they have every right to be. The time and effort put into building the relationships with your followers is no small feat. It is about being 1 part engaging, 1 part informative (or funny) and 2 parts creative. Some individuals put a lot of effort into building their presence and reputation. So for Twitter to create a a way for select individuals/companies to gain as many followers in a month, that people have been working on building (day and night) for a lot longer seems to unfair to the people who are not suggested. Rank (in followers) is equal to credibility something people work hard to attain. When an individual is ranked #5 two months ago, and 2 months later they are ranked 35th it can make a person be a little bit annoyed.

The second thought was more busniness related. Twitter should monetize this! People have been recognizing the phenomenon (it is 3rd on the list of social media platforms behind mySpace and Facebook) but have been asking two questions:

  1. How can business use social media?
  2. How can Twitter (like a lot of other social platforms) find a way to make money.

Within the LA Times post I see clear value add for being a suggested user. All the sites above are new sources, and at the end of the day they want people to get their news from them (not unlike any blogger or expert). Showing hard number on how the suggested user feature can do that for organizations looking to connect with an audience is what will get companies making space in their media budgets. If Evan Williams and Biz Stone are not thinking about this I think they should be. Mind you I don’t think the formula would work if it was as simple as $$$ == placement. Twitter hopefully understands it’s growing populace and will try to focus content that users will actually like.

I think it is just as important to find a better way to connect new users with engaging users. I would suggest that when users sign up, they fill out a small questionnaire about their likes and interests. Twitter can then use a list of criteria (keyword connections, bio, followers, engagement, retweets, etc) to offer up a list of users that would engage the new user. It would do a better job of connecting users to content of interest. Surfacing people based around similarities versus popularity would be a good way to target segments and keepthem engaged.

What do you think?