Category Archives: Business

Citylink goes down

CricketersA power outage resulted in a shutdown of Melbourne’s CityLink tollway tunnels today around 9am, for several hours. Apart from the obvious electronic signs that rely on power, I assume it affected lighting and exhaust pumps.

According to the Herald-Sun, Citylink spokeswoman Jean Ker Walsh said: “We have rebooted the systems that allow our operators to manage the tunnels safely.” So there you go. They rebooted the tunnel. Ms Ker Walsh also mentioned on the evening TV news that they’d be upgrading their UPS!

Interestingly on the Herald-Sun’s RSS feed, this story came through in the early afternoon. The feed claimed there was an attached picture, but it turned out not to be a picture of gridlocked cars or an empty motorway — rather it seemed to be a picture of cricket players.

The other effect of the shutdown was the Citylink web site also appeared to lose power… or perhaps it was just snowed under by the traffic. Like some other transport providers, they didn’t cope well under stress.

The Vicroads web site kept running under the load, though apart from showing slow traffic in the area, didn’t contain specific information relevant to motorists who might be caught there. I assume the information for radio reports and the like are gathered by phone, not off the web sites.

Building the Perfect IT Person

Deborah Rothberg at eWeek has a puff piece about making yourself indispensible when the outsourcing comes.

My view is that management, the directors of any outsourcing drive, have no idea who’s indispensible or not. That coupled with “why would you want to work for a company that outsources it’s intellectual capital” brings me to a big yawn on this article.

I guess the many pieces of “don’t be a tech-dweeb” advice will help, in such that management will hate you less – you stop confusing them and instead talk about synergizing the paradigm going forwards for a win-win team outcome.

“Get into project management,” screams the article, “its your only hope!” – Yep, not enough PMs, that’s a likely problem. Very view people can drive MS-Project and run through risk-management checklists.

“Maximize internal knowledge” – unless that’s where the bodies are buried, I’m not sure tying your brain so tightly to one employer is such a great plan.

“Don’t whine” – well, I guess I can’t argue with that. The squeeky wheel gets tossed overboard at the first opportunity.

$50 million
Combined salaries of the Top 10 CIOs, according to Baseline’s 2006 CIO Compensation Ranking, released Aug. 1.

Wow. Check out all that value they’re adding, with their amazing intellects and all.

Has anyone out there found that certification (as suggested by the article) helps, either with staying or getting employeed?

Amazon’s data loss

Amazon has lost historic data. Sales data. Data for profiling customers.

I know. They lost mine.

I found out because it wouldn’t let me look inside The Complete Far Side because I don’t have an account that’s bought stuff – according to their records.

Except now I can look at the excerpt, but still they reckon I haven’t bought anything.

Weird.

A free STB for all (again)

Alex Encel is having another go at getting everybody in Australia a government-subsidised set top box. (See last time).

I like the idea, but I’m still not clear on who would pay for those who need antenna upgrades (or indeed how many/how much dosh is involved for this).

As he points out, so far they haven’t picked up the idea apparently due to ideological grounds rather than sound economic argument. But that’s typical of the current government — otherwise why would we have massive subsidies for private health insurance?

By the way, just to be pedantic for a moment, in Australian English, the word analogue has a ue on the end.

Ebay how-tos – will they ever agree?

Don’t be an eBay buyer, or you could turn into this crazy eBay woman. Be a seller. Perhaps you’re going to make a killing on PS3s. Or you’ve just cornered the world market in a particular Lego set. Just don’t pick some dud product. While you’re not going to become an eBay millionare, often the question is “What’s the trick to make the most money”?

Everyone with an opinion disagrees.

Shipping
Research shows that people are relatively insensitive to shipping costs, even though honour and the eBay rules say you can’t charge much beyond what it actually costs to ship. But perhaps the research was flawed, it only sampled 80 purchases.
Duration
The PS3 guy reckons 3 day auctions are the way to go. Roth reckons ten day ones are best, because they cover two weekends. Smith says 10 day auctions suck, but gives no reason.
Finish time
Sunday evening might work well, and in my sample of one it worked great, but:

Sunday evening may well be a peak time for ebay but bear in mind that there will be both an increase in buyers AND of auctions/competition so it’s not clear it’s the best time to end an auction. I’ve found Sunday, Monday, Thursday evenings to be good.

People are home on the weekends. Are they home, bored? I guess you want your auction to finish at such a time that when people see it, they’re willing to bid on it.
Body copy
Sean Blanda at College v2 says ‘don’t waste time on narrative‘. J.D. Roth thinks just the opposite. My anecdotal evidence says that amusing, engaging and informative copy makes for higher realised prices; the time investment in this, however, can be a killer. So you’d want to be selling multiples of whatever it is. Perhaps because I included a story of the item’s provenance it helped.
Starting price
Low starting bids are universally suggested, but often the following caveat is normally ignored:

It’s also not true that a 0.99 starting price is always the best policy. This is only true if your item has a lot of demand. Many times if there are only a few buyers interested and you list the item at near retail you will eventually get a buyer willing to pay that price – you may need to relist a few times. If you had starting it at 0.99 it may be that only one buyer happens to be interested at the time of the auction.

Moreover, if you have more than one item that will generally have few buyers and you list at 0.99 and it sells at that price, you’ve then set a precedence. People who search for completed listings will now perceive the item to be worth 0.99 – not good.

Myself, I’m going to use a buy-it-now price. I’m in no rush to sell, and really want the super premium I can capture.
Pictures
Everyone says put in a picture, but here’s a money-saving tip:

You can embed lots of pictures in your html rather than pay ebay to upload them – ebay gives one free & charges for the rest. It takes a little bit to learn this, but is NOT difficult.

Geeks aren’t afraid of HTML. And we love optimizing things, such as cost.

Feeback
Early or late? I think you’ve done unilateral disarmament if you’ve left feedback before the buyer has. But some people think you ought to leave feedback as soon as you’ve got the money. But a buyer can screw you over in so many ways after giving you the money. Bad move.

Unclear
I don’t know what the right Finish Time is. Any suggestions, with reasoning or, better yet, evidence?

Business cards

Lately I’ve been thinking about the concept of business cards.

Business cards are a token for re-establishing communications after an intial meeting. You meet someone, give them your card, and they later use that card to get in contact with you. But for them to remember who the token was from, it must match to a context they have constructed – so you need to include information on the card to aid that recall.

The information I consider necessary for contextual reconstruction is your name, photo, role and organisation. A hint at what the organisation does also helps. Most business cards don’t include a photo, I imagine because doing so would make you look like a prat; many people have difficulty recalling someone just from their name, but a photo gives instant recall. A work-around for the prat issue may be a witty comment on the card like “Not photogenic, but a Software Engineer nonetheless”. The card should have blank space for writing in additional context information. Garrett Dimon thinks that job titles just don’t work in small companies, so includes a micro-CV instead. I think you’ve got to leave space for written notes, so user-generated context information can be stored. On Garrett’s cards, I’d do the CV in gray so it can be treated like background text and scrawled over. To scrawl on a card, having process colour and the surface that produces doesn’t cut it. Go with spot colour on a matt card, so that pencils, felt-tip pens or whatever will work.

As for what contact information should be included, I think that voice, web and email addresses are mandatory, but there’s no need for fax numbers or street addresses – they can voice/email you and ask.

Is it important to make business cards that people keep? I think the way you can ensure someone keeping your card is to make it useful at what it is – a token. If you demand a memorable or keepable card, you could make a business card that can also be used for estimating distances. Or you could put an unobtrusive puzzle on there, like a Soduku. Or make the card dual use – like a business card / lock picking tool set. The internet has killed Compact Disc Business cards, because presenting that much data is easy over the internet (and people are a hesitant to put a rectangular CD into their drive. Unless it was something useful, like Damn Small Linux) – another useful card could have holes cut out to enable UML diagramming with a metal business card (stainless steel, US$1.80 each); or perhaps frosted plastic. On the creative side, you could do a PCB business card, or just give them a puppy. But these are all gimmicks; if gimmicks do it for you – or your customers – great. But don’t break the rules. Wallets are designed to hold business cards, so if yours doesn’t fit it’s going to have to be ultra-compelling to keep.

Robert Scoble thinks a good business card starts a conversation, and he might be right – if you treat business cards as a way of generating business leads. And the gimmick cards would certainly do that. But would you really contact someone based on a cool business card? Surely you should have started the conversation before you swap cards. He also says that fun job titles are so last century, but if there’s originality, I disagree. Director of Doughnut Freshness, indeed. But plain and boring might not be a problem, if you’re so interesting people want your card regardless.

Guys, a hint: don’t confuse calling cards and business cards. Trying to pick up chicks with a business card just doesn’t fly. Calling cards perhaps should be more interesting, or show more personality, than business cards. In fact they are more a marketting device than a contact token. Step 4 at Great FX’s ‘Design Business Cards in Adobe Photoshop’ article includes a bunch of useful links for designing a business card.

There are International / cultural considerations – the Japanese keep getting mentioned as being different. Like, only girls have rounded corners on their cards, and the Japanese hand cards over upon meeting. And I believe that the Japanese might freak out if you wrote all over their business card. But I don’t know much about this area.

What’s the best business card you’ve ever seen? The worst?

Wrath of the geeks

Joel Spolsky is outraged over an IT security advert with the slogan “To catch a geek, you have to think like a geek”, featuring a picture of a man in illfitting trousers, red socks and plain black shoes:

What is this, high school? With the bullies who fail all their classes have such an inferiority complex they have to make fun of the geeks?

You know, I’m a professional geek. And I’ve worked with a lot of other professional geeks. Dozens. Maybe even hundreds.

Most of them are smart, and many of them brilliant. The vast majority are well-dressed. Only a tiny minority have fitted into the geek stereotype of unfashionable nerdy incomprehensible uncommunicative brainiacs.

Most of them a very well dressed, friendly, outgoing people. Some (gasp) are even women.

Okay, so it’s only advertising. But it’s obviously got a few noses out-of-joint. And from Joel’s reaction, some of those noses are decision-maker noses.

Clueless agency undermines customer’s advertisement

Compare this agency ad, which turns up in a “linux C++” search, to this homegrown ad, which turns up in a “linux C++” search.

I encourage everyone to apply for the first job. They clearly want everyone to do so. I certainly did. You’d think that agencies, with their unabashed love of keyword searching would know better… perhaps they’re fully aware of what they’re doing. I love their fourteen key areas of specialization. The second job, well, read the instructions. It’s a nice place, with a good coffee machine. And people too. And management that’s able to pull itself back from the brink of cluelessness without being yelled at. Mind you, the last few paragraphs used to read:

Now, we won’t chuck your application away if you don’t hit all these points. But if you clearly don’t match the job at all you will get an abusive email. We will be drawing our conclusions from the application you send (hint, hint). Comparisons will be drawn between yourself and a small rodent.

We’re located on St Kilda Rd near the Domain Interchange. Public transport is pretty good here. Oh, we’ve got a darn good coffee machine, if that floats your boat.

Note: Do not send us an application if you are clueless. You’re wasting our precious time, and you will get an abusive email in response.

Name and address, please.

Those of us in AU who used to frequent Tandy Electronics might recall that they always asked for a name and address — ostensibly for customer service, but in practice to send you catalogues. I had a CompSci teacher in year 12 who refused to provide it; he found it ridiculous to do be asked, especially when buying something like a single resistor.

Raymond Chen writes about this happening at the affiliated Radio Shack stores in the USA, and tells a funny story refusing to give his name.

Retiring Baby Boomers lead to IT Workforce Crisis

ComputerWorld reports that the retirement of the Baby Boomers will lead to IT Workforce crisis. The tech crash shook a bunch of people out of the industry (mostly “HTML programmers” – the rodeo clowns of our profession), and it also caused a collapse in the number of undergraduates enrolling in IT courses (I’ve been doing my best to discourage anyone from entering the field).

Basic economics says that a reduced supply of workers and an increasing (or even static) demand for them leads to a rise in prices. And it’s not like prices are low at the moment anyways.

More champagne, anyone? I’ll just drive the shops in my diamond-encrusted Rolls Royce to fetch it.