T Bryce Yehl: Bryce's Follow-up List

Moving

Mon, 04 Nov 2002 20:15:07 GMT

I'm finally taking the plunge and switching to "MT". I'm not going to bother importing this weblog, at least not initially. Too much work for too little benefit. My archives can stay here indefinitely.

My new home page and weblog. Feeds are available in RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0, and RSS 2.0 flavors. I'm not going to set up RSS redirects. I don't like Userland's solution because any aggregator that doesn't understand the format will barf on it. HTTP 301 redirects are better supported, but I don't feel like reconfiguring Apache to allow .htaccess files.

For the couple of people that subscribe to my category feeds, I'll get around to re-creating those eventually. Stay subscribed to the current feeds and wait for an update.

Sat, 05 Oct 2002 20:26:32 GMT

Make Your Existing Perl Apps .NET-compliant: Learn how CPAN Perl modules can be made automatically available to the .NET framework. The technique involves providing small PerlNET mediators between Perl and .NET and knowing when, where, and how to modify. [Sam Gentile: Sams .NET Stuff]

Mon, 30 Sep 2002 07:53:23 GMT

Real World XML Web Services: For VB and VB .NET Developers. Just been reading Yasser's book, one of the better web services books I thought, it also includes some coverage of PocketSOAP (both rpc/encoded and doc/literal), and proxyTrace, cool! [Simon Fell]

Sun, 29 Sep 2002 07:25:29 GMT

Poll-worker trainers rebel [Miami Herald: Local] Also, local Pol bit by shark

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 23:55:16 GMT

Traffic Engineering: Finding the Right Route. In this first installment on Traffic Engineering, excerpted from O'Reilly's BGP, learn how to find the best route in a multihomed setup--the one that will take advantage of all available bandwidth. [O'Reilly Network Articles]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 22:08:58 GMT

Content management ROI. Jim Howard has written an article on determining content management ROI. He explores both "hard" and "soft" measures, provides small case studies, and gives examples. To quote: While it’s challenging to put a price tag on having a standard look-and-feel... [Column Two]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 22:08:14 GMT

Interoperability for open-source CMSs?. Paul Everitt and Gregor J. Rothfuss write about the challenges of interoperability between open-source CMSs. They clearly state the current situation (little compatability), and then explore the case for and against moving towards greater interoperability. To quote: Do open source... [Column Two]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 22:08:10 GMT

Web-based editing tools. Paul Browning maintains an excellent list of TTW WYSIWYG Editor Widgets. For the rest of us, TTW stands for "through the web" (it works within a browser). This is a very handy and comprehensive list, useful for any developer creating... [Column Two]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 22:08:06 GMT

Insure against being slashdotted..

It's not a denial of service attack; you've been slashdotted! Someone mentioned your low traffic web site on the evening news and suddenly your servers are overwhelmed.

Most ISP contracts cap your traffic, just turn off the faucet after the first n megabytes downloaded.

Scott Johnson:

If I was Cmdr Taco or Hemos or anyone at VA, I would introduce "SlashSurance: Insurance Against the Slashdot Effect". This would be something like this:

$10 annually for a single notification email sent no more than 1 hour before reference to your url is posted. And, if we detect that you promote this before it goes up on Slashdot then we reserve the right to pull the story (or any future coverage of you).
$25 annually for a days worth of automatic mirroring to a server of our own
REQUIRED: Absolutely 0 conflict of interest with the editorial process. Ideally no one on the editorial side should even know who signed up.
Low key marketing effort

I'm not sure about anyone else but I would have no objection to paying $25 or $10 just for the piece of mind that this would bring me.

While /. might offer this service, it is too little too late for most people.

That's why your ISP should offer this; it is the point of pain.

Traffic badge goes on your page ("My HugeHosting DOS Insurance Is Paid Up!")
Traffic spikes trigger your ISP to make a mirror of your site and deploy traffic distribution
The mirror includes text ads; generating revenue without undue bandwidth costs
Mirrors die off as traffic does
Helps ISPs upsell service to you if the new traffic is a trend instead of a spike
ISPs spread the risk of being slashdotted among their customers. 1-3 orders of magnitude jumps in traffic.
ISPs spread the most serious of risks (the President mentions your site in a TV speech; your nude pictures surface) among multiple ISPs through a Reinsurance (insuring insurers) program. 5+ order of magnitude jumps.

I think there is real money in this, a dollar a month from every hopeful small business site or weblogger.

Like lotto, it is a tasty bet on your dream of a long shot upside.

[a klog apart]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 22:08:01 GMT

Lists of CMS vendors. I've been collecting lists of CMS vendors for a while, and two new webpages were quietly published on our site... [Column Two]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 22:07:57 GMT

Ideas Are To Talent As Execution Is To Practice.. Poorly grounded, ill-conceived, unlikely, improbable ideas may well be easy to spew. [blog cognosco v 0.1]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 22:06:44 GMT

Avoiding the same mistakes. On the KM-Framework list, Jackie Green asked the following excellent questions in response to the release of my Sixteen steps... [Column Two]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 22:06:28 GMT

Rewarding and recognizing knowledge sharing. This is an interesting article on [Rewards and Recognition in Knowledge Management] from the AQPC. In it the APQC President Carla O'Dell is quoted as saying :

"What has been interesting in the 30 years of research is that as you increase extrinsic motivation, you can drive out intrinsic reward. For example, if you give people $20 every time they come to a community of practice event and then stop giving them that, they are going to be upset. Be cautious about attaching extrinsic rewards to behavior you want to persist over time."

Speaking personally I am very much against extrinsic motivation to reward or encourage knowledge sharing. Its like saying 'this is not really part of your job' or worse 'this is a distasteful part of your job' and so we are we going to reward you separately to do it.

This is totally the wrong message to be giving and can only undermine knowledge sharing in the long term. Knowledge sharing is a fundamental and integral part of every knowledge workers job - not so different to breathing! Why the hell should you single out the key essence of a knowledge workers job - to mind what they are really getting paid for and reward them separately for it. It is just plain crazy.

Disincentives need to be removed and knowledge sharing needs evangelizing and supporting. Recognition is also important. But to my mind the prime way forward is to encourage people to talk openly with each other and to think about knowledge sharing for themselves. You may also need to facilitate such conversations.

This is in the hope (yes hope - you cannot mandate it) that they will come to understand that knowledge sharing is actually not only in the organizations interest but also their own.

If intelligent people who are intrinsically motivated to do a good job of work cannot see the value of knowledge sharing then maybe there is really no value in it for them or the organization but I very much doubt that!

Later in the day Sunday: Serendipity! Even [more] on this subject in an item on 'Knowledge sharing and leadership' in Jim McGee's blog. I love the [article] by Alfie Cohn - if you have any lingering doubts about the stupidity of rewarding knowledge sharing then read this article!

Also a number of other good links here on the subject e.g. the work of Hazel Hall. I have an article on Knowledge Sharing that is taking a long time in gestation but I must remember to come back here when I find time again to work on it! [Gurteen Knowledge-Log]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 21:56:47 GMT

Microsoft MSWeb case study. Over the last couple of years I have seen some impressive demonstrations of the Microsoft intranet MSWeb. However it has not been well documented (least of all on the Microsoft site) so I was very pleased to be alerted by James Robertson to a case study of MSWeb by Peter... [Intranet Focus Blog]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 21:56:42 GMT

Search interface patterns. Liz Danzico explores the different ways that a search interface can be designed. She identifies four different patterns: standard surfacing... [Column Two]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 21:56:37 GMT

Krzysztof Kowalczyk: Blog your resume..

Krz insists that you must:

Blog your resume. This is how a typical resume looks like. My opinion is that it's impossible to tell anything from a typical resume. So a guy says he knows PHP. Does it mean that he's a PHP guru who has written 100k lines of PHP code or that he's just finished "Learn PHP in 15 minutes"? No way to tell. My idea: blog your resume. In addition to a standard resume keep a log of all the stuff you're learning and doing. E.g. if today you wrote a 5k lines perl script that spiders the web and extracts interesting info, you would to your log a dated entry:

Finished 5k line Perl script to spider the web. Used LWP::Simple module...

etc. Maintain focus and balance. We assume that this information will be read at some point in the future by someone who'll want to hire you. Don't put irrelevant information like what you've eaten for breakfast (maintain focus). Also don't post trivia like wrote 5 lines of Perl code to display "Hello world" (maintain balance). It's a win-win situation. Potential employer has a much better chance to assess your skills and experience. You'll have a better chance to showcase your skills and you'll have an edge over resumes that only say "Programming skills: C/C++, PHP". Of course you should start now, the day you're out of work is probably a few years late. Blogs are a good way to maintain this "extended resume". You might use categories (a feature of many blogging systems, e.g. Radio) to integrate this into your blogging flow.

Darned tootin'.

This gets the raw data in.

But it leaves you with editorial work.

The people who read résumés suffer from information overload. And it's getting worse.

Recording your daily/weekly accomplishments is incredibly useful. It helps communicate with your colleagues, customers, and supervisors. If you jot just two or three notes every day, in a year you've created a descriptive collage from hundreds of data points.

Your detailed trail of accomplishments is helpful to HR or a hiring manager only so far as you organize, categorize, connect, and summarize it.

For example, 15 different posts about your Perl scripting among 300 other posts are hidden and diffuse. You can keep the reader from drowning in detail with a one or two line summary, and a link to those 15 experiences (collected and organized and cleaned up).

Tech fix? Maybe livetopics plus Radio categories can help organize this material

Practical fix? Discipline. Review your posts monthly. Summarize and add to your CV.

[aka strategy]

[a klog apart]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 21:56:33 GMT

Radio Wishlist - Audio options..

I'd like to see accomodations for audioblogging. A few requests:

On collecting audio attachments.

Tune my maximum receiving size. Let me set the maximum file size for downloading by channel or time of day. I'm on a
Harvest during quiet times. Let me prioritize audio attachments lower than other Radio harvesting behavior, so upstreaming and other downloads come first.
Support download resumption.
Support alternate formats. mp3, au, ra, wav, QuickTime, etc.
Support playlists by downloading the list then downloading the mentioned files.

On presenting and playing attachments.

Show file sizes and play times.
If a syndicated attachment is over my set limit, let me override and queue it for download.
Let me play a post's playlist.
Create a queue of audio posts, so I can listen to all my audio posts at the same time. Perhaps by generating a playlist file and launching it.
Create a flag that shows if I've listened to an audio post. I can then delete or save flagged posts.
Let me specify a maximum folder size for all the syndicated audio enclosures.

On composing audio posts.

When I post, check if the file size or file types are not permitted by Radio. If so, tell me before I post. Without this verification, the post's text may point to a missing attachment.
Convert sound attachments to file formats and resolution consistent with my preferences and other restrictions (like maximum file size).
If the file format permits, copy post metadata (title, date, url, author, description) into the sound file itself.

Now where's that microphone...

[a klog apart]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 21:56:28 GMT

Share More, Get More. Knowledge isn't like money, when you give it away you don't have less. [Blunt Force Trauma]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 21:56:22 GMT

On "the fear that someone else will pick up your ideas and work them out before you do. ". One of the objections I often hear to sharing knowledge is the "fear that someone else will pick up on your ideas and work them out before you do. "

I have always had a problem with this viewpoint since the emergence of the web because the one thing you can almost guarantee is that someone out there in the world, if not dozens or hundreds of others will have had a similar idea and be working on it.

They may also be brighter than you and more advanced in their thinking than you and have more time to develop the idea. So why not seek them out and collaborate them!

But like all good ideas - even this one is not unique - I have just discovered Phil Wainewright in his Loosely Coupled weblog advocating exactly the same mindset and putting it in a far better way than I might [].

Read the full postig and think about it. We all have ideas that would be better shared than hoarded!

I think this highlights one important aspect of a highly networked world that we are all going to have to get used to. There are very few genuinely original ideas in the world. Someone, somewhere has inevitably already come up with the same idea. By pooling your thoughts with theirs, both of you will likely progress them further than you could have done individually (or maybe someone else watching the exchange will have a new insight that takes the idea further than the pair of you). The more open the network, the more everyone can feed off each other's ideas. The less open it is, the more slowly everyone progresses.
So which is better? I think the answer is that, in an extensive open network, the one thing you can be sure of is that someone else already has the same idea as you. If you deny that fact, you relegate yourself to coming in behind them. If you accept it and embrace the network, you have a chance of participating in their success. (I have a feeling this has been said better by someone at Microsoft, but I can't recall the reference just now. Perhaps someone reading this will be able to refresh my memory).

Side note: I recently developed some RSS code for Lotus Notes and I'm not aware of any similar code available on the web. Now I could try to hold on to it or sell it but its not core to what I'm about and I do not have the time or inclination at present to do anything more with it. So I've made it available on my site for free download.

In the past few months over 50 people from around the world have downloaded it. Most have left their e-mail addresses and most have subscribed to my knowledge-letter. When I come back to further develop the RSS capability on my site - I will have built up a small network of people whom I can contact and share ideas with. Hopefully getting more out of it than I have put in. But I don't really care - if I had not published the code - it would have rotted on my hard-disk - publishing it means that people get to benefit from it and move the technology forward. In the long run everyone benefits. [Gurteen Knowledge-Log]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 21:56:16 GMT

Fixing the Microsoft intranet?. Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville have written an article on fixing the Microsoft intranet. This is a huge system, with... [Column Two]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 21:51:54 GMT

Collaborative working using an intranet. Many of the dot.com magazines have perished, but Fast Company seems to keep going, though I admit I look at it on the web, rather than pay for a subscription or an individual issue. I was catching up with recent issues this evening, and came across an article in the... [Intranet Focus Blog]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 21:51:52 GMT

Data protection issues. Intranets tend to contain a great deal of personal information, and indeed for many companies the main benefit of having an intranet is to be able to identify employees with specific skills and experience. In Europe there are very strict controls over the way that personal data is handled. This... [Intranet Focus Blog]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 21:51:45 GMT

Convera becomes more visible. I have to admit that over the last couple of years I had largely ignored Convera as an enterprise search engine. The company (formerly Excalibur until its acquistion by Intel last year) seemed to me to be mainly interested in its image retrieval functionality. Recently I visited Convera's UK offices... [Intranet Focus Blog]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 21:51:41 GMT

Search engines for intranets. My Moreover feed picked up an article in Microbanker based on a presentation by Dennis Deacon, Bank One intranet manager, at the International Quality Productivity Center's intranet content management conference in late April in Chicago. The article is headed Good Search Engines Make Good Intranets and the author states that... [Intranet Focus Blog]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 21:51:25 GMT

Atomz CMS selection guide. Reading the July 2002 issue of EContent today I spotted an advertisment by Atmoz, the internet search engine company, for a Content Management Buyer's Kit (CMBK) that the company has developed. I've just been exploring it, and I have to say that quite a bit of thought has gone into... [Intranet Focus Blog]