Archive for June 2007

Denny Hatch criticizes book reviewers proclaiming they reveal too much information. Whether you agree or not, I follow these rules in writing book reviews:

* Honest: I try to provide an overview of the reading experience including the content without the marketing speak you find on the back of the book or inside the cover. In reading reviews, I want to know whether the book is worth my time — and that’s what I aim for in the reviews.

* Shoot for the right length. A book review isn’t an abstract, but it shouldn’t take much of a person’s time. Can’t put a number of words — you just know when it’s right. The review shouldn’t be so short that the reader doesn’t have a clue what to think. “I loved it. You must get it,” a frequent type of comment in Amazon reviews, just doesn’t cut it. You loved it, great. Tell me why.

* Provide new information: I study other reviews after writing mine to ensure I covered something different. Some people don’t rely on one review to make a decision. I want them to have a variety of information instead of the same stuff. Some people list the chapter titles. Boring. I only mention them if the entry doesn’t include the details, and briefly describe the chapter.The Perfect Thing is a perfect example (couldn’t resist).

* Don’t give away anything. Had to be said.

Job interviews. Client interviews. Reporter interviews. The inevitable “What are your weak areas?” comes up. You’re not expected to be perfect. Yes, it’s true — no matter what your family tells you (my oldest won’t believe me when I tell her that I don’t expect her to be perfect). Joyce Lain Kennedy, career expert, shared advice on how to answer this question. For me, the most difficult to answer is, “Where do you see yourself in five or ten years from now?” It’s easier to answer today, but not in the first ten years of my career.

DEAR JOYCE: I never know what to say in a job interview when asked, “What is your outstanding weakness?” or, “If you could improve anything about yourself, what would it be?” Saying that you’re a workaholic or a perfectionist has become a well-worn cliché. Suggestions? – R.O.R.

Yes, among employers who interview frequently – and among virtually all recruiters who interview for a living – the buzzwords of “perfectionist” and “workaholic” are worn to a frazzle.

SIMILAR BUT NEWER. But there’s plenty of life left in the proven tactic of choosing a weakness that shows your strength – if you use fresher examples:

“I make it a point to double-check my work because as committed as I am to meeting deadlines, I sometimes move too fast.”

“I’m not a big socializer in the office and may be perceived as standoffish. Although I enjoy congenial relationships and good jokes with coworkers, my work style is focusing my energy on meeting expectations first and playing later.”

“I may be seen as tentative when I’m not crystal clear about the nature of a project. For example, despite my research, I have a number of unanswered questions about the structure and size of this position. How much authority and resources would I have to accomplish its responsibilities?”

“Others have mildly complained that I am too likely to use impersonal e-mail to communicate with coworkers when I could just pick up the phone or walk down the hall for a face-to-face meeting. I use e-mail to save time. Do you see a problem with that method of communication in this company?”

TRUTH AND BALANCE. In a similar vein, mention a shortcoming that shows you have thought about what you do less well than other things. But immediately counterbalance the weakness with an example of your proactive approach to personal improvement:

“I was good at creating interest in a product but wasn’t closing sales. So I strengthened my ability to close by reading industry newsletters and sales guidebooks and by asking for tips from the best performers in my office. I put my new knowledge to work, and within a few weeks I improved my record by 35 percent.”

“I addressed gaps in my technical knowledge by asking for extra job assignments that offered training in the best technical practices.”

“I don’t learn new office software programs intuitively or by osmosis. I have to work at it. I deal with my ‘geeklessness’ by getting books or DVDs that step you through a program, and by practicing at home until I get it down pat. I now am better than average at using Word, Excel and PowerPoint.”

“I am not yet proficient in air-conditioning principles and repair. But I am enrolled in a night class in air conditioning to upgrade my building engineering technician skills. I’m about 75 percent through the course.”

MEA CULPA. Sometimes it’s effective (and refreshing) not to blow smoke at the interviewer. Instead, admit a not-terribly-serious error, or that you were slow on the uptake, and then say you learned your lesson and that you certainly won’t do that again:

“In my last job, I was slow to realize the value of XYZ. I had a wake-up call when the innovation gained market share. You can bet that in the future I’ll be on top of new developments, front and center.”

TEMPORARY WEAKNESS. Compare the value you bring to the table with that of existing employees:

“Moving from the public to the private sector, I won’t be as experienced in this job as my coworkers. So that’s a weakness – for a limited period of time. But my references will confirm that I’m a fast learner and an energetic worker.”

NO BLURTING OUT. Obviously you’re not going to bring up deal-breaker “weaknesses” like, “I’m a whining and complaining person,” or, “I have trouble keeping secrets about what goes on in a company,” or, “I have sticky fingers and can’t resist taking office supplies home.”

When in doubt, remember a guiding principle in handling the W-question: Speak strength to weakness. You are not blindly self-centered and you work to correct shortcomings.

MORE EXAMPLES.Check out the column titled “Best Answers to Your Biggest Weakness Question.”

A recruiter offers a different perspective.

If the truth of the matter is you really do have a major weakness, such as you are horrible in mathematics or writing and the position does not require either, you should answer like this:

“I know the job hunting books say you should always answer with a weakness that is not really a weakness, but I’m not going to go there. The reality in my case is that I am crappy in math (or writing, etc.). If you need someone to do basic calculations (or write position papers), I can do that just fine. But if you need someone to do algorithms (or write theses), I’m not that person.”

And on the opposite question, “What are your most significant achievements?” the “experts” advise you to have at least two or three significant achievements to describe, preferably in mini-story format. That is good information. However, what they leave out is the fact that most of the entire job hunting populace consists simply of average, hardworking, everyday people – most of whom have not done anything of tremendous importance. I teach my candidates to answer:

“I have done many things that I consider significant, but nothing that really rocked the business world. The bottom line is that I am a hardworking, results-oriented, high-energy individual who gets the job done – and done right. My work is always on time, of correct quantity and quality, and if you hire me, you can expect nothing less, whatever the task.” – - Neil P. McNulty, Virginia Beach, Va.

After playing a few rounds of Gemsweeper, I realized the game resembles Sudoku. You don’t fill in numbers, but you apply a similar strategy in trying to find the hidden gems and uncover the blanks. Paul, my significant other, said upon watching me play, “Hey, Minesweeeper look-alike!”

Minesweeper wasn’t my game. I preferred Solitaire over Minesweeper back in the days when Windows came with the two games. I tried Minesweeper a couple of times, but Solitaire won. No matter, Gemsweeper reeled in Paul and me. He couldn’t resist helping me with my game. I told him to shoo because I wanted to figure it out myself.

This puzzle game — which consists of a grid of tiles — adds a Mayan expedition feel as players work to restore the temples around the city. Each temple contains 14 puzzles in which you uncover gems hiding under the tiles and dispose of cursed tiles. Professor McGuffog guides you through the tutorial and game.

The grid could range from 5×5 tiles to a huge 30×30 tiles. Numbers appear at the top and side of the tiles to help you figure out which are cursed and which aren’t. As you find all the gems to complete the puzzle, a picture appears leading to a McGuffog corny line. I could do without the cheesy comments, but I welcome his company.

At the end of a level when you’ve rebuilt the temple, you play a bonus round where you must find a set number of gems before time runs out.

The thing that drives me insane is the use of the right and left mouse buttons. The left uncovers gems while the right breaks cursed tiles. Too many times, I clicked the wrong button. But this approach works better than the alternate way. The other way is to click the hammer icon each time you want to switch modes. The developer did the right thing, as I don’t think there’s a better way. Taking your time is probably the best way to avoid the mistake I make.

Uncover too many curse tiles and the game ends. Of course, you can replay the puzzle. The game comes with Quest and Arcade mode. In Quest mode, you rebuild the temple. Arcade mode works more like the bonus rounds — when you clear a row, another appears in its place.

The game comes with over 200 puzzles and 30 treasure hunter “titles.” You earn a promotion when you reach a set score. While the promotions don’t do much for the game play, it’s nice to claim a new rank. Plus, I learned a new word, “Tuareg,” the name of one of the ranks. A Tuarag is a member of Muslim nomads in the Sahara who typically speak Berber or Hamitic.

Like Sudoku, Gemsweeper requires thinking and logic to succeed. I’ve stayed up an hour past my bedtime thanks to this energizing game. Thankfully, the Quest lasts a long time with the many temples needing rebuilding. I don’t want it to end and hope that Lobstersoft will release more puzzles. Since I regularly play and review games, I rarely continue to play a game after completing the review. But this one keeps interfering with other reviews because I crave to play it and watch colorful gems fly.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows ME/2000/XP/Vista
• 600MHz or faster Processor
• 128MB RAM

A few years ago, I started working on a business plan. I even sought a SCORE counselor. But nothing materialized with the business plan. I’m not looking to grow, add employees or any of that. I simply want to do what I enjoy and work with clients that I can support. I do.

I’m lucky that my plate overfloweth. However, marketing doesn’t stop. Looking for more projects never stops. I would like to work less without earning less, so I have more time for volunteer work, real vacations, and simply hanging out with my family. I think about this often to keep it fresh in mind especially when a new opportunity crosses my path. I wondered if this meant having an official document — the business plan.

Bob Bly doesn’t have a business plan. He has a career that many writers would love to have. He’s happy. I’m happy. Why make ourselves miserable dealing with a business plan? So now you have it — two people who make a good living as writers without a business plan.

The book begins with absorbing insight into the life of the drones and queen bees. The queen bee sits all day while her slaves service her and feed her royal jelly that no one else can have. Who knew the world of bees could be fascinating and resemble the corporate world?

Death By PowerPoint takes a satiric approach in exploring what’s what in the corporate world. Flocker describes employee personalities and situations, and explains how to deal with them, or rather protect yourself and stay under the radar. Casual Friday? What do you do? Even something simple as casual Friday can make a worker bee fret. Get tips on dealing with “fashionipulation” for manipulating your world with clothes.

Learn how the cubist culture got started and what cube decorations say about a person. The elephant in the room doesn’t exist as the book punches the art of politics in the face. Throttle a passive-aggressive communicator’s attempts to take advantage of you and protect yourself from the backstabber. The corporate lingo chapter covers original and “I wish I had thought of that” terms. It doesn’t rehash too many of the terms heard in the corporate halls.

The e-mail etiquette chapter offers little new material, but the book would be incomplete without it. Rarely does an office skip the mandatory fun events, so prepare yourself for that upcoming team-building session with the “Mandatory Fun” chapter.

Funny quotes and curious facts appear sprinkled throughout the pages along with sticky notes and abused bathroom door characters. Beware there are R-rated words and scenarios such as the chapter on office romance, but not too much.

Anyone reading this must take care in deciding whether to follow advice since some wouldn’t fare well for the worker bee while others could lead to a memorable moment at the office. Death By PowerPoint offers tips and a much needed laugh at the dysfunctional corporate world. Treat the book more as a humorous one rather than a self-help book.

Anyone needing comic relief or an escape from the throes of the corporate world should grab this easy and fun read. Like Office Space and Scott Adams’ Dilbert, Flocker uses words exaggerate the corporate life and provide tips for surviving The Office-like environment without going insane.

Title: Death By PowerPoint: A Modern Office Survival Guide
Author: Michael Flocker
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306815125
Date: November 2006
Format: Paperback
Pages: 219
Cover Price: USD: $12.95 Amazon: $10.36

A large nonprofit organization uses Kintera.com to ensure all of its Web sites contain the same look and feel while providing volunteers and employees an easy way to update the Web pages. Unfortunately, Kintera isn’t easy to use. It also has a ghost in its word processor. In trying to fix a bulleted list, the bullets would keep disappearing and I had to keep clicking the Bullets button until it “took.”

In building several Web sites for a nonprofit organization, I opted to use MovableType as it has a friendly back-end for creating, editing and deleting content. Blogger is probably easier to use, but I needed more control over the design.

I want to find more applications like Kintera — where a nonprofit organization can set up a back-end that already has design templates letting the locals have control over the content and navigation. Anyone know of any?

For the most part, Mystery of Shark Island is a hidden objects game, but it takes a different approach. Most hidden objects games use still photos. This one takes you to the beach where waves sweep in the objects you need to find.

The start of the game wasn’t impressive. Hunt, find, click. Hunt, find, click. How hard can this get? The objects were in plain view. It didn’t take long before I was frustrated with the game. So the game went from blow off to “I’m going to throw the monitor over a cliff if you don’t let me finish this level” hard after two islands.

I couldn’t get past a difficult beach on Island 2. Eventually, I succeeded and the levels after that provided just the right amount of difficulty as I made it through a few islands before I hit another roadblock. It wasn’t until Island 9 that I had to battle the game until my fingers were blue. The timer ticked so fast, I felt like I was in fast forward mode.

Sometimes I knew the exact objects to find and other times, the only hint was a shadow. An object’s shadow isn’t as tough as facing question marks in later levels. Not to fret — you get plenty of practice to grow more familiar with the assorted seashells, rocks and sea glass to help you prepare for the time when the question marks arrive.

The game didn’t stop with finding and grabbing objects. Eventually rocks showed up to play with your time like a toy. Time ticks down while you lift the rocks, but you can speed it up by finding a strength coin. There’s a timer coin to add time, a wind coin to shoo the dirt away, and a sweeper coin to speed up your brush as it sweeps the sand to reveal what’s hidden.

The game’s Story Mode involves finding hidden objects within a set time on an island’s five beaches. After you earn five keys from the beaches, use the keys to unlock a portal to transport you to another island until you’ve visited 10 islands. The portal puzzle doesn’t have a timer (thank goodness), but it isn’t exciting to play. Every transport comes with a note of the character’s observations. You also learn more from listening to seashells. The ending was bland and disappointing.

Arcade Mode lets you play the unlocked islands repeatedly until you’re sick of trying to find all the objects before the waves take them away. Story Mode contains a goal score. If you reach the goal score, then the expert score appears to laugh at you to see if you can make it that far.

The music nicely accompanies the island atmosphere. Though hanging around the beach is relaxing, nothing could help me unwind. The game kept my body tense and on edge as I hurriedly hunted with the shrinking timer teasing the corner of my eyes. As anxious as I was to find out what happened next, I didn’t play the game constantly since the challenges wore me out. Hidden object fans will be happy with this one and its original take on the genre.

Windows System Requirements

• Windows ME/2000/XP/Vista
• Pentium III 700 MHz or faster processor
• 128MB RAM
• 800 x 600 minimum screen resolution
• Sound Card recommended
• DirectX 7.0 or later
• 23 MB available disk space

Mac System Requirements

• Mac OS X 10.3.9 or newer
• G4 800 Mhz or faster, or G5 or Intel processor
• 800 x 600 minimum screen resolution
• 21 MB available disk space

On occasion, I get an assignment from a specific client that includes brainstorming company names as well as finding potential matching domain names. Lifehack has a nice article on How To Brainstorm Domain Names. When I brainstorm names that need domain names, here are things I keep in mind:

* Avoid words where the end of one word is the same as the start of the next word. Car racing, for example. This would translate to carracing.com. When recalling a domain name, I debate whether it’s carracing.com or caracing.com.

* Put the domain name together and make sure the URL doesn’t look like an embarrassing URL. Bet you’ve seen a “forward this e-mail” that listed funny domain names like www.expertsexchange.com (Experts Exchange) and penisland.com (Pen Island). Innocent and good names, but not so good URLs!

* Skip dashes, if possible. URLs with dashes have received a bad name because of spam sites. However, many wonderful sites use dashes like www.digital-web.com. This site came out long before spammers got the idea to abuse the dash.

* Check the spelling. Is it hard to spell?

* Add another word, if you already have a company name where someone else already registered the domain name. If you’re ABC Painters, try adding a word such as “abcpaintersdallas” and “abcpaintersinc”. Obviously, a painting business would want to drive locals to its site, so adding a geographical name can help with search engines.

* Make the thesaurus your friend. Sometimes you discover a better word for something that represents your business. Coffee, java, and cafe are commonly used in coffee shops, so using a thesaurus to find something different might yield great results.

What URL naming dos and don’ts do you have?

Thank goodness this doesn’t come with smells like the upcoming My Name Is Earl smell-o-vision episode then it would be impossible to play without craving chocolate. You may want to play Chocolatier on a full stomach with the graphics clearly showing every delicious ingredient in the 60 different kinds of bars, squares, infusions and truffles.

The game comes with Story and Freeplay modes with over 130 quests taking place in 14 cities. Working through the tutorial, the game looked complicated. But it wasn’t. Give it time and it will become as addicting as chocolate. Thankfully, unlike chocolate, this didn’t hurt my waistline — maybe my bottom from sitting on it for hours in eager anticipation to progress in the game.

Not only do players buy ingredients, make new products, sell chocolates, buy factories and stores, and travel the world; but they also try to get the story behind a family squabble. Since we only use the finest ingredients, we must travel to cities around the world for specific ingredients. The two U.S. cities didn’t carry cacao. In fact, they carried the least amount of ingredients in the whole world.

Expensive products sell at higher rates because they contained ingredients specific to a region like the Sulawesi Macadamia Cacao Infusions, which contain one ingredient from Sulawesi. When you don’t have a lot of dough, you want to travel to the locales that pay more for the chocolates you have available.

Upgrading a factory from bars to truffles doesn’t simply involve changing the ingredients, but also buying new equipment. Those cost you a pretty pound. As soon as you assign a new recipe to a factory and have its ingredients, it turns into a race. You have to make as many as you can of the candy following the recipe within a set time. Unfortunately, this made me dizzy considering my susceptibility to things moving in circles. The amount of chocolates made during that time is the amount the factory can produce in a week. The bars are easiest to make since they contain two or three ingredients while the truffles can contain six unique ingredients.

Every city contains a store that buys chocolate, a market that sells ingredients, a special crop for the hard to get ingredients, and one or two local hangouts for talking with people to get the scoop on the business and the family. Some hangouts also give you a chance to gamble and double your money or lose it.

The game screen has a message section. This section lets you know about any problems in your business — such as degrading food supplies — along with any action items you promised to take and tasks you’ve done. This message section is small, hard to read and slow in scrolling. Sometimes I had more than one action item and it was a chore to find them in the message section when they didn’t appear at the top as current tasks did.

I loved the diversity in this game. There was no right or wrong, or a set path you must take. You could make whichever recipe, and travel to the destinations of your choosing unless you needed to find an ingredient only available in one place. You could help people along the way and haggle prices. The game slowed when I had tons of money, but still needed more recipes and couldn’t accomplish things until I found the right person. During that time, I traveled from port to port trying to find someone to help.

When I finally got a hit, the game picked up again and kept me hopping for the rest of it. I never thought I could manage six factories — the thought of that sounded like too much multi-tasking, but it wasn’t. In fact, I wish I had more places to visit. Chocolatier didn’t attempt to copy any of the “run a business” style games. Rather, its creator developed it from scratch as the game package turned out beautifully as the chocolates.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP/Vista
• 700MHz or faster Processor
• 128MB RAM
• 800×600 minimum screen resolution
• Sound Card recommended
• DirectX 7.0 or later
• 30MB+ available drive space

System Requirements: Mac

• Mac OS X 10.3.9 or newer
• G4 800 Mhz or faster or G5 or Intel processor
• 800×600 minimum screen resolution
• 21MB+ available drive space

OK, if this poll by British pollsters of YouGov is accurate — then prepare to cringe. The ten most hated words on the Internet — based on a poll of 2,091 adults — reports the following words making the list:

1. folksonomy
2. blogosphere
3. blog
4. netiquette
5. blook
6. webinar
7. vlog
8. social networking
9. cookie
10. wiki

Folksonomy earns its rightful place on the top. Can’t tell you how much work it took me to understand what it means, spell it right (kept writing “folksomy”) and pronounce it (probably still saying it wrong).

The other words make sense. They feel phony. Especially in the earlier days of blogging, it always felt weird to see “blog” and even “weblog.” Saying it sounds too personal like mentioning certain parts of the body.

Cookie may not sound bad, but who wants to see the delightful treat in a sometimes bad light? While cookies save us typing, the bad sites also abuse them giving them a bad name.

Wiki … Hawaiian sounding words are fun, but this one just looks out of place especially in the world of business. “Hey, have you checked the wiki for changes?”