Alexa Web Search Platform

The Alexa Web Search Platform provides public access to the vast web crawl collected by Alexa Internet. Users can search and process billions of documents — even create their own search engines — using Alexa\’s search and publication tools.

NBC, Apple announce iTunes TV show deal

NBC Universal and Apple on Tuesday announced a deal that brings NBC television content to Apple?s iTunes Music Store. iTunes now offers more than 300 episodes of 16 shows, according to the statement.

Ten reasons to learn and use web standards

If you?re a web developer or designer new to the concept of web standards and are undecided on whether you should spend the time to learn all about them or not, here are some of the most important reasons for doing so.

Why IT needs strong leaders

must read for all who like to read!

In this month’s Baseline issue, it talks about the best 500 companies at information management. I personally got a kick out of what Werner Vogels, the CTO of Amazon.com stated.

He stated that if you have a project team that can eat over two pizzas, you have too many people on that team. A good size team averages eight or fewer. Otherwise the project gets bogged down in so-called “administrivia”.

From personal experience, eight or fewer on a project is a decent amount to strive for. But, you need to be careful of those that count as more then one person. I have personally dealt with people that push a project to the so-called “administrivia” period faster then you can say “pretty decent“.

From my perspective (the bottom looking up), interviewing someone for a position is a hard thing. The question I hear often is, how do you know they can do what they really can do? Anyone can pad a resume and without knowing how to read through that, you are going to be stuck with someone who is just that, a resume padder.

I have interviewed at a few places in my time and here are some ideas that I have taken from them that I really liked.

1. Group interview. Have everyone on the team, in the room for an informal interview process.

   The reason I like this idea, is because if you have a small enough team, the person you are going to be hiring is going to be working with them a lot. At a certain point, skills are just skills. You need to be able to mesh as a group.

2. Have brainteasers. One companies stance was they didn’t necessarily want “smart people”. They wanted problem solvers. So therefore they had a word problem that they wanted you to work out on the board and to show your work. This can give you a great idea on how people actually work or come to a solution.
3. Build something. Have them build something that can show off skills that they profess to have. For example, have them build a AJAX blog if they say they have mad javascript skills along with PHP and MySQL. I have talked to people before and they state that they don’t like to be tested. It insults them. My stance is this is a great buffer for the employer. You get a great idea of the skills you are hiring for.

Now if they past those three tests, or a combination thereof, you have found your prime canidate. The best part about having tests, is you can compare canidates to each other so you get the very best.

I personally have been in a situtation where we hired “the best” canidate at a particular position. One week later, I noticed that that book he just bought from Borders is a book on how to do X, where X is his current job. So I asked him if he has ever done what we hired him for. He honestly told me that he hadn’t.

I hope this doesn’t happen often, but I am sure it happens more then it should.

So this last week, a co-worker and I resurrected a game that I personally loved as a kid. Two for flinching. Now we both had our own rules and so therefore, we got into a huge argument over the proper rules. Since he couldn’t backup his rules with data, my rules won out.

They are:

1. If you flinch, you get hit twice
2. If you make contact without a prior flinch to be acted upon, you receive 10 hits for contact

Now, the controversial rule that we outlawed, thanks in part to Todd Kerpelman, was after any hit is made, you have to wipe it off.

About a month ago, my boss came to me with a project that another department in our company was working on. He asked me for my opinion on the project but before I answered, I asked him his opinion. His answer forever changed my life. His response was, “it was pretty decent“.

I broke down laughing. I couldn’t hold back the tears. So now our company standard is “pretty decent”. Every time someone asks me about the quality or how something works, I respond with a shrug and then I say that it is “pretty decent”.

I suggest you try it. See how it works for you. I bet you will be surprised with the results.