All posts by susabelle

Facebook’s New Timeline and the Laptop Problem

Facebook

Yes, I’m still a Facebook geek, even if I don’t post about it as much as I used to.  I was forced into the new Timeline view about two months ago, and I have given it the good old college try, as we like to say.  I still am not fond of it, but like most Facebook changes, it is not anything I can change.

The real problem with Timeline, for me, is the sheer size of it.  I use a laptop as my primary machine and have a slight visual impairment, and Timeline is just too freakishly big to be useful for me most of the time.  I do have my screen enlarged somewhat, but not overly so (it’s at a 2X), but by doing so, I’ve made Timeline and most of its features unwieldly and unviewable.  If I want to upload pictures, I cannot see the right-hand or left-hand side of the upload and settings window, and there is no scrollbar to let me move the screen to those locations.  For whatever reason, Timeline believes all of us are using browsers on a wide-screen monitor with normal or high resolution.  This means I have to guess what I’m typing in the Album Title box, and in the “say something about this album” box.  It’s a good thing I’m a relatively good touch-typist, but still.  I’ve had to go back more than once and fix a typo that I couldn’t see because the screen isn’t big enough to show it all and there is no way to scroll.

I know this is some bit of simple code, some random thing that made sense to the programmer, but it’s frustrating for me.  It’s got to be frustrating for anyone with a laptop using enlargement.  As our population ages, these kinds of code mistakes (or oversights) could become a real issue.  I manage to muddle through with what I have, but at what point does my visual impairment make this impossible?

Which brings up the bigger issue here.  More and more older people are using Facebook, according to recent polls. I  know in my own family this is true; my teenagers are hardly on it anymore, but anyone my age and older is on it constantly.  Most of the people I talk to on Facebook are 40 and up, and my mom and dad (in their 70’s) both recently joined Facebook and are having a grand time.  Accessibility needs to be a consideration, not just be an after-the-fact fix.

Can We Work 9 to 5?

People

The Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook) story that has made the headlines the last few days has highlighted a long-standing issue with tech-industry workers, regardless of their job type or gender.  It’s not just about the early bird getting the worm.  It’s also about the night-owls getting the promotions.

As a tech worker, I have often felt compelled to work long hours, from the office and at home and even on vacation, just to “keep up.”  I think tech workers are some of the most harried out there: the perceived requirement for long hours, for being available even when you aren’t supposed to be available (at home, at a conference, in a meeting, at lunch, on vacation, on the bus during your commute), the expectation that you’ll always be connected and tethered (smart phone, tablet, laptop), and that you don’t know the proper use of the word “no.”  Yes, I make my living in technology.  But does this realistically mean that I should not have a life at all outside of my job in the tech industry?

This is the same question that should be asked of both men and women.  Why is the expectation that men who work in the tech industry have no lives, either, and that women, by virtue of the fact that they are women and possibly mothers and wives as well, are expected to have lives and therefore cannot perform at the same level as men. Ergo, women cannot be as successful as men.

And how much of this expectation is our own fault?

I thank Ms. Sandberg for finally speaking out about the reality of her job and her home life.  I wish she had done so sooner.  The tech world may be overwhelmingly male, but success is not always a result of how many hours you put in.  It is a matter of the quality of your work, being able to work SMARTER, not harder, as a former boss of mine put it.  I have long known that my ability to multitask, in addition to my skills and experience, means that I do not have to put in the same amount of hours as others to do in the same job.  In other words, I’m good at what I do. I’ve learned to work smarter, not harder. I also refused long ago to be tethered, to work more than a standard work week except in very rare circumstances, and have put a lot of effort into changing people’s expectations and perceptions along the way.  I have found that many “emergencies” that come up in my line of work are not emergencies, but poor or nonexistent planning on the part of the requester.  By reforming people’s expectations, I reduce the amount of panic and “emergency” production that I will have to face in any given week.  That means, in literal terms, that I can have a life, and that my life does not have to be 80% job and 20% sleep/shower/eat.

The truth is, by allowing ourselves to be tethered to our devices/job, by allowing ourselves to be bullied and pushed around, we have set the expectation that the only way to succeed in the tech world is to give up everything that is not related to our job, and to live for the company.  I refuse to be that person.  When I am on my deathbed, I don’t want to say, “I really regret not having taken my daughter to the park, or gone on that hiking trip to the mountains, or visited Japan.”  No one on their death bed ever says, “if I had only worked harder/longer…”

So, my fellow geeks.  Can you work smarter, not harder?  Can you cut back, little by little, on the amount of off-company time you are spending on the company?  Can you build a life that doesn’t require auto-syncing of your work email with your smartphone, and can you stop checking your work email before you go to bed and the minute you get up in the morning?  Can you mold expectations, by mere degrees, every day, every week, every month, to reduce the “emergencies” that keep you tethered to the company?  Can you get yourself into a 9-5 mold, instead of the one you’ve allowed to be built for you, that keeps you constantly under the threat of work?

I challenge you to do so.

 

Amazon’s “Fake Book” Problem

amazon

Print On Demand (POD) has been available for quite a few years.  I used POD to publish a book almost 10 years ago now, a terrible novel that had delusions of grandeur.  Okay, maybe I was the one with delusions of grandeur.  But anyway, I proved to myself that anyone could publish a book, and they didn’t have to be in any way creative, good, or readable.  Self-publishing houses, also known as Print on Demand, provide that last step to a creative author; instead of having to submit a manuscript to dozens of publishers and agents to find someone to publish your book, you format it yourself and start selling through one of these POD services.  I used www.lulu.com, but there are plenty of others out there.  Anyone, without spending a single penny of their own money (just their time), can lay out any type of book they want, and list it for sale.  Cafepress.com offers this service, and so does another, Createspace.com, an Amazon company.

The cool thing about being able to self-publish and sell on demand is that you can sell your books.  The uncool thing about it is that anyone can publish anything and offer it for sale.  And therein lies a problem, especially with Amazon, which owns CreateSpace, and lists titles published with CreateSpace in their books section.  The problem, in this case, is fake or “knock-off” books.  Now, there’s nothing illegal about publishing a book with the same title as another book.  There are only so many words to go around, and any book title has a pretty good likelihood of being repeated, especially in popular genre’s like mystery, romance, and westerns.  And that isn’t the problem here.  The problem here is that anyone can write any book, give it a similar name to a popular book currently being sold by booksellers all over the world, upload it to CreateSpace, and start selling it on Amazon alongside the popular one.  Non-savvy buyers, or those who may not know the exact title of the book they are looking for, may stumble upon the knock-off book in a general search, and buy it not realizing it isn’t the book they wanted after all.  Because there are no editing hurdles in place for these knock-off authors, it is easy for them to quickly put up something that looks relatively legitimate, even if it violates copyright or is no more than a few pages of regurgitated or completely ridiculous material.

Third step?  Profit!  Turns out there are a solid handful of individuals that are doing such things through CreateSpace, with their “books” being available for purchase on Amazon.  It’s hard to say how much money is being made on these knock-offs, but one woman claims she has “written” over 10,000 books and sold them on Amazon.  Her book titles all spoof or are knock-offs of currently popular fiction.  I’m not brave enough to buy one to see if it’s any good or not, but I think I can deduce the quality by the sheer quantity.

Why did I never think of this as a money-making technique?  Here I am slaving away writing blog articles, working on computers, and holding down a day job, and I could have been taking the easy way out.  Just write something, anything, give it a name that sort of sounds like a current best-seller, upload it, and wait for my royalty checks.  I am in the wrong business!

Amazon is taking down the copy-cats as they are made aware of them, but unless there is some sort of check put into place to keep these out of the listings to begin with, it will always be a case of fighting the fire, instead of working on prevention.  If I were selling fake Coach purses at the flea market, or bootlegged CD’s at the corner 7-11, I’d be sure to get caught and prosecuted.  But how do we legally fight such self-publishing practices?  Unless the work is plagiarized, or there is obvious copyright infringement, there’s not a lot to be done.

I have to say, it sounds like a pretty creative way to make a living, doesn’t it?

Text Spam DrivingYou Crazy?

spam

Being a new owner of a smart phone, I had never heard of text spam.  After all, my phone number is on the federal and my state’s no-call lists, so why would I ever think I’d get spam in the form of SMS/text messages?

Well, I do get them, at least one a day.  After a couple weeks of this, I started to get aggravated.  I knew I didn’t want to just text “stop” in return.  That’s like trying to unsubscribe to email spam; all it does is bring on more spam.

Well, it turns out I can have my carrier (who happens to be ATT) do some of the work for me in cutting down on SMS/Text spam.  I can forward my spammy texts to 7726 (that spells SPAM).  When I do so, I usually get a text back from ATT asking me for the phone number from which the spam came. I text that number back, then get a thank you text from my carrier.

What happens after that is not completely clear, but I think the more people use this service, the more likely it will be that wireless carriers will be able to take action against spammers.  Time will tell if I’ll get less spam via text message, but I’m hopeful.

Why Google Search Will Never Replace a Library

search

LibraryThe other day, as I was working on editing the most recent novel I’ve drafted, I realized there was just something I could not find on Google.  I’m a big fan of “getting it right” when it comes to how people interact in a novel, and I needed to understand better how men interact with each other, how they talk to each other, what gets said and what goes unsaid.  Not being a man, I am a bit clueless.

So off to Google I went to search.  And there I stopped.  What the heck was I searching for?  What search terms should I put in, how could I word it so I could get the most appropriate results?  I’m a geek and a tech; I spend many of my waking hours in front of a computer screen.  I do much of my research online, and have for years.  I know good information from bad information, and know to check a URL and the “about” pages when looking at any information online to determine if it is legitimate information, or just opinion.

But this search was going to stump me.  There was no really good way to search for this online and get what I needed.  I grabbed the car keys, a pad of paper and pen, and headed the twenty blocks or so off to my local library.  We only have one library in our town, but it’s an exceptionally good one.  They even have a herd of reference librarians sitting at the ready for any question that comes along.  My steps never faltered, and I soon stood in front of the reference desk.  In three sentences, I described what I was looking for, and before I was done the librarian was out of her seat and leading me into the stacks.  She first took me to the relationship section, where I found books on how to talk to men, how men think, and why women and men have a different “language.”  Then she led me to the theatrical section, where she showed me books full of monologues from plays, even suggesting a few directly.  Lastly, we ended up in the “how to write a novel” section.

This search took less time than it took me to drive to the library in the first place.  And I walked out with a half-dozen very promising resources that I’ve spent the last two weeks going over.  I know more than I ever thought I would about men and how they talk to each other, what is said and what is often unsaid.  Eye-opening.

And while I may have been able to eventually find the information online, if I’d figured out how to search for it, it was much easier, and less time-consuming to just hit the original search source:  my local library and an educated reference librarian.

When was the last time you were in a library?

Cellhelmet for the iPhone 4/4S

iPhone

Cell Hellmet from CellPig.comWhat if you didn’t have to worry about your iPhone 4/4S getting damaged when you drop it on the ground, or step on it?

That’s the premise behind Cell Helmet, new from CellPig.com.  To be clear, the protection isn’t necessarily in the case, which is your standard polyurethane.  The protection is in the “insurance” you are buying with the case.

Yes, you read that right.  The case is pretty standard.  But the insurance recovers unlimited repairs and unlimited replacements within the year’s warranty you receive.  There are limitations, of course.  Moisture damage is not covered. “Deliberate” damage is not covered (whatever that means).  Accidental damage is what is covered.  Drop it or step on it, it’s covered. Spill a drink on it at the bar, that isn’t covered.

The cost of the case is $44.95.  If your iPhone 4/4S is damaged, you send it in, include a $50 “handling charge,” and they will ship it back to you, either repaired (or replaced if unrepairable), in three days.

Now, I did the math, and let’s say I’m pretty hard on my iPhone.  I buy the case, and end up dropping my phone one too many times the first few months.  I send it in, with my $50, and they repair it.  Maybe a few months later, I drop it and then step on it.  I send it in, with my $50, and they repair it.  I’ve now spent $150 having it repaired.  On the other hand, I could have insured the same phone for even more problems (lost/stolen in addition to damage/break) for about $5 a month through my cell phone carrier.  That’s only $60 a year.

Hard to say whether a plastic case and “insurance” is worth the price of the Cell Helmet, but if you’re pretty hard on your iPhone, this might be worth looking at.

Should You Delete Your Google Web History?

google

Google LogoLike many of you over the last few weeks, you’ve probably been encouraged through all kinds of tech sites and blogs to delete your Google web history.  Should you?

More importantly, do you even have any web history to be worried about?

It seems as if I do not.  I have none to delete.  I also apparently don’t have any kind of profile on Google at all.  I’ve taken both recommended links from various articles to see what Google knows about me.  I have a Google account, occasionally use Google+, use Gmail daily (as in, I stay logged onto it at all times) and Google is my default search engine.  I’m never on a computer that I am not logged into Google on, for the most part.

The first link I tried, Google’s ads preferences page, had no information on me at all.  Others I’ve talked to have said their ads preferences shows their age (sometimes approximate and sometimes pretty close), the region where they live, and other rather personal information.  My page shows me where to find my cookies, but there is no information at all about my age, where I live, or anything else.  In fact, the page just looks like a lot of blah blah blah about Google and it’s advertising, to me. There’s nothing there of a personal nature or anything that tells me anything about myself (or what Google knows about me).

Okay, that’s good, I guess. But now the privacy policy at Google has changed, and there’s another place to go and see what Google knows about you, and a way to turn off the web gathering of that information.  It doesn’t mean Google won’t be collecting; it means they won’t be associating what you search for with your identity.  In their words, if you turn off this web gathering, and clear your web profile, that you won’t have personalized search anymore.  Okay, so I head on over to the Google web history page, intending to delete my web history.  Can you guess what I found?

I have none.  I had the option to turn it on or click on “no thanks,” but there was no option to delete my web history, as there was supposed to be. That’s because I have no personalized web history with Google.

And I’m not 100% sure why this is, since I’ve been using Google for years, and have had a Gmail account since the second round of beta.  I use my Gmail account for all kinds of things, and I use Google Calendar daily, and also Google Docs on occasion.  I should certainly have some sort of footprint.

The biggest difference I can see between myself and others who are seeing this footprint, is that I block ads.  I have blocked ads for years.  This doesn’t mean I don’t see ads at all.  It means that I see the least obtrusive ads, and the ad blocking program I use does not feed me Google Adsense ads.  I never see them.  Is this why I have no Google history?  No web history, no nothing?  I’m not invisible to Google, being a regular Google user.

But what is going on here?  I can find nothing on this anywhere.  Is the reason there is a web history at all because a person has seen and/or clicked on advertising?  And as I’ve said, I still see advertising; it is just subtle and non-intrusive, and I can either ignore it willingly, or click to block it with my ad blocker. None of the ads I see seem to be directed at me at all, they are random ads, for random items that may or may not interest me.

This has puzzled me for several months.  I don’t intend to change a thing about my setup or my ad blocking, however, as I’m perfectly happy to have no history and no real identity with Google.  But surely, I am not the only one experiencing this.  Would love to hear from others that find what I”m finding.