The Many Faces of Mike McBride

Thanks for the suggestions, looks like I have some...

2009-07-08T11:52:54.763-04:00

Thanks for the suggestions, looks like I have some app experiments in my future!

Free apps: Kindle for iPhone, Phoneflix (if you s...

2009-07-07T05:22:58.126-04:00

Free apps: Kindle for iPhone, Phoneflix (if you subscribe to Netflix), Google Earth, icanhazcheezburger, Nozbe (if you have a Nozbe.com account), A Free Level, Flashlight.

Paid apps: Trism (if you're into Bejeweled on slanted steroids). Photobuddy (for photobugs that need an exposure/DoF calculator for shooting in manual).

Novelty stuff you may want to try and then delete: iFu, Ustream (this thing is unbelievably laggy, even on wifi), Yowza.

I also recommend jailbreaking it when you feel up to it. Installing themes and skins is worth the effort.

I love Beejive, 1password pro, sometimes check the...

2009-07-06T21:39:20.751-04:00

I love Beejive, 1password pro, sometimes check the att wireless app for my usage, the vip authenticator I use with paypal and verisign.pip openid, shazam, pocket tunes brightkite, i can haz cheezburger, skype.
-George

I applaud that kind of effort big time. TO answer...

2009-06-19T19:16:49.374-04:00

I applaud that kind of effort big time. TO answer your question: YES.

Jim, You bring up an interesting perspective, on...

2009-06-16T09:03:53.152-04:00

Jim,

You bring up an interesting perspective, one that I don't necessarily is different from what I'm saying above, just not the viewpoint I chose. You're right, if you are looking to social networking as a business development tool, you do have to keep it somewhat on the professional level, which actually fits into my premise that the personal and professional lines are blurred. Anyone who is posting embarrassing information about themselves, or political rants, runs the risk of alienating a great many people, loosing connections and possibilities through those connections as opposed to making them.

On the other hand, if you view online networking as an extension of in-person networking events, at an in-person networking event, say a local chamber of commerce event, you do veer off into talking about sports, your kids, the weather, etc. It's all part of the game, if you will, of making connections with people that help them feel comfortable about you as a person, and as a lawyer.

So, if your sole goal is business development, surely the balance between personal and professional is going to be different than mine, but they will both still be present to some extent.

It's hard to disagree with anything you wrote. But...

2009-06-16T08:39:27.203-04:00

It's hard to disagree with anything you wrote. But I understand the "experts" point of view as well. You've made yourself an Internet celebrity (for lack of a better term) and you cannot do that without giving insight into who you are as a person.
But for the lawyer whose sole goal with social media is business development,
veering off the legal services message dillutes the marketing. Many political posts may alienate those who disagree. Many posts about hobbies may lose part of your intended audience who is interested only in your legal areas of expertise.
Having a fully formed online persona is great for many netizens. But if your only social media goal is marketing your law practice, a different approach may be best.

I agree, more often than not those of us in the te...

2009-06-10T09:31:31.615-04:00

I agree, more often than not those of us in the tech field already know how to wipe a drive using other tools, that don't really cost money, but I still wonder if there's a market out there for people who either don't really have the know-how, or don't want to risk wiping the wrong drive by connecting it up to a machine with a different drive connected already. Since this works without the CPU, you plug the drive itself into the device, you'd eliminate that risk, aside from physically hooking up the wrong drive, which you can never fully eliminate.

Yes, if you're disposing of a drive nothing beats the effectiveness, and stress relieve of physically destroying it! :)

I generally see it this way, if Im giving away or ...

2009-06-10T08:48:40.223-04:00

I generally see it this way, if Im giving away or selling a drive then Im probably savvy enough to run drive wiping software from a CD to zero it out. The biggest problem in that scenario is making sure you zero out the right drive(!!).

If Im just disposing of a drive, do I really need to go to the trouble of zeroing it out? Smashing the holy living hell out of it is not only more satisfying, but in the end run probably just as secure. The thief's who steal identities arent going to go to the trouble to replace busted circuit boards, read platters, etc. to take data off a smashed drive. Bonus points, anyone can smash a drive against the curb five or ten times

Steven, great example. There is something about se...

2009-06-03T21:54:12.679-04:00

Steven, great example. There is something about seeing something in writing that makes it seem more "real" to people, but the spoken word is just as much of a risk when you're talking to customers, or clients in the law firm case.

agreed, 110%. At the call center where I previousl...

2009-06-03T17:08:17.947-04:00

agreed, 110%. At the call center where I previously worked, we had *huge* battles about letting customers see "raw" knowledgebase documents written by support engineers. "But what if something's wrong?" would be the argument. Those of us on the "information needs to be available" side of things would reply "if they're wrong in a document, what's to keep them from being wrong on the phone?"

Tina, It sounds like, in your smaller environmen...

2009-06-03T08:57:21.573-04:00

Tina,

It sounds like, in your smaller environment there's no need for a specific person who solely works in tech support/helpdesk role, however it also sounds like you've got a bunch of specialists who can all cover the help desk questions, but maybe not do each others jobs. For example, if your network admin is gone for some reason, who can handle network and server problems? Who would handle a corrupt app install build if you weren't there, etc.? That's just as much of a problem in my mind.

I (Applications Support Specialist) work in IT for...

2009-06-01T11:22:02.158-04:00

I (Applications Support Specialist) work in IT for a law firm. I'm the first person to answer help desk phones. If I'm not available, then the Desktop Support Specialist guy answers them. If we're both unavailable, then the Network Administrator answers them. If we're all busy, then it falls to the Litigation Support Specialist. Basically, we're all "specialists", yet we all answer help desk calls. We only have 60 lawyers, so our IT staff is small. I hate being called "help desk", because it often implies that I don't know very much and can only answer basic calls and need a script to do so. Of course, we all know that is very different in a law firm.

Kyle, cross site might be a possibility. I typical...

2009-05-28T07:26:59.269-04:00

Kyle, cross site might be a possibility. I typically don;t log in to that account directly, but I do have an iGoogle page for that account in Flock, with the gmail notifier on it. I typically only access social networks with Flock like Facebook, LinkedIn etc. so there's a possibility that something I clicked there could have performed it. Don't really know for sure though.

I guess the next logical thing to check would be h...

2009-05-28T03:25:26.763-04:00

I guess the next logical thing to check would be how long do you remain logged in when you do check that e-mail account. Cross site request forgery, etc. And do you purge your cookies and history on shutdown?

Chad, that would have been a good idea, had I thou...

2009-05-27T23:16:24.650-04:00

Chad, that would have been a good idea, had I thought of it before I logged in with the mobile a few times to change my password, and security question, etc. Those are the last entries when I log in now.

Aaron, I suppose that's possible. I don't even remember what the security question was. It is odd though that they only sent the one email, to the 10 contacts I even have in that account, and didn't even try to change the password or anything. So, little actual damage done, but it still bugs me!

Is it possible someone guessed your security quest...

2009-05-27T22:32:37.491-04:00

Is it possible someone guessed your security question(s)?

Did you happen to check the last logged in IP's fo...

2009-05-27T22:32:30.757-04:00

Did you happen to check the last logged in IP's for that account?

Thanks for the input guys. I definitely understand...

2009-05-23T18:57:54.447-04:00

Thanks for the input guys. I definitely understand the performance boost you get with the larger RAM capacity, I just knew there were definitely some capability issues, that's why I was somewhat surprised to see it be the default for home PC's like that. I can only imagine the number of folks who went out to get a new PC and were angry about their old printer not working anymore. *L*

The only real issues a home user would run into is...

2009-05-23T14:58:19.598-04:00

The only real issues a home user would run into is older peripherals like printers, scanners, etc. Especially since you cant run unsigned drivers (atleast without hacks) so you cant try forcing old drivers.

Thats the only true issues I've run into.

www.vistax64.com I just purchased a new Dell with...

2009-05-23T10:31:26.897-04:00

www.vistax64.com

I just purchased a new Dell with Vista Home Premium 64-Bit and I ordered 8Gigs of RAM and a 1 Terabyte hard drive. I don't want the thing to be outdated within 6 months, and I can tell you this, the thing is a rocket ship in terms of performance.

I think the reason may be that Windows Vista 32bit...

2009-05-23T09:15:38.587-04:00

I think the reason may be that Windows Vista 32bit is limited to 2Gb. They play some games to push it to 3Gb using the IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE option.

But, I think to really use all the 6Gb or 7Gb of address space, you need the 64bit version on Windows. There are a few issues with some application, but most of the pain has been with 3rd party device drivers.

Some serious game players will use a dual-boot system so that they can use XP for game playing.

In all fairness to Microsoft, they really do go out of their way to maintain backwards compatibility. Sometimes they may be better off not to.

--Brian
http://assistdatarecovery.com

I don't think there are that many incompatibilitie...

2009-05-23T09:10:34.071-04:00

I don't think there are that many incompatibilities nowadays. As long as you stay away from Symantec's AV software you'll probably be ok. (There are some strange features missing in 64bit and when we first started deploying servers it wouldn't even load either). I was going to put 64bit Windows7 on my home pc but the cpu doesn't support 64bit.

@Ken, Yes that is problematic about the WiFi, but ...

2009-05-18T13:39:00.000-04:00

@Ken, Yes that is problematic about the WiFi, but since we were basically accessing the same network as all the students access on a daily basis, I can understand it. That being said, the easiest solution is creating a separate "conference guest" wifi network for the building. Of course, then CSCC has to devote tech support resources to all the students who wind up connecting to the wrong network and can't access internal school stuff. There's no easy answer when dealing with conference WiFi in the same location that you have a running, internal, wireless network.

@Christian yes, the conference was mostly advertised through social media, and social media is currently represented in Columbus by a lot of marketing/PR/small business people. As you said, the programmers, sys admins, DBA's of the world, don't spend a lot of time looking for events to attend on social networks. I've met some great folks through local twitter groups, but most of them are not technology workers, they are PR and Communications people.

@Alvin A users group might be a good place to get the technical education for people who are interested in starting out with WP, or get good info on themes and plugins, etc. By it's nature, it's less about using WP or blogging to market and more about the details of working with it than a large conference would be.

@malcolm, 4 tracks? That requires a lot of attendees to pull off, frankly. Though I do think a newbie mini-track is a valid idea. I'd drop the marketing track though, if you're covering the social networking and getting your blog known and attracting more readers in a separate track, I don't see how whatever you pull in for a marketing track is related to Wordpress or blogging any more. There are plenty of other conferences about business development, where you could talk about blogging, as opposed to a blogging conference where you'd talk about marketing plans. (Think Jim's "You're the Expert" session, for example. While it was a great presentation, was it relevant to using WordPress, or blogging in general, or was it something that fits better in a small business/entrepreneurship conference?)

Good comments. I was not sure what to expect from...

2009-05-18T07:24:00.000-04:00

Good comments. I was not sure what to expect from WordCamp when I signed up. I was pretty pumped about going though. For me, I would agree with the more technical content stuff. I am pretty new to wordpress... have used it off and on for couple years for personal blogs. I am back to using it again, and really wanted to know how to create custom themes or to be able to edit existing themes. That is the one thing that I too left empty handed with.

My suggestion for Wordcamp Columbus 2 would be the following:
Have three to four tracks
1. Technical track
2. Marketing track
3. Blogger/ Social Networking track
4. Newbie track

While for me the first session was good, the SEO panel & the branding/ marketing your blog sessions where the best, surprisingly. I was kind of disappointed with the afternoon sessions. I think the unconferences could have been better advertised, thought out, something.

As to the comments on the Columbus tech community... I would agree with Christian. Their are many here that have no interest in giving their time, unless it includes a check for them. Luckily, I have some good friends in the Columbus tech community that I can call if I run into a problem and to ask for questions. While there are some in Columbus that has tons of tech knowledge, many of them do not have the people skills to hold a crowd for a presentation. Then we would all be complaining about the speakers. So I don't have a solution for this. Here is a group that is sharing information within the tech community... http://www.digitaldisciples.net. My friend Gabe (@godsmac) runs this and they do monthly tech training as well meetup.

Ken, I am sorry you feel that way. I am in no wa...

2009-05-18T06:34:00.000-04:00

Ken,

I am sorry you feel that way. I am in no way being critical of tech type people. My comments about that don't translate well. I have great respect for them and know that we need them. However, this is a personal observation I have made over the years. I am in no way making the attempt to attack them.

I just thought it odd that some people in previous posts say that rather than attend and help a conference that is about learning for all, in order to help it evolve and grow to what it should be, that they would publicly mock it. It is this holier than thou attitude that I have seen first hand in the graphic design community. The ones that want to learn and help their community grow and gain the respect of other sectors of business are the ones that become successful and are inclusive not exclusive.

I wasn't trying to turn this into a pissing match. I was stating things about my own observations from the conference and my own experiences over the years. Please tell your socially competent programmer friends to contact Jason and Alvin for speaking spots for WordCamp Columbus 2.