No Panacea

Dell Limits Exposure to Price Comparison

Mikhael Felker — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 17:46:37 +0000

After recently visiting dell.com, I noticed that the titles of products (e.g, Panasonic SC-P960 Home Theatre System) have been converted from vanilla text to images. The images, I speculate, prevent automated programs from automatically reading prices of products that feed into search comparison sites (e.g., pricegrabber). Thus, somewhat limiting direct price comparisons. Dell does include the “Manufacturer Part” on the product page, which could be used to for price comparison.

The use of “image text” in place of regular text has been used to fight spam for a while, but this is a relatively new application.

Heinz News Blurp about Shortcutguide

Mikhael Felker — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:43:44 +0000

Heinz news blurp

Technical skills and technologies in Demand

Mikhael Felker — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:24:47 +0000

oDesk provides some interesting charts on what technologies and skills are being contracted out. From a cursory look, these skills/technologies are in demand: Amazon services/API, Zend, Content Management (Joomla, Drupal), SEO, iPhone, XML, SAP, Project Management, Windows Administration, Adobe AIR, 3D Design; moderate/stagnant demand: ColdFusion, Facebook, OsCommerce, Perl, SQL, PostgreSQL, Zillow, Flash, Photoshop, Crystal Reports and sliding demand: hi5, Lotus Notes, Mambo, PalmOS.

Target proactively Recruiting Real Estate Agents

Mikhael Felker — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 17:39:19 +0000

I was searching on Google for “real estate jobs” and discovered that Target is proactively seeking unemployed real estate professionals.

Real estate and retail definitely have something in common: sales. If Target can recruit some of the best real estate professionals at heavily reduced labor costs, that’s a big win for them. That is until the real estate market picks up again. However, the property market is not likely to have an upward trend for the next several years. Interesting how companies are changing the recruiting strategies to take advantage of the labor shift.

ShortcutGuide update

Mikhael Felker — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:40:50 +0000

I’ve made some significant changes to ShortcutGuide.com, incorporating YUI AJAX, tabular browsing, ability to add shortcuts from every application page, a quicker way to enter shortcuts, real time updates (instead of a 24 hour wait period), higher performance hosting plan, etc. The site has now over 3700 keyboard shortcuts for 100 applications, real-time stats are available online. More frequent developments are also on the blog. Let me know your thoughts and any features you would like added.

Server Upgrade

Mikhael Felker — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:41:36 +0000

The site was down for several hours today as I worked to switch hosting platforms, modify DNS entries, archive/restore the WordPress database, and copy over the apps. Everything looks to be working now and the the site should perform better as I’m no longer using shared hosting, but moved over to a virtual private server.

Certifications in the marketplace

Mikhael Felker — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 03:01:46 +0000

As software and IT specialists take on more certifications, prospective employees must ask themselves the following question. Are the resources spent in (time exam preparation, training materials, exam fees, upkeep fees) worth the benefits (in increased prospects and compensation). Part of this can be answered through analyzing the demand side of economics (are employers looking for these certifications?). Are the certifications listed in job descriptions? One interesting place to do some quick empirical research is Indeed.

Below is a graph that compares that absolute demand of certifications in the marketplace (e.g., in how many job descriptions did the term MCSE appear over a time span of 3 years). This is a rough gauge of now many companies are seeking those particular skills. We can see in the absolute scale that demand for MCSE’s have diminished and there is a slight uptick for more professionals holding the CCNA and CISSP credential.

The graph below is slightly more interesting, as it compares the relative demand for particular jobs (or more accurately search terms appearing in job descriptions). In the above graph we saw in absolute terms, demand for CISMs was relatively flat, but relative to other positions, there are more posting.

As more information becomes available, employees should start to take advantage of these online research avenues. If you haven’t already look into glassdoor. This site provides salary information based on a particular company (powerful information for negotiations).

More resources: Certifications talk from 2007

Wordpress upgrade

Mikhael Felker — Sat, 10 May 2008 23:49:15 +0000

I’m impressed how easy Wordpress has made it to upgrade versions of their blogging software. I was using version 2.1 previously and just updated to 2.5.1 (which has a much cleaner UI and more AJAX functionality). The upgrade took less than 5 minutes including downloading the new files and uploading them to my hosting provider.

The upgrade instructions included four simple steps noted below:

1. Delete your old WP files, saving ones you’ve modified.
2. Upload the new files.
3. Point your browser to /wp-admin/upgrade.php.
4. You wanted more, perhaps? That’s it!

I did have to copy over the wp-config.php (which includes the DB configuration information), but that was relatively painless.

Kudos to Wordpress on their new update.

Quality technical resources online

Mikhael Felker — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 05:17:15 +0000

I’m starting this post with several links of technical videos, podcasts, and books that can be viewed for free online. I hope to expand this list as I pick up more resources on the way.

Internet Protocols and Communication Networks (Windows Media - audio and video, some for download other streaming)
Topics covered: Networking concepts, Routing Protocols (RIP, EIGRP, OSPF, EGP, BGP), Transport Protocols (TCP, UDP), Network Protocol (IPv4, IPv6), Wireless Broadband, etc.

Google Video Lectures (Google Video)
Topics: AJAX, Distributed Systems, Web Security, C++, Java, Python

Security
Handbook of Applied Cryptography (Entire book in PDF)

Google I/O Sessions and Videos
Topics: Web Applications APIs, Mashups, AJAX, Google Gears, Authentication to Google Services

Security Engineering (by Ross Anderson) (Entire book in PDF, audio chapters)

PriceProtectr saves you dough

Mikhael Felker — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 00:38:54 +0000

PriceProtectr.com is a site dedicated to saving people money after a purchase. It helps users take advantage of retailer price protection/price matching policies. If an item costs less than you bought it for originally (e.g. the cost of the iPod dropped $40 since you bought it a couple days ago), you can get refunded that amount. The way it works is pretty simple, you buy a product at an online retailer (e.g., iPod at Amazon.com), then go to PriceProtectr.com and enter the link of the product page. For instance the 16GB iPod Touch. Then enter in your e-mail address and wait for a price drop. If the product price gets slashed within 30 days, as indicated by Amazon policies or other retailer, the site will send you an e-mail. It is also worth noting that the PriceProtectr system works with over 70 e-tailers and provides contact numbers and web pages of the retailers that one would call to get the refund.

As Borat would say “I liiiiiike”.