Steven Savage – Page 1044 – Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek

Are You Responding Or Carrying Out?

October 10, 2010 by Steven Savage

It's hard to get organized. Trust me, as a busy person I realize this. Many people end up busy but somehow never getting actually toward their goals. They KNOW they're active, they can list all the things they've done, but they're not getting anywhere.

(You're probably nodding your head. I've been here myself.)

I finally came to realize that one of the biggest causes of this is that sometimes we're not following our grand plan (if you don't have a grand plan you have an entirely different problem). Instead of following that plan we're just responding.

Resume Worthy Roundup for September 2010

October 9, 2010 by Steven Savage

What companies should you geeks be looking at? Here's our list for September 2010!

ActFio – Raised $16 million and is in the vital area of data management, including backup.
AOL – They're buying up companies as some kind of plan and have shown a lot of ambition. They're in danger of becoming a Fan To Pro Crush Object at this rate . . .
Citras – $10 million and they do cloud storage.
Crunchyroll – They're making technology for online manga. Plus, they're Crunchyroll.
DeNA – This highly aggressive company is expanding into the US. We lost track of how many articles we posted on them. They bought Gameview, just for one instance.
Gameloft – They're selling tons of games via the app store.
Kno – Because it's obvious they've got a lot going on.
Motorola Mobile – They got spun off with $3.5 billion dollars from their parent company. That money is not going to spend itself, people.
Laser Light – 3D movies may not be doing as hot as thought, but this company that helps make it possible raised $13 million.
Netflix – Beyond ruling everything and being installed on everything, they've branched into Canada.
NetShelter – They just got $15 million to spend, and have a definite business focus – blog advertising.
Newsweek – They're hiring. Nuff' said.
Quantenna – Solid business in mobile/wi-fi chipsets, and $21 million in venture capital.
PopCap Games – As they're expanding into Korea.
RedHat – Besides being cool, earnings were up 20% in Q2.
Samsung – They've got new tablets and more coming and seem very savvy.
Say Media – A heady mix of VideoEgg and Six Apart? Intriguing possibilities there.
Skype – As they expanded conference options.
Solve Media – Because they're finding an ad-driven way to replace annoying CAPTCHAs.
Voxy – An interesting language education service. If they get some VC, then definitely wing them a resume.

– Steven Savage

Turning Hated Expertise Around

October 9, 2010 by Steven Savage

You ever get a call from a family member to help you with a computer problem that they could have figured out with some research?

You ever have a friend doing an interview who called you to ask you what the person he was interviewing was talking about?

You ever find yourself cornered at a party or get-together to explain something about your job or industry to someone, and wondered how they didn't know something that simple?

Yeah. Me too. When we do something for a living, when we're truly into it – in short, when we're progeeks or would-be-progeeks – everyone uses us as a source of information. It gets annoying.