By now most of us know what Twitter is. Of do we? I spent more than a few months with a Twitter account and no real idea how to use it. At first it seemed a lot like re-branded Instant Messaging and I already have plenty of choices for that. Did I really need another one? My business partner Nick kept telling me, “Dude, you need to get on this. It’s big.” I wasn’t initially moved.

And then came the revelation: Twitter is not about instant messging. It is about promoting yourself to others. You can do it for business reasons or for personal ones, but one simple fact is true: Sell yourself 140 characters at a time. I’m not talking about spamming people. We’ve got plenty of that via other avenues (and Twitter is a victim, too). It’s about saying things that are quick, concise, relevant and interesting about what is happening in your world. If you say things that are not boring, people will follow you. You don’t have to find followers, they will find you. All you need to do is tweet. Dare I say it? “Tweet, and they will come.”

To date I have three Twitter accounts, each for a different facet of me. Admittedly I use one more than the others but I don’t like to cross-brand who I am. But that works for me. I tweet about business things with my business Twitter account. I tweet about more personal things with my personal twitter accounts. I don’t like to muddy the waters (which is the primary reason I despise Facebook). That may not work for you. Do what feels right.

The single biggest thing you can do for yourself on Twitter is to make sure you don’t get lured into using it as another IM client. I follow more than a few people who use it to chat about where to go to lunch or what time a movie starts, etc. That’s annoying. To them I suggest a little app called Skype. If you use Twitter as an IM client you are likely to lose followers in a hurry.

Twitter is a phenomon. It’s still misunderstood by many, though. More famous twitterer’s like Ashton Kutcher have increased their celebrity by making them more accessible to their fans. Having a direct line like that to people who have historically been so unattainable is a powerful, powerful thing. While you may not be hooking up with Demi you still may have interesting things to say. Tweet them. You will develop a following of your own.

A final note: Just because someone follows you does not mean you have to follow them in return. If you get a new follower, look them up. See what they tweet about. Read their bio. Are they interesting to you? If so, follow back. If not, that’s cool, too. If you do follow someone, see who else is following them. You will find that many of their followers are interesting to you. Follow them. Some of them will follow you in return. It’s viral.

Now go. Tweet.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

I get a lot of emails from Cisco every week.  A whole lot.  They aren’t spam, really.  It’s just that the frequency with which they arrive in my mailbox makes me think of them as such.  Here is how the subject line of each and every message reads:

End-of-Sale and End-of-Life Announcement for the <Insert Latest Product Being Kicked to the Curb Here>

For example:

Nobody plows through products like Cisco.  They release and kill products faster than a developing fetus churns through cells.  It’s ridiculous, really.  Because I view our industry with a tiny pinch of cynicism I often find myself a teeny bit disenfranchised with Cisco over such things.  Their products tend to cost some noticeable duckets.  And they tend to get EOL’d pretty quickly.  Combining those two truths together means that Cisco is always wanting me to buy new gear before I’ve gotten sufficient ROI (Return on Investment) on what I’ve got.

But that’s part of the business model for Cisco.  The big players, the one’s with really deep pockets, can afford to keep up with Cisco’s shennanigans.  In fact, because the checks getting written aren’t usually having any impact on the paychecks of the people writing them they often don’t care one way or the other.  What’s a hundred grand here or there?  I mean, really?  It’s the smaller businesses that can’t hang.  Dropping $4K on a switch is a major deal for a small business.  Being told that it is end-of-life a year or so after you buy it stings more than just a little bit.  But this is the nature of the business.  Things move on.  Technology develops .  Features evolve.  Stockholders need dividend checks.

Don’t get me even a little bit wrong.  I straight-up LOVE capitalism.  I don’t believe that the big boys should have to play nice to give the little upstarts a chance.  That’s crap.  Crush them if you can.  Because if you don’t, they will crush you.  If I was Cisco, I would crush everyone.  Every Friday my employees would wear shirts to work that read “Cisco” on the front and “Monopoly” on the back.  I’d have custom Monopoly board games made where the objective was for Cisco to dominate the board, crushing all competitors.  Well, that’s the America I want to live in, at least.  It’s better to be the crusher than the crushee, of course.  And it sucks to be you if you find yourself getting smooshed.

I have a word for small businesses who want Cisco gear but don’t want to pay premium prices.  Either get out your checkbook and try to keep up or do what this word implies.  Pick a path and follow it.  I can tell you this because I am a small business.  I know what it is to want the toys of the big boys but have the bank books of an upstart.  I don’t like this word any more than you do.

So what’s the word?  You already know it.  You don’t like to say it.  It’s like buying bo-bo brand sneakers or Sam’s Choice Cola.  It’s buying Hyundai because you can’t afford Mercedes.  It’s like buing Inspiron because you can’t afford XPS.   As much as you don’t want it to this word shouts out to the world, “Hey, I can’t afford it!”

The word:  Linksys.

Cheers,

Colin Waver

I love about 90% of what Google does.  Microsoft, despite all of its efforts to win me over to their search engines has about a zero percent chance of being successful.  If Google is not your home page I seriously think something is wrong with you.  I think they have medications for such problems.  Having said that Google is not welcome on my desktop (Google Desktop is within the 10% of things that are Colin no-no’s).

On Saturday morning Google-the-mighty had some trouble:  http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/013109-human-error-caused-google-search.html?fsrc=rss-security

It was brief, a mere blip on the radar.  I was on the web all morning on Saturday and I missed it.  Bummer.  I would like to be part of such moments in time.  Seeing Google have a misstep like that would be a memorable event.  But what I thought was fun was how quickly Google got to the business of blaming a human for the snafu.  As technology becomes more and more automated we, as the consumers of the convenience it brings, need to have a lot of faith in its abililty to not make mistakes that do bad things.  Google is hip to this.  Was the problem really caused by a person?  I guess so.  But even if it wasn’t I suspect that Google would massage the truth to make it look like it was.

I guess we will need to worry when we type a query in that ever-so-simple interface we all know and love and it comes back saying, “I’m sorry, Colin.  I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Back in 2002 I went to Georgia to attend a Windows XP rollout event.  A story was related to me while I was there that I never forgot.  It’s second hand information and I probably have all the details wrong but the underlying message remains clear.  The story goes something like this:

A high-level Microsoft executive is sitting on an airplane.  A woman sits down beside him.  During the flight they strike up a conversation.  Eventually it comes out that he works for Microsoft.  The woman becomes very excited and proceeds to tell him that she has just quit her job and is getting ready to go to school full-time to become a Microsoft Office User Specialist (MOUS).  She can’t wait to get started.

Rather than congratulating her decision to go to school and get certified the Microsoft exec pondered, “Wow.  How bad does our product suck that you have to quit your job and go to school just to learn how to use it?”

To me the message is clear.  Excessively complex technology leaves the majority unable to participate.  Products targeted to the masses (Microsoft Office being at the top of that list) should be easy to use, intuitive.  Unfortunately, intuition is not part of the general population’s skill set.  If typical ideas relating to the distribution of IQ are correct, almost 1/2 the population simply doesn’t have the mental capacity to really embrace the complexity of a suite of products like Microsoft Office.  What an interesting problem.  Mass market technology that isn’t suitable for the masses.  Computers and the software that runs on them are complex by nature.  How do you make something that is inherently complex usable to a population whose intelligence level is mostly average or below average?  Hmmmph?

It was a conversation this morning with my wife that got me thinking about this again.  Her company is in the midst of a migration from Office 2003 to Office 2007.  The migraiton has been assigned “project” status in her shop, which is a big deal.  There are multiple employees dedicated almost exclusively to preparing for and executing the migration.  It is going to be done in phases, department by department.  Product training will be provided to IT staff and users along the way, of course.  The whole initiative is really quite large.  There are many departments and thousands of employees spread around the United States.

So now, almost a decade after that flight taken by the Microsoft exec, the question remains:  How bad does Microsoft Office suck that a company has to 1) purchase the software for ever seat (a few hundred bucks/seat), 2) dedicate multiple salaried employees to the planning and execution of the deployment, and 3) re-train every user in a company to be functional with the product (I’m assuming they have figured Office 2003 out for the most part)?  And let’s not forget the CPU, RAM and video upgrades needed by most computers to have a chance at running Office 2007 at anything above a crawl.

Quite the time and wallet-suck, huh?  I know it seems like it but I promise I’m not trying to bash Microsoft.  I like Microsoft and I like Office 2007.  I could be talking about any vendor or most any piece of software.  I don’t think that execs question was answered because there is no real answer.  Microsoft is pretty close to the top of this list when it comes to making software usable to the masses (I reluctantly admit that Apple has them beat).  Linux on the desktop is a usability joke when coupled with Joe Everyman.

So what’s my final analysis?  How do I see it?  Well, we do not need to decrease the complexity of technology.  We need smarter people.  But that just isn’t going to happen.

Colin Weaver

Note:  Ever notice how it’s always somebody else who isn’t smart?  It’s never you (me).  A few days ago a friend of mine asked me if I ever wished I was smarter.  I laughed and told him I wasn’t dissatisfied with my current level of intelligence even though I was aware that there are people out there much smarter than me.  This got me thinking about the whole idea of intelligence (which eventaully led to the topic above).  Does a person with really low intelligence realize he is the one who picked the short straw?  Does an idiot think he is smart?  How would he know when all he has is his own inner monologue talking to him (and that little voice always seems to makes sense, dosen’t it)?  And to that end, how do I’m not the one high-fiving myself and drinking from a short straw?

New site out there … wish I thought of it. http://www.glassdoor.com
Glassdoor is site that allows you to review your current employer and anonymously tell how it really is to work where you work. Their “show me yours and I’ll show you mine” approach is going to be a hot topic in short time. Are you thinking about working for Booz-Allen? How about Northrup-Grumman? Well, make a visit to glassdoor and see what employees are saying before you decide to buy in to the hype being sold to you by the recruiters. Is it true or a bunch of bunk? I’ve heard that Booz is a very cool place to work and most of the people I know who work there are pretty happy but I’ve only met a few of its people. I wonder how the majority feels. Glassdoor is going to help us know the truth.
If I have a fear about glassdoor it’s that it will do little else than serve as a place for people to bitch about how much their company sucks. Hopefully we will get a blend of good and bad so it can become a useful tool. Time will tell. Grumpy people tend to post more than happy workers. For now, head over there and tell us what’s up at your shop. Is it awesome? Does it suck? After you do that, start seeing what they have to say about places you think you’d like to work. Maybe glassdoor will change your mind …or solidify your desire.

I’m working from home today. And I’m increasingly not alone. How many times a day do you hear people talking about the price of fuel? I’m just as sick of talking about fuel as I am of paying for it. Up to this point I have heard a lot of grumbling about gas prices but I personally have not met a large number of people who are changing how they live their lives as a result. But that is changing. As I write this regular unleaded is a little over $4/gallon and diesel (which both of my cars use) is about $4.75/gallon. My most fuel efficient car gets about 26 MPG in the city and when I do the math on my commute I am spending about $8/day getting to and from work (and yes, my wife and I ride together to the office). $40/week or $160/month is not a fun amount to pay but it’s not causing me to move yet either. But for some people, things are getting more and more difficult.

Now, I don’t have long-term solutions or political rhetoric to spew here. My spidey senses, however, tell me a change is arriving as I type. That change is the telecommuter. Having no idea what fuel prices will eventually rise to I forsee a time in the near future when an increasingly large number of employees work from home at least part of the week.

Let’s consider the average office worker, Tyler. Tyler makes about $35K and commutes about 40 miles round trip to work. His car, which he is upside down on and can’t trade in gets about 18 MPG in the city. Assuming gas is $5/gallon he is spending about $50/week on fuel just for his commute to the office. That’s $200/month, $2,400/year (not counting holidays, vacations, etc.). Back when fuel was $2.50/gallon (which I remember everybody said was insane) it was $1,200/year and back when prices were reasonable ($1.25/gallon) it was a mere $600 per year. In the past 3-4 years Tyler’s annual commute cost has increased 400% for a true dollar amount of $1,800. Tyler is going to react. One of his many reactions is going to be to go to his boss and say, “I want a raise.”

A raise of $1,800 is a little over 5% given Tyler’s current salary and most companies don’t give 5% raises. What’s more, if they did give a 5% raise it would only bring Tyler back to even. None of the other collateral increases Tyler is experiencing because of increased fuel costs are being addressed (groceries, etc.) And if we factor in the taxes involved on the additional $1,800 in salary it really won’t even cover his increased fuel cost. Tyler would need an 8% or 9% raise to accomplish that. Companies are not likely to be able to afford giving workers bumps in salary like that so I see a few choices:
1) Tell the employee that they will not get a raise and risk losing them (we’re assuming Tyler is an employee you want to retain)
2) Let Tyler work from how 2-3 days/week and provide him a laptop that has VPN connectivity to the office.

And here is where the IT shop comes into play. I believe that we will begin to see a lot more users given laptops and extended the opportunity to work from home. On paper it makes sense for the company. The choice between paying Tyler an additional $1,800/year or buying him a $900 laptop that he can use for multiple years isn’t a choice at all. As an extra bonus, Tyler is going to like his job even more because of the new flexibility in his work schedule. An arguably better bonus for the company is that if you buy the laptop you now have a depreciating asset on the books and that’s got some benefits come tax time.

The moral of the story is this: IT people, get to work on your VPN skills and make sure your remote management mojo is in high-gear. Our workforce is about to stop coming in to the office. And one thing is true about VPN technologies: When they work they tend to be great. When one little thing is wrong, they don’t work at all. Your ability to sit down at Tyler’s computer is about to get a lot harder …unless you drive out to his house, of course. Be sure to fuel up before you go.

The stage was set before the price of fuel went out of control: VPN’s, VoIP and really easy video conferencing. In hindsight these technologies were solutions waiting for really good problems. Well, now we have one…