There's A Story Behind Those Numbers!

Statistics are an interesting thing.

I was looking at my blogger.com statistics page just now, and spefically at the "Audience" tab, which breaks down page views by country. Naturally, the vast majority of my as yet limited audience resides in the U.S., with 191 page views originating here. But guess which country came in a distant second place?

Poland, with 15 page views.

Well, I was just tickled pink to learn that I had an international audience. So tickled, in fact, that I decided to use Google Translate to compose the following targeted message to my readers in Poland:

Witam wszystkich naszych czytelników w Polska! Dziękuję za przeczytanie bloga i zachęcamy, aby dodać komentarz, powiedz nam, jak nam idzie. I daj nam znać, jak wygląda życie w tych dniach Polska! Życzymy samych sukcesów i dobrego zdrowia.Nawiasem mówiąc, moja żona jest pochodzenia polskiego.

Easy Money: Writing 140 character Ad Copy For SponsoredTweets As If I've Had Three Martinis, But I'm Actually Sober...

I was over on copyblogger.com reading “Five Ways To Write Magnificent Copy” and found this hilariously accurate tip:

“Write Drunk, Edit Sober”.

Of course the author, D Bnonn Tennant, wasn’t suggesting that the ability to write engaging prose requires a .08% BAC. Rather, that we as blogging authors need to write with a little less inhibition. We need to put a bit of personality, a dollop of passion, a smidge of silliness, a little…flavor, if you will, into our writing.

As the author put it, “Don’t self-consciously write. Just tell.” And I agree.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in the habit of running out for a six-pack before I sit down to write the blog. Although, I will say that I enjoy the occasional Dos Equis, vodka martini or a nice glass of sweet, fruity gewurztraminer.

But I certainly don’t need to drink to loosen up before I write. I’ve learned to automatically go to my Silly Place when I write, especially when I blog, so my creativity is not dependent on alcoholic attitude adjustment.


140 Character Ad Man
This same principle of “Write Drunk, Edit Sober” can also be applied to writing ad copy.
Case in point: I’m registered with SponsoredTweets, and the other day I received an opportunity to be paid for writing a 140 character ad for the makers of a line of worsted-wool apparel, located in Maine.

“Worsted wool garments are warm and cool equally--wearable nearly year-round,” the instructions read. Certainly a benefit to potential buyers, but I didn’t immediately see any compelling call-to-action in between the lines there. So, I flipped the Silly Switch to on and decided to go looking for the humorous angle.

I hopped over to the client’s website, where I was presented with a landing page displaying the client’s logo, some text, and a widget with rotating photographs. One of the photographs caught my eye: an idyllic, pastoral setting with a flock of sheep. One woolly fellow in the middle of the photo was looking directly at the camera as if to say, “Hey, buddy…I know the deal. I wear wool all year long.”




What did that sheep know that I didn’t?

And then it hit me: my 140 character inspiration. I switched back to my tab with Sponsored Tweets, and fingers flying over the keyboard, wrote my ad.



Now, end-to-end, from the time I first looked at the opportunity to the time time I clicked the “Submit” button, couldn’t have been more than five minutes. I only charge 99 cents per tweet, but translated to an average hourly wage, that’s $12.00 per hour. All from the comfort of my home.

Easy Money.

Badges? BADGES?! My Blog Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Badges!

If you’ve got a blogger.com-hosted blog as I do, and you’d like a snazzy Yahoo! Pipes-fed badge displaying the lastest Social Media web headlines from a mashup of Bing, Google, and Yahoo! searches (like my “Social Media Buzz” badge at the top of the right column!), copy the script below, add an HTML widget to your blog, and paste the script into the window.

<script src="http://l.yimg.com/a/i/us/pps/listbadge_1.4.js">
 {"pipe_id":"bb2581df2ac6d68257e1a7866874de2f","_btype":"list","hideHeader":true}
</script>

Brought to you by the good folks here at The Digital Stylus Blog!

Need a badge for another blog host? Leave a comment and we'll do our best to work with you!

How To Create a Yahoo! Pipe Google Search To Power Your Twitter Stream (Not So Easy Version)

I REALLY like Yahoo! Pipes.

Last week, I did a little poking around on the Yahoo! Pipes site on a recommendation from Dino Dogan. Being a programmer by trade, I’m a daily keyboard jockey since I’m typing lines of code for living.

But, I also have a background in sequential illustration (comic books to you) and graphics/DTP, so the visual aspect of the programming method employed by Pipes has a real appeal for me. To my mind, this is how programming should be: connecting little visual building blocks of functionality rather than QWERTY tippy-tapping.

Visual and easy, yet powerful. I can just FEEL both hemispheres of my brain tingling in excitement.

Enough With The Creepy Sensory References, Show Us How To Make a Pipe!
Alright, alright.

In a previous blog post, I wrote a tutorial on how to create a simple Yahoo Search and turn it into an RSS feed for your Twitter stream, using Yahoo! Pipes.

So much for an introduction. Let’s look at something a little fancier: a YQL (Yahoo Query Language) pipe.

Schlep on over to http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/, and click the “Create a Pipe” button. (This is assuming, of course, that you’ve already registered a Yahoo! ID as outlined in my previous tutoria!)


You remember this screen, yes? The library to the left, the debugger at the bottom, and canvas in the middle. In the library, click and drag on the data source named “YQL”, placing it on the canvas.


YQL is modeled after SQL or Structured Query Language, which is the language used to move information in and out of relational databases. With YQL, the internet becomes your database (or more specifically, data that’s offered via web services). That’s right: the Whole Great Big Enchilada. Suh-WHEEEEET.

I think I’ll call it the interwebase.

GASP! WHEEZE! CHOKE!
So I hear a couple of you starting to hyperventilate. Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you do any programming…I’m going to do it for you!

Copy the following text.
select * from rss where url="http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=0&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=social+media+marketing&output=rss"

Now, before you start to feel your brain go all numb and your eyes start to cross looking at this code, let me break it down and translate for you. Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on ya.

select * from
This is called a “select” statement. Essentially, we’re saying “Give me all the columns from “ some datasource, usually a database table when using SQL. In this case, we’re using “rss” which represents an RSS feed.

where url=
This is called the “where” clause. We’re saying, “But don’t just give me ALL of the  possible results, I want only certain ones, and this is what I want you to look for”. It’s how we get specific. In this case we want results where the URL equals a certain value.

You’ll notice that buried in the query string is “social+media+marketing”. Those are our search keywords; we’re looking for Google News search results for the keyword combination of “social”, “media”, and “marketing”.

Now, paste the code into the “Enter Your Query” text box in your YQL module.


If you’re feeling extra geeky and want to play around with the YQL query, click “Try in the console”. You’ll be presented with the YQL console below:


The top text box allows you to edit the query and test different values in the search; simply substitute different search keywords, separated by a plus (+) sign, for “social+media+marketing”. Click the “Test” button and view the results in the “Formatted” window. When you get tired of playing around with YQL, return to your Pipes canvas and our original YQL module.

Of course, our YQL module isn’t any use all by himself; he needs to buddy up with the ‘ol output module. You remember how to connect ‘em, right?


After saving and naming your brand-spanking new pipe, click “Back to My Pipes” to navigate to your pipe list. Your newest pipe displays at the top of the list. Click on the pipe’s name to bring up the pipe description.


And again, if you’ve been reading our previous blog posts on Yahoo! Pipes (and shame on you if you haven’t!), this page will look familiar, including the sample search results.


What you do with your YQL feed is up to you, but if you want to setup Twitterfeed to update your Twitter account with this boatload of links, click the “Get as RSS” button.


Copy that URI in the address field, and bop on over to Twitterfeed to configure your new RSS feed. Need help? Just see this previous blog post!

In Your Face, Gregor Mendel!

Editor Dad’s Note: I’ve asked my eldest daughter to write a guest blog post.

I come from a family defined by two things. One, their intelligence and two, their creativity. My father is a computer programmer as well as a talented artist. My mother, sharp as a tack, has a voice like an angel. Also, she cooks like nobody’s business. And if anybody dares to think cooking cannot fit under the definition of art, they’re an idiot. To eat a delicious meal is to experience a three dimensional masterpiece of the senses.

But I digress.

Lastly, there is my younger sister, who magically happened to develop a hand for drawing as well as a voice for singing  AND an evil genius sort of mind.

I, however, did not. Way to let me down genetics.

I spent most of my life trying to come to terms with the fact that I was just the smart one. Creativity had escaped my genetic makeup. All hope was lost.

That is until a few weeks ago…

Two of my co-workers, who are each planning separate weddings, were discussing their progress at work.

“Hey, I found a photographer!” exclaimed Bride Number One in excitement. “For four hundred dollars!”

“”Four hundred??” I ask incredulously. “Are you kidding me?”

That elicited chuckles of pity. Apparently, my naiveté had struck again. Oh how little I knew of the world for she proceeded to inform me, “Yah, that’s pretty cheap. I had another guy wanting to charge me $2,000.”

I could not contain my disbelief again and blurted out…

“Oh my gosh, are you kidding? I could take your pictures for you!” 

Let me explain. Through the years I’ve actually attempted to break the chains that DNA held me with by dabbling in several artistic outlets. Guitar, piano, mime. Photography was the only one that held potential. I had taken pictures here and there. Pictures over which I could feel some actual pride. Yet, it fell to the wayside as life found a way to crowd itself in. And my ADD like "blurtation” was a joke. Which was apparently lost on my co worker as she pressed the matter, intrigued.

The next thing I know I’m staying up until One in the morning editing pictures to add to my portfolio. (Giggling at the fact that I got to use the word, portfolio. It’s so, dare I say it… artsy!) With the help of Walgreens.com I put together a 20 page, hard cover book, chalk full of MY own photographic work. It was beautiful.

I nervously wrung my hands as my co-workers leafed through the book a few days later. And to my surprise, they liked it! Not only did they like it, they raved about it. Showered me with compliments. It was a foreign experience to me, being praised for my artistic talent. Strange, but wonderful.

Now, contracts to photograph both of their weddings are in the works. Not bad for “just” a smart girl. In your face, Gregor Mendel.

…Cuz, you know, he’s the father of genetics. And I was talking about genetics earlier, and being limited by my own building blocks… Never mind.

So Where’s Your Post on DIY configuration of Twitterfeed with my URI from Yahoo Pipes? Hmmm?

Okay, okay…I’ve procrastinated long enough.

So, in my last installment I stepped through the process of creating a very simple Yahoo! Pipe to search using the keyword “bullying”. We now have an RSS feed that returns the results of that keyword search, but how do we pump that RSS feed over to say, our Twitter account?

Your perseverance is about to be rewarded, O Patient One.

The next step in our process is to scurry on over to Twitterfeed: http://twitterfeed.com/


If you don’t have an account yet, the registration process is a cinch: enter an email address and password (confirming the password) and click the “Create Account” button to create your new Twitterfeed account.


You’ll next be presented with a screen to define your first Twitterfeed. Hopefully, you’ve still got the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) that you copied from Yahoo Pipes in your clipboard; you’ll need to enter a name for your new feed and paste the URI in the “RSS Feed URL” field.


To test and ensure that the connection between Yahoo Pipes and Twitterfeed is working, click the “test rss feed” button. You should get a screen similar to the one below:


Click on the “Advanced Settings” link and we’ll do a little more configuration: select a value for Update Frequency and number of posts. If you received the message “Feed parsed OK, but due to missing pubDates make sure you select ‘Post new items baed on GUID’ in Advanced Settings below” in the previous screen, select “GUID” in Post Sorting. Finish by clicking on “Continue to Step 2”.


The next screen lets you select a feed publishing destination. Since we’re pushing the results of the Yahoo Search to Twitter, let’s select Twitter. We’re going to connect this Twitterfeed to our Twitter account, but we’ll need to give Twitterfeed permission to post updates to our account. Click on the “Twitter” link.


The screen updates to allow you to select a Twitter account. Of course, since Twitter’s switched over to oAuth (Open Authentication) security, we’ll need to take a little side trip to authenticate. Click the “Authenticate Twitter Using oAuth” button.

You’ll be asked to allow a third-party application, in this case Twitterfeed, to have access to your Twitter account. Since there’s nothing nefarious involved here, let’s go ahead and click the “Allow” button.


You’ll be returned to the Twitterfeed page, secure in the knowledge that Twitterfeed and Twitter are now the best of friends! In fact, Twitterfeed likes your Twitter account so much that it now displays the name of your account as the “Authenticated Twitter Account”, as seen below. Click on the “Create Service” button.


Click on the “All Done!” button.

Happy, happy, joy joy! You’ve created your feed!

How to use Yahoo! Pipes and twitterfeeds to Automatically Power Your Twitter Content Stream (The Easy Version)

I figured that when I followed someone like @AskAaronLee, a guy that has over 148,000 followers, I’d probably glean some useful tidbits of Twitter wisdom.

Oh, and then some.

Aaron has a guest blog by Dino Dogan on how to use Twitterfeed to create automated Twitter content from RSS feeds of your own blog or your favorite content providers. Dino’s post even includes some great screen shots showing how to configure Twitterfeed.

And Now…The Requisite and Not Quite So Camouflaged Shameless Self-Promotion
Dino’s guest post got me to thinking: last year when I created my custom application "TweetieBot" to automate my Twitter updates, I decided to leverage Cloud resources by using Google Alerts for content. I configured about 30 different alerts with keywords such as “parenting tips”, and “child safety” that I would have emailed to me on an “as-it-happens” basis.

I then wrote a VBA script to parse the Google Alert emails in OutLook and then save them in a SQL Server database. TweetieBot would then select a URL at random and automatically update my “twittifamily” Twitter account every five minutes.

(Then, there was the oAuth meltdown…part of the reason I left Twitter for a year. Don’t get me started on THAT subject.)

So that was my plan for World Domination and creating an automated stream of content for my Twitter account.

Now TweetieBot worked great for me, but it’s not a solution that can be duplicated for other folks. But, after reading Dino’s article, it occurred to me: Google categorizes its news by topic and publishes via RSS. What if I syndicated an RSS stream from Google to Twitter? After an abortive attempt using Google search, Dino suggested that I use Yahoo Pipes instead.

Eh?

Like Ben Kingsley said: “It’s all about the data…”
Wikipedia’s entry says that Yahoo Pipes is “a web application that lets you create data mashups that aggregate web feeds, web pages, and other services, creating Web-based apps from various sources, and publishing those apps.”

I think of Yahoo Pipes as a simple and elegant way for you to move data around from one part of the web to another.

You’ll find Yahoo Pipes at http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/. If you don’t have a Yahoo ID, you’ll need to register for one before proceeding.

Once you’re registered with Yahoo, click the “Create a pipe” button.

You’ll be presented with the Pipes Editor below, a clever little beastie that allows you to visually design a “pipe” through which content will be “pumped” from a source, modified according to any rules you wish to define, and then pushed or published out to a destination somewhere else. (Like your Twitter account, natch. How’s it get there? Stay tuned, True Believer.)

You’ll see the three sections of the editor: library to the left, debugger at the bottom and the canvas in the middle.

The Library is a collection of “modules” or tools that we’ll use to perform work. The “sources” section of the Library contains modules that represent sources of data on the web.

In the Library, click and drag on the the source named “Yahoo! Search”. Or, you can click on the plus sign (+) in the “Yahoo! Search” button.

This places a Yahoo! Search module on the the canvas, as well as a pipes output module. More on that little guy later.

The next step is to define a Yahoo Search using keywords, much like you would do if you were on the Yahoo! Home Page. This assumes that you have something that you’re looking for in the first place.

Keywords, Or My Yahoo! Search For Meaning
One of the folks I’ve met on Twitter is a courageous young lady named Catherine Grant (@CatiGrant), a victim of bullying in junior high and high school. She’s taken that experience and transformed it into positive activism by promoting an anti-bullying campaign on http://www.stompoutbullying.org/blog/?p=95.

She also recently appeared on the Dr. Phil Show in an episode focusing on bullying.

So, with our hats off to Cati, let’s define a Yahoo Search for the keyword “bullying”. We’ll simply type the word “bullying” in the “Search for” text field. You may, of course, use whatever keywords your little heart desires.

With the Yahoo Search module selected (you can tell because the module’s title bar is orange), you’ll notice that an interesting thing happens: search results will appear in the debugger along the bottom of the screen. Our search ran successfully!

But to complete our pipe, we need to connect our Yahoo Search module to the pipe output module: click on the connector on the bottom of the Yahoo! Search module, and drag it to the connector on the top of the pipe output module.

Click the “Save” button in the top right portion of the toolbar, give a name to your pipe and click “Save”. Then click on the “Back To My Pipes” link to navigate to a list of your pipes.

Our latest creation, “YP_bullying” appears at the top of the list. We’ve created the pipe, now we need to let consumers in the Cloud know about it.

Click on the name of your new pipe; this will bring up the pipe’s description page, complete with sample content. Click on the “Get as RSS” button.

Now, you’ll get a face full of RSS feed, but what we’re really after is the URI. Copy that baby out of the address bar.

Next Installment: Wherein I Show You What To Do With The URI. Because it’s late and I’m tired of making screen dumps.

Unless you can’t wait and you want to take go over to Aaron Lee’s blog and check out his instructions.

Help A Grumpy Old Tomcat Out

I’m indulging my new writing hobby by compiling a collection of personal experiences of WAHM’s, workshifters, web workers, and other telecommuters. I’ve found correspondents through helpareporter.com, as well as Google searches, and met some fascinating folks virtually over the web.

A couple of weeks ago I found graphic artist Dave Bryant’s blog “Grumpy Old Tomcat”. I wrote the following email to Dave to request an interview:

Dave,
I read your "Grumpy Old Tomcat" blog post about telecommuting on livejournal.com, and your background is precisely the kind of human interest story I'm seeking for a book project. I'm a former Bay Area resident (Mountain View and San Jose) who's now living in the Central Valley near Fresno.
I’m compiling a collection of interviews with people who have improved their quality of life by “workshifting”, telecommuting or working remotely.
So far, I’ve interviewed the following people:
Wendy Peck, author
Gwen Gulick, senior marketing communications manager at Harvard Publishing
Meieli Sawyer Detoni, fashion writer
Bruce Curtis, Director of International Development for the World Institute on Disability
Gina Kleinworth, an independent contractor with hirebetter.com.
D'anne Hotchkiss, Public Relations Director for TeraData Corporation
I’m hoping you’ll consent to an interview. Thanks for your time and consideration; I hope to hear from you at your earliest possible convenience.

Dave soon responded:

I don't think I'd be a good candidate: I honestly can't say I've improved my quality of life by going freelance. In fact, right now I'm experiencing the worst poverty of my life, and I have no idea when or whether I'll pull out of it. Moreover, my average annual income since I went freelance is in the range of twenty thousand a year -- in one of the most expensive places in the US -- and this year will pull that average downward noticeably.

I answered:
I'm sorry that you're having a rough time right now.
I wish there was something I could do to help you get more business...

And Dave sent back:

Thanks very much -- I appreciate the concern. If you have any suggestions for advertising that don't require any budget to speak of, I'd welcome them. And, of course, word of mouth can be useful as well. My difficulty isn't in doing the work; my clients are always quite satisfied. The trouble is in finding the clients in the first place.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve wondered periodically how I could help Dave. Having resurrected my custom application TweetieBot, I thought I’d use it to let the good people on Twitter know about him. Here’s his website with contact information and samples.

This is NOT a request for a handout or charity on Dave’s behalf. He seems like an independent, self-reliant sort of chap, the kind of person who’ll do a great job if given the chance. So if you’ve got some print or web graphics work that you need, why not consider requesting a quote from Catspaw Desktop Publishing?

From Dave’s blog:
“…I would like to post my résumé as widely as possible. I’ve done work for businesses across the country, after all, and I would like to be able to reach potential clients everywhere, at least in the US…I need to cast my net more widely than a single region, especially in these trying economic times.
There are other ways of defining communities than spatial proximity; one of the most lauded things about the Internet is its ability to bring people together regardless of distance. After all, isn't that what “telecommuting okay” is supposed to be all about?”

So, consider this a challenge to you, my fellow tweeters; an experiment in doing some social good, in testing the proposition that the Twitter community can be motivated to come to the aid of a hardworking, fellow human being.

Help a Grumpy Old Tomcat out?

The ‘Bot is Back!

So, last year I flirted with Twitter development by creating a custom piece of software that I called “Twittibot” that posted recent, news-worthy URL’s to Twitter every five minutes. It was fun, I met some interesting folks on Twitter, but after a while it grew time-consuming to provide content. So I shelved the project, uncertain if I would ever revive it.
I’m here to tell you that the ‘Bot is back and better than ever: http://twitter.com/twittifamily
I had to overcome Twitter’s conversion to oAuth authentication, but thanks to articles by Shannon Whitley and TweetSharp’s Daniel Crenna, TweetieBot is in business!

I’m Actually Workshifting!

So, I’ve gone mobile and I’m really workshifting! WOO-HOO!

The scene behind me is Terminal A of the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. I’m winging my way to Houston for a week, where I’m volunteering to work with a team of software engineers to develop some custom software for the United States Branch of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The Unintentional Self-Googler

Urbandictionary.com defines “self-googling” as the “act of using the Google search engine to look yourself up.”

Now, I imagine that just about every living soul who has ever used Google for research has engaged in self-googling. I’ve treated myself to the indulgence many times over the years. But until recently, I have never experienced it in such an…unexpected way.

You see, I’m a big fan of Google and all the various Cloud-based and other apps that the company produces: Google Mail, SketchUp, Google Sites, the list goes on. Last year, in a frenzied fit of programming, I decided to tackle Twitter development by creating a custom Windows WPF application that periodically posted online article URL’s (of interest to parents and families) from a database on my PC to my Twitter account, every five minutes. Well, naturally, if you’re going to tweet content at that volume and that frequently, you will most definitely need to populate your database with an abundance of said URL’s.

There was no way that I was going to waste my time trolling the interweb for articles, copying and pasting URL’s into my database. And I had not yet discovered the secret of employing low-wage Filipina Virtual Personal Assistants (and especially since I’m of Filipino descent, it almost seems a bit unethical somehow...something akin to using your kids for forced child labor...). I determined to leverage existing services in the Cloud to find fresh sources of news, and made the joyful discovery that I could transform my Google searches into automated Google Alerts that would pop up obediently in my inbox literally within hours of being published to the web. Since I was using OutLook at the time, I could write custom code to strip the URL’s out of the incoming emails and push them into my database. From there, my custom app would post random article URL’s to Twitter. Voila! Instant news service! In fact, I wrote a little article about the app on codeproject.com.

What I soon realized was that, even though I was saving a gazillion man-hours in searching the web for content by having Google do it for me, I still had to do a ton of manual analysis and editing of the data that I scraped from the alert emails. It just became too time-consuming to read through hundreds of links each day, and I eventually abandoned the project.

Fast forward to the present: I’m currently working on a writing project that chronicles how some professionals have improved their quality of life by “workshifting”, telecommuting or working remotely. I decided to monitor online news sources for stories or developments, and, of course, set up some Google alerts. Among the twenty-something search key words that I configured was “workshifting”.

In the meantime, I had joined http://www.workfromhomeboard.com, a site for remote workers (or those who want to become such), in hopes of finding more subjects to interview. I even created the following thread to solicit stories from the forum members:

Calling All Workshifters (telecommuters): I'd Like To Hear From You!

Are you one of the thousands of people who use their PC and the web to work from home (among other places), either part- or full-time?

I’d like to hear from other folks out there who, like me, are “workshifting” (the new replacement buzzword for “telecommuting” – no kidding).

Writers, bloggers, web designers, engineers, developers, affiliate marketers, graphic designers, consultants, sales, customer service, doesn’t matter.
If your job is location independent, using technology that allows you to work from home, the internet cafe, on the beach, or even from the other side of the world, please take a moment to email me with your answers to the following:

In a sentence, describe your work: self-employed, or working for a company?

Do you spend part of your time in a traditional office space?

Are you single or married?

Are you a work-at-home Mom?

Are you a parent of a baby, pre-school/school-age children, or teens?

Are you taking care of aged parents?

Are you disabled?

Does workshifting allow you to volunteer for a good cause?

How did you find your current workshifting employment, and how long did you search?

How has workshifting maintained or improved your quality of life?

Feel free to forward this survey to other workshifters that you know.
Thanks in advance.

- Dwayne

I check my Google mail account several times a day, and last Friday, I got this startling alert in my Google Mail inbox:

IM On Steroids

I remember when instant messaging in the workplace was looked upon with disdain.

This recollection has to be from around 2001, when I was working in the Fresno, CA. office of a network integration company called NetsWork.

Their tagline was “We make nets work”. No kidding.

Headquartered in Pleasanton, CA., the company’s strategy for growth was to acquire the small to medium-sized “Mom and Pop” network integration shops throughout California, Oregon and Washington. These small organizations had a gainful and loyal customer base, and NetsWork had the financing and resources of a large corporation to support the small shops’ development and growth.

We had just moved into some fancy new digs in North Fresno – well, fancy for Fresno anyways – and we all worked in half-height cubicles in a large bullpen area: salespeople, network engineers, management, support staff, and me. I was one of four developers at this location, and I was tasked with maintaining our mission-critical work order system called SRS. I forgot what the acronym stands for.

I distinctly remember talking with my manager Terry Reuter one afternoon about some software-related subject. Bespectacled, sandy-haired and rail-thin from constant bike racing, he’s one of those rare triple-threat IT guys. You know the kind: he could go into a business and singlehandedly set up an entire network – Microsoft or Novell, because we did both. Then, he could build you a server from spare parts and write a custom CRM application overnight and install it on the new server. He was just that good, a one man network integration company.

I also admired the fact that Terry’s wife Lynn is also in IT. In fact, at the time of my conversation with Terry, Lynn was working at NetsWork as a programmer as well, doing development in Microsoft Access. A wife who’s a programmer AND working for the same company? How cool is that!

As we chatted, Terry happened to glance over at one of the network engineers, back from one of his customer visits. The engineer was chuckling to himself as he typed away to some unseen correspondent via Instant Messenger.

Terry’s brow knitted and the corners of his mouth sagged in a frown of disapproval. “I hate Instant Messenger”, he muttered under his breath. “I wish we’d outlaw it.”

Now, I respect Terry a lot. So when he expressed his contempt for Instant Messenger, I dutifully avoided ever using it at work even for legitimate reasons, despite the absence of a corporate policy.

Oh, how times have changed.

When I started with UnitedHealth Group three years ago, I noticed that the pre-configured company laptop came with a desktop shortcut pointing to something called “Communicator”. On a conference call, I asked my manager about it.

“Yeah, that’s the corporate version of Instant Messenger”, he explained.

Our team of .NET programmers is composed entirely of workshifting employees, distributed geographically primarily on the East Coast and Midwest. Since our programming team was scattered across the country, with me being furthest West in California, the fastest way to contact a team member was via Communicator. In fact, my manager proceeded to encourage me to reach out to my team via Communicator if I had questions or needed another programmer’s opinion on an issue.

Corporate version of Instant Messenger?

Since when had instant messaging received the Blessing of Corporate America? I was stunned.

Microsoft Office Communicator, of course, is the Enterprise incarnation of Instant Messenger, a sort of IM on steroids with additional features such as VOIP, video conferencing, and integration with the Office Suite. Included in the base installation of a laptop provided to employees by a Fortune 20 company, and advocated as a legitimate business tool.

And it started out life simply as Microsoft’s entry into the internet chat space.

Heavens, what next? I suppose I’ll have to get used to tweeting my team members...

My New Friday Workshifting Tradition: Starbucks

Photograph by Josh Libatique

Now that Starbucks has free wireless internet service (huzzah for Starbucks!), I'm thinking of making the local site my Friday workshifting spot.

For me, going to Starbucks requires a ten minute drive from my home to half-way across town (yeah, it's a small town), and that, of course, requires a car. We own three cars: my wife takes one to work, and my daughters take the other two. Which kind of hamstrings my ambitions of workshifting; mobility, after all, requires some sort of mode of transportation to become mobile.

Thus, most days I'm stuck working at home, with two cats that have just been recently introduced to one another. The first, our resident 18-year old seal point Siamese is a grouchy sort who's currently hissing at the newcomer, a long-haired gray tabby named Macy Gray. Suffice to say that I'm a virtual shut-in, home for about seven hours a day, alone except for two seething, caterwauling furballs.

So, by the time Friday rolls around, I'm just a bit starved for human contact. Not that I want to immediately rush out and engage everyone I happen to meet in spirited conversation, mind you; I just feel the urge to be in the company of bipedal creatures with opposable thumbs, large braincases, and that have an affinity for caffeinated beverages.

Did I mention that I used to be a barista? Yeah, back in the winter of 2006, while I was "in between jobs", I did the adult thing and "did what I had to do", taking a part-time gig at the very Starbucks that has become my new tradition. Our town is located within fifteen miles of a California Women's Correctional Facility, and evidently there's a whole shift of correctional workers that gets out of work and is looking for some caffeine at 5:00 a.m. in the morning, so this particular Starbucks opens really early. So, every day, I'd drive bleary-eyed and semiconscious to Starbucks just in time to pick up trash in the parking lot and drive-through, then take orders or make drinks for the morning "rush" of customers. It was brutal.

Actually, there was one good thing that came out of it: during my daily four hour shift, I was in near-constant motion, moving quickly from the bar to the coffee station to the iced drinks station and then back to the bar. You know how they say that, if you take at least 10,000 steps a day, you're guaranteed to lose wait? I was losing weight, baby.

It was while I was working at Starbucks that I learned to make several drinks that don't usually appear on the menu, one of which is the "Red Eye". This drink is so named, as the legend goes, for college students who were preparing to cram all night for a test the next day and needed a way to stay up for several hours at a time. The students initially drank lattes made with a single shot of espresso; this spiked their energy level for a short time, but was followed by the inevitable crash. Some student finally got the bright idea to mix espresso with coffee; the effect was that the student's energy level increased, but stayed at the elevated level longer, and made a much more gradual decline. The next logical step, of course, was to add a second shot of espresso, which was dubbed the "Black Eye". This is my absolute favorite latte: a venti Black Eye, with four pumps of sugar-free vanilla, two Splenda's, and about an inch and a half of steamed whole milk.

Which brings me, in tangential fashion, to my point; I should explain that, in the strictest sense, I don't feel that I'm really, truly a workshifter.

More precisely, I feel like I'm a second-rate workshifter. Oh, sure: my job as a programmer is definitely location independent. It allows me to work from wherever I want, with a flexible schedule, but my lifestyle design reality seems so pedestrian compared to other workshifters that I've heard of, the kind that conducts business while attending an entrepreneurial conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Or who takes a couple months to vacation and volunteer while traveling through South America.

I suppose those folks are more of the "digital nomad" variety. Now, those are the REAL workshifters, the Major Leaguers. Me, I'm playing Triple-A ball.

Actually, I really should consider myself fortunate, and count my blessings. I had been staying away from Starbucks in recent months, simply because it gets expensive to get a venti Black Eye AND pay for wireless access, but all that's changed. On Friday, I'll claim one of our cars as my own, drive down to the local Starbucks, order my venti Black Eye, pop open my laptop and earn my credibility as a workshifter.

Now if only they'd do something to make the chairs more comfortable.

HEMP of Another Variety

The other day, I was just thinking how wonderful it is to work at home.

"How wonderful it is", said a little voice in my head, "to be able to work at home".

Invariably, whenever I meditate upon life's goodness, whenever I hear a little voice in my head enumerating my various and sundry blessings, there's always another, different voice coming from another corner of my mind that tends to play The Devil's Advocate.

"Yeah, working at home's fantastic", said the other voice, sounding a bit like Jack Nicholson, "just as long as your power doesn't go out." This, of course, is the Voice of Anxiety, which always plays like Jack Nicholson in my head.

"Power, schmower", interjected another voice, this time with a distinctly Christopher Walken-esque quality. "One high-altitude electromagnetic pulse and that's it for your little work-at-home gig, my friend. Fried. Kaput, end of story. It's back to the nineteenth century for you, reading your books by candlelight."

This second voice I've come to recognize, over the years, as the Voice of The Worst-Case Scenario.

As you can tell, my mind likes to hold conversations discussing my irrational fears and possible dangerous future events over which I have no control. Welcome to my neuroses.

Neurotic or not, the Walken-voice's claim does have the Ring of Truth to it. My job as a workshifter (is that even the correct usage of the term?) is totally and completely dependent upon a collection of delicate, low-voltage electronics: my laptop, printer, wireless gateway, cable modem, phone and headset. And I'm not even counting the Ethernet cabling running from my gateway to the cable modem, and the coaxial cable beyond that. And beyond that, the Big Enchilada that is the vulnerable civilian infrastructure: the power grid.

Some brainiacs at the EMP Commission (http://www.empcommission.org), Dr. William Radasky and Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, recently wrote an article for The Space Review, essentially a rebuttal to an earlier article by Yousaf M. Butt, "The EMP Threat: Fact, Fiction, and Response".

I scanned through the article and tried to understand as best I could. After reading scientific or technical pieces like that, a voice in my brain that sounds like "Ted 'Theodore' Logan" in "Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure" (my all-time favorite Keanu Reeves movie) always grabs the microphone, attempting to summarize.

"So, like, the EMP dudes were like 'Whoa…EMP is totally gnarly, bro.' And then this Yousef dude's all, 'Chillax, bro…EMP's lame.' And then the EMP dudes are all, 'No way, bro…"

Suffice to say, Radasky and Pry say that EMP is bad and our power grid's vulnerable. Here, you go read it.

So, what's a wary, worried workshifter to do? A frantic Google Search of "emp shielding" yielded some results mentioning a device called a "Faraday Cage".

I'm intrigued.

A Faraday cage is an enclosure constructed of some conductive material, typically metal mesh, that blocks out external static electrical fields. Wikipedia says this: "In 1836, Michael Faraday observed that the charge on a charged conductor resided only on its exterior and had no influence on anything enclosed within it. To demonstrate this fact, he built a room coated with metal foil and allowed high-voltage discharges from an electrostatic generator to strike the outside of the room. He used an electroscope to show that there was no electric charge present on the inside of the room's walls."

So now, all I have to do is find – or build – a mesh enclosure big enough to hold me and my laptop.

"Great. You'll look like a gargantuan parrot in a bird cage," comes yet another voice, low and grave, sounding very much like Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn in "Spider-Man"; this is the mocking Voice of Self-Loathing. "And as soon as you shut the enclosure door, your wireless is gonna stop working, genius".

I'll show him, I thought; if a car can withstand a 600,000 volt simulated lightning strike, EMP is no big deal. I'll just bring my laptop and headset outside and sit in my 1997 Nissan Altima! Wireless internet reception AND protection from EMP.

I'll just have to get used to saying, "How wonderful it is to work out of my car!"