cmurray.org

Some of you may have noticed the recent appearance of this nifty little tag cloud on my blog. This is, in fact, not a tag cloud, but rather a category cloud. I do not spend time tagging my posts because there are so few people actually looking for content here and because I am just lazy about it. So, because I use the Category section for posting within topics in WordPress, I created a cloud based on those. I’m not sure that anyone actually will use it, but I think it sure looks cool.

It’s a simple mechanism that counts all the posts within a given Category and then assigns a font size based on a range within where those counts fall. The display of the category tags and their post counts is then random, creating a different cloud formation each time the page is visited or reloaded.

(Disclosure: The title of this post is meant to attract Borgy101′s attention, for all the wrong reasons.)

I tried Wine on a Linux machine several years ago to run Photoshop within that platform. Wine is an emulator which allows you to run Windows applications as if they were native to Linux. I have to say that it was a huge and frustrating failure. I believe the issues were primarily with Wine not having the proper DLLs from Windows to make applications run properly.

Having rebuilt my LAMP system here at home using VMWare, I now have a good development environment for trying such things again without breaking my production environment and my blog. With this, I installed and configured Wine to run several Windows apps within my Ubuntu Linux space. I have to say that I am extremely pleased with how easy it is to get working and how well the programs run once installed.

One big difference from how I am using Wine now from back then is that my initial trials were on a dual-boot system and the Windows apps I was using already were installed within the Windows partition of that machine. I believe this is why Linux had trouble running the applications and finding the library files; it had to cross many parts of the system and make those connections, which it often could not do.

In this new environment, I am not working with an existing Windows installation. I am merely using the Wine configuration manager to create a ‘fake’ windows file system, and then installing the applications from CD or .exe files directly into this environment. Therefore, everything the application needs to run is known by the Wine server at runtime.

As I said, this appears to run remarkably well. The applications I have tried so far include Picasa (the wonderful photo storage and imaging tool from Google), Trillian (a cross-provider IM app), and of course, Photoshop (Linux does come with GIMP, a really great impersonation of Photoshop, but I had to install Photoshop just to see).

Yesterday, I was meeting with the owner of a small, family-run business very close to my home. (One of the biggest attractions of the gig, frankly, is the 20-minute commute through the woods.) Reading through my resume and talking with me about my experience and accomplishments, he looked up and said, “So, you’re kind of like a Swiss Army Knife.” He was quick to add that he in no way meant for the comment to be taken as disparaging or dehumanizing. Rather, he saw my project management, systems design and implementation, programming, database management and development, and business analysis experience as complimentary and especially valuable to a smallish and growing enterprise. (It also could be said that it makes me harder to fit into a tightly defined role; in fact, I do not believe that this role in particular is a good fit from my view or theirs.)

I turned down a gig in Boston a month ago because of the daily commute into town, the trips to New York, and the demands of a new start-up. However, the job itself was a pretty good fit: build and manage the infrastructure while also driving the web site to support community and new technology platforms. So, this analogy of Swiss Army Knife as marketing concept to me has legs. Perhaps the best way to get a job (and one that suits my skills and one that I truly would enjoy) is to leverage the breadth of my skills rather than remarkable depth in any one given area. This could conceivably be a good consulting idea as well, if that were something I wanted to pursue and from which I could generate enough business and income.

I suppose that the term ‘generalist’ also could apply to me here. But in situations of growth and/or diminishing resources, a generalist can be a hugely positive thing. I recall a comment by someone I used to work for implying in negative tones that a colleague of mine was a generalist. Truth is, the guy has remarkably deep skills in database management, programming, architecture, and web development. Referring to him as a generalist in such a detractive manner was to me more narrow-minded than insulting. A generalist with some deep skill sets can solve a lot of problems quickly.

I certainly would love to hear thoughts about this angle from anyone reading this post.

I recently met Kent Anderson, Executive Director of International Business and Product Development for The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal Watch, and other publications of the Massachusetts Medical Society. One of the first things he said to me was that NEJM is and has been making a concious effort to emphsize online over print in their publishing strategy. And he gets it. They have revamped their sites and the tools that support them, changed internal processes and cultures, garnered buy-in and participation from the entire organization (from requirements and specifications on out to quality assurance and user-acceptance testing). He points out also that their highly-matrixed organization was fundamental in executing this strategy. He also notes that the strategy was carefully planned and executed over a long period of time through incremental initiatives. He speaks of all the things others talk about when trying to achieve this new paradigm: monetization, community, balanced revenue models. He speaks as someone who has done it.

I have seen organizations where the mandate is to drive online business over print. The trouble is driving the shift in culture and revenue models. It’s not enough just to say that you are going to do it. Management must insist on recreating the culture to support such a radical shift. But to do that, management has to first get the joke.

Here also is a brief interview with Kent speaking about some of their strategy and how it was adopted.

For the last couple of months my blog comments have been getting slammed with spam. Each day I’d check my email to find at least four or five such comments, each full of external links and often offering low mortgages, investment advice, and a variety of questionable prescriptions (fortunately, none of which I need at present). But WordPress comes with Akismet, a spam filter which requires only a WordPress.org API login to make use of the Akismet web service. This service checks incoming comments, captures them if thought to be spam, and holds them in the Manage area for later review. Having enabled this feature last week, my comments are so far clear of spam, and the Manage box as of this morning had 15 spam-related comments, all deleted with one click. Highly recommended.

Years ago, I had two machines on my desktop, and two large, bulky monitors as well. Later on, I was able to toggle between the systems using only one monitor, but still, they were two separate systems. In recent years, I have preferred my own Toshiba laptop to any of the systems offered at my workplace. My laptop has all my tools and scripts and such, and also has remarkable power: I can run virtual servers, Oracle, and lots of other browsing and email applications without any performance hit. In the last couple months, however, I have been using my laptop with a second monitor. (Many machines cannot support multiple monitors and require a newer graphics card like an ATI or nVidia to do so.)

There’s a lot of research on the topic. Most people, given the opportunity to use two monitors, would not consider going back to one. The productivity increase has been pretty well documented, both scientifically (through amount of actual work performed and through testing things like eye movement) and anecdotally. Coders especially enjoy one window for writing code and another for checking out the results.

I began using this setup a couple months ago at work using my laptop and a Dell flat-panel. I especially liked that the mouse travels seamlessly between the two monitors. And yes, I find it is much easier to keep things like my browser and IM windows on one screen while the other can be used more for writing. I found a program called UltraMon by RealtimeSoft which extends my computer’s ability to use multiple monitors (including trivial things such as which screensaver to play on each monitor, whether or not to display task bars in different windows, and so on). UltraMon is free for thirty days and then costs US $39 for a single-user license.

For working at home now, this past week I picked up a remarkably brilliant and clear Samsung 17-inch flat-panel for only $180 at BestBuy. Certainly worth the price of admission. And no, I would never go back to a single-monitor system.

When we talk about blogging, we most often make the assumption that blogging requires writing. This is important espeically when we talk about whether or not senior management should be blogging. While there are many reasons for these folks to blog, they only should be doing so if they have something valuable to offer their audience (customers in most cases) and if they can clearly articulate those messages. However, there is another kind of blogging that may be appropriate for not only these senior folks but also anyone with expert knoweldge in a given field or topic area.

Using a blog as a source for aggregation of content can be hugely valuable and monetized. I found this morning a blog on asset management which was merely a collection of links and headers to excellent content on the subject. When you visit these pages, the first chunk of real estate is populated with some advertising, and then below you find all that good content gathered and compiled for you. No other editorial content is included. If the person developing and maintaining these links is known to be expert in this field, this “blog” becomes hugely valuable to those needing this kind of information. (This informaton also is syndicated and as such can be loaded into your feed reader.)

For content experts who perhaps are not willing or able to write well on a topic, this aggregation of subject content can be valuable and profitable.

Jon Udell today blogged about a new Mac-based writing tool that provides nothing more than a black screen with green text. Reminiscent of old 70s-style green-screen terminals, WriteRoom provides an absolutely distraction-free environment for writing. All other applications disappear: menu bars, email and feed alerts, browsers. This is really sweet and makes me wish there was a Windows equivalent.

My brother-in-law started a software company a couple years ago with a former business partner. They found a target niche in the software application market for physical therapists. There simply was no good software to serve that market. He and his partner (former directors and senior management of a well-knowns bicycle company) saw the opportunity and built the business by hiring good designers and developers and by talking to folks in the market about what they were looking for in a billing system. The reason I bring this up here with Jon’s post is that they went with a very closed, single-purpose system comprising a database and application server, wireless laptops throughout the office, and a centralized storage facility to upload daily transaction data. The closed part is that all the laptops run only their proprietary application for billing. There is no Windows or Linux environment, no email, no internet, no browsing. They understood that most desktop and laptop systems are problematic because of their users trying to install software and configure them to their liking, in addition to downloading payloads of viruses. By providing laptops that run only their system they increase their deployment costs, but support costs along the way decrease significantly. Short of an ASP model, this is a good, though more costly, solution to an environment prone to error and full of distractions.

I recently took some time off from blogging. Work, school, and family got the better of my time and I found it hard to even read other blogs (often fuel for writing my own). I came back from vacation last week committed to writing again on a regular basis.

And parallel to this thought, I found some great posts by my blog-pal Steve Borsch. I have been reading Steve for a few months now and find him very knowledgeable, inquisitive, and always interesting. (I actually found his blog because of a reference from David Churbuck’s blog.) Steve has been writing this past week about why we blog, what it means, and why we should be doing it. It resonates because with this time off I have I was wondering why it was so important for me to get back to writing my own blog.

In the first post I read this week, Steve is speaking to the power and importance of his blog to his life and business. Many people have found Steve specifically because of his blog and what he writes; it has worked better for him than a resume or job posting. People find him, read him, and realize here is a guy they should be talking to. (In fact, Steve and I exchanged emails about posts we’d both written regarding CMS offerings and the lack of middle ground in that space. I won’t say we’re friends but we now know of each other.)

In the second post, he illustrates one of the most powerful community aspects of blogging: reading and linking to one another. This is basically how I have built out my Bloggers list as well as found content to write about. I found Steve by reading of him in Churbuck’s blog, I found Griff Wigley’s blog today because I was reading Steve, I found lots of bloggers still needing my attention on Griff’s blog. And on it goes.

There also is the attention your blog can get you when looking for work. Currently, I am interviewing and meeting lots of new people every week. Not only do I provide my resume and references, I make sure to note my blog. While I have been lax in writing more about technology lately, I want people to come to my site and read what I think of publishing and technology and community and the trends within these spaces. Like Steve says, writing helps you to clarify your thinking. And as David mentions, it helps to keep a journal of your thinking, like a public notebook. (David not only writes brilliantly of marketing and clamming strategies, but his blog also has evolved into a travel log for his recent trips to China and Europe.) In addition to technology, my blog now documents my children and the big events in their lives as well.

So, with this post I remind myself why I so much enjoy doing this. I also refocus my efforts and get back to writing about CMS systems, feed aggregation, and innovative management practices.

Below you’ll find the accounting of our trip by guest blogger Mia Murray.