JAFDIP

Just another frakkin day in paradise

Archives for 2011

Shiver

winter small thumb

Icy flakes fall
The world white blanket wrapped
Breath rises in night sky.

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How do we solve the current economic crisis

A heated discussion on LinkedIn was recently initiated by Alan Kitty who originally wrote the following:

With 10% unemployment in the US alone, the world is, putting it mildly, experiencing a deep dip in the business cycle. Governments can muddle through the process of trying to minimize the damage – but an upturn will occur regardless of their efforts – otherwise the term “business cycle” would have to be retired. Is Global Capitalism due for an overhaul? Do we need a new economic theory? Is it time to find a replacement for all known forms of government; or do we just sit tight and wait it out?

Much of the 28,000 responses have taken one form of the blame game or another. Very few have actually attempted to offer any sort of solution to the problem. Worse still there are a large number of people blaming the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, which is entirely preposterous. In fact to sit there calling the participants of scum does absolutely nothing to solve this problem and is indicative of the disconnect that they are demonstrating against. The members of the various occupy groups are a symptom of the problem. They are a precursor to the dire state of affairs and a symbol of the rift between our leadership and the population.

We will not find a solution by rewinding back to some sort of fantasy era. Certainly no amount of wishing the problem away will get us there either. Honestly both the Republicans and Democrats are at fault for this mess. I truly believe that neither of them are capable of fixing it. If they were then would not have become a factor in the first place.

The most important issue at this time which sadly has been the most important issue of the last 6 years is unemployment. Both the Republicans and Democrats are responsible for the whole sale auctioning off of our economic future. There is absolutely nothing else to say. Each side has done it’s fair share of damage all in the name of progress.

The most infuriating point is that there is another 7-8% of people who fall into the grey unemployment. These are the people most hurt because they do not qualify as officially unemployed. At this point a conservative estimate is that the true unemployment rate is 17%. There is a stigma in this country against the unemployed and it has been proven that many companies will avoid hiring ‘unemployed’ workers no matter how qualified. This will only compounded once our troops return from the middle east. These returning service members deserve jobs too.

In addition, we have companies like Microsoft whining that they can not find qualified worker to fill job openings. These companies are making a lot of noise in DC about opening HI work visas and foolish politicians like Mayor Bloomberg is standing behind them. In stead of whining these corporations need to adjust their standards. Corporations have long enjoyed person hood but without being good citizens.

We need strong leadership to make real change and push forward some simple steps that send a clear message to corporate America as well as the disconnected of .

  1. Raise the corporate tax rate. This is nonnegotiable. I know people hate hearing that we need to raise taxes but this is absolutely essential.
    1. The tax has to put towards paying down out multitrillion dollar debt
    2. A portion for startup grants to the unemployed
  2. Tax cut incentives for companies that permanently hire unemployed workers. This is an incentive for companies to look past the stigma of ‘unemployment’. They incentive must be some sort of point system for every month they keep the same individual employed.
  3. A long term Federal student loan deferment plan. I know that many student loans offer some sort of deferment but this may not be enough to help the economy back on it’s feet. I DO NOT feel that we should bailout the student loans with a handout like we gave the banks.
  4. Close the door on all future bailouts. Federally sponsored loans on a case by case basis are one thing but to simply hand over the people’s money to a mismanaged corporation if utterly unconstitutional. If you feel otherwise then put it to a public referendum and see what the people think!
  5. Establish an incentive for saving. People live too much beyond their means and we have become a vapid greedy society. Our grandparents saved their pennies. We need to return to a more frugal lifestyle.
  6. Raise the tax on Capital Gains this solves the problem of corporate officers who receive small salaries and large stock options
  7. Establish a salary cap based on a ratio of the corporate officers to entry level employee salary. In addition set a bonus cap that is based on the permanent hiring of unemployed workers.
  8. Require all elected officials to carry the same health care coverage as the rest of the population. No more special treatment for them.
  9. Establish a tax on overseas outsourcing. We need to make the cost of off-shoring our work force comparable to hiring local talent.
  10. Establish a moratorium on all foreign work visas. Companies need to hire local talent.

This list is just a beginning but I feel it could substantially effect our economy in a positive way. Obviously I am just one man with a simple view of how to improve things but imagine what could happen if our collective political machine could do if they actually focused on the needs of the people and not their own wallets. Ultimately we need to stop pointing fingers and start solving problems or we could end up reaching critical mass.

Hopefully, this article got you thinking. Hopefully, it woke you up. Hopefully, it will spark some serious discussion about the problem and possible solutions. Hopefully before it’s too late.

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Why is interaction the key to social media?

I have written about social media interaction also known as engagement several times in the past but wanted to focus briefly on some specific examples. Recently I was asked some questions by a social media novice about my particular social networking stream. For instance, let’s look at the following three questions.

  • What’s the point of dozens of tweets per hour?
  • What percentage of that is noise?
  • Is this strategy or boredom?

Each user of social media has to understand his audience in order to be able to successfully answer these questions. I have a truly global audience which is something difficult for someone just starting out to comprehend. Another concept that new users find troublesome is the life expectancy of a status update. Although each update will live on forever the visibility of the update in the average stream is approximately 5 minutes. This is not very useful if you are promoting an article or cause you are involved in. Obviously if all you updated was your content then your advocacy would surely be viewed a nothing but noise.

no spam!
Image via Wikipedia

There is a fine line between noise and SPAM. The difference between the two is how your audience responds to your message. Do they retweet your content? More importantly do they ask you questions. These are true signs of value and one of the best metrics of your social media standing. Unfortunately none of the current ‘Vanity Meters’ effectively measure your true influence. They certainly do not measure your interactions with other people in a meaningful manner.

For a moment consider the some of my core social media topics. The first being technology especially phones and other hand held gadgets. Recently I as asked my opinion and prediction of quad core processors appearing in such devices. When some one out of the blue asks your advice or opinion it caries far more weight than any klout score. It means that they value your feed on this subject and ansering back quickly demonstrates that you are an approachable individual who values them as well.

Another example is coffee. I drink large amounts of the stuff and talk about the with other coffee junkies. I talk about coffee so often that people ask me questions about the substance. I recently was asked to recommend coffee makers. I pointed the individual to REI’s coffee press travel mug. The individual found this to be exactly what they were looking for.

One final example regarding my travels to China. Since traveling around the globe I get asked all the time about my opinion on subjects pertaining to that region. I know that I am by no means an expert in conducting business in the Pacific Rim but it is a connection to individuals that I have. Let’s face it that connections like this are the foundation of successful business relationships.

As you can see I have a method to my madness. I understand social networking at a level that eludes most tech types. As I have said many times it is the conversation that is important. Numerous updates are important to me for initiating critical conversations. These conversations lead to conversions which is critical for maintaining any sort of blog audience. Someday these converted readers may lead to enough traffic to sustain this site in particular through ad revenue. Yeah someday…;-S

 

 

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How to reset Safari’s Homepage

Have you ever experienced some sort of phenomenon that corrupts or otherwise inhibits you ability to safely open an application on your Mac? Recently a friend of my announced on twitter that she had clicked a link that ‘messed up’ her Safari and that she thought it was infected with a virus or trojan. I thought since the answer while obvious to me was not openly available on the net I would publish it here for future reference.

Unfortunately my Google search did not yield anything of consequence so I did some digging on the command line and found the following command through trial and error. Actually to be quite honest I nailed it on the first try but let’s just chock that up to blind luck. Honestly I just made a guess that the property name would be HomePage written in camel text.

defaults write com.apple.Safari HomePage https://www.jafdip.net

After executing the command I was able to confirm that this was correct by simply opening Safari on my machine and observing the result. Another option would be to use the Properties List Editor to open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist but if your system is not set up for development work then it is not likely you will have such a tool at your disposal. The following is a snapshot of what it would look like.

Unfortunately the file is a binary plist (property list) and should not be edited directly without the proper tool. If you do then you could render Safari completely inoperable under your ID on the Mac. Your options at this point would be to try deleting the file and let Safari creates a new default version or to grab a copy off of some one elses’ Mac ID but in either case you will likely loose any preferences you had.

In fact if resetting the homepage does not work then you will likely need to resort to deleting the plist and hope that a fresh start of Safari will result in the best. Open the terminal app which is located in Applications/Utilities. The following is a snap of what your terminal window might look like.

Enter the following command and you will be prompted for your password if you have one. I will not argue the necessity of having a strong password on your Mac rather I’ll just say that you are asking for trouble if you do not.

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist

Since Mac OS X is based on an open source UNIX (FreeBSD) it will return to an empty command prompt if the command is successful. Simply launch Safari as you normally would and enjoy the startup music as well as resetting all of your preferences… again.

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The Rules of Social Media Engagement

Are you maximizing your social engagement? Consider these the eleven rules of social media engagement.

Image representing LinkedIn as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

Whether you are a power tweeter or an occasional updater there are certain methodologies you should employ in order to achieve the highest possible value from your effort. Consider the list below as a short guide to set you on the path of achieving social media enlightenment. I call them rules and as with all rules feel free to break them as your see fit. It’s not like the Social Media Police are going to write you a summons. Just know that you’ll be hurting your own image.

The first step in is to collate all of your accounts under a single umbrella. Consolidating multiple accounts into one environment will be overwhelming at first but in the end you will gain greater control and understanding of your engagement needs. The streams in my Tweetdeck tend to look like the Matrix. In fact in a sheer moment of überGeekiness I even adjusted the theme to be monochrome green. The result is I have a screen containing the information I need in front of me so that I can process where to place my attention.

Raising your engagement potential is the name of the game

Tweetdeck a la MatrixThe main benefit of this consolidation is that I am better able to stay abreast of the changes in my various networks. Without this level of awareness I would never be successful in many aspects of engagement. For engagement is many faceted gem. It is not focused on one medium but across many. You can not be just a tweeter because you have conversations that occur on other media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ to name but a few. All of this leads naturally into the next step.

FOLLOW Your Retweeters

Image representing TweetDeck as depicted in Cr...
Image via CrunchBase

Coordination is nearly impossible to without some sort of simplified management and consolidation is the essential building block to coordination. By monitoring all of your important streams you are better able to plan your effort and spread it across the networks of concern. Coordination is the process of spreading your engagement across the bounds of multiple social media infrastructures. Conversations should be organic and bend themselves around the network upon which they travel.

However in order for these processes to work each of these networks need to be firmly cemented in a specific foundation. They have to have a solid grounding in order to be effective. If you are a self publishing wizard then you need to follow other publishing icons, as it is expected that the majority of your content will be centered around publishing. It is not to say that you are not allowed to follow other people it is just that you need to ensure that you have a solid foundation from which to branch forth. Only than can you build additions to your Social Networking House.

The next key area is to divide and of course conquer. By this I mean you need to break your network down into more manageable streams. This is where tools that allow listing and grouping become essential. Think of these lists and groups as bricks in your foundation. Imagine for a second how difficult it is to follow a busy stream of hundreds of people let alone thousands. That would be like building a castle on top of a swamp.

In my personal account on twitter I currently follow a very active stream of approximately 4500. However the only way it is manageable is that I broke that down into discreet lists. These lists allow me to frame the updates into topical streams of information. In fact there are lists I use and follow that contain users whom I do not even follow. For instance my SciFi list mostly contains celebrities that I do not follow directly but by watching that list I am aware of what is happening in that circle. This saves me from following celebrities that will not likely follow me back. Unfortunately most celebrities do not understand nor even care about the necessities of the followback. I know this is minor but there is nothing worse than receiving a something personal via DM and not being able to respect that privacy and DM a response.

  1. Consolidation
  2. Coordination
  3. Build your foundation
  4. Divide and conquer
  5. Ignore the numbers
  6. Stick to what you know
  7. Share your passion
  8. Follow your retweeters
  9. Respect the HASHTAG
  10. Know your avatars
  11. Follow up

One important subject is follower counting. This is a huge issue and my personal consideration is that unless you hit the followback wall do not worry about the number of followers you have. It is more important to concern yourself with follower quality and interaction over count. If you look at Klout, Tapp11, TwitterCounter and so many others you will loose focus on your message. These sites encourage you to focus on ridiculously meaningless vanity metrics because that is what their business model is based on. You can summarily ignore them.

One caveat regarding Klout is that you can currently give out +K’s to 9 people per day. I would suggest that this is actually a good practice and should not be overlooked. Just remember to include the obligatory mention tweet as well as the thank you tweets to for anyone who give you a +k in return. Each of these distinct actions help raise your engagement potential. Think of it as another method of opening the conversation door.

Image representing Klout as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

Never forget that your message is the reason you are doing all of this but it is not the only reason. What I mean here is although you use social media to share your message it is also important to listen to others in your circle. You must focus your circle to a specific core of activities or else your message will get lost. You can not be everything to everyone. So stick to what you know best and build up from there. Be a source of reliable information on the subject you know best.

Focusing on what you know makes it easier to achieve the next goal which is to share your passion. People become intoxicated by something that someone else is passionate about. Without passion your message lacks the drive to carry it through the cruft to your audience. Your passion will help your content bubble up to the top. It will get you noticed.

All of this will lead to people sharing your information with others. These people will help you develop your social capital and credibility. As a general rule of thumb FOLLOW your retweeters. Besides being a general good practice, it is a simple rule that you need to heed. If your followers think enough of you to share your content with their followers then you have to at least be curious who else they are sharing. Could it be someone who contradicts your beliefs?

Unless you hit the followback wall do not worry about the number of followers you have

More importantly your retweeters most likely share ideas and content congruent to your beliefs. By following your retweeters you increase the likelihood that you will discover new content and new ideas that these individuals share. If they share the same point of view as you do then you have extended your core and strengthened your foundation. Ultimately it opens the door to further engagement which is critical to your success with social media. Remember the key aspect of social networking is to build relationships and you do that through conversation. It is easier to easiest to share information with people who have similar beliefs, background and methodologies. The differences between you increase the potential for conversation.

At this point I need to discuss the mighty HASHTAG for a moment. Be ever cognizant of existing hashtags in the updates of others. There are two tags you MUST always be aware of #in & #fb. These two tags will send a tweet to your LinkedIn and Facebook stream respectively. If you are not careful you could unintentionally retweet something into your other streams.

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

While no one owns a particular hashtag it is important to understand who else may be using it. Take for example the two hashtags that are associated with my personal account the first is #JustSayin and the other is #LastTweets. Each have their specific purpose and I use them so often that no matter who else uses these tags my messages will show up alongside them in the search results. My point being that if you think you are going to corner a particular tag and hijack its stream be forewarned that because you do not own the tag you have no real idea how others will use it. You should do your research before just sending an update with a seemingly clever hashtag.

You know he may be crazy w/ that ark and all but we could be nicer I’ll go apologize to @Noah tomorrow… #LastTweets

One last thought about hashtags and this is kind of huge. Google ignores them. In fact their search algorithm strips the # (octothorpe) symbol from your query strings. In addition Facebook has made no indication that they intend to respect them either. So at this point Twitter, LinkedIn, Diaspora and EmpireAvenue seem to be the only major social media platforms that honor the hashtag. It is very sad that Google has rejected such a vital information tagging tool.

Since I have already written two comprehensive articles about avatars I will just recommend that you see the “What’s related” below and read those articles. They cover the best practices you need to know about selecting a good avatar.

Sadly Google ignores HASHTAGS

This leads me to number 11 which is odd I know (no pun intended) since most normal people can only focus on 10 things at a time. But this one is kind of a big deal and applies to all of your social media activities. You need to followup with people. It is like any other factor in business. Think of it like this: You will never hit a home run if you do not swing through the ball. If you make a promise you need to follow through on it and if you have a conversation with someone on LinkedIn about something then you must always followup with them. No one likes to have their question unanswered and if you are a venerable source of information but often leave your clients wanting they will look elsewhere for the answer.

If someone tells me they are not feeling well, they started a new jobs, got a promotion or whatever it is I always send them a note. It is important to engage with people on a personal level and the easiest way of learning to engage with people is to listen to them. They will tell you what they need. Failing to listen is why most tech support people are complete failures at social media. They spend too much time ignoring their users and focus solely on the mechanical turning into Nick Burns every time. It takes just one small deed to make a big impression. You just need to decide if you want the impression to positive or negative. The choice is yours.

Ultimately your goal is to maximize your impact with a minimum of effort. Unfortunately measuring that impact is difficult at best. As I have already mentioned there are many wizards and people out there that will try to sell on some magick formula or bottle of snake oil that gives you a nice simple number to crunch. This is because as humans we are attached to these simple answers. The truth is that it is only your engagement that will drive your social media effort. As much as your managers do not want to listen to this undeniable truth followers do not equate to results. All that I can say is that by following the eleven tips outlined here you will improve your engagement thereby improving your true ROI, or as my friend Ted Rubin likes to say RonR (return on relationship).

If you still insist in throwing money at the problem I am always available and have some cute little bottles of scented oil for you. #JustSayin

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