Connected Well

The BBC has a good article about Google’s free/paid news announcement called first-click-free which enables news outlets to let Google index and show their news, but then limit the number of “free” articles you can read to five per day:

We’ve updated the program so that publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing.

Check out Google to Limit Free News Access over at the BBC with an informative video that I can’t easily embed and a follow-on article called “Did Google Just Blink” by the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones:

Rupert Murdoch has made clear his desire to see other papers in his worldwide stable follow the Wall Street Journal’s lead in asking readers to pay for at least some of their online journalism. And he’s also expressed, in forceful terms, his view that Google – and the BBC for that matter – are an obstacle to those plans because they provide a route to so much free news.

In my opinion, Murdoch and other news outlets have only two cards to play: Either make their news so interesting, so exclusive, so relevant and niched, personalized and so amazing that people will keel over and die if they can’t read it, or realize that, if you want to appeal to the masses, the masses don’t want to pay dollars for it… at least not in the traditional sense.

There’s a new economy for news. No longer are todays papers tomorrow’s kitty-litter liner or fish-n-chips wrapper. News comes and goes in megabytes per second, and in 140 character snippets.

The good news is read, shared, commented, revised and rebuffed by its own readers and created into something new and interesting every single millisecond.

The uninteresting news simply never. gets. read.

This is not Google bowing to the publisher. This is Google playing its cards to ensure it has top content in its engine, and when the day comes that the big mass media players finally give in to reality that “pay for access” won’t cut it anymore, Google will already be so far out ahead nobody will be able to catch up.

Geek News Central and others agree with me.

Good luck mass media. See you in the funnies.

Rahhb life, next bbc, google, massmedia, media, murdoch, newmedia, news, newscorp, newspapers, twitter

I have been running Windows 7 Release Candidate for nearly a month and I love it.

The list of things Windows 7 brings closer to me and makes more fun/easier to use is kind of endless.  Every day I use it, I slowly begin to think that someday I might forget the MS-DOS commands and endless, repetitive click-cycles (the kind your tech support guy repeats from memory when helping you get connected to a projector for a meeting… or get your monitor to show anything at all after the meeting is over)  I have committed to memory in order to accomplish anything worthwhile on previous Windows OS’s.

One consistent item I keep wishing I had easier access to was a simple applet that helped me manage my startup programs, or manage what programs start automatically when Windows launches.

This really should be simple to find, but it’s not.  In my opinion, if there is anything more detrimental to most-user’s experience with their PC is the crud of programs and their various “notifiers”, “monitors”, “updaters”, “download helpers” and otherwise annoying popup programs that do not NEED to be running, but run every single time the PC starts up.

Searching the Control Panel and Windows Help, I finally came across a link to an applet called “Start System Configuration” (which I recognize as msconfig thanks to my MS-DOS-infected brain) that can help me manage my startup programs, but the description for the applet has nothing to do with what I want to do:

“Any program that tries to start on my machine…. kill it dead.”

To access the Program Startup Killer, access Widows Help and Support, and then search for start system configuration.  Ignore that it says nothing about killing off offending startup programs, just click the link to open it.

Up pops the system configuration applet.  Click the startup tab and uncheck any programs you don’t want to allow to run when the machine boots.   Then click “Apply”, then “OK”.

Danger: This isn’t a well-refined applet, and unchecking the wrong boxes could cause damage to your system or user experience if you don’t know what you’re doing.

api Tools, next microsoft, windows, windows7, windowsOS

William Gibson-Futurist, originally uploaded by MichaelMarlatt.

api human, next, people awesome, cool, future, images, photos, quote, william_gibson

definition: enticing – alluring: highly attractive and able to arouse hope or desire;

Some new and exciting things are happening in the world of recruiting, and I am glad to be a part of a small portion of it. As some of you may have noticed, my linkedin and facebook profiles have all been updated with the news that I am no longer working with Omniture, and I have aligned myself with EnticeLabs, a software startup with some amazing technology to help companies get closer to candidates they’d like to hire.

This role fits me like a glove in many ways because I love software and I am passionate about connecting people through smart recruiting. The tools this team has been developing amaze and astound me. I am sure everybody says the same thing when they join a startup, but the technologies and abilities the team here talks about in everyday language would be impossible for most HR and Recruiting departments to imagine themselves doing.

Imagine your HR or Recruiting Department being able to:

• Develop an interesting talent pipeline that sells your corporate employment brand to passive candidates, while enticing great people to submit themselves to your talent database constantly… while you sleep.
• Simply and easily place your company’s employment brand in front of the 80% of jobseekers that don’t read job boards.
• Actually spend your time recruiting, not sorting through hundreds of spam emails.
• Leverage our pre-existing buying relationships to allow your employment messaging to be placed in front of hundreds of targeted individuals for a fraction of the traditional cost.
• Instead of the ‘Post and Pray’ method of traditional job posting services, rest assured that the system is automatically adjusting your spending to target and drive results from the people you actually want to hire (not just the ones who spend their days browsing job boards).  Did the requisition suddenly close or get placed on hold? No problem… turn it down (or off) and save your money.
• Receive insightful (and visually-stunning) analytics helping you know exactly what and where your job advertising is performing (and where it is not).
• Launch, adjust or shut off your job advertisements with either a one-stop phonecall top your dedicated Account Manager or a few mouseclicks online.
• Stop stressing about your job advertising. Be as hands on or hands off as you want to be.

Interested? Want to know more about Entice Labs? Check out this 2 minute video introduction or call 877-2-ENTICE

api Tools, next career, changes, employment, entice_labs, job, job_postings, life, recruiting, sourcing

The long-awaited re-emergence of GrandCentral since Google bought them has come about, being dubbed (of course) Google Voice (what did you expect? With other products named such novel things as “mail” and “news” or (what was that original one called, again?… oh yes…) “search”?)

Since it’s just launching, it remains to be seen if Google Voice will put all the features it promises into a package consumers will love.

From Google: The new application improves the way you use your phone. You can get transcripts of your voicemail (see the video below) and archive and search all of the SMS text messages you send and receive. You can also use the service to make low-priced international calls and easily access Goog-411 directory assistance.

ZDNET feels the service has the “potential to make the search giant a middleman in an important part of people’s lives, telephone communications. With the service, people can pick a new phone number from Google Voice; when others call it, Google can ring all the actual phones a person uses and handle voice mail.”

This is all moving us forward to a future more “wired”, but less tethered… as phone numbers become enduring modes of contact, getting a “google number” will ensure that people can reach out to you for years to come.

When using Grand Central, I enjoyed the use of the tool, but wished it could allow me to provide more intuitive rules around callers or on-the-fly commands. It appeared that Grandcentral was purchased before it was fully “baked”. I am looking forward to how Google Voice has improved the service… as well as looking forward to having ONE NUMBER TO RULE THEM ALL (or filter them “all” out).

Interestingly, this application feels a lot like GMAIL, google’s email system. It’s transformation of email from a “messages” based platform to a “conversation” based one, then heralding the introduction of powerful rules-based management, simple keyboard shortcuts, and account access from various methods… all for the price of having ads appearing around your messages (but not IN them, which Yahoo/Hotmail still do).

As long as the tool (if it becomes ad-aware) displays relevant ads to me without overly-annoying, and ensures that my privacy will be maintained* then I am very interested in the tool.

api Tools, next, video communications, google, google_voice, mobile, telecom, telephone, voice, voicemail_transcription, voice_recognition

WOW. I <3 Ted Talks to watch while doing data-intensive tasks or through lunch. This one about a $300 wearable device is pretty amazing:

About this talk

This demo — from Pattie Maes’ lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry — was the buzz of TED. It’s a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine “Minority Report” and then some.

About Pattie Maes

At the MIT Media Lab’s new Fluid Interfaces Group, Pattie Maes researches the tools we use to work with information and connect with one another. Full bio and more links

About Pranav Mistry

Pranav Mistry is the genius behind Sixth Sense, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data. Full bio and more links

Rahhb Tools, life, mobile, next, video future, next_generation, TED, ted_talks, wearable_technology