Lannie Byrd » Technology

Collaboration, innovation, working online gets loud

Lannie — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 21:02:44 +0000

At work our office is in an open working environment where all the worker bees sit in these nice built-in cubicles which are larger than some offices I’ve had in the past. In the cubicles besides the web team members there are some other graphic designers, writers, photographers, videographers from our creative services department. One downside to these cubicles is every couple of weeks I get a message from someone that the web team is being too loud and interfering with others work or that it looks like the web team just socializes all the time and doesn’t do any work. Unfortunately, I have to explain that working with technology, working online requires collaboration among workers across disciplines to do our best work. In fact a recent study pointed to collaboration being one of the top six attributes of high-ranking women in technology.

A collaborative work style is perceived as a critical success factor in high-technology by both technical men and women, and is consistent with a culture that values innovation, which cannot be achieved without extensive collaboration. Collaboration is both a critical source of success but also a great source of career satisfaction.

Collaboration = Socializing = Loudness = Innovation = Satisfaction

What you need to know to flash

Lannie — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:17:46 +0000

Flash content is an important part of the overall mix of web content and has a steeper learning curve than most other kinds of web content creation. Unfortunately, Macromedia and now Adobe have changed the flash creation process/interface so often that if you once learned flash it’s like you’re starting all over again if you pick up a newer version of Adobe Flash. I first learned flash in 1999-2000 creating some audio slideshows and calculators, but I had to learn it again 2003 for a couple of prjects and after that I just gave up because I didn’t want to go through the process of teaching myself flash again.

Mindy McAdams author of admittedly outdated textbook, Flash Journalism: How to Create Multimedia News Packages, now recommends learning flash using Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Classroom in a Book. In fact she has even created a nice little guide to everything you should know to create great flash content outlining the six things she thinks you need to know (and the chapter’s they’re covered in the Adobe book) and two common misconceptions about flash.

Her six items you need to know are

Buttons
Loading external content
Optimizing images
Loading and controlling audio
Loading and controlling video
Actionscript 3 and XML
Bandwidth profiling

Now, I have to decide if I really want to tackle Flash again.

Video: how cloud computing works (and how you use it everyday)

Lannie — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:58:12 +0000

Here’s a good video from CNN that explains how cloud computing works and how you use it every day.

Wow! One out of four pageviews is from Facebook

Lannie — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 02:36:04 +0000

In the United States one out of every four pageviews is from Facebook. Amazing! Google only accounts for one in eight page views (15 percent).

AT&T Service fails, but Google answers

Lannie — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:08:53 +0000

The visual voicemail on my iPhone quit working about a month ago (I won’t say what caused it), but I called AT&T today to see if they could help me get it working again after missing a couple of voicemails.

Surprisingly, I didn’t have to hold for an operator at all, but the operator I got had me on hold several times as she tried to figure out my phone’s problem. After trying several different network changes on the AT&T side and several changes on my phone over the course of an hour, the support tech finally gave up and suggested I needed to reinstall the Surprisingly, I didn’t have to hold for an operator at all, but the operator I got had me on hold several times as she tried to figure out my phone’s problem. After trying several different network changes on the AT&T side and several changes on my phone over the course of an hour, the support tech finally gave up and suggested I needed to reinstall the iPhone OS and offered to connect me with an Apple support tech to help me out. I declined the Apple help and told her I could handle the reinstall myself. Before I hung up on her I she made an appointment to call me back the next morning to see if my voicemail was working correctly.

After I got off the phone, I turned to my trusty support database, google, and queried, “visual voicemail broken iphone” and on the second page, two minutes into my search, I found my solution– reset the network settings under Settings > General > Reset Network Settings. My phone restarted and I immediately got two visual voicemails– Problem fixed!

I thought I already knew this lesson, but I guess I learned it again– Google your problem before calling for support and more than likely you’ll find the answer your need. Now, I get to to explain to the AT&T tech how easy it was to solve the problem.

Job seekers lack internet skills

Lannie — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:11:47 +0000

A fifth of American’s don’t have Internet access and the demographic profile of those without access — generally older and less educated — match up to those who are the newly unemployed according to an MSNBC article published today.

This digital divide separates not only who qualify for jobs and who does not, but also who can apply for jobs and who cannot as many company’s application systems require you to fill out an online form and submit a resume in an electronic format. Even what many would consider a simple task such as sending an email with a resume attached confound the newly unemployed. Forget about asking someone to use a computer to manipulate a spreadsheet or create a presentation.

Did these people loose their jobs because of their lack of computer skills? Probably not outright, but being able to complete everyday computer tasks probably would have made them more valuable to their former employers. Maybe a some of these stimulus/recovery funds still floating around should be spent on computer and Internet classes for the newly unemployed.

Why ruin their false reality for them?

Lannie — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:36:42 +0000

I had an interesting conversation the other day with some people that were making fun of social media in general and using social media for marketing/public relations. Eventually I just gave up arguing with them. It wasn’t worth it. I’ll just let them stay backwards. They’re happy that way. They don’t have to think. WWhy ruin their false reality for them?

This morning I ran across this video full of great facts about social media (the facts are great, but the music is not so great). My favorite fact: Social Media is now the #1 activity on the Internet (not porn)!

My must haves on a new computer

Lannie — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:20:06 +0000

I keep switching computers around at work and at home– just jumping from one computer to another to try something different out- and I have come up with a list of tools that I always install first thing when I take a new windows computer to use. I’ve done this so much lately, that I’ve put all of these tools on my usb drive that I keep on my key ring (isn’t that a geeky thing to have?).

Firefox - an extensible browser that renders appropriately
Filezilla – easy to use ftp client
Notepad ++ – small text file editor
VLC - media player that will play almost any video or audio file

When I take on a new Mac or Linux machine I still use Firefox and Filezilla, but have a different text editor.

I also have a set of extensions that I always install in Firefox the first time I use it.

Xmarks (was foxmarks) – a bookmarks synchronizer (I don’t use the password sync feature)
Firebug – a quick html/css inspector
Screengrab! – take a quick screenshot and save it or paste it.
Measureit – answers how long or deep is that image?

I have a lot of others that I eventually end up installing when I need them, but these are normally the first four.

So what tools do you always use?

Twitter in the mainstream

Lannie — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:39:05 +0000

Twitter has been in the news a lot this week with the race to million followers between Ashton & CNN and Oprah’s introducing twitter to her huge audience, not to mention the techie audience blowback to Oprah and her new followers. I’m glad that Oprah has introduced twitter to a whole new audience (especially since Twitter for the most part survived the additional users). And all the new users and Oprah don’t bother really bother me because their not in my network and if the do happen to comment on something that I’m searching for, I welcome their input.

Sites to follow the legislature

Lannie — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:17:05 +0000

The Arkansas legislature convened yesterday and it’s apparent the digital revolution is chasing them down at full speed. Last time around you could tune into the Arkansas Times Arkansas Blog for an overview or Steve Harrellson’s Under the Dome for the details, but you only got their distinct opinion on things.

This year we have my brother-in-law’s Tolbert Report with his ubiquitous flip camera and house speaker Robbie Will’s new blog also keeping us informed on what is going down at the Capitol. I can promise you the Tolbert Report will have a slightly different take on the legislature’s actions than the rest of the pack, but I am wondering if Robbie Will’s will have the stamina to keep up with all the duties of being Speaker and keeping the blog up to date and responding to comments and questions from the blog (it’s fun reading about his struggles with technology).

It’s also interesting to see how the Arkansas legislature agenda compares to other states. The National Conference of State Legislatures has released their top nine issues of 2009.