Is the world ready for resume revision histories?
Imagine using Google Docs to write your resume. It’s not a bad choice since you don’t have to worry about losing it in a hard drive crash. Just login to your Google Docs account, make a few updates, and send off a current resume to whoever you’d like.
In most cases, people today would save off a .pdf or .rtf version for emailing, print it, or copy/paste it into the body of an email.
But what about this: how about just inviting someone to your resume instead? Not only could they view your current resume, they could review the revision history of the Google Doc to see how your resume has changed over time:
Would this be valuable?
It seems like it could add an additional layer of authenticity to your resume since people could see exactly how your resume has evolved over time. This could obviously backfire on people who play a little loose with the facts on their resume, but that would mean there are even more benefits to those who are comfortable doing this.
Resume RSS
Taking things further, you could allow people to subscribe to the revision history of your resume, so every time you make a change they’ll receive an update in their RSS reader. It pretty much automates keeping in touch with prospective employers.
Just how stupid is this idea?
Steve Borsch pointed out on Twitter that it’s amazing what you can find on the web using the “filetype:” command on Google.
If you haven’t tried this before, try typing the following line into a Google search box:
This should bring back a list of every PowerPoint file Google has found on the web. Results like this show up in regular searches, but the filetype command easily narrows things down.
Steve’s right that it’s amazing what you can find. Here are a few examples that bring up some revealing information where the filetype is combined with a word (or words) included in the indexed file:
filetype:xls confidential (marking something as confidential suddenly makes it less so)
filetype:pdf predictions (refine this a bit further for your industry)
filetype:ppt jobs reorganization (lots of stressful presentations of shifting org-charts here)
They can get much more damaging than this.
The Weekly Standard has a lengthy article taking a look at the landscape of Google’s plans to digitize the world’s books.
Not surprisingly they’re facing resistance from some corners. In general, the approach Google is taking to book search is similar to what they’ve done since Day 1 with websites. The biggest difference is that they have to turn the books into a computer readable format for indexing:
And here lies Google’s dilemma: Out-of-copyright books account for about one-sixth of all titles. Most books–75 percent of them–are in copyright, but out of print. Only about 10 percent of all books are both copyrighted and in print. Google has decided to get around this problem of copyright protection by simply ignoring it: forging ahead and scanning books, regardless of their copyright status. If a book is in the public domain, its full text is displayed to users, but if the book is protected, then Google shows users only a “snippet” of the text surrounding the search result. It is relevant to note that “snippet” is Google’s word and is intentionally not a legal term; how much text is displayed is entirely at Google’s discretion.
The snippet system has worked well for Google on the web. Provide a taste of what people can expect to find at the original source, then take people to the original source for further reading. It drives massive amounts of traffic to every site on the web today.
I think this is something publishers don’t fully understand yet, but will eventually come to grips with. It’s good to allow people to get a taste of your writing. In fact, if you’ve spent much time in bookstores you’ll know that anyone buying a book first opens the book and pages through it. The web makes it possible to discover more books of interest than they’d find on a trip to even the largest physical bookstore.
The Exception
The biggest exception I’ve seen to this is actually quite glaring: reference books.
Searching for any keyword within a reference book is a much different experience than doing the same thing with a novel. In the case of a novel, it provides access to a short snippet of a story. With reference books, it provides answers that, once consumed, make the book less valuable.
Admittedly, it would be stupid to buy an entire reference book on programming, books of word definitions, or manuals for occasional use, but that’s exactly what happens today.
To solve this, I think manual creators will find that they’re better off avoiding Google’s Book Search and similar programs like Amazon’s peek inside feature. Rather, they should consider subscription based all-you-can-consume business models for online access to their reference materials.
The Weekly Standard has a lengthy article taking a look at the landscape of Google’s plans to digitize the world’s books.
Not surprisingly they’re facing resistance from some corners. In general, the approach Google is taking to book search is similar to what they’ve done since Day 1 with websites. The biggest difference is that they have to turn the books into a computer readable format for indexing:
And here lies Google’s dilemma: Out-of-copyright books account for about one-sixth of all titles. Most books–75 percent of them–are in copyright, but out of print. Only about 10 percent of all books are both copyrighted and in print. Google has decided to get around this problem of copyright protection by simply ignoring it: forging ahead and scanning books, regardless of their copyright status. If a book is in the public domain, its full text is displayed to users, but if the book is protected, then Google shows users only a “snippet” of the text surrounding the search result. It is relevant to note that “snippet” is Google’s word and is intentionally not a legal term; how much text is displayed is entirely at Google’s discretion.
The snippet system has worked well for Google on the web. Provide a taste of what people can expect to find at the original source, then take people to the original source for further reading. It drives massive amounts of traffic to every site on the web today.
I think this is something publishers don’t fully understand yet, but will eventually come to grips with. It’s good to allow people to get a taste of your writing. In fact, if you’ve spent much time in bookstores you’ll know that anyone buying a book first opens the book and pages through it. The web makes it possible to discover more books of interest than they’d find on a trip to even the largest physical bookstore.
The Exception
The biggest exception I’ve seen to this is actually quite glaring: reference books.
Searching for any keyword within a reference book is a much different experience than doing the same thing with a novel. In the case of a novel, it provides access to a short snippet of a story. With reference books, it provides answers that, once consumed, make the book less valuable.
Admittedly, it would be stupid to buy an entire reference book on programming, books of word definitions, or manuals for occasional use, but that’s exactly what happens today.
To solve this, I think manual creators will find that they’re better off avoiding Google’s Book Search and similar programs like Amazon’s peek inside feature. Rather, they should consider subscription based all-you-can-consume business models for online access to their reference materials.
Minneapolis gained big-city legitimacy today by joining the list of cities with Google Maps relatively new StreetView functionality. Map viewer now had the option to view their location of interest from a street map, aerial photos, or from a street level view based on photos taken by cars driving our fair streets.
Early reviews say that this technology is amazing. What surprised me most was the extensiveness of the mapping. I though they would cover business districts and major streets to start but they’ve shot close to everything in the first round.
Highlights:
The most somber highlight found so far comes from Aaron Landry, who discovered that you can drive across the I-35W bridge using photos taken only days before the bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River.
On a comedic side, an entourage was caught leaving a strip club during daylight hours by the Google cam:
Where does a person need to click on an ad to generate a click?
On the ad, of course!
Er, maybe?
This is a question Google has been experimenting with lately, by making changes to their AdSense ad units.
As I understand it, Google is concerned about people clicking on ads accidentally. For example, you may have opened this window, toggled over to work on a different application, then clicked back over here. If, by chance, you clicked on what you thought was a blank part of the page, only to find yourself leaving through an ad, you’d probably consider that a bad experience.
Likewise, the advertiser you accidentally visited has now paid for your unintended visit, so they’re not going to be particularly pleased.
To address these concerns, Google has modified what constitutes a click. You new have to click specifically on the text portion of text ads rather than anywhere within the area that serves up the text ads.
Some publishers find this unfair, but if it’s good for visitors and advertisers, it’s the right thing to do in the longer run.
Now here’s the twist: Google’s modification to what constitutes a click has been inconsistently rolled out. Some sites, as Darren Rowse from ProBlogger has pointed out, are receiving special treatment from Google:
AdSense Ad Click Zones - Gmail and Other Large Sites Get a Better Deal
I can’t be certain that it’s just a premium publisher thing - but it does illustrate that Google isn’t completely consistent with the the clickable zones on their ad units. While I can understand the need to provide value to their advertisers and to give extra features to premium publishers it does leave me with two questions:
1. are Google not worried about readers of these sites mistakenly clicking ads?
2. how do the advertisers whose ads appear on these sites feel about the increased chance of a mistaken click?
“Premium publishers” like CNN and MySpace get to play by the old rules, thus continue to benefit from accidental clicks.
A better way to handle this would be to give publishers control. If publishers choose to blended ad colors that lead to higher percentages of accidental clicks, only the text should be clickable. However, if publishers choose to use ad colors that clearly differentiate advertising from other content on the site, the entire ads should be clickable.
FeedBurner stats across the web took a nose dive today. For example, this site dropped from around 2700 to 1665 subscribers overnight.
Zoli Erdos did some digging and got to the bottom of it. For some reason, subscriber counts from Google powered RSS readers, including Google Reader and iGoogle, weren’t counted overnight. One would think that Google - who now owns FeedBurner - would count their own stats, right? Well, usually.
FeedBurner is Out of Flame Today
If your see your FeedBurner subscriber count cut in half today, don’t panic, it does not means your readers “fired” you. It simply means that Google’s Feedfetcher is not reported in the total count today.
What this does show is just how big Google Reader has become in two short years. Almost 40% of the subscribers to Technology Evangelist are now using Google Reader.
Microsoft Office, but I think it’s going to be consuming the sales of
Microsoft’s flagship communications product first: Microsoft Exchange.
their mail clients and mobile devices in sync with the GMail servers much the
same way Exchange server does with the MAPI protocol. Today GMail is no match
for Exchange, but by adding IMAP support they are one step closer to a full
Exchange server replacement.
and calendars in sync between multiple computers running Outlook as well as
mobile devices that support Exchange Active Sync (or EAS). In addition the EAS
clients get access to push e-mail meaning that as soon as the message hits the
Exchange server and is processed, it will be pushed to the users mobile device
for delivery rather than scanning for messages every 15 minutes (for example).
All of these Exchange server features are great and valuable in a business
setting, but many of these features are not supported on non-Outlook mail
clients and mobile devices that don’t have EAS support are out of luck. In
addition, Exchange is scary expensive when compared to other servers such
as Merak or Communigate
Pro.
this. Part of the IMAP protocol is something
called IMAP
Idle which keeps a server connection open allowing for push e-mail to
devices that support it. IMAP Idle is the next step in the path for Google to
replace Exchange. The iPhone supports push e-mail to/from Yahoo! e-mail
via IMAP Idle but for some reason ignores IMAP Idle on other servers that
support it such as Merak, Communigate or even Exchange. Other mobile
applications such
as FlexMail and ChatterEmail
support IMAP Idle for Windows Mobile and Palm devices. Desktop clients
such as Thunderbird and the new version of Mail.app found in Leopard will also
include IMAP Idle support. With these IMAP Idle clients on mobile devices and
computers we’re able to get instant e-mail notification the moment the message
hits the server, much the same way you do with Exchange and Outlook but at a
fraction of the price or in the case of GMail, for free! That is, for
free once GMail supports IMAP Idle.
There’s an open standard that’s
called SyncML
which should take care of this nicely. SyncML allows the two-way synchronization of calendar, contact and task data from a handheld and computer or possibly from an online service provider such as Google. Many Symbian devices already support
SyncML and rumor is that Palm will be dropping hotsync in favor of SyncML in
their next OS due out the 12th of never (I saw this rumor
on Engadget
in 2005 so, uh, yeah). There
are Windows
Mobile add-ons that should also support SyncML. It would be
possible to add a contact to a SyncML enabled handset and that contact would
auto-sync back to Google which would also auto-sync back to the desktop app.
SyncML also has a bunch of other features to facilitate backup options
and syncing of other media objects which would in theory allow this service to end up being more powerful than what Exchange offers today.
very large portion of what Exchange offers. Some of the very few things
that would not be supported are Active Directory synchronization which in a
pure web world won’t matter too much (all that login info could be done using
a Google login) and multiple colors for messages (MAPI supports many different
color flags and IMAP only supports flag on or off but no color). The
biggest hurdle has already been achieved, now it’s up to Google to keep it
going. With Google Apps for business this becomes a much more powerful
solution that’s remote, offers almost all of the same functionality as
Exchange, requires little to no IT staff to maintain it and since it’s based
on open standards has the ability to run on just about any device, oh yeah and
a business can control the user accounts too (as opposed to the free version).
read over
on WMExperts
that Microsoft is releasing their Microsoft System Center Mobile Device
Manager 2008 (yes, that’s the actual title) which will allow provisioning of
mobile devices remotely much like a Blackberry. I’m not sure I see
Google trying to tackle this beast. Will Microsoft System Center Mobile
Device Manager 2008 be the saving grace for Microsoft Exchange Server, or will
the tie between the two products be too weak and we’ll end up with Google Apps
controlled by Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008? Even
so, if Google did support IMAP Idle and SyncML would you or your company ever
consider breaking from an Exchange environment?
Google has finally gotten around to adding a comments subscription option to Blogger powered blogs.
It has a few limitations, but is a welcome improvement over nothing at all.
The limitations:
1. It looks like you have to have a Google account to subscribe to comments.
2. The comments have to go to your Google account.
3. Strangely, when I tested it the first comment email I received was my own comment rather than the comments following my comment.
The comment notification emails are well done, with links to the commenter’s blogger profile (I’d rather have it link to the site if my choice), the original post, to the comments form for follow ups, an unsubscribe link, and the blog’s homepage.
Apparently, I’ve been using Google too much.
How much?
So much that Google thinks I’m sending “automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application.” I know I use Google a lot, but this much?
Google offers two links in their suspension message to sources for antivirus or antispyware applications. Here are the operating systems I get to choose from:
I’m on a MacBook Pro. Hmmm. Google?
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