Screaming Squirrel

I had completely forgotten about this interesting little video I recorded at Golden Gate Park a couple of years ago. We had gone to SF to visit my brother and his wife and we went for a walk. I heard this bizarre sound and when I followed it I saw the source of it. Who would have known...?

Christmas

Christmas came and went and while it was the first time in 12 years that I wasn't in a house of my own, it was still really nice. Carrie did an outstanding job of getting the apartment ready with decorations, a nice tree, and she made a wonderful Christmas dinner with ham, sweet potatoes, rolls, and my mom made her signature butter with mashed potatoes (she uses a lot of butter, but they're so good). Sadie was dressed up in her official Christmas outfit much like Santa's helpers. My mom flew in for a couple of days from Montana and my brother Kevin and his fiance Shawn were in for about 30 hours on their return from visiting my brother Pippa in Australia.

My mom really had a great time with Sadie. The two of them got along famously and they spent so much time together playing and laughing.

It was a quick Christmas visit and I am resolved to be in a nice home by the same time next year and it will be even more grand but as it was, we had a great time.

iPod Touch Hacking, What I Did...

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was very satisfied with the results of having hacked my iPod Touch to use the iPhone applications and other 3rd party applications. Here's what I did (and this is using my Mac so you'll need somewhat different instructions for Windows).

Before you go any further, here's the obligatory disclaimer: I neither endorse or recommend willful alteration of a product that is already quite good. There is the possibility that you might brick your iPod.

1. If you are at version 1.1.2 of the firmware, which has been available since November, you'll first need to downgrade back to version 1.1.1. Download the firmware here. Depending on how your browser handles downloads, it may automatically unzip zipped files. If so, you'll need to re-zip it or make sure it's not zipped when you go downgrade.
2. Plug your iPod into your computer via the dock to USB cable. Cancel the sync if iTunes tries to communicate with it. Put the iPod into recovery mode by holding down the 'Home' button along with the power/sleep button at the same time until it shuts down and as soon as it restarts (the Apple symbol will appear on the screen) let go of the power/sleep button but keep holding the Home button.
3. With iTunes open it will then present you with the option to restore your iPod. Before you click on 'Restore', hold down the 'option' key and click on Restore. The Finder dialog will appear and then browse to the location of the 1.1.1 firmware that is still zipped and select it. iTunes will then install the firmware. This may take several minutes.
4. After the iPod reboots, disconnect the dock cable and connect the iPod to your wireless network and open Safari and point it to http://jailbreakme.com/. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select the 'Install AppSnapp' link. Safari should crash and you'll then have the Installer.app icon on your iPod's 'Springboard' (the home screen with all the icons for the applications).
5. Open Installer and choose the application OktoPrep to install.
6. Now you'll need the Jailbreak application, download it from here.
7. Connect your iPod to the computer again and make sure iTunes is open.
8. Once iTunes sees your iPod, go ahead and choose the option to Upgrade your firmware. It will take several minutes to download and install. After the upgrade is complete, close iTunes.
9. Launch the Jailbreak.jar application you just downloaded (it's inside the downloaded files)
10. Check 'install SSH' and set a root password and hit 'Jailbreak'.
11. Disconnect and reboot your iPod. You should see the Installer program on the Springboard.
12. Open Installer to download and install packages.

Installing iPhone apps

1. First, you'll need to find them and download them to your computer. You might check various torrent sites. Make sure you get the version for your firmware, which, if you've followed these instructions, is 1.1.2. Make sure you get a set that includes the requisite 'Framework' folders because without them, Maps, Mail, and possibly other applications won't work.
2. You'll need to use SFTP to move these applications from your computer to the iPod Touch--you can either go command line from the Terminal or you can use a GUI program to move them. Either way, you'll need to put them all in the '/Applications' directory.
3. In addition, you'll NEED to copy GMM.framework from /System/Library/Frameworks/
4. settings bundle in /System/Library/PreferenceBundles/
5. One individual also mentioned this: cd /Applications/[appname].app/
6. chmod -R 644 *
7. chmod 755 [appname]
8. - then, test it by [still in Terminal] “./[appname]” (without quotes of course)
9. Test it by seeing if you can open Maps and then Mail (and configure an account).

I think this is everything, let me know if I missed something!

Credits to my resources:

http://www.hacktheipodtouch.com/install-application/mail/mail-app-on-ipod-touch
http://www.hacktheipodtouch.com/unlock/ipod-touch/iphone-apps-working-on-ipod-touch
http://lifehacker.com/337863/how-to-install-third+party-apps-on-your-new-iphone-or-ipod-touch

Also the ipodtouchmaster on youtube
Change the order of the icons on the bottom menu

Employment Profile

Not too long ago I completed a profile for a company that requires it as a part of their application for employment. I thought it was reasonably accurate in most areas. I've pasted the results below.

Summary

Aron, your responses indicate that you are an intensely persuasive and determined person. You delegate details and obtain technical support whenever it is possible. Your inclination is to deal with a project's key elements rather than its specifics. Too much definite structure and regulation affects your level of comfort. Since you are a very likeable person who takes time to listen to people, it is probable that you have many acquaintances and friends.

Communication Style

Aron, you have strong social skills and are excellent at quickly establishing rapport. You enjoy talking to people and do so with enthusiasm and spontaneity. Your style of fast, lively expression is both engaging and effective. You are a fluent speaker who expresses thoughts quickly, optimistically, and persuasively.

Also, Aron, you respond to people with flexibility and open-mindedness. You relay a tone that is uninhibited, creative, and, at times, quite independent.

You enjoy talking and can put people at ease. You use a fun, indirect style of communication. You are people-oriented and can easily relate with another person's point of view.

Aron, you are a natural team player. You readily delegate authority, and you embrace training. You do not care to be involved with too many technical details. You let others set game plans, priorities and time frames.

You function well when you are allowed a lot of people-interaction. You would rather talk about details than write them down. You enjoy being the focus of attention.

Leadership

Leadership Style: Persuasive
You perform your leadership role by using your excellent ability to interpret people's actions and dialogue, and then by persuading them to do things your way. You like a leadership role, function in a manner suitable to your environment, and support teamwork. You develop your people with enthusiasm. You delegate details freely and may be disinclined to delegate authority. You actively promote change and look for new ways of reaching goals.

Conscientiousness

You focus on your goals with self-discipline and positive motivation. You are able to recognize the importance of applying hard work, planning, and organization to achieving the tasks before you. Your determination to achieve excellence is complemented by a purposeful disposition.

Motivation

Motivation Needs:
Aron, you tend to be motivated by a great deal of interaction with people, and by identifying with a prestigious organization with a good public image. You desire opportunities to make more money for yourself, or to improve your status within the organization. You are motivated by praise, public recognition, and by acceptance. You are most productive when working as a team player, and when you are liked by others.

You tend to be demotivated if your territory or opportunity is reduced in size, or if you are not allowed a significant amount of people-interaction or teamwork. Insufficient recognition from management and/or peers can also affect your motivation. You can be demotivated by a perception of not being personally liked, and by not being invited to meetings with peers.

Primary Motivation:
• A lot of interaction with people.
• Meeting new people and making friends.
• Opportunities to make more money and improve status.
• Being a team player within the organization.
• Praise and public recognition.
• Identifying with an organization that has prestige and a good public image.
• Awareness of what is going on in the organization.
• Acceptance and being liked by others.

Primary Demotivation:
• You perceive you are not liked.
• You are not invited into meetings with your peers.
• Your territory, (opportunity) is reduced in size.
• You feel you are not part of the team.
• You do not have enough people contact.

Emotional Intelligence

Aron, your responses indicate that your Emotional Intelligence is exceptionally well developed. You pursue your goals energetically, and you persevere until your goals are achieved. You strive continually for self-improvement, and you are not discouraged by temporary setbacks or disappointments. Your negotiation, persuasion, leadership, and conflict
resolution skills are probably very well developed. You perform your work conscientiously, and delay gratification while pursuing your goals. You display appropriate self-confidence. You tend to understand the emotional makeup of others.

Work Status

I am still employed and my employer is still in business. We've trimmed down to ~40 employees and lots of people are doing things beside what they were hired to do, myself included. While many people are clearly demoralized and reluctant to do things outside their areas of expertise, I'm rather enjoying it. Granted, most of the things I've been working on are still technology related but instead of drafting policies, working with vendors on disaster recovery, and negotiating contracts, I'm still doing interesting things. I'm instead working with wholesale vendors to sell off excess equipment, working with facilities to smooth out issues with the building security and alarm panels, helping users directly, I relocated an office almost single-handedly (network, phone, servers, switches, routers, call managers, etc.), and have been learning how to work with our Cisco VoIP phone system. I'm actually learning a lot as well as refreshing my technical skills so it's kind of fun. There's also a certain type of satisfaction you get from doing more of the hands-on stuff--you can see what you create and get the immediate end-user satisfaction. While I don't necessarily plan to stay in this mode long-term, I'm glad to see that I can jump right back into it and offer good service.

So, if there's a lesson to be learned.... It's wise for management to jump back onto the front line and do the stuff that got you to where you are now. It gives you an appreciation for your team, hones your skills, and helps you to find areas where there might be room for improvement. Of course, it also is a tremendous time to reconnect with your group and your customers on a level for which there is no substitution.

iPod Touch Hacked

I'm far from bleeding edge in hacking my iPod Touch because there was a part of me that was concerned about breaking it (though the likelihood is really quite low) and much of it was trying to find a single good source for instructions, and there was a small part of me wishfully thinking Apple might officially release applications. After perusing enough sites and blogs I broke down and did it last night. I'll try to do another post with the final kit of instructions that I used a little later.

In sum, I had to revert to previous firmware 1.1.1, break it with the TIF exploit, do the proper prep for jailbreaking, and then did the 1.1.2 update through iTunes. After that, I installed apps, found the iPhone's applications and Frameworks (for Weather, Mail, Stocks, and Maps) and several cool apps from the jailbreak site. After this was done I was able to remotely SSH to the iPod and use all the apps.

Let me say now, I was crazy to have waited. The iPod Touch goes from being a cool UI iPod to being an awesome rockin' handheld PDA/music player/browser. The Apple iPhone apps are killer--Mail (I configured mine with my Gmail account via IMAP, not the default built-in configuration), Google Maps, and Weather are elegant and highly functional. The solitaire and blackjack games are fun, and there are several others I have yet to try. While it's still not a laptop, it is highly functional now.

I wouldn't recommend this for everyone by any means but if you have some patience and inclination, it's well worth it.

Blogging Test from the iPod Touch

Let's see if this works....

Sent from my iPodTouch

Job Search Update

When looking for another job it's sometimes hard to tell if your resume and/or cover letter are dialed-in. You'll wonder if the resume is too long, too short, formatted in an attractive and meaningful way, if it reflects your experience and talent, etc. You wonder if your cover letter has the substance that the potential employer needs, if there are any prejudices about where you presently live or your education, etc. It's not until you start getting some nibbles that you realize that you might actually have done a good job branding yourself. And with branding, I firmly believe it needs to go beyond the simple realm of creating a Word document listing your skills. If you have something to offer you can share it in a blog, responses to other blogs and articles that permit comments, reviews of products, forum discussions, etc. On one hand some people might see it as blatant self-promotion and I would have thought the same not long ago but what I'm finding is that it can be meaningful. My favorite recent example is a response to home office energy saving and my response was picked up in a follow-up story. I'm not a radical tree-hugging individual but I do believe in practical changes that aren't overly difficult or expensive and make a difference, particularly when you do a few things that add up and have a nice cumulative effect.

Back to the theme of the post... I have suddenly started getting a few really good nibbles. This serves as excellent affirmation that your identity online (one particular nibble confirmed that) and/or resume and cover letter are firing on all cylinders. One phone interview when really well and the committee was very impressed with my credentials and the discussion. The head of the department took part and called me afterward to tell me that. He also mentioned that he was afraid that I might be over-qualified and that the position might not offer me the ability to influence as much change as he thought I would be capable of, at least not in the near term, but he would enjoy my contributions. I stepped back and thought about it, looked at the location, the pay, and how the position could fit into my long-term career plan and it really didn't make good sense so I withdrew from the running.

I also got a call from a small northeastern college to which I applied over a month ago. Sometimes colleges and higher education take a while to fill positions, both private and public schools. This one looks promising based on the description and I had a phone interview last week that went quite well. They'll be contacting me again in the New Year.

Profile Your IT Organization

5 minute test to do a pop-analysis and summary of your IT organization.

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David Byrne's Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists

Former Talking Head's frontman gives his take on how emerging artists should look at the music industry situation.

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Awstats and Apache2

After fighting with the installation of awstats to quit giving me reports of 'corrupted' log files and errors on updates, I thought I'd post the sum of what it took to getting it to work correctly on my home *NX (Linux/UNIX) server.

In the awstats configuration page, I finally ended up using the combined LogFormat option (1). I then had to modify my virtual host logging format to the following:
%h %l %u %t "%r" %>s %b "%{Referer}i" "%{User-agent}i"

The standard examples I saw had slashes (\) in between each of the variables which caused me to get the corrupted log file message when I would update. I won't tell you how long it took me to figure that out but I now have it working again, amen. Nothing like a little trial and error.

Five Key Technology Trends for 2008

In the coming year mounting pressure will force companies to think "green" and a weakening economy will require new value strategies, says a report by Booz Allen Hamilton.

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Top 10 Tips for New Bloggers From The Original Blogger

"Jorn Barger of Robot Wisdom coined the term "weblog" Dec. 17, 1997 -- 10 years ago Monday -- to describe the daily list of links that "logged" his travels across the web. In the decade hence, Barger feels that he's gained some wisdom of his own about blogging. Here's Barger's top 10 tips for novice bloggers"

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A Big List of Sites That Teach You How To Do Stuff

The web can help you learn how to do just about anything you can imagine. Read/WriteWeb compiled a list of some of the best tutorial sites out there, most of them including video or other rich media instruction.

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The Evolution of Community

In my current position I have two staff members who are remote workers, working out of their home in Portland, Oregon. They are really solid contributors and very interesting people.

I was talking to one of them the other day about things and since he is from the Marin County area he has a lot of friends and family down here. I asked him if they had made many friends in the Portland area and he said that they aren't really very social so they pretty much keep in contact with the friends they've had for years. He said he keeps up with his friends almost daily via e-mail, instant messaging, and playing X-box over the network together.

This individual's social interactions with old friends only reinforces my theory that the nature of community and friendship is evolving dramatically. In an earlier post I recounted how simply posting old family photos has reunited my Italian family with my U.S. family. Even though I only see them once every few years, I have a small handful of really good friends from high school and grade school. In fact, we've been able to reconnect and have more frequent communication in the last few years as they have become more regular computer users and are using audio and video chat. Obviously you have to have something in common or some sort of connection in the first place but the now ancient art of letter writing is no longer required, spontaneous short conversations are possible without often inconvenient telephone conversations.

Some people might bemoan a lack of depth as a result of the abbreviated instant messaging (IM) or text message conversations but I think without these vehicles that most people would otherwise abandon communication with their geographically distant friends, or at least let them lapse.

Again, my team member's means of keeping in touch with his friends through e-mail, IM, and X-box gaming is neat. No, it's not the same as 'being there' but often times that's not even an option and without these things, it's highly probable that they'd lose touch all together.

How to Network: 12 Tips for Shy People

Struggling to meet new people? Follow this common-sense advice for increasing your networking mojo and improving your chances of landing a job, customers, or investors.

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State of the CIO 2008

CIO.com had an interesting article recently about the CIO of 2008: What Kind of CIO Are You? In reading through it I was pretty easily able to identify my style. The first thing that really rang true for me was that of being a Transformational Leader. One of my strengths is being able to quickly identify the needs of the organization, the current state, and how to reorganize and shape the IT division to better align IT with the strategic objectives of the organization. Here are the bullets of the article:

• Redesigning business processes
• Aligning IT initiatives and strategy with business goals/strategy
• Cultivating the IT/business partnership
• Leading change efforts
• Implementing new systems and architecture
• Mapping IT strategy to overall enterprise strategy

I also think my nature is that of what they called the 'Business Strategist' which really doesn't seem wholly different. Here is the description for it:

• Developing/refining business strategy
• Understanding market trends
• Developing external customer insight
• Developing business innovations
• Identifying opportunities for competitive differentiation
• Reengineering or developing new sales and distribution channels

The other type of leader that they describe is a 'Function Head', which strikes me as being more of a tactical role. While I am certainly comfortable with the tasks associated with it, I do find my contributions to be more transformational and strategic.

Much of the article talks about being in the right place at the right time and I couldn't agree more. It is imperative that anyone, regardless of their position, be able to identify his or her own skills and put them to work in an organization that will benefit. It needs to be a mutually beneficial relationship for both the employer and employee to be successful. A couple of times in my career I've had frank discussions with employees who just didn't seem to be finding their groove and I wasn't able to adjust their positions enough to make the groove fit them and I had to say that maybe it wasn't the right job for them. While this sometimes terrifies people, it can often be the necessary wake-up call for everyone.

Why Leaders Must Evolve

Leaders who can adapt themselves to change have a competitive edge in a world in which the traditional model of management is in danger of becoming obsolete.

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The Best Gifts are Inexpensive

Alternative gifts that don't cost as much....

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Windows or Mac?

My quick answer as to which operating system I prefer between Windows v. Mac v. Linux v. UNIX....

YES

There really is no simple answer to the question because the answer really depends on what it is that I'm trying to do or accomplish. You really have to ask a lot of questions to find the answer to this and even then the dynamics can change and the answer may not be the same in 6 months. I've been working with and supporting Windows desktops and servers since 1993, Macs from 1988 - 1992 and again from 2003 on, Linux and UNIX since 1998. It's funny though, as someone who uses a Mac at home it's often expected that when someone asks me computer advice that I'll automatically recommend them to get a Mac. The truth is that people who use Macs typically are pretty enthusiastic about them and they have a greater brand loyalty than Windows users. I believe the choice is one that requires some questions be asked before a definitive answer be given.

In general I can say a little about my opinions on each of the operating systems.

Windows--obviously Windows owns the desktop though there are some minor shifts moving toward Macs but it's still small (well under 10% overall). In a large enterprise environment where enterprise mail and file services and applications are necessary to be managed, it's hard to find a solution more elegant than Microsoft's Active Directory and one of the better management suites (i.e., Altiris, LANDesk, etc.). In a smaller business environment you could make an argument for Microsoft's Small Business Server (which is a bargain) but you could as well for a Mac desktop with Mac server. In many regards it would come down to what applications you need to run and if they have any operating system dependencies. In a small business you could actually run a Mac server as your authentication (logon), file/print server and be quite happy. It could actually be a little cheaper too. As the industry moves toward more browser-based applications we'll see less dependency on a particular operating system so many things can change quickly.

One thing that has surprised me is the negative press that Vista has received. Every new operating system has its growing pains and teething but Vista seems to have received more than its fair share. But in my experience with it, which includes 3 beta versions and the production version were that it was quite stable and the aesthetics were great. Usability wise, you eventually become numb to the security reminders (though I guess that can somewhat defeat the purpose) but the most challenging things for me were trying to find stuff that I needed to service on a regular basis (network connections, for example) and lack of driver support. Microsoft and some of its key partners made a lot to do about the quantity of drivers built in but I found it to be sparse.

Mac OS X--the Mac operating system, UNIX-based as it is, has undergone some big changes since its inception at the beginning of the millennium. I personally hadn't touched Macs since I left college where I worked in a computer lab and supported the Macs. I really didn't have much interest in the Macs running the OS 8 or 9 since so much was happening with Windows at the time and Active Directory made its debut on Server 2000. When I got to my job with the University of Nevada, I heard from the Mac user community (representing nearly 20% of the campus) that the support for Macs was abysmal. Since they were using UNIX at the core and I had been working with Linux and UNIX for 5 years at that point, I would give it a try. I purchased PowerBook laptops for all of my staff at the time (the new aluminum G4 PowerBooks had just come out and they were quite fashionable). In fact, I splurged and bought a PowerBook 15" loaded for personal use as well. It took me a long time to 'get it' and would spend hours trying to figure out what I needed to do to get my job done. After a few months I overcame the hurdles (figuring out how to use Microsoft's Remote Desktop on the Mac helped a lot too) and started to see the elegance of the Mac. At the time the hardware was definitely expensive for the performance compared to the Intel/AMD options. Once the shift to Intel processors came around, I was all sorts of happy. In powerful desktops and servers the Apple machines were often quite a bit cheaper than the Dells and considering that they could run Windows natively, it was quite attractive. For my home use, and probably most people's, I think a Mac is a more enjoyable computer experience. Photo editing, surfing, music management and creation, video editing, and video chats are all easy and fun with the Mac. For me using a Mac makes the stuff I want to do with a computer happen. The hardware is generally very elegant and in fact, the low-end laptops, so long as you don't need big video gaming power, are a bargain. For about $1100 you get a Core 2 Duo Santa Rosa processor, 1 GB RAM, remote control, 80 GB 5400 RPM drive, Wireless b/g/n, Bluetooth, and a great web cam, not to mention a good suite of consumer software.

Linux--I really like Linux and most UNIX distributions for servers. They tend to be remarkably stable and one of my favorite things about them is that updates almost NEVER require a reboot. Mac and Windows servers seem to require a reboot about every 2nd or 3rd update session. Linux on the other hand can almost always stably update kernel-level items without reboots. Even on my home Linux server I would have uptimes limited by power outages and physical moves--even then extending past 6 months. The catch though for many people is keeping your Linux/UNIX server up to date on all the applications. Often times there are core applications that don't have any sort of automatic updating or notification routines and as a result it's up to the systems administrator to keep an eye on them manually to look for updates. One solution is to use a bundled Linux distribution such as SuSE or Red Hat which have the ability to update the applications through a core update mechanism. Of course, if you choose to manually install applications you are back in the same boat as doing a 'roll your own' variation. The big down-side to the bundled distributions is that you probably won't be using the latest version of the applications because those tend to be upgraded infrequently. I also don't care for the fact that the bigger bundled distributions now require registration.

As a desktop though, I would be reluctant to recommend Linux. I've tried multiple iterations of KDE for the desktop and Gnome. None have really been a good alternative to the Mac OS or Windows--things are just too patched together. For me it was an uphill battle, as much as I wanted to make it work. Of course you then get into the fact that so few applications exist for the Linux desktop.

So, there it is, for home use I personally prefer Macs for what I do (video chat, photo editing and library, music, and video encoding) but for larger businesses, it's hard to argue against Windows, at least until more applications are cross-platform, which is happening. I don't know that Linux will ever gain critical mass on the desktop but it will continue to evolve as a server OS and the fact that the vast majority of hardware embedded operating systems are based on Linux is hard to ignore.

Rumor: Windows Apps Running Native on Your Mac | Compiler from Wired.com

Code was found in Leopard that looks for Windows DLL's where attempting to load a Windows executable... future feature: running Windows apps natively?

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Of Life

My baby girl is approaching a year of age. It's been a fascinating experience becoming a parent and priorities change and time scheduling is a delicate and fragile dance but it's totally worth it. Of course the first three months are a blur and you certainly question what the hell you were thinking in that period. After that you either get numb or it gets better, I think it's mostly the latter.

I can't describe how excited I am to get home and see my family after being gone all day. I'm usually up and moving around 5:30 in the morning and do my morning routines (news, breakfast, shower, etc.). I usually leave for work a little after 7 and don't get home until sometime after 6 PM. The mornings are tough for me sometimes because Sadie wakes up a little, usually ready for a morning feeding. I have to fight my urge to pick her up and cuddle her for a morning fix before leaving. She needs to sleep and feed and we're trying to condition her to a routine but it's tough. When I get home I give Carrie a kiss and then it's my time with Sadie. We chase each other around the house, we read, we spin around, we chase the cat (and the cat loves it), and I often give her a bath before Carrie puts her to bed. It's a lot of fun and I wish I could spend more time with her but we usually try to have some father-daughter time on the weekends.

No point to this really, just that kids can change your life, for the better if you let them.

About my last 3 out of 4 Jobs....

I was reading another thing about finding the right fit with a job and it reminded me of something I hadn't thought of in a long time. In 3 of my 4 jobs out of college, I was promoted within 6 months of being hired.

At one, I was hired as a manager of a small group of systems administrators and within a few months I was promoted to a director level with various units of IT reporting to me.

At the position before that I was hired on as a technical trainer and within 5 months I was asked to take a manger role with far greater responsibility.

Before that I was hired on as a technical product specialist and within 3 months i was traveling around the US as the primary liaison between the customers and the engineers and later promoted to the role of Global Training Manager covering several continents.

I'm really not trying to brag here but in all instances I've been brought on to do one thing which I've excelled at to the point that it gained the attention of higher level management and was quickly moved into larger roles with greater responsibility.

OS X Leopard and Screen Sharing

I was at the Corte Madera Apple Store this afternoon getting my laptop's power supply and battery swapped out and someone next to me at the Genius Bar was there trying to figure out why his 'Back to My Mac' remote access wasn't working. While I have not personally used B2MM to connect across the Internet, I have a different solution that I have used for remote desktop connections and other things for a few years now. It is simplified with Leopard because they have included a basic remote desktop utility called Screen Sharing that is the underlying application used to, well, share screens of another Mac. This all assumes both computers are running Mac OS X version 10.5. Here's what I did....

1. Sign up for a free Dynamic DNS account by registering. You will end up with a subdomain name. For the sake of this example, I will call mine wilbur.dyndns.org where 'wilbur' is my subdomain name.
   
2. Download and install the DynDNS Updater software from the Support section to your home computer (one that will be on all the time) and fill it in with your account information after it's installed. Configure it so that it launches whenever the computer is turned on.
3. Change the home computer's IP address to a static one on your subnet. For instance, if your home firewall/router is providing DHCP addresses, leave that setting but choose an IP address that's available for your home computer. For instance, Linksys firewalls by default use the IP addressing schema of 192.168.1.xxx. They by default hand out IP addresses starting with 192.168.1.100 and up. In this instance I would use a lower IP address, such as 192.168.1.50 for the computer to be controlled remotely. Test it and make sure you can still get to the Internet in your browser.
4. On your Mac, go to System Preferences/Security/Firewall and add 'Apple Remote Desktop' under the 'Set access for specific services and applications'. See the picture on this entry for more detail.
5. On your home firewall/router, make sure you open up TCP/UDP ports 3283 and 5900 and have them route connections to the IP address of the computer you want to remotely control (for this example, 192.168.1.50). You will likely need to restart your home firewall/router now.

At this point you should have the appropriate ports opened on your firewall/router, your Mac should have a static (or fixed) IP address, the Mac's firewall should allow Apple Remote Desktop, and you have an account and the DynDNS Updater software running.

Now, on your remote Mac, you can go to your Macintosh HD/System/Library/CoreServices/ and double click on 'Screen Sharing'. In the box at the bottom type in the name of your subdomain that you registered for in step 1 above. In my case, it is wilbur.dyndns.org and click on 'Connect'. If you did everything right, you should be connecting to your remote computer!

Of Music and Media

I'm beginning to feel that we're on the cusp of something new with music. No, the music itself will ebb and flow stylistically as it has before but the means of distribution and awareness of new music will change. It's starting to happen now with Radiohead distributing their latest album for free and asking fans to pay what they think it's worth and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails encouraging new means of distribution. Apple has exposed unheard of artists through its Tuesday weekly free music on iTunes (a friend of mine on average buys an album a month based on hearing new artists this way). There's no denying the popularity of MySpace for music (though I personally don't care for the jumbled appearance).

At the same time we have the RIAA who seems to be looking for more and more ways to protect its interests and continue to maintain its profits. The members are desperately scrambling to find ways to make money now that it's nearly impossible to get away with selling an entire album for the sake of one or two songs that the consumers want. This means to sell a complete album you either have someone who really likes the band, all the songs need to be good, or you sell the entire album at a price that warrants buying the entire album instead of the 2 or 3 songs that someone might normally buy. The RIAA is incredibly aggressive about pursuing those who have illegally obtained or distribute music to the point that their lawsuits are being challenged because of the astronomical amount per pirated song.

So, what does all this mean? I think we're going to find emerging Web 2.0 applications and enhancements to Amazon's MP3 store and iTunes to make it easier to find new artists. There will be better self-promotion. Big artists could recommend upcoming artists for songs they should download at reduced cost or free samples. There's going to be a lot of neat new stuff going on in the next few years. And frankly, it won't break my heart to see the RIAA members have to re-tool to remain profitable and to compete.

Where to Live?

I've had a few places in mind of where I'd prefer to live for a while now. They do have some common threads.

Some of the things that I look for include:

• interesting geography--I like mountains, bodies of water, and trees; I like camping, motorcycling, skiing, kayaking, and bicycling so my ideal locale will permit all of those
• climate--I'm not a particular fan of Hawaii or Florida type of weather, I do like seasonal changes and I actually like some snow; having grown up in Montana I think I have a fundamental appreciation for the change of seasons; if I'm going to be somewhere it doesn't snow I'd really rather that it be mild year-round, such as Marin and Sonoma counties in California
  
• community--I've lived in areas that were bedroom communities that seemed to lack their own sense of identity and while often peaceful, I do prefer a place that can stand on its own and isn't necessarily dependent on the next county's economic prosperity; I prefer a place where people feel like they are active participants and contributors; within this grouping I tend to prefer places with fewer than 150,000 residents
• culture and character--this is a little trickier to characterize but small northeastern towns of 4,000 people can have it, particularly if a local college is a major occupant of the community due to the nature that a college town can bring; part of this is an intellectual curiosity that I enjoy; if the town has some interesting and meaningful history, all the better; I don't require a symphony but a local playhouse or a couple of coffee houses with live acts or the occasional poetry readings take place, I'm pretty happy; a raison d'etre really makes me happy; towns where the local college or university are significant tend to score higher; ethnic diversity is important to this as well
  
• shopping--this is a mixed bag, I'm really not much of a mall crawler or big-box shopper but hopefully I don't have to go much more than an hour to get to those places for the 3 or 4 times a year I might feel the need; most of my shopping is done via the web now, heck, I even have Huggies on a subscription through Amazon delivered to the doorstep! Of course, organic farmers markets and grocers are big with us.

So, with this said, what locales have I identified? This is not a complete list but covers many in the U.S. that hit my radar (in no particular order):

• Missoula, MT
• McCall, ID (though there's not much work outside retail trade)
• Boise, ID
• Pasadena, CA
• Claremont, CA (trees and PhDs)
  
• Camino and Placerville, CA
• Red Hook, NY
• New London, NH
• Portland, ME
• Petaluma, CA
• much of Marin County, CA
• Eugene, OR
• Portland, OR
  
• Medford, OR
• Spokane, WA
  

Of course there are many areas in western Europe that I really like too but job opportunities are limited for a US citizen who doesn't already have work rights in the EU.

So, if you have any other suggestions for places that have the blend that I've described, please let me know!

Coffee Makers....

Minor post here but I just noticed that my response to a story about reducing energy consumption was picked up in another story on ComputerWorld. Too cool!

In sum, we switched to an insulated carafe coffee maker because we discovered that leaving a coffee maker on to keep the coffee in the carafe warm takes about 1,000 watts of electricity. That's nearly as much as a hair dryer or a space heater! Of course, coffee that hasn't been burnt by a 1,000 watt warming plate for an hour tends to taste better too.

On Community

I was talking with my in-laws over the Thanksgiving holiday and the subject turned to that of their neighbors. They referred to 2 or 3 of their neighbors by the nicknames they had come up for them. I thought this sounded curious and I asked them if they knew any of their neighbors by given name and they answered 'no.' They've lived beside and across from the same neighbors for seven years. Interestingly enough none of this surprises me.

It could be my imagination but it seems to me that fewer and fewer people actually know their neighbors. I try to reserve judgement on most things but I really do believe that it's beneficial for everyone to know their neighbors. I'm not saying you need to be best friends with them but I believe it improves the quality of your life if you know who lives next to you and you have a rapport. With my first home I got to know nearly all the neighbors on my street. We would help each other out, share tools, and attend one another's parties for kids, Halloween, etc. When we moved to Reno we immediately got to know our neighbors to our right--they are DINKs who also enjoy camping, motorcycles, bicycling, and home improvement. We looked out for one another, took care of the other's house during vacations, and would have the periodic beer or dinner. We got to know the people across the street and a few others.

I guess I believe that it can be a mutually beneficial thing to know your neighbor. I believe it's better for the neighborhood, the property value, the safety, and general happiness if you know something about the people with whom you live in close proximity. It's nice having a name to associate to the face, and it is even better if you get to be friends. I still consider my neighbor from Placerville to be one of my best friends.

Before leaving my in-laws after Thanksgiving I asked them for a New Year's resolution--get to know 3 of your neighbors. I think this is good for everyone no matter where you are. You'll enjoy the community you help to build. You'll be a part of something.

Confidence – the Ultimate Personal Brand Attribute

Confidence – the Ultimate Personal Brand Attribute
By William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson

Nothing is as attractive as confidence. You know people in your life who just exude confidence, and you see how others are drawn to them. Confidence is powerful. It’s empowering. It’s grounding.

What is confidence?

According to Wikipedia, self-confidence is a term used to describe how secure a person is in his or her own decisions and actions. This faith in one’s abilities may be applied generally or to specific situations or tasks. Self-confidence is an important attribute because the lack of it can cause underperformance.

Although someone can be incorrectly self confident, self-confidence usually involves a realistic assessment of one's own abilities. People with high self-confidence typically have little fear of the unknown, make decisions with conviction, are able to stand up for what they believe in and have the courage to risk embarrassment. Confident people aren’t afraid to speak in front of large groups, put their thinking on paper for others to critique or share new ideas. They have a vision and believe that vision can become reality.

How does confidence relate to personal branding?

Confidence is an attribute of all strong brands. After all, strong brands are not wishy-washy. Confidence derives from an understanding and appreciation of who you are. It comes from being comfortable in your own skin. It’s a celebration of your authentic self, acknowledgment of your innate traits and skills and an ease of knowing you have what you need to achieve success – however you define it.

To achieve a higher level of confidence, we must develop greater clarity of our unique gifts and talents. We must acknowledge how powerful we are when we are maximizing these strengths, and we must feel secure in our ability to persevere.

You will find free exercises here to help gain self-awareness.

Confidence busters and bolsters in the world of work.

When it comes to the world of work, we have many opportunities to bolster or break our self-confidence. While some of us are naturally more confident than others, confidence can be built—especially if we avoid the busters. Focusing on the positives and your long-term goals will help you to stay on track when the “turkeys get you down.”

Confidence Busters

• Working for a company whose values are incongruent with yours
• A manager who doesn’t acknowledge the value of the diversity of talents on his/her team
• The wrong skill fit for the job you have
• People who take credit for your accomplishments
• Being overworked and underpaid
• Negative feedback on your work

Confidence Boosters

• Successfully taking a risk that involves your strengths
• Surrounding yourself with others who are validating and nurturing
• Recognition for a job well done
• Asking for what you want and getting it
• Having your bio, resume, or online portfolio professionally written (you get objective perspective on just how marketable you really are)

Are you confident?

Ask your trusted advisors what they think. You can find out if others describe you as confident by taking the personal brand assessment.

That what you focus on e-x-p-a-n-d-s. Think confident!

William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson are the authors of Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand and partners in Reach, a global leader in personal branding for career-minded executives and professionals. Reach is the platinum sponsor of “A Brand You World” Telesummit – a virtual professional development conference featuring personal branding experts and bestselling authors. Subscribe to the podcast at www.personalbrandingsummit.com.

Is It Time to Toss Your Resume?http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Is It Time to Toss Your Resume?
By Abby Locke

Would you cook a gourmet meal and then serve it on dirty dishes? Probably not. So why would you engage in a new job search using outdated, ineffective resume development strategies?

If you’ve been conducting a targeted job search that is not generating any interviews or getting you the results that you want, it’s time to sit down and evaluate your existing resume.

Let’s take a close look at some of the questions you should ask yourself to avoid the basic mistakes that could hamper your job search.

Is Your Resume Too Short?

Are you one of those die-hard, traditional executives still abiding by the one-page resume rule? There are innovative, one-page career marketing documents like the networking resume and career biography, but your standard executive resume should not be squeezed onto one page.

If you downplay your career progression and end up cutting out critical information just to get it to fit onto one page, you run the risk of appearing extremely under-qualified. Your goal is to keep the resume content succinct, concise, and as brief as possible. But, if your career story is compelling and accomplishment-focused, developing a two-page resume is more than acceptable.

Does Your Resume’s First Page Stand Out?

Generally, you have a max of 30 to 60 seconds to make a great impression on a potential employer. Don’t make the mistake of filling your resume’s first page with heavy detail that does not support your qualifications, experience, and expertise. Information like education, certifications, associations, and volunteer work take up too much valuable real estate on the first page.

Instead, use the first page to strategically draw the reader in with a strong personal branding statement, career highlights, and core competencies.

Does Your Executive Resume Contain Too Much Fluff?

If you have opted to include a summary of executive qualifications, key achievements, or an executive profile at the beginning of your resume, be sure to avoid adding “fluffy”, superfluous statements that don’t add value.

Here are a few common phrases that you should avoid on your resume:

• Great problem solver concerning customer relations, inventory management and cost containment.
• Demonstrates superior leadership through conceptual thinking and strategic planning.
• Articulate communicator with expertise in professional presentations and key professional relationships.

These statements are general, can be used by anyone, and do nothing to differentiate you from your competition.

Try using more powerful statements like these:

• Forward-thinking strategist able to structure contract agreements, financial investments, and joint ventures that increase business growth and minimize financial losses.
• Broad-based expertise with marketing to diverse cultural and ethnic groups in untapped, domestic, and international markets.

Do Your Achievements Stand Out?

Don’t make the reader work hard to determine if you are the right candidate – most recruiters won’t take the time to hunt down your achievements if they’re lost deep in your resume. Your executive resume is a career marketing document that needs to effectively “sell” you to potential employers.

When your career achievements and high-impact accomplishment statements are buried among your daily or overall responsibilities, you can easily be overlooked as a viable candidate.

But, you can draw attention to major career achievements in several ways. Try writing an umbrella statement with quantifiable successes that demonstrate your problem-solving and leadership capabilities. The statements below would appear just before the job description


Developed a healthcare consulting services company from startup to fully operational in just nine months; grew annual revenues from zero to $5 million in first year.

OR

Performance Impact: Introduced innovative process improvement initiatives that automated 45 processes, shrunk operating costs by $500,000, and eliminated 100% of manual, time-consuming tasks.

You can also use hard-hitting, bulleted statements that really stand out. Check out the examples below:

• Delivered $13.5 million savings in general and administrative expenses by conducting extensive review of corporate and field human resources operations.
• Reduced annual HR expenditures 50% by eliminating duplicate costs, creating benefit efficiencies, and reducing employee training costs.
• Decreased staff turnover 20% and boosted employee satisfaction by implementing targeted recruiting, retention and human resources enhancement programs.
• Lowered annual benefit costs for two consecutive years by introducing managed care approach to employee health care plans.

Do You Display Your Personal Brand?

Adding a personal branding statement to your executive resume helps to manage the readers’ expectations right from the beginning. Think about your professional reputation, your unique attributes, and your consistent trend of career accomplishments. Use that information to write a strong, memorable branding statement and include it as part of the title header on your executive resume.

For example, a manufacturing executive may have a branding statement similar to:

SENIOR MANUFACTURER EXECUTIVE

Engaging cutting-edge technologies to advance corporate-wide initiatives, expedite manufacturing processes, and achieve aggressive revenue / cost objectives.

While an Operations executive would emphasize his leadership and management capabilities in a branding statement like the following:

SENIOR OPERATIONS EXECUTIVE
Start-Up, Emerging & High-Growth Companies

The Profit Builder: Systematically improving internal systems, strengthening operational processes and mobilizing vital resources that propel companies into stable, profitable entities.

If a career move is on your list of New Year’s resolutions, take the time now to get your executive resume and career marketing documents in order.

Abby M. Locke, president of Premier Writing Solutions, is a Certified Executive Resume-Writer and Personal Brand Strategist who helps senior-level professionals and C-level executives achieve personal success with customized, branded executive resumes and career marketing documents. Her resume samples have been published in Nail the Resume! Great Tips for Creating Dynamic Resumes and Same-Day Resumes.

On Commuting

After moving back to California I have a 22 mile commute each direction. We could have moved closer to work but we really like Petaluma. If I had a job any further south we would probably move but I consider it an acceptable commute, particularly by motorcycle where I can take back roads (at least when there's daylight after work) and I can split lanes once I get to the traffic congestion. As much as I like the area driving/riding it day after day can get a little boring. I recently wired my motorcycle helmet with thin Chatterbox earphones that I inserted into the space behind my ears in the helmet and have been listening to podcasts on my iPod. I find the podcasts perfect because I can pay attention to the road without big volume changes in the audio and am still able to pay attention to the podcast. Lately I've been going through the Vintage Airstream Podcasts and am really enjoying them. I seldom have the time at home to sit pay attention to a 50 minute podcast so this really works out nicely. Of course when I finish those I'll have to delve back into my Click and Clack, The Tappet Brothers.

Hosted Core Services

I think the next decade will prove to be an interesting time as far as hosted services are concerned. The prices and quality of hosted services are improving for the buyer every couple of months. Microsoft/Hotmail, Yahoo!, and Gmail are all improving their free services and offer some sort of business class hosted solution as well. Of course they have integrated social networking and applications as well. Google is leading the charge to deploy as many features/applications as possible and theirs and Microsoft's offerings are the most elegant. Google's isn't quite as well integrated as Microsoft's but Microsoft lacks the visibility and still feels a little too restrictive by comparison (log in at least once every 90 days or lose it).

Of course one of the most core services is e-mail. This has rapidly become the file server for employees and personal users of mail. So why should someone host their mail (and other services)? Cost is an obvious reason, and accessibility and you don't have to handle the burden of off-site redundancy, etc.

There are a lot of other details and some philosophical/legal questions that need to be considered on any of this as well but there are a couple of different core opinions about it but I think I can predict a reaction and opinion based almost solely on age.

One of the biggest benefits of having your own mail system is that you have instant, live support from internal people, including the ability to restore something you inadvertently deleted. There is also a sense of security that you can go into the server room and physically touch the server(s) that holds you mail. Some people like that sort of thing. Hosting your own mail, and this is a big generalization, tends to be a more popular solution for people who are roughly 35 or older, unless they tend to be more technology aware.

On the other side of the argument, we have people using mail who are now 10 - 35 years old who most probably grew up with a free hosted mail account being their original e-mail. They never had the luxury of having their mail restored and probably tend to be more careful with what they delete. They have a greater awareness and responsibility for their mail management. This group is also of the opinion that mail quotas should be gargantuan. To maintain the types of quotas that the hosted services can is overwhelming for most businesses. My present Gmail quota is 4.8 GB! I'm now uploading all of my old archives into my Gmail account so I can have it in one place. That's cool! Once enough of these people become employees and they bring their expectations to the workplace, it will be too cost-prohibitive to have the quotas to which they're accustomed and they don't expect that level of extra service. It's kind of like the concierge guy/lady in the bathroom that used to be prevalent everywhere and now only remains in stuffy or old-school hotels and restaurants. Frankly, those guys make me uncomfortable.

There will always be a desire or requirement for some companies to keep their mail hosted on-site, but much of this will be driven by the employees and the changing landscape.

We're seeing this as some colleges and universities are beginning to host official student mail. I looked at it quite seriously for the University of Nevada, Reno about a year and a half ago and found that both Gmail and Hotmail had pretty compelling systems for switching. Microsoft's solution would have caused some resistance mostly from the anti-MS faculty on campus but offered pretty good integration with the Active Directory environment but had few options for students to configure their own mail (forwarding, POP/IMAP access, etc.). Gmail didn't have the native AD integration but it did have more options for mail handling and it did have APIs for hooking into the existing directory services.

So, with all that being said, there is potential for small to mid-sized companies using hosted mail soon with existing options (and several are, but not a enough to be very noticeable). Much of the acceptance of a hosted mail offering is generational though. The sub 35 year old workers are more independent in terms of mail and their expectations are different than the average 35+ worker. As we get more of the Generation Y and later workers in the companies and the offerings become more robust, we'll see the shift.

Motorcycle Therapy

The last couple of months have been a whirlwind and most of my free time has been occupied with job searching. I was thinking of going camping this weekend but Carrie didn't much feel like it and she suggested a long motorcycle ride. That sounded like a pretty good idea so I headed out for a good ride on the VFR. I set up a new playlist on the iPod and I was off. I headed out toward Bodega Bay and north on Highway 1 (PCH) up to Mendocino and then back down Highway 128 to Cloverdale and back to Petaluma on 101. I left around noon and didn't eat anything until I got to Cloverdale around 3:30 PM. I guess that's what happens when you're having fun. There are few things like an all-day ride to clear your head. Highway 1 is a spectacular road--one where you want to take in the amazing scenery but also where you want to maximize the ride by hitting all the corners just right. It was mostly foggy on the ride up with the slightly slimy mist that gathers on the visor. It gave me good time to think about the job search and the current options. I can't say that I drew any conclusions but I feel like I have a better sense of the pros and cons of each. For me there are few things more satisfying than a full day's ride on some outstanding roads. Thanks to Carrie for the suggestion and giving me the afternoon to amuse myself!

The Future of Job Seeking

Much is being written about having your own online identity and presence and management of that. I think it makes sense, I certainly Google on every applicant and business partner I deal with. So what about someone considering me as a potential employee and they can find plenty about me online (much of my own contributions/publications as well as a lot of stuff from forums and my time with the University of Nevada) but I can't find anything about them? I suppose it's a personal choice but if someone or a company claims to be embracing new technologies and is interested in me as an applicant because of my enthusiasm and I can't find anything about him/her, should I pursue the position?

This is certainly not bleeding edge thinking but perhaps leading edge. What's the future hold on this?

One fakakta Week!

Well, this has been an interesting work week....

Due to the mortgage credit crunch our business has nosedived and as a result we've laid off several people, including many in information technology, including my staff who maintain phones and the servers that the phone equipment uses, as well as those who were our vendor links including phone service.

Late last week we lost connectivity to one of our remote sites, as a result of AT&T having terminated the wrong network line. As a result we lost phone service with them, building security, and data. It took nearly all of one day to get the line reconnected and then AT&T wanted to bill me back for getting it running. I calmly explained that it was not our fault for the wrong line being cut and they seemed to understand that they shouldn't charge us then.

Thursday of this week one of our guys goes into the server room and it's nearly 90 degrees! Turns out one of our 2 A/C units is blowing ambient air. The technician from the maintenance company comes out and diagnoses a bad compressor. That will be installed Monday but in the mean time we're on one A/C unit and have a series of fans through the room exhausting the hot air.

About noon today we get a call that voice mail isn't working. After trying to diagnose it ourselves and seeing nothing but cryptic errors on the server we break down and call the vendor. Since we've been trying to save money we didn't renew the $87k annual maintenance agreement and we're low on their list of priorities (that company is ExtraTeam). We paid a deposit by credit card and are waiting for them to step up still as I type.

So, the lesson in all this? People in pivotal roles are pivotal. The positive side is that my remaining staff and I are all getting a crash course in much of the infrastructure and how to resolve issues. Good times ;-).

Kobayashi Maru

Kobayashi Maru, I love this phrase, it's the name of a test administered at the Star Trek academy. It refers to a situation where the person being tested is presented with alternatives and there is no right answer. The test is really a measure of character about how we deal with choices and come to conclusions.

By the way, I think most everyone has seen some spin on the motivational posters somewhere or another, but this one is really fun.

When An Executive Resume in Not Enough

When An Executive Resume in Not Enough By Abby M. Locke

While an executive resume will always serve as the primary tool in your job search, increasing competition for top, high-paying jobs requires that you engage in new strategies for job search success.

Developing a portfolio that includes innovative, cutting-edge career marketing documents can really power up your job search and give you the boost that you need. The best approach is to create a series of one or two-page documents that provide the reader with an in-depth look at various aspects of your career progression. Like the executive resume, ROI career marketing documents must be targeted, contain relevant keywords and highlight critical career achievements that position you as the right candidate for the job.

Here are four ROI Career Documents to consider:

1. Career Biography: This is a synopsis of your entire career and education written in a narrative format and works well for networking contacts, speaking engagements, board positions and company websites. With a career biography, you only need to focus on top career achievements and milestones for each company; job responsibilities are generally summarized. When written in strong, active language, the career biography can be just as powerful and informative as the executive resume.

Here are the first two paragraphs from a career biography written for a Senior Consultant. Notice how the first paragraph ends with a summary statement that encapsulates a portion of his career and the consistent value he brings to various companies:

Daniel Allen brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the field of global outsourcing services. For the past six years, he has worked with Fortune 500 companies like Nike and ABN AMRO, where he efficiently met unique organizational and technological constraints to produce significant achievements in cost reduction, service delivery and internal process improvement.

Currently, as one of the Senior Consultants for the Global Advisory Services, Daniel is responsible for leading program management and project planning initiatives for growing companies seeking to secure outsourcing contracts in the global marketplace. He interfaces directly with senior management and C-level executives to strategize and devise effective measures including contract negotiation, agreement structuring, and operational level agreements for long-term ROI maximization.

2. Critical Leadership Initiatives: This one to two-page document is very popular with C-level executives as it allows them to showcase their top leadership and business strengths at work. When writing this ROI career document, make sure that you chose achievements from your entire career that demonstrate strategy planning, organizational leadership, staff development and business acumen - just to name a few. Use this document to show potential employers that you have broad-based expertise. Present each achievement in the Challenge-Action-Results (CAR) format as best as possible.

Here is a sample achievement from a critical leadership initiatives document written for a marketing executive:

Leadership Challenge: Revitalize a poor performing marketing department challenged with lackluster results, service underutilization and declining employee morale - VP of Corporate Marketing, ABC Business Corporation

Introduced company to new "market-driven" philosophy; revised existing marketing, branding and communication strategies; and instituted comprehensive public and community relations programs.

Bottom-line impact: Annual revenues surpassed $200 million goal in just two years and internal utilization of marketing department increased 200%.

3. Industry / Functional Profile: This ROI career document demonstrates and verifies your expertise and strengths in a particular industry or functional area. For example, this document can be focused on technology, marketing, M&A or business development. It is generally one page and gives evidence of specific qualifications and expertise; it’s also highly effective as a leave-behind document after an interview.

Again, using the Challenge-Action-Results format helps to "sell" your story. Here is an achievement used in a technology profile:

Technology Challenge: As VP, Information & Technology Services for ABC Enterprises, revitalize business operations constrained by spiraling technology costs, missed project deadlines and inconsistent team performance.

Actions: Conducted in-depth analysis to identify business "pain" points, assembled top performing individuals to serve on planning team, identified highest revenue-generating products and services and prioritized key business objectives.

Solution & Results: Secured management approval and $50 million to implement the company’s first IT strategy and technology roadmap over a three-year period. Subsequently introduced new processes that propelled double-digit cost reduction throughout the company.

4. Networking Resume: As the holidays approach and business activities slow down, your job search does not need to take a break. Armed with an effective, one-page networking resume, you can still catch the attention of recruiters and key decision makers. The networking resume is essentially a slimmed down version of your executive resume and it gives readers your top career achievements from each position/company. Below is the top portion of a networking resume:

SALES MANAGEMENT & MARKETING EXECUTIVE

Self-directed, motivated sales executive with distinctive track record of success in taking startup, turnaround and high growth companies to new levels. Astute business acumen coupled with solid customer relations and operations expertise ideal for securing new business opportunities, expanding customer base and achieving corporate goals.

Strategic Planning / P&L Management / New Product Launch & Positioning
Sales Initiatives / New Business Development / National & Regional Sales
Business Partners & Alliances / Customer Service & Retention / Marketing Plans

JOB TARGETS
Position Level: Executive Vice President / Senior Vice President / Director
Focus Areas: Sales, Marketing and New Business Development
Industries: Financial Services • High Technology • Manufacturing

Overall, you want to remember that the same amount of detail and effort should go into creating your ROI career documents as you would put into creating an executive resume. If your job search is starting to go in circles and/or you’re competing against the best of the best, try adding one of these ROI career documents to get you ahead of the competition.

Abby M. Locke, president of Premier Writing Solutions, is a Certified Executive Resume-Writer and Personal Brand Strategist who helps senior-level professionals and C-level executives achieve personal success with customized, branded executive resumes and career marketing documents. Her resume samples have been published in Nail the Resume! Great Tips for Creating Dynamic Resumes and Same-Day Resumes.

The Six P's of Online Branding

The Six P's of Online Branding By Kirsten Dixson and William Arruda

We’ve written many articles about how you will be Googled in your job search and how having your own blog or website gives you a great deal of control over your personal brand online.

But what if you’re not ready to have your own site and just want to build an online profile quickly? Or, perhaps you came up as "Digitally Dabbling" in our Career Distinction Online ID Calculator, and you want to increase your volume of relevant online entries? All is not lost! Just use our Six P’s to build your online brand.

Publishing
Write articles or whitepapers, and get them published in online publications that your target audience reads. Your online profile will be even better if these publications are highly ranked in Google, Yahoo or MSN. You can also submit articles to article banks to have them syndicated.

Posting
If you’ve ever purchased a book from Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com, you can post a book review on these websites. It’s key to review books that are relevant to your area of expertise. Off-topic choices may confuse the perception of your online personal brand. Even if you love to cook, don’t review a cookbook if you don’t want to work in the food and beverage industry.

Pontificating
Posting comments on others’ blogs is a powerful way to build your brand - yet it’s probably the most overlooked online branding tool. Dan Schawbel is a marketing executive who has creatively used this technique to increase his visibility. In fact, this tool even garnered him a mention in Fast Company.

You can find relevant blogs on which to comment at Technorati.com or through Google’s blog search. Read a blog for a while before you comment to get a feel for the author’s style and whether you want this particular blog associated with your own brand. Remember, you can’t take back the comment once it’s posted, so ensure that it’s professional, well thought out, and error free.

If you’re hesitant about posting, go with your gut and sleep on it. Be sure to link the comment back to your own blog or website if you have one. You could also link it to your LinkedIn or Ziggs profile if you don’t have your own site.

Participating in online discussion forums also helps you to connect with and become more visible to others who share the same interests, though it’s not necessarily a part of your public online identity that will show up in a search. You can find forums through Google Groups or Yahoo Groups, and some by-invitation forums may be available to you through professional associations. Bernadette Martin, founder of Visibility Branding, says online forums can be a valuable way to formulate ideas and strategies before presenting them to the public on the internet.

Publicizing
Write press releases about your endeavors (solo business project successes, what you learned from attending a professional conference, noteworthy volunteer work, information about an upcoming speaking gig or article, etc.), and post them to free press release distribution sites like www.prleap.com.

You can find more sites like this by Googling "free press release services". If you need the press release to rank highly (maybe you have digital dirt that you are trying to sweep under the virtual rug?), consider purchasing the search engine optimization services available from many of these content distribution sites.

Partnering
One of the most important elements of your brand environment is your professional network. Since your network can extend your brand for you by spreading the word about your unique value, it’s ideal to get others to write about you online. Cultivate relationships with journalists and bloggers. If you’re writing a blog that people read and enjoy, they’ll write about what you are saying and link back to you. It’s that simple!

Also, leverage social networking sites like LinkedIn, Ryze, ecademy and Facebook to connect with your network and keep them updated on your accomplishments. Aim for quality of contacts over quantity, and only add your real colleagues and clients to your online network.

Profiling
Use services like Ziggs, LinkedIn, Naymz, and ZoomInfo to create a basic online profile and increase the volume of Google results for your name. If your professional information already appears online, you are likely to have a profile in Zoominfo.

Since they automatically create your profile and twenty percent of the Fortune 500 use ZoomInfo for recruiting, you’ll want to claim your profile and update it regularly. To get the most out of these sites, post content that is consistent across all of your profiles and that matches your resume.

William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson are the authors of Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand and partners in Reach , a global leader in personal branding for career-minded executives and professionals.