Greggles, Gregorybeans, Frijoles, Beans
Submitted by greggles on
Get your IE7 Browser. The future of web browsing available at IE7.com.
Heh.
Submitted by greggles on
So, I did it. Today I purchased the FON social router. I figure, if nothing else, I get a cheap WRT54GL router. If it works out to be a cool service then that's great.
Submitted by greggles on
The bane of the telecommunications industry is always infrastructure. Well, maybe sometimes it's the regulation board or the PUC, but mostly it's infrastructure. Capital investments in infrastructure are like fingernails on a chalkboard to the telecom CFO. If you want to create a WIFI hotspot network you have to spend money on a ridiculous number of things like:
What if you could have a wifi network without buying or hiring any of those people? What if you just had a couple engineers who retrofit really cheap WIFI routers with your hardware/software package and then you sell them to people who already have a broadband connection? All of a sudden everybody with a DSL/Cable connection in their house becomes your Salesperson and Field Technician.
At least for the USA, T-Mobile hotspots go for $10/day. And there is no such thing as being able to use them for free. In contrast, "Aliens" on the FON system currently pay $3/day. Undercutting Tmobile by two thirds. Well, that's not bad.
This is what Wired was talking about in their recent "Crowdsourcing" article. It's the idea that as communication and search costs lower you can suddenly contract with everyone in the world to be a tiny little service provider in a giant company that has very little infrastructure or employees, but that does millions in transactions a day. eBay has been doing this for a few years now, but we finally have a fun title for the practice.
Submitted by greggles on
So, I was reading Businessweek the other day (again) and an interview with Soros (subscription required) struck me a little bit odd and misleading.
But a little background first...
One of the first things I remember from my management class was a graph that looked somewhat like this:
Of course it was fancier and what not, but that's the basic idea. If you are in a situation where there is a relatively small amount of time pressure, you can take a little while to make the decision and the structure for the decision making (the management) tends to be relatively democratic. If you are under a deadline and are doing something "serious" or "scary" then there isn't enough time to consider a very broad set of inputs and the decision tends to be more autocratic.
The lesson also discussed how you can flip the situation - or the perception of the situation - to use a different management style. So, if a person or an organization needs to be more autocratic to get an organization to move quickly or do something that isn't very popular then you can emphasize a relatively scary, serious, and time-sensitive item in the world which will give management more power and allow them to make decisions on their own. The employees will respond to this reasonably well for at least a little while because that's what employees do in times of crisis.
So, if you can use an invented crisis to move people to action and make positive change happen then that's a pretty awesome thing. If you disagree with the course of action then you will tend to see this as an abuse of power. There are several examples from U.S.A. politics that show this method in use - whether for good or bad:
Submitted by greggles on
So, for my birthday the bug bought me a new belt from Patagonia that is not only really cool looking, but also has a built in bottle opener. Now that's just awesome. Thanks, partner.
Submitted by greggles on
So, I was reading this article in businessweek about how fancy the satelite dish and cable tv providers are getting. Are you kidding me?
The major breakthrough technologies are
Submitted by greggles on
I was recently asked where the best place is to go for Drupal support if you think you have a bug but you aren't sure.
The question is a tough one. Looking at the Drupal Support page you see lots of options depending on what kind of support you need. For a problem with your own installation of Drupal you can take the problem to:
If it's technical enough, you might also want to go to the developer list or the developer irc channel but wading in there with a question that is not on-topic is a bad idea.
It can be confusing and challenging to know which is the best option. Personally, I tend to use the support mailing list and the forums depending on the question. If there is a specific forum for my topic - like performance - I'll use that specific forum. If it's just "general support" I'll use the support list. The irc channel can get you an instant response, but sometimes it's a ghost town. The support list seems to have a higher ratio of responses/question than the forums do but it is also fairly low traffic at the moment.
There is clear demand from existing large commercial Drupal sites for support. These tend to be a mix of "fix this thing" and upgrading to new releases of the software and adding more features to a site.
I'm curious if there is demand for paid support at a smaller level. If an individual is asking for help in the forum, they get limited response, they try IRC and nobody can answer, what do they do? Do you think that you'd be willing to pay for Drupal support either via email, chat, or phone? If so, how much would you be willing to pay? Would you want to pay per question? Probably from the support side it's necessary to be paid per hour.
