Tips for Twits

It’s not often that we have time away from our projects to share about UX or Product Management.  So when Zwee, Gary, and I were invited to speak on a panel sponsored by Startup Roots SG about both subjects, we were more than happy to participate.  Our fellow panelists, Andy Croll, Navjot Pawera (Bubble Motion), and Meredith Chan (Mig33) provided unique insights and were fun to chat with regarding the challenges encountered introducing good UX and PDM practices into startups and larger companies alike.

Some key takeaways for us:

• Product Management is a vaguely defined organizational role in this region.
• UX as a concept also suffers from a definition blur with usability and design
• Even as former/current Product Managers, there was disagreement amongst the panelists regarding what a PDM’s job scope and responsibilities should be (are).
• There is a definite need to better educate companies and executives on the strategic importance of Product Management.
• Ditto on UX
• You will certainly be hearing more about both topics from us in the coming months…
• In the meantime, here is a recap of the Product Management Panel from Startup Roots SG.

Caveats: This post is not to criticize Ricoh printer’s lack of Mac OS X support. It merely provides a workaround to do printing grayscale on Ricoh C2051 for Mac. What you can’t are printing colour and printing grayscale high quality than 600dpi.

There is a good reason why we need to pay a hefty S$1000 to be able to print from Mac. It is expensive to get the PostScript level 3 option on the Ricoh C2051 because Ricoh has to pay a license to Adobe. Ricoh picks genuine PostScript driver which ensures colour matching and high quality printing, while other manufacturers make compatible PostScript language chips.

So instead of using the original PostScript interpreter, we are going to use Ghostscript (an open-source PostScript interpreter that includes integrated support for the CUPS printing system in Mac OS X.) and Foomatic-Rip (a configurable printing filter to generate appropriate output using PostScript-Printer-Description (PPD)).

• Grab and install the required packages (pxlmono-xxx, foomatic-RIP-xxx and ghostscript-xxx) at Openprinting: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/macosx/pxlmono
• Once you are done, open your favourite web-browser, enter http://localhost:631/admin as the address. Authenticate yourself.
• Click on Add Printer – you should see the Ricoh 2051 printer under Discovered Network Printers. If not, select “LPD/LPR Host or Printer” under “Other Network Printers” and continue. Enter the “lpd://hostaddress”. Optionally, enter location, description for the printer.
• Choose Ricoh for Make/Manufacturer. Choose “Ricoh Aficio MP C2051 PXL” for the Model/Driver select dropdown. If there is no such entry, download the pxlcolor-Ricoh PPD at http://www.openprinting.org/printer/Ricoh/Ricoh-Aficio_MP_C2051
• In order to set Default Options to Grayscale and two-sided-long-edge, navigate to http://localhost:631/admin . Under Printer heading, click on Manage Printers, then select the printer we just added. Under Administration dropdown, select Set Default Options, then click on General tab, set Grayscale for Color Mode, Long-edge for Duplex.
• Finally, fire up your terminal and run the follow command (ignore %, it represents the terminal prompt)

  % sudo SystemStarter restart PrintingServices

Even if you have set the default monochrome printing option for the printer, some applications will not pick the default options automatically. So before submitting the print job, you have to select Printer Features in the Print dialog, choose Grayscale instead of Color for Color Mode option. Happy printing!

About a month ago, Z wrote a collection of his thoughts on attracting top talent. Serving as HR Manager at Savant Degrees for about a year, it was something that I had to face on a daily basis. However, a lot of the challenges that I faced came from sieving out the top talent from the not-so-top talent.

One day late last year, I received a particularly bad application that put me in a very foul mood, sparking a rant on Facebook. I wrote a note on my pet peeves from a HR Manager’s perspective and I was pleasantly surprised by the positive replies I received.

So today, I hope you enjoy the view from the flip side. It’s a toned down, less ranty version of my thoughts on impressing your recruiters and getting that job at your fave startup.

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My pet peeves and what smart applicants should do instead:

1) Missing cover letter

As we are a small company, all of our applications are done by email. The great thing about email is that it allows you to attach files and documents application systems sometimes don’t allow you to. Furthermore, on the careers section of our website, it says to submit your cover letter and resume. (This is a particularly bad sign for developers, not getting conjunctions right… but moving on.)

However, I often receive email applications saying, “Please see my resume attached for the XYZ position. I hope to hear from you soon”.

Resumes are just a record of what you’ve done, which may or may not be relevant to what I’m looking for. Especially if you’re a fresh graduate and probably have a mish-mash of internships and student gigs. Sometimes I don’t even look at a resume until the interview cos most of the time, it doesn’t add much value to me when narrowing down candidates at the beginning of a recruiting process.

A better way to get attention from the recruiter is to write a letter to tell them why you want to work for their company and in this particular role. A number of our best performers now impressed us with the passion they displayed in their cover letters. We had someone come to us with 5 years of experience as an editor, but wrote us a very spirited letter about why she would make a good programmer. We gave her the job and she’s doing really well now.

2) The super long resume

Google “resume templates” and chances are you’ll get tips that say “keep your CV to one page, max two”. There’s a reason why all these websites say the same thing – it really makes a difference.

I’ve gotten resumes that were 12 pages long listing out the person’s entire work, school and life stories. I really do not need to know every last detail. This problem seems to be more for techies who want to show off what languages and frameworks they know how to use, but my point is, it’s TMI.

And in the words of Mark Twain, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” If you didn’t have time to apply for a job, I’m not sure how much effort you’re gonna be putting into your work. So keep it short. Seriously. (Note: this principle does not apply directly to the one-line “Here’s my resume attached” email)

Like I said on my previous point, the stuff you’ve done may or may not be relevant to the position you’re applying for. What I would suggest is that you pick conversation points for your resume, those jobs and experiences that let you learn skills that can be applied to this job or lets you demonstrate your personality really well.

If you really need to write all your experience down, just use LinkedIn. Then you can add a link on your resume. Tip: It makes great reading material for when your recruiter is bored and wants to look productive Extra brownie points!

3) “Err, what exactly does the company expect me to do?”

As the main inspiration for this post, this is really a problem you can easily avoid.

If you managed to dig up the email address to send your application to, I’m sure you can dig up the job description on my site too. Why would you send me your resume to apply for a job you don’t even know about?! Immediate big red REJECT stamp.

4) Subject title: “Job Application”

Again, this might not apply to big companies that make you fill in application forms on their recruitment portals, but more for smaller companies like mine that still make use of email applications.

I get a ton of emails and although Gmail is awesome with its labels and filters, I’m not diligent at keeping up with them. So if you want me to pull up your application fast, always include the title of the position you’re applying for. That way, when it’s time for me to go through them, I have them neatly searched and yours is definitely gonna be in the pile. Plus you’ve got your kick ass cover letter on that email so I’m gonna sit up and take notice.

Moral of the story: don’t fall through the cracks with lazy subject lines.

5) Don’t call me Mister

First of all, my name is pretty feminine. And also there’s Google, Facebook and LinkedIn. So if you had basic face-stalking abilities or met me before (this one takes the cake), please don’t call me Mr Bi Ying. It’s Miss Wong. Mademoiselle, if you so please.

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Well, there you go! So, if you want to get that job, you’ve gotta position yourself as top talent and it starts with the little things. No, hang on, if you think about it, it starts with the big thing – it’s you. Give yourself the best chance and we’ll do the same. Good luck!

 

Recently I took over the portfolio of our HR manager. Now, I can fully understand her pain. Thanks B, for putting up with all our complaints.

There’s a lot challenges when it comes to managing talent. The first of which is in attracting people to take note of Savant Degrees through all that noise. Everyone wants a rock star programmer, ninja coder or some other similar oxy-moronic titles.

So when I re looked at our previous job descriptions and studied the many others out there, I had an epiphany.

Instead of doing anything, I took a step back and I decided to spend time to talking to great engineers and hires. As I interact with them, I realized these are the people with skills and passion; and you immediately know they can do anything, anywhere.

From then on, I come to believe it’s not about what the company is doing, it is the raison d’être (reason for existence in French and I can’t find a better phrase) of a company that attracts people.

A similar parallel in marketing can be seen in the following clip many decades ago by Steve Jobs. It’s not about the how fast the processor is, how much ram it has or how big the HDD is. It is in what the company believes. The WHY instead of the what or how (Simon Sinek). In this case for Apple, it’s “Think Different”

An engineer with great skills can excel in any company that sells phones, laptops and music players. It can be LG, Samsung, Sony or Apple. It doesn’t matter. What matters is they believe in the vision of the company.

I tried a little experiment (I will probably talk about it another time) and we had a surge in number of applicants in a less than month. Interestingly, there were many who didn’t know what they can do in the Savant Degrees but they want to be in the company anyway. I guess this is a minor success but it got me excited to continue in this role.

Gary and I was in a sales and management class and we were sitting on the same table as a late 30 to 40ish entrepreneur, Greg. When we first introduced ourselves as product managers and designers, he could barely wait for us, these couple 20ish year old kids, to finish our introduction.

Into the class, we worked on a short assignment about selling a product and he went into details into talking about the features instead of higher order benefits. From the start, he was so sure he was to be the one representing the team. He was insistence about his answers. It was obviously wrong in this context and I could see his body language turned from confidence to hostility to frustration as Gary and I cogently put forward our points and the consultant trainer agreeing with us every step of the way.

It was clear that we turned him around and later he became more interested in what we do in Savant Degrees.

This incident had me thinking. When I’m his age, will I have the humility to listen and learn? I believe the only reason why we were able to grow so rapidly in the last few years is because we were like a sponge. We had to learn from everyone, including our peers, our clients, our mentors, our parents etc. Everyone has something to teach and we just need to listen.

I’m writing this now and in years to come, when I’m acting like Greg. Please forward me this.

The Greg Syndrome n. A condition where a person has an inability to learn through open discussion and listening due to pride, ego, seniority, age, expertise(lack of) or a combination of the following.

Good management is not so different from parenting.  It requires plenty of care, attention, mentoring and the ultimate wish for your subordinates to succeed.  Lets take several counter examples we dont consider ineffective:

1. The Angry Manager – Potentially an army Sergeant Major/Disciplinarian
   Approachable – Not without a death wish. Count on for good advice – Unlikely. Motivating – Hell no.
   Overall management capabilities – Terrible.
   The angry manager has only 1 trick up his sleeve, anger and punishment. Thus his management capability is only as good as his ability to enforce his punishment (which is never as easy to enforce in the real world without a steady stream of recruits). GE and Goldman Sachs may be able to pull this off, where their guys are self motivated, intelligent and a world of remuneration awaits them. Otherwise, i wouldn’t advice you to try.
2. The Heart Surgeon Manager - Only useful when something goes wrong. Tries to find every excuse to install a pacemaker
   Approachable – Moderate. Count on for good advice – Unlikely. Motivating – No
   Overall management capabilities – Moderate
   The heart surgeon manager works on a more corrective schedule. He only enters the scene when a problem has already occurred and often working in this constraint this leads him to find the quickest and least painful fix to things. Sure he manage progress and provides lots of healthy tips but that’s ultimately it. The heart surgeon has no interest in your overall health. Just your heart’s
3. The  Buddy Manager - Great for feedback and drinks with
   Approachable – Yes. Count on for good advice – Yes. Motivating – Yes
   Overall management capabilities – Great
   Whats wrong then? The buddy manager is always perceived at a common level and is too friendly for his own good. Without being in an environment of perfect work ethics and discipline, the buddy manager is easily undermined and will find increasing difficultly in establishing his authority. Sure you can have beer with the man, but it may be him telling you his sorrows instead.

Enter the parental manager. What are their qualities?

• Parents are meaningfully authoritative. They tell you quickly when you do something wrong. It shouldn’t be challenged. They only exercise their authority in utmost necessity and you trust that. Not a moment more flippant.
• Parents are great listeners. They genuinely want to know more about you, about how you think, about what you experienced. They’re never judgemental. Only with that can they fix your premises instead of your surface problems.
• Parents are sages. They don’t always have the answers and they don’t presume they have yours. They’d tell you how they would break down the problem with their years of experience and offer you guidelines. Most importantly, they want you to come to the conclusion yourself, instead of always teaching you the answer.
• Parents have the patience of Buddha. Well, only if you ask right. They’re more about the journey than the destination and they’ll help you back on your feet every single time you fall, pat you on the back and tell its alright. All they ask in return is, try your very best.
• Above all else, they love and care for you. It’s always been about making sure you succeed.

Their effects are undeniable. Admittedly, not everyone has the honor and opportunity to be the child and even less people have the aptitude and self-restraint to be a parental manager. Yet it is a role that everyone should strive towards. I’d caution readers to be more humble before jumping forward to exclaim “I am already such a parental manager”. God knows i’ve been trying since forever. If you are, congrats, I salute you and you’ll know exactly what this post is talking about, otherwise think about your relationships with your subordinates and ask if they function on such an existence.

Applied correctly, it is extremely rewarding and fulfilling.

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UPDATE 16 Aug 2010 4:09 PM GMT : Facebook Execs have been contacted, (well through the emails discovered) and notified of this issue. They are looking into it already. But the issue still remains.

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A few days ago, I heard about a facebook bug where if you try to login using a facebook user’s email account and wrong password you will be shown the user’s real name & profile picture. Spammers could have possibly used a simple script as the one put up by one Atul Agarwal (the person who initially noticed the “bug / feature / vulnerability”) in a full disclosure mailing list here

But luckily Facebook fixed it so that, this would apparently be shown only if the browser has the cookies for that particular user.

This put an end to the can of worms the “bug” could have opened up especially better phishing, what with the photos and names etc, temporarily. Yes you saw it right, I said “temporarily“!

In this article I would like to highlight another way to accomplish the same end result.

Background

But before that let me point out to a nifty feature in Facebook – the reverse email searching for a facebook user. If you didn’t know it before, basically you can search for a user by email(if you know it). This is quite nifty as it helps bridging your email contacts and your facebook friends.

Alright then, what does this imply? Anybody with the knowledge of your email account can look up for your email in facebook and find your profile. In reality this wouldn’t be dangerous, unless people with malicious intent know your email account. Well if they do, they have a treasure trove of information to send you more convincing “phishing emails” or do a brute force attack on your passwords. Most people use bits and pieces of information on their Facebook profile like Name,Hometown,Birthday for their emails and passwords making them an easy prey for such malicious activities.

The Real Deal

But let us go one step further and believe that “everyone who knows your email account is good” and wont try to hack for your passwords. So now unless and until someone is able to do a brute force check on possible email accounts through a script and check facebook if that email account has an account and if so get other related details.

To do it manually, will for obvious reasons be tiring. And you can’t crawl through facebook.com site search as it will block out all bots but perhaps Google, Bing & Yahoo. But what you can do is and which has been tested by me first hand is to use Facebook’s own Graph APIs

As mentioned in the API documentation, you can search through facebook for people using something like

https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=query&type=user

So if you replace the query with any email account you are trying to check if it exists in facebook, it will return you the name, first name, last name,id, picture and hence the profile of the user. Of course you need to register for a Facebook application and use it and get the authorization (Oauth) of a user to make this call, but when that user can be anyone including the “spammer” himself with a Facebook account it matters little. And at least to my knowledge Facebook is not monitoring these calls as they would be thought to be harmless. Neither do they check if someone is storing that data or not. This has been a strongly debated point ever since the application platform had been introduced. Chris Soghoian nailed it in his post in CNET on January 23,2008 by saying that he can only assume that Facebook has a team of trained psychics on staff who use their mysterious powers to ferret out rogue developers.

The Solution

An easy temprorary fix might be to not allow this call with an email query and I really hope they do it real soon or at least fix it in some other way. All we can do in the meantime, is to keep our email accounts secure by choosing longer, hard to guess names and have equally strong passwords.

Oh and also as part of my POC, I devised a script to get emails of those with facebook.com domain. Here are the results I got in 30 mins of code. (Imagine the implications if I was able to do this on gmail.com, yahoo.com etc, with more time, more server power) You might even recognize a few of them. Either way now you could possibly email the Facebookers directly to tell them how you feel about all this.

Vid
Senior Developer
http://www.savantdegrees.com

We had to setup a EDM/newsletter system for a client. He wanted to consolidated his and his staff email addresses. He sent me a few outlook PST files. We imported it into outlook and found that besides the few thousand emails in the contact list, there’s another few thousand more emails in different folders which held email addresses. I figured it would be easy to extract those emails.

Unfortunately, there’s no built in way of doing it in Outlook or Thunderbird. There’s a couple of paid solutions to extract emails from the inbox folders but I had to try it a few more times. After tinkering around with Outlook and Thunderbird, I found a way to extract emails through exporting to CSV.

Simple steps to get email addresses from inbox. These steps are for Office 2007

1. Import emails into Outlook
2. Export to CSV(DOS) (See Figure 1)
3. Open with Excel
4. Select the email column and copy into a new file.
5. Save as CSV.
6. You have it. Use it anywhere you like. CSV is supported for most applications.

Figure 1

Here’s the instructions to export to CSV file.

Days of text sites are long over. Nowadays, you can hardly find a good site without the use of appropriate photos, images and artwork. However, some web designer resort into using others’ work by using google image search. Using those images is often illegal and they are not the best images anyway. Here are a dozen sites that are better and legal.

1. Flickr Creative Commons

One of the site which I visited often for good quality photo is Flickr. It has a huge selection of photos mane of which are protected under the Creative Commons which means you can use them legally as long as you attribute the photographer.

2. Stock Exchange

I also frequent  sxc.hu for stock photo as it is the best I have used thus far. But be careful. The first row are premium photos and it cost money. Clicking on them will take you to a different site where you have to pay.

3. IconsPedia.com

If you are looking for icons to doll up your site, Icons Predia is the place to go. If you want to add a cool Twitter Bird to your website, this is the first place to look.

4. EveryStockPhoto.com

Every Stock Photo searches several other stock image sites for you. Well, it literally search all the photos regardless of ‘appropriateness’. Hence, you might be in for some ‘dirty treats’.

5. NASA

At Savant Degrees, many of us are geeks, so we talk about science fiction, spaceships among other things. I’m not sure how this happened but if the U.S. government takes a photo they often release it into the public domain. If you want high quality technology or space photos you can’t do much better than NASA.

6. FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Freedigitalphotos.net has high quality photos but the selection is not great and the terms of use require a link back to use the photo for free.

7. FreeStockPhotos.com

Not only does Free Stock Photos have some great nature photos it also has a list of over a dozen other free stock photo sources.

8. MorgueFile.com

Morgue File has many photos that you are free to use commercially without attributing the photographer. However, they are not exactly stock photos but more of good snapshots.

9. StockVault.net

StockVault has 13,000+ high quality stock photos. The photos are high quality but low selection. The site does not offer safe search so use it at your own risk.

10. HistoricalStockPhotos.com

If you want vintage photos Historical Stock Photos is the site for you. Colorwise, don’t expect too much.

Hope this post help! Do recommend more sites by leaving a comment below!

Something as simple as getting the sql dump of a database in Microsoft SQL Server (2000, 2005 et al) to a SQL file could be quite a bit complicated (atleast more so as compared to the way we do it in MYSQL). SQL Server Management Studio does a good job of creating scripts that can help you recreate Database Schema. But when it comes to recreating the real Database data through SQL scripting sadly it simply just doesn’t have any simple method to accomplish it (as far as I know it).

The best way to accomplish this MS SQL is by using Microsoft SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard 1.1. It seems to be a pretty good tool because of its simplicity, stability, accuracy and ease of use. Once you download & install it, you can choose either the tool’s GUI or the command line interface to generate a single SQL script file which can be used to recreate a database (both schema and data). What is mire, there is even a bonus feature of being integrable with Visual Studio!

Download it from the Microsoft Download Page for Microsoft SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard 1.1