Category: General

WikiReader is an electronic encyclopedia giving physical form to Wikipedia. Now you can take it with you wherever you go.

WikiReader

This looks like an incredibly cool device. It is fairly small, has a touch screen, can be read in daylight and only costs $99. You can download updates from the internet and it looks like they plan to update it twice each year.  Two AA batteries are expected to power the device with normal usage for about a year.

There is a “Random” button that will show you a random article.  It is similar to the button on an iPod Shuffle.  You can also search by typing on the onscreen keyboard.  There is also a history button that lets you pull up previous searches.  You scroll up and down the page by sliding your finger on the screen up and down–similar to an iPhone.

The design looks good.  It isn’t a multi-function device, but $99 for an electronic version of an encyclopedia that will fit in your pocket seems pretty good.  I am impressed that they are able to produce something like this at that price point.  I’m curious how the reading experience is.  It looks pretty readable.  The display isn’t large and doesn’t look like it shows pictures, but still looks usable–particularly for short periods looking up information like what you would do with an encyclopedia.

I’m curious if you can take your own MediaWiki and use it as the content for the device.

A programmer was working with a headhunter who misrepresented him to some potential clients.  He asked the Slashdot crowd if and how he should fire the guy.  The best response:

In my experience, headhunters are very forthright about their desire to kill people, eat them, and hang their shrunken, stuffed heads from strings around their neck. Obviously, you should fire them if they look overly hungry and there is no one else for them to eat. Or if they catch and eat people other than those you hired them to catch and eat. Employed with care and attention, though, headhunters can bring something to your business that no other employee can: abject terror in those that oppose you.

I have an article published over at Freelance Switch called 9 Steps Toward Genuine & Effective Networking.  Here are some of the things discussed:

• Mailing physical newspaper and magazine articles.
• Befriending the “little” people.
• Meeting in person
• Taking notes.

Be sure to read the full post.

Some employees work because it pays the bills. They don’t feel that their work is particularly meaningful or important. Others work with a sense of purpose because they feel like what they do matters. If your employees shift to treating their work as a “day job” (something that just pays the bills) you will see much less productivity. This partially depends on the employee, but it is even more dependent on the employer. Here are things to keep this from happening to your employees.

• Meaningful work — It is much easier to be passionate about something that you feel actually matters. Make sure your employees are doing things that matter. Make sure that they understand how their contribution helps the organization function as a whole.
• Pay for performance — If you want you’re employees to be passionate about their jobs then thier performance needs to somehow impact their life. One way to do this is to financially reward people productivity.
• Don’t throw work away — One of the fastest ways to destroy passion in your employees is to ask them to create something and then decide not to use it. Everyone wants their life to count for something, but if the results of their effort just gets thrown away they will just start “putting in their time” with little regard for quality. This isn’t to say that you can never change your plans, but good leaders know how to salvage people’s contribution even if their work is no longer needed for it’s original purpose. I’ve been in situations where I was given a difficult project to complete, but after successfully completing the project, management changed their mind and decided that what they asked for wasn’t what they really wanted anyway. If this happens once, employees will probably just consider it part of organizational change. If it happens several times in a row, most employees will stop putting any real effort into their work, saving their intellectual energy for areas where it might be valued.
• Get to know your employees — You need to know what makes your employees tick.  It is much easier for someone to be fully engaged in their job if they feel like their boss understands their life goals.
• Invest in people — This can be done through coaching, sending people to a conference, or even just by buying them a book on some topic you’ve identified is important to them and their career.  If your employees feel like they are just a means to a business goal, you aren’t going to get a high level of engagement in their work. Most people want to grow and they will give their loyalty to an organization that helps them to that end.

After reading a some comments in a blog post about how DMOZ really needs more good editors, I thought I’d give it a try. I noticed that the Personal Organization category didn’t have an editor so I pushed the button to apply to be an editor. I filled out the form carefully and spent a good amount of time trying to find the sample sites that I would add to that category.

After spending a good amount of time filling everything out, I submitted the application. Later on in the day I received this response:

Dear Mark Shead,

Thank you for your interest in becoming an Open Directory Project editor! Although we would like you to join us as a volunteer editor, you have chosen a category that is already well represented, or is broader than we typically assign to a new editor. We would encourage you to re-apply for a category that has fewer editors or is smaller in scope, in order to increase your chances of being accepted.

Feel free to reapply by submitting an application in another area. If you wish to re-apply, you must fill out another application. Please do not reply to this email.

Regards,
The Open Directory Project

Additional reviewer comments:

Now I understand if they only want you to be an editor of a small category at first. When I signed up, I tried to use a sub category, but the only subcategory was for consultants, and I wasn’t really interested in doing that.

If they really don’t want people to apply for these categories, they shouldn’t put links to sign up as an editor at the bottom. If they had of had a suggestion of a different category to try that would at least show that there was some level of thought on their side of things. Just saying “keep applying and maybe we’ll eventually let you in” seems like it has a good chance of just wasting my time.

If you want good editors, you need to make sure you aren’t wasting their time. Good editors are more likely to be busy individuals who want to contribute to the community. Bad editors are more likely to be people who will just keep applying over and over again until someone eventually lets them in as an editor.

Maybe I’ll try signing up as an editor again someday if I find a category that I’m interested in, but at this point I think DMOZ may be shooting themselves in the foot by asking for people to sign up as editors for a category and then telling them “no you can’t edit this category”.