I’ve been saving the URL for this Smart Money article titled “My Outsourced Life” for quite some time now. Written perfectly by A. J. Jacobs, the story covers the writers attempts to oursource as much of his life as possible. Even going so far as to have one resource for personal matters and one for work.
The article was interesting to me because I’ve working with programmers and developers all over the world. India, Pakistan, Russia, The Netherlands, the Ukraine, and Canada are among the many home countries of programmers I’ve working hand in hand with.
The idea of outsourcing non business tasks was the most hilarious, here’s a snippet I found very amusing:
“First, I try to delegate my therapy. My plan is to give Asha a list of my neuroses and a childhood anecdote or two, have her talk to my shrink for fifty minutes, then relay the advice. Smart, right? My shrink refused. Ethics or something. Fine. Instead, I have Asha send me a meticulously researched memo on stress relief. It had a nice Indian flavor to it, with a couple of yogic postures and some visualization.
This was okay, but it didn’t seem quite enough. I decided I needed to outsource my worry. For the last few weeks I’ve been tearing my hair out because a business deal is taking far too long to close. I asked Honey if she would be interested in tearing her hair out in my stead. Just for a few minutes a day. She thought it was a wonderful idea. “I will worry about this every day,” she wrote. “Do not worry.”
The outsourcing of my neuroses was one of the most successful experiments of the month. Every time I started to ruminate, I’d remind myself that Honey was already on the case, and I’d relax. No joke — this alone was worth the $1,000. “
Do the owners of test.com check the email sent to test@test.com? If they do what do they do with the possible thousands of test messages being sent everyday? Is the volume substantial or moderate?
I develop Rich Internet Applications for a living and over the years (7 of them) I’ve used test@test.com countless times in development and also to bypass lame email checks/registration requirements.
Does anyone out there in the blogosphere know the owners of test.com?
From their “About” page:
Test.com has a successful twelve year track record providing hosted testing software to leading organizations.
Test.com’s flagship product is a web base testing software product called Test.com. The software lets organizations author and administer their own Training Content, Tests and Certification Programs online.
Test.com has numerous international Patents and innovations. These innovations and our expertise make our products easy to use.
Test.com has grown to be the largest and most customer centric provider of hosted testing averaging over 2.5 million transactions on its network a day.
Test.com customers include some of the largest international corporations, departments of large companies and many smaller organizations.
Test.com has proven its strength in the world of building software for online testing and certification programs.
Visit Test.com for organizations to learn more about Test.com’s flagship product, or contact us if you would like to learn more about Test.com and how you can request a free no obligation trial of our software.
Why can’t Google tell me what time it is? I know that my IP address and it’s corresponding ISP location aren’t an exact match to my physical address but why can’t Google just take a whack at it, and tell people that they *might* be wrong?
Here’s a quick little graphic I worked up in Fireworks showing where My IP registered (geographically) and where I’m actually located.
Not a huge distance in miles, and definitely within the same time zone (EST), therefore Google could easily tell me what time it is.
I don’t know if you’ve been to Yahoo! Shopping lately, but it’s a complete disaster of a shopping portal and Yahoo should be ashamed … ASHAMED! of having that atrocity in their mature web portfolio.
First some history …
I happened across Shopping.Yahoo.com not because I was ’shopping’ but rather I was following the story on Woot! about a new “partnership” they rolled out with Y! Shopping (anyone else find it weird that Woot! and Yahoo! both end! with! exclamations?! Jason Toon is hilarious by the way, and his blog announcement of the “selling out” is a good read.\
Getting back to Y! Shopping, if anyone hasn’t seen the home page, it’s a disaster of banner ads, links that look like banner ads, and poorly structured navigation and changing page layouts … it’s that bad.
Here’s a screenshot, see the large version at Flickr.
Here’s a screenshot with my commentary, and the larger version at Flickr.
The Problems as I See Them:
1. The main store navigation looks like a poorly disguised ad placement, more commonly seen on spammy landing pages setup by domain prospectors. 2. There are ads, everywhere. Too many ads and not enough product highlights and shopping tools. Amazon makes Yahoo! Shopping look downright silly. 3. Wasted space. Not only do the ads take up valuable real estate, the spacing is bad and Yahoo uses an entire section to tell me I’m not logged in that could be devoted to … selling? (what a concept) 4. Woot! Their best feature is halfway down this depressing page, and offers the only glimmer of hope (and slim chance that someone still has a pulse) over at Yahoo! Shopping.
Look, I’m sure Yahoo! makes an assload of money from this portal, and probably sells a crap load of ads and makes a tidy profit. But it’s just downright horrible, and they could make a lot more if they’d devote a little attention (and some expensive Stanford PHD brain time) on devising a better shopping experience, and in turn better ROI for their advertisers.
August 13, 2007 at 8:15 am · Filed under Humor, Web 2.0
I don’t usually like to brag, or hate on blogs for being “late to the party” but I scooped CN on this video by about 4 months. Yay for me. It ran over at Oomny.
I don’t know about you, but I am planning a trip to Israel now! I totally want to tag my food, create wish lists, food stumbles, eggs with RSS, and timer point 2:54 just about bust my gut. And of course, everything is free because it’s the Internet! You must take a cookie so that the store owner will remember you for tomorrow! Shalom to all my friends in Tel Aviv!
Inspired by my last article on Global Warming I scoured the web for for funny videos on the topic of global warming and found some of the best clips I’ve seen online in a long time. I searched YouTube, Google Video, Flurl, MetaCafe and found videos from Futurama, The Simpsons, Stephen Colbert, Will Ferrel and more. So without further adieu, here’s the list of 10:
1. Will Ferrel. This clip was featured in my last article but it’s so good it deserves to be posted again. Here’s Will Ferrel playing President George Bush talking about Global Warming.
2. Futurama. Global Warming or: None Like it Hot is a classic Futurama clip that I found on GooTube.
3. The Simpsons. I found this video at MySpaceTV (of all places) of Marge and Lisa getting a demonstration on Global Warming.
6. Stephen Colbert. The Convenienist Truth video is a great clip from Colbert. I wish I could find more Colbert material but Comedy Central isn’t very generous when it comes to allowing bloggers to embed clips (they’re using WMV streaming for crying out loud!).
7. Stephen Colbert. This is a rather low quality video (from WeWin.com via Flurl) of Stephen interviewing author Tim Flannery about his new book The Weather Makers. Colbert’s interviews are always good for a laugh.
8. Polar Bear. This is actually a commercial for Halls I believe, but it’s pretty funny and somewhat related.
9. Philip Walkate. I’ve never heard of this Duth comedian but here’s some stand up from him with some topics relating to Global warming.
10. Spinal Tap. This video is funnier for it’s Spinal Tap content but it’s related to Global Warming in that the band needs to reunite for the themed concert.
The joys of a first birthday cake for your little one:
This what your child will look like after you let her eat her own birthday cake. The highchair was covered in cake and we had to practically hose it down.
Baby Nipples and Crack Cocaine, a perfect combination for Google AdSense ads today on Oomny. This special mix of ads comes from my wife’s recent post on Dr. Brown’s Bottles and my contribution (courtesy of StumbleUpon) the Drug Slang Dictionary …for parents
This got me thinking, who advertises with the keyword phrase “crack cocaine” on Google? Or anywhere for that matter. Now I know we’re not supposed to click our own ads but I just had to find out so I took one for the team and risked banination from the mighty Google gods to find out. The results? Not much of a surprise actually, as most of them were drug rehab clinics which makes perfect sense.
From their “About” page:
