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About Me
I'm Michael Koby, and I love technology. I'm also a programmer, currently doing Ruby on Rails development for a small Houston startup. Here I talk about technology, programming, politics, movies, music, and anything else I feel I need to talk about. If you would like to know more, you can check out the About page.Popular Series
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Twitter Makes a Huge Mistake
Okay Twitter, I’ll admit it, I’m totally hooked on you. No really, it’s the constant stream of what’s going on in my neck of the woods (Houston, TX), combined with the constant stream of what’s going on in my areas of interests (.Net Development, Web 2.0, blogging, social media, and randomness). You always have a constant flow of information and it’s quite addicting.
However, you have made a huge mistake. Gigantic in fact. That mistake? Moving IM delivery of tweets to the bottom of the priority list. Yep, big mistake. Gargantuian even.
Why is this a mistake? Because personally, I hate text messages. They cause my phone to beep, tone, or vibrate. And since I own a BlackBerry that is addicting. You forcing me to use text messages to get my tweets (in near real time) on my phone is feeding an addiction. Did you know that? Did you know that you are contributing to the problem of Crackberry addicts worldwide? Seriously you’re almost as bad as a heroin pusher, except for the fact that no one (at least that we know about) has died from a tweet.
But seriously. Why drop a feature that lots of people have been clamoring for when you took it away and move it lower down the priority list? It doesn’t make sense. Yes, you own the market on micro-blogging at 140 characters. Yes, no one is going to jump ship to Jaiku just to get the IM feature. But really, I mean, as a business (one that doesn’t seem to have a revenue stream), would it do you good to listen to those that actually use your service? I’m totally confused here.
I personally loved Twitter via Google Talk. I could get it on my phone, desktop, or even a web browser. You can’t beat that kind of coverage. Now that I’ll have to wait even longer for Twitter via IM again, I’m not really sure what to do. I know I definitely tweeted more when I had the IM feature. I did. You can see the drop in my personal tweets goes down when IM was taken away. It was just so easy.
So Twitter, seriously, reconsider this priority change. It’s going to hurt you in the long run.
links for 2008-10-11
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links for 2008-10-10
Posted in Daily Links
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Consulting Consultants: Hyper-Communication
One of the biggest lessons that I have learned in the past year of consulting is about communication. Communication with your company (if you work for a consulting firm like me), communication with your team mates, and most importantly communication with your client. In some cases, communication with all three will work wonders for your reputation. Here’s the incident that helped teach me this lesson…
The Story
Back in January of this year, I sent an email to my client boss requesting January 23rd off for my birthday. Since I make it person practice to never work on my birthday (if I can help it), this is something I’ve done for years when I was working at my previous employer. I received a response to that email telling me that it was “okay” for me to take the off. Little did I know that 2 days before my birthday something extremely personal would happen in my home. Since this event was personal, but I also wanted to keep my client informed, in case other events took place regarding that situation, I gave the client boss a quick (skimpy on the details) run down of what was going on. He asked if I had told my employer about it, I told him I hadn’t but that I planned to.
The next day I took my birthday off (as planned, requested, and approved) and had not had a chance to talk to my employer about the personal matter. I had figured I had told the client and that was the most important thing. However, while I was out of the office the vice president of my office and the account executive in charge of the client came in to check on things. When the account executive didn’t see me, he asked the client where I was. The client not wanting to divulge personal information that I might not have told them yet said “I’m not sure what he’s told you, but I don’t know exactly where he is” (the fact that the client boss did not discuss the personal issue is strong testament to his character and is much appreciated).
You can see how this is bad. The client boss had forgotten about it being my birthday and my having asked for it off in light of personal item I had entrusted him with. Combine that with the fact that I had also made the mistake of not telling the other on-site consultants from my firm that I was taking the day off. No one knew (or remembered) where I was.
The Lesson
Ouch. Talk about learning the hard way, right? Well since I was able to produce the email that showed I had asked the client for the day off and had the “okay” to do so, the issue was quickly aleviated. But it could have been avoided entirely had I told more people about my whereabouts and schedule.
The message here is, make sure as many people know what your schedule is as possible. When you ask for a day off, do so in advance. When you have permission from the client, make sure to send them a reminder the day before, just as a heads up. Also inform any other on-site consultants and client employees as possible. Definitely inform those that you are working with directly. If you work for consulting firm, make sure you shoot off an email to the account exectutive (aka “sales guys”) so they know too.
Hyper-communication doesn’t just revolve around taking days off. You want to be in constant communication with everyone about what’s going on. You want the people from your company to know what’s going on at your client. Especially anything that has a direct affect on you.
The idea here is to actually over communicate. Don’t do just enough to get by. And definitely don’t stop when you think you’ve done all you can. Think and make sure that you are talking to everyone you need to talk to. Make sure everyone knows where you are at and what (proverbial) page you are on. The more people that know, the better it is for you in the long term.
Posted in Consulting Consultants
Tagged communication, consulting
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Michael Koby 
The State of United States Politics
I was having a disscussion with a friend of my over the past couple of days (we’re both fairly conservative) about the state of politics in this country. The amount of times the left side of folk scream out in anger towards the things the right side says (and vice versa). For the record we don’t really like either candidate. We both have issues with Obama’s desire to drive this country towards socialism (which we are directly opposed to) and we don’t like a lot of stuff that McCain says. Neither candidate is as bad as the other side makes them out to be though.
During the course of our coversation I said, I wonder what the recent polls look like. So I did a little digging. As of today, here are the numbers from 2 different websites:
1) RealClearPolitics.com: Obama 49.0 versus McCain’s 43.9
2) CNN Election Tracker: Obama 49.25 (Avg.) versus McCain’s 43.5 (average margin for error: 6.25)
When looking at those it is easy to tell that Obama definitely has a lead on McCain. However, it is not a huge lead. It is also worth noting that Kerry lead Bush in most polls leading up to the election (and please don’t cry “election fraud” as it was never proven substantially, and never tried in court). My point is these polls don’t really show us too much about what will happen in the actual election.
One thing I do want to point out is how much the polls are currently split down the middle (or fairly close to it anyway). If you were to hit most popular internet sites, many of them will praise the works of Barak Obama and villify John McCain. Several media outlets will do this as well. To look at all the praise of Obama and to see/hear/read of the disdain for the republicans last eight years of “reign” and then see the current poll numbers, it can really make one think. Seriously think about it. If you knew nothing but what you read on the net, you’d think that Obama (being the democrate nominee for president) would have a huge lead over the republican candidate. Especially given Bush’s low approval rating. Congress was replaced two years ago because people felt the republicans weren’t doing their jobs, so they obviously had a low approval rating to have a change in congressional party leadership.
However, the race (at least according to the polls) looks to be at a dead heat. The conclusion I have come to is this: While most people might in fact be unhappy with Bush, a large percentage of Americans still hold to basic republican ideals. To put it another way, a large number of people still believe that the republicans have the right idea and agree with it.
Think about it. If it was simply a party issue, republicans are bad and democrates are good then Obama would have a huge lead over McCain. But as it currently stands they’re pretty much neck and neck (especially when you consider the margin for error). But political parties are more than just a side you pick, they represent ideas, principles, and even beliefs. They are an ideology about how things should be done by the people and for the people. The fact McCain has just about half of the numbers in the polls really shows that a lot of people still hold to the ideals of the republican party, even if they don’t like their current figureheads.
Just something to chew on.