January 2007

This guy did a cool test and if you have Norton on your PC, you might want to take a look at this. Norton slows down the computer so much it was mind boggling. I always knew Norton was a hog, but this is ridiculous.

read more | digg story

Scott Schroeder just won a HP digital camera and printer from Pay Per Post! Checkout the announcement on the pay per post blog. Check out scott’s post on MyFootballStore.com.

jJpBXsvK9a0

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about getting organized and bringing on some developers using the oDesk platform. I have since hired Mykhaylo Legenchenko to assist with the completion of Simulagent. The project is moving along and I really enjoy working with Mykhaylo. So what been the main advantages of hiring Mykhaylo through oDesk?

1. Candidates
I interviewed 20 candidates in one week. If a candidate wasn’t a good fit, I immediately moved on to the next. In the end I had three good candidates. I had all of them work on a simple test application with a deadline. Mykhaylo completed the app on time by the specification. The others didn’t come through.

2. No Bullshit
There is a task at hand and it gets done.

3. Work 24/7
Well, almost. While I am sleeping - he is working. When he isn’t working, I am working on #5 and the UI. We only get a couple of hours to discuss progress, make changes, and set goals because of the time difference. This forces #2.

4. Skills
His coding skills are superior to mine. He is a bad ass in ajax and php, has a Bachelors and Masters degree in Computer Science.

5. Documentation and Specs
Due to the inability to have face to face meetings, I am forced to write better specifications. This has forced me to become more intimate with the application.

6. Proof
I can see screenshots of his computer while he is working on the project.

Together we are bringing Simulagent, and all future web apps to a new level.

[tags] Outsourcing, odesk [/tags]

I hope everyone had a happy new year and holidays! I took a much needed break to spend some time with the family. Spent some time away from the laptop, did a little reading, lot of traveling, played some golf, and shot some videos with my new Sony 30GB DCR-SR40 ! I need to get some video editing software, so any suggestions are appreciated. Don’t have a mac yet, maybe next year.

One interesting thing from my trip was learning about the ways my family uses the internet. One side is stuck on MSN and the other is stuck on AOL. Many of them don’t know about firefox, youtube, flickr, and many many more. The initial look on their faces when I started explaining it all was very confused to say the least. After explaining a few of the sites and sitting down and showing them how they worked, they are diggin it…kinda.

It goes to show how much bigger the web will be 10 years from now. My 14 year old brother and lots of is friends have MySpace pages, I just read about a 12 year old writer over on Profy.com, and a school here in Vegas is teaching web design in 7th grade! The future is upon us. I’m excited to be involved in such a powerful industry and can’t wait to see what the future holds for all of us!