Saturday 27 January 2007

Chasing people up

I think everyone finds this most frustrating. Repeatedly calling someone up because they either do not return your calls or have not done something done that they promised or even owe you money. Contacting people who are unresponsive wastes time and money and indicates that they don't care even if they are just too busy. Of course in some cases they may have changed numbers or have suffered emotional stress. Wouldn't it be great if people texted, called or emailed back a holding message such as away on holiday rather than ignoring the call?

A worse scenario is when a company lets you down because of poor customer service. For example, a certain parcel delivery company left a mobile number to call back and no one is responding. Also, their Website is out of date and uninformative and yet one of the biggest shopping companies is still using them. So I'm still waiting for my parcel.

Another example is the lack of feedback on job applications. Even saying why an application has been rejected would be useful instead of sending nothing or a generic rejection letter.

I hate being let down and I do not like letting others down. If I let myself down then I call at least do something about it. With other people all you can do is remind them and hope they has a sense of compassion, duty and honesty (even if it is to tell you that they cannot help you).

Wednesday 24 January 2007

Popup Annoyance

Websites that spawn windows containing adverts and pushing other information in your face are the scourge of the internet. Another is the pop-over windows that obsure articles with an advert. These can normally be closed by the 'x' in the top right hand corner.

Other things that annoy me online include bogus emails such as fake competition entries and phishing sites that go to a false banking site or rely on the gullible to believe that they have won something. Also, badly designed sites with flashing and glaring graphics. These include gambing sites and those where the designer is trying to show off all their skills and some of the content is missing, out of date or not working properly.

There are also too many programming and scripting languages. Many of these will become obselete in the next 5 to 10 years when convergence happens or when AI takes over the coding process.

Thursday 18 January 2007

The cost of Travel

With the strong winds, celebrity big brother fiasco and BBC move hitting the news it was surprising to find out on the news that the average houshold spends 62 pounds on travel (followed by 58 on leisure). There is a huge opportunity in saving time and money if everyone could reduce their travel by just 10% (not to mention the environmental improvement).

Things that could be done include:

(1) Increase in telecommuting and home working including the use of video conferencing and selective computer networks that link some home computers to the business network.
(2) Virtual reality technology to the point where reality and fantasy merge but where the user has control of his or her surroundings (instead of a matrix scenario). This may reduce the demand on flights as well as trains and car use for leisure purposes.
(3) Vehicle pooling and bussing to the extent that people are picked up and driven in groups by area to area thus reducing traffic and road time picking up.
(4) Active promotion of cycling and walking for shorter distances (increases fitness and reduces stress).
(5) Teleportation of body or/and mind via the process of scan/download/transfer/upload in a process analogous to direct writing but where we can download human consciousness and upload at the other end (possibly to a cloned body).

Anyway 3 of these ideas could be used here and now without affecting working efficiency. What happened to the paperless office now that we could benefit from car-less roads?

Friday 12 January 2007

Job experience conundrum

Why is it such a problem in today's society to get work?

I have applied for many jobs but get no interviews.
A couple of agencies have told me it is because of a lack of experience in the last year or two. However, this was largely due to personal problems and depression. So how to fill the gaps - courses, helping others, explaining how I have searched for jobs.

IT industry so unwilling to train candidates for entry level jobs.
This culture in the last 5 years seems to rely on the individual to continuously train yet this is not enough. For example, it costs money to get IT certification, do a degree course and then go the extra mile either by volunteering or somehow getting the experience before getting the job that gets the experience. This is a big issue considering the amount of jobs and people job switching. Degrees are wasted because no one recognises the fact that I have transferable skills and can also pick up the more demanding aspects of the job quickly.

Unemployment.
It appears that unemployment ensures a much harder route back to work. Companies just do not like to invite people to interviews who have been out of work or have only done short term work in recent months. There appears to be a culture of poaching people from one job to another and job moving. This is good if you are in a career already and want to move ahead but leaves the stop gap jobbers and unemployed left to network and work for nothing to find better work and seek out those lucky opportunities.

Building a presence.
A CV only gets you so far. A good Website, demo or portfolio (if relevent) helps but since 90% of careers seek experience and often a lot of it in the same role things are not looking good for gaining broad career experience. Grabbing the bull by the horns helps as long as debt does not become an issue. After doing call centre jobs, some admin and some industrial work it is not nice to have to do even more of this whilst trying to get a proper job that I will enjoy rather than one that may just get some money in.

OVERALL I FEEL LET DOWN BY THIS MONEY GRABBING CAPITALIST SOCIETY AND THE WAY IT IS RUN.

Monday 8 January 2007

iPod and iTunes

The battery keeps running flat on my iPod nano when not in use. Is this related to the lack of a switch off feature?

Also fiddly for quickly scanning through a track. Tends to keep altering the volume using the touch ring. can only reliably track slowly through a track. Annoying for those DJ mixes when I want to listen 30 minutes in.

iTunes does not properly categorise tracks and genres for music that is not commercial and not always in shop such as demos, DJ mixes and tracks converted from some CDs. It is also fiddly to manually organise music to directories/genres as it tends to sort some but not all tracks from artists to albums and some to an alphabetical list of singles. Changing track names individually can be annoying.

Also, I have heard that tracks downloaded from their store do not play on other mp3 players because of their proprietry mp3 format. Yet iPod will play most if not all other mp3 formats.

Otherwise great device and great innovation. Plug and play and automatic search by iTunes can save a lot of time. Shame Apple do not have above features and flexibility for more control for the user.

Sunday 7 January 2007

Bar in job salary adverts

Some job advertisements have a salary range and the word 'bar' is written at a value somewhere in the middle. Is this the highest value a new recruit can start at such that they start at a salary lower than or equal to this.

For example: $20000 - $35000 (bar $30000)
The most experienced new recruit could start at $30000 but will be able to earn $35000 after some service without promotion.

Or is it a salary not available to that particular post but available on that pay scale in general?

For example: $20000 - $35000 (bar $30000)
A new recruit could start at any amount in the range other than $30000