In my line of work, it’s not overly complicated to find opportunity if you’re of a specialized, practical, skilled, motivated, and interested breed.  On the flip side, it’s not easy to find that breed of person.  Hiring a replacement software engineer to lead a team of talented individuals and young company to success has been nothing short of exhausting.

Information Technology is a broad field with enough facets to make anyone’s head spin.  This age of information pushes us to want to know everything, but it also serves up more knowledge than we could ever learn.  As a result, I am always running across those who specialize in certain areas of the IT field and have a great deal of crossover into others.

A PHP programmer who was once a system engineer, is an active member of an open-source Assembly project, and is evolving to become an Android and Java developer is the nature of so many resumes of this generation.  I suppose I’m referring to the short attention spans that marketing has adapted to and parents haven’t, but how could we grow and love this industry if not for a consistent need for something new.

This quest for fresh perspectives and new creativity seems to drive us, but the one thing that transforms a great developer into a phenomenal developer is a honed ability to apply a sense of pride and elegance to their work.  These are the developers who thrive on technology and produce great achievements by properly mixing all the colors on their palette.  They are the craftsmen and craftswomen of the web that are striving for perfection today and have been peering in at the future since yesterday.  They are also the developers that I spend months tracking down.

On a regular basis, I see the most misleading resumes.  A developer appearing to hold every skill under the sun may have truly only scratched the surface of each sector they’ve touched or allowed their skills to sour and atrophy.  These shortcomings are easily revealed by a simple questionnaire, but they’re disheartening none the less.

Obviously, hiring for this mindset is a different ballgame.  As the wheel of innovation and evolution spins in the enterprise, I look for the evolving specialists who most recently match the company’s technology track but are salivating for the future.  The company benefits from having driven team members that help it stay ready for the next best innovation before it arrives and by innovating before the past sets in.

Even when a remote few developers have a fresh skill set that they’re bolstering by example, a standard of quality, consistency, and prideful craftsmanship is almost always painfully lacking.  I’ve seen too many crank-and-bank shops turn interested and excited software engineers into overworked and underdeveloped day-walkers.  Even so, people are lazy in general, and quality craftsmanship is difficult to come by to begin with.  Although, I do believe that it can be taught.

In much the same way a master blacksmith teaches their apprentice how to finish a cast to a shine or recognize when they’re about to be burned, an apprentice software engineer can learn the nature of quality and precision from a seasoned mentor.  They can be inspired to generate quality work.  Sadly, crank-and-bank shops, mass development studios, and Indian programming factories do not provide this structure for achievement.

With happy wholesome developers who have been able to make their mark in the industry with excellence, there’s nothing to loose.  These team members who strive for perfection and beautiful elegance will push each other to learn, grow, and innovate to new expectations.  Their heightened sense of the future will keep the ideas and research pouring in.  Driving forces in the industry will inspire them to reach further.

Unfortunately, sound development staff is just the beginning of the puzzle.  Even more challenging than finding solid software engineers is the task of finding a leader who is capable of supporting, encouraging, securing, and mentoring this genre of developer while keeping the best interests of the company in mind.  The master blacksmith who can take on an apprentice and still deliver for the king is a skilled craftsman indeed.

Project management ideas that fulfill the expectations of both the organization and the developers are not simple formulations.  When placed between a fast paced company and engineers striving for quality innovation, they’re even more challenging.  A developer who understands as well as upholds consistency and quality, consumes new technology like a vacuum, is able to stay hands-on in the development shop, and is able to break into the hand-shake and eye-contact political world is the one in a thousand leader that we are only so lucky to find.

Hiring boards, technical communities, recruiters, and newspapers all seem to have difficulty reaching a hand in deep enough to snag these individuals.  When they do, it often seems that they’re hardly holding on before the candidate is back in the pool of employed untouchables and heavily guarded by the organizations with which they dance.

Often times, the pool is lessened further when these leaders choose their own paths as very driven entrepreneurial business men and women who pursue their trade with a prowess second to none.  When you’re finally exhausted from trying to find the best candidate possible, you’ll be lucky if you can outsource your projects to them and their skilled development shop at any less than $150 an hour.

There are lights at the end of the tunnel, but they’re few and far between.  Investing in an in-house development studio is specialized and expensive.  Shortcuts will not help, and the cascading effects can be disastrous.  Finding a great leader is the first but most difficult step, and it usually takes one to know one.

~A

Okay, but have you seen what the iPad is capable of?  As a word processor, miniature gaming console, and a personal assistant that docks with a slim keyboard for easy use in a parked home environment, the iPad is the personal computer of the next generation.  I find it hilarious that Ballmer is so clear in his political response that computers will “…look different next year, year after, year after that,” but he’s still too shortsighted to see that they started looking dramatically different last year.

Aside from having a retarded title, the article cites silly Ballmer’s own words when he says that people will continue using PCs in a world where people are carrying smart phones and tablet devices.  Steve, you’re a riot, and I’m laughing my ass off as I type knowing that you’re only answering the concerned call of your biggest investors by confidently, and probably unknowingly, lying through the ignorant mouths behind the scenes that none of us ever see.  Mr. B, in case you missed the memo decades ago, PC stands for Personal Computer.  Tablet devices, like the iPad, are personal computers.

Poor ol’ Steve still pictures the manufacturer soup under his desk, running software that’s still harboring code from twenty years ago, as the PC of today.  I wouldn’t doubt that it’ll be a cold day in hell before he picks up an iPad for more than press-pressured show-and-tell smiling through gritted teeth.

He also says that PC sales will continue to grow.  *smiles and waves to investors*

PC sales are growing right now, because there are deals to be had on the latest operating system from Microsoft that promises to prove that Microsoft still has some worth after the non-refundable terrors experienced with Windows Vista.  When Microsoft experiences their next Windows Me disaster, the following iteration will probably boost PC sales too.  What makes the industry think increased PC sales are filling Microsoft’s pocket books when it’s more likely that Microsoft’s latest anorexic timeline, that rushed out a replacement for their latest mistake, is the culprit.

Anyone would be willing to go to almost any length in the face of disaster, which pretty much makes it immoral for Microsoft to even charge for Windows 7.  It should be offered full-featured and free as a heart-felt apology to those who were taken by Vista and sucked into hardware beefy enough to be a part of an enterprise-grade server farm.  Windows 7 is what Windows Vista should have been, and we should be somewhere better right now.  There goes Ballmer sticking people in the past again.

Steve continues the interview by driving home the concept that this is a multi-device world and everyone will still have a base station and/or a laptop at home, one but probably more handheld mobile devices, a game console, and a tablet.  I agree that this is a consumerist nation of credit-happy individuals, but I also see the majority of college students, older generations, family-oriented Americans, and the average joe with enough money and desire in their pockets for one, maybe two, simple devices.  Open your eyes Steve, because XBox sales are the only thing that you’ve got goin’ for you right now.

B-man also explains that “PCs” will continue to change form factor year after year.  Again, I have to point out — my eyes and eye lids dimming from the fatigued fire flickering in them – that form factors already have changed.  Have you seen the iPad yet?  lol  Still, Ballmer seems to be selectively blind in the grinning face of adversity, and everyone is enjoying this year except him.

Speaking of next generation technology, if you haven’t seen Google’s new Chrome OS, I have to recommend taking a look.  The OS, in its current alpha (in development) state, interfaces with the cloud and nothing else.  That is, it consumes applications from the Internet, and it leaves the concepts of on-disk storage and the safe harbor of application stability, security, and data to the institutions that understand them best.  While there will be plenty of valid concerns about privacy and “Big Brother”, I think this movement is absolutely brilliant with enough fish and security in the sea to obscure uncle Sam’s line of sight.

What’s exciting about this system is that, much like the MacBook Air captured our attention and showed us the way of the future by making it to the stage without a DVD/CD-ROM drive, Google’s open-source Chrome OS is helping us to realize the ambitious dream of the 80′s that the Internet will one day be the desktop.  It’s also supporting the quickly spreading dreams of today that software will be a collaborative human advancement along the same lines as science and art.  It won’t be long before we will be leaving the personal disk and bulky workstation of the past right where they belong.  Steve, I’m talking to you buddy.

Chrome OS and the MacBook Air aren’t alone in the innovation catapult this year, though.  Jobs rightfully, albeit gently, set Flash to the side to make room for the up and coming HTML 5 standard, Project Natal introduced us to space-age voice/video recognition and advanced artificial intelligence for family entertainment, and the iPad upgraded the idea of a bulky tablet from a twisty-turvy life-short notebook to the keystone science-fiction device of a smart home.  Folks, we aren’t even in the future yet, and Ballmer has already missed the train.

To elaborate lightly on Chrome OS’s assist with regard to the future of the “PC”, I have to mention the recently notorious “cloud computing”.  It’s the hoop-jumping coal-walking buzzword that’s flexing its muscles these days, thanks to a few steroids from the industry, and companies around the world are taking it in hook, line, and sinker.  They’re already pushing as many of their applications and services as possible to the cloud for global consumption.  Google Docs is a word processor, Hulu and YouTube are television you can touch, and the more common ones like games, notes, bookmarks, and mail are already stable parts of the cloud.  With 3G, 4G, broadband land-lines, and satellite in a fully and wirelessly connected world, we can finally say that we’re ready for a desktop in the cloud.

Mr. Ballmer, Microsoft Windows is still caught in the past that everyone else is starting to feel sorry for.  Not even the enterprise wants to pay you for cheap resource-intensive hogs like your Windows 7 thousand pound gorilla anymore unless they’ve already done their deals with the devil.  Sure, if you take all of the top-mass off things seem to run pretty well, but OS X Server is smooth no matter what light you put it in.  To your dismay, sir, I’m hearing Ubuntu, FreeBSD, OpenSuSE, and CentOS more and more each day.  Have some of that with your market share in the morning.

The moral of the story?  Get your wife an iPad and a cell phone, and she won’t want for anything more.  Buy your wife a Ballmer “PC”, and she’ll always need an upgrade.  Further, don’t talk to a Microsoft guy about the future when Apple is taking us there.  PC Magazine, you should know better.  For shame…

Ballmer, I wish you the best of luck with your gaming company.  Cheers to XBox.  Maybe you can focus on giving it some room in your “smaller form factor” predictions.  lol

~A

The thoughts that the world reads will affect their thoughts, what they might write, and who they might communicate with in the future.  My words will reverberate in their minds when we meet in person whether we speak or not.  They may even attempt to validate concepts by tapping the same tree from different sides as they interact with the sources of data that I have published, that others have published, and that in-person meetings will confirm.

Catching their thoughts, watching their self-published nodes develop, and listening to their questions with my publishings in mind has shown me an exhausting, but interesting, interconnected web of information both online and off.  Equally as interesting is the corruptibility of this web.

What I’m writing now, who I’d like to become, how I tailor and order search results for consumption, the ease with which linear pathways can be generated, and the raw power of building a page-turner for the masses can create any persona, perception, and interpretation of fact or fiction so long as the source can be “validated”.  One thing that I’ve come to notice is that people are becoming increasingly believing of online sources, and younger generations will strongly believe something to be true so long as it is seen from two or three points of view even if all points of view look at publications based on the same source.

It’s as if an onlooker notices you are holding something behind your back and queries, “What are you holding?”  You are holding a piece of candy, but you respond, “I have a piece of paper in my hands.”  The onlooker is inclined to believe you, but they approach from a different angle and ask more indirectly this time.

It’s a different day of the week in a different location, and you turn your front to them still holding the candy behind your back as you respond with the same answer.  Later, the first onlooker runs into a second onlooker, who had just asked you the same question, and query whether or not the second onlooker knows what’s behind your back as a tertiary means of confirmation.  The second onlooker responds, with plenty of self-satisfaction from knowing the answer — even though it’s the wrong answer, “It’s a piece of paper.”

Now, the first onlooker has fully confirmed what they know as a fact.  The second onlooker obligated themselves to, and therefor self-imposed belief of, what they now also know to be a fact.  Both onlookers have been fooled.

This is the power of the Information Age.  Whether the onlooker was armed with the correct information or not, the impact was the same.  A networked onslaught of perception became a single reality for multitudes of real people.  The lesson?

Inform responsibly; validate intelligently.

The Social Media bubble is now the awesome superpower of the digitally connected world.  People have become units with statistics and interconnected points of view.  The rumor mill is bigger than ever, and people have already been made and destroyed from the opportunities and disasters that the Internet has paved the way for.  For those of us in the United States, the Internet is largely uncontrolled, and it’s full of corruption just as it is full of good intention leaving plenty of room for concern.

Security is the number one concern for online social networkers with no drop in pressure.  Facebook allows group-by-group highly granular security policies that allow you to show some information to one group of “friends” and other information to another.  MySpace, Google’s many publishable services, and others have similar granular security principals.  They are all digital locks with digital keys leaving the raw exposure of data elephants at the mercy of skilled software engineers.

Who has the keys, who sells the keys, and how powerful are the keys really?  Welcome to what many are deeming Web 3.0.  There are many different definitions for Web 3.0 sometimes including detailed technical algorithms and platforms that have yet to be widely adopted in software and on connected home devices, but the common layman high-level definition is that Web 3.0 is an Internet that capitalizes on the data collected for any one person in a way that allows connected software to tailor your Internet experience accordingly.

Advertisements, people, links, ideas, propaganda, and products that you are shown are those that you are most likely to click, be interested in, or buy.  Web 3.0 can even utilize the data from people you know to help it understand your interests even better.  While this sounds very sheisty, there are several features that can assist us as well.  Knowing your geographical location, connected applications such as Google’s search can help you find doctors, lawyers, or family getaways near you.  With some basic information on your origins, applications such as MySpace and Facebook can reconnect you with long lost friends or members of your family tree.

I don’t think it’s any surprise that the youngest generations were among the first to jump into social media platforms.  Sometimes ignorance is bliss.  With identity theft sitting on the top of the charts today as a world crisis, after years of receiving junk mail, after taking more falls than most of us can count, and stemming from a more private and semi-secretive culture looking out for family interests, it’s no wonder why older generations are much slower and more cautious easing into online persona publishing than many of their children and their children’s children.

The newest generations have been trained early to understand common application user interface design and easily cruise their way through multitudes of connected applications.  They rely on networked technology to communicate on major and minor scales.  New generations friend and de-friend with meaning as well as maintain social circles, rumors, likes, and dislikes all online.  Protecting your child from the risks of the Internet now presents the new issue of raising an anti-social child.  In schools, being connected is now considered the norm.

If a child is disconnected in a public school, they’re asking mom and dad for a cell phone and an e-mail address, because they want to be accepted and they need to be in the know.  They want to stop getting taunted every time they have to give the dreaded “I don’t have an e-mail address.” response to their peers, and they need to be able to stay up to speed on school publications as more schools make more moves to paperless delivery systems.  No child is going to regularly dig through the school website for the latest information in an age where sometimes hundreds of micro information feeds are delivered to them daily.

Latest generations are so unable to disconnect themselves from the social collective that it causes magnitudes of anguish when they are forcibly disconnected.  Not knowing what to do, they become naked and frustrated in anticipation for the moment they can rejoin the collective.  Heaven forbid they try their Twitter attention spans on a board game.

We now have the single largest method of societal corruption and the most efficient system for world unity only a few generations away from being fully grown.  As the greatest swiss army knife that ever was or that may ever be, the single greatest collaborative database of human knowledge, and a gargantuan platform for corruption and misinformation, we are being forced to change the way we think about the Internet.

For now, everything is still young, and there’s nothing more interesting to me than watching this new world develop.  Seeing how people are easily led from one page to another as if they were ordered and bound in a book, watching those who think they are digging diligently be easily fooled into looking at the same side of the same coin dressed in different outfits and presented in indirect ways, and understanding how heavily newer generations have come to rely on the Internet are all observations of only recent developments.  Imagine the future.

~A