It’s hard to throw out old PCs that still work but aren’t really up to what you want to do today, and there’s no point putting them in the cupboard because in a few years they will still end up in the dumpmaster.
Recently we’ve had a lot of success installing Ubuntu on a few older PCs and giving them to people who only need a web machine. In doing this the systems have worked so well that I decided my tired old laptop that takes 10 minutes to boot up would be more use with Ubuntu on it. It took about an hour to install the system and download a bunch of updates and I now have a machine that starts in 30 seconds again.
Then I realised that I no longer have a PVR to record the MotoGP because the AverMedia PCMCIA card doesn’t work. A bit of googling showed that it was going to be difficult to get that card to go, it would be simpler to just buy another card that was supported under Ubuntu. So off I go and get a new tv card and over the next few days come to realise that “supported under Ubuntu” meant that I could download some driver source code that I could compile only if I had the full linux source code, or some things could be commented out and the driver coaxed into action.
When I got my system talking to the TV card I then had to configure it to one of the many tv viewers available. This step took a few more days until I eventually realised that the new tv card being a DVB-T device would only work with digital channels, analog signals were ignored. The Foxtel channel I particularly wanted to tune in is an analog channel and I would need to obtain a supported Hybrid TV card and start over. Maybe I should get a Foxtel IQ box that just works.
I’m not so sure I want a PVR anymore as I’ve also been seeing Ustream showing a number of things that have been really good and getting better very quickly. Maybe I’ll just subscribe to an online site for MotoGP and see where things go.
The office space we have now is huge and we’ve got some other small businesses in to share with us. In fact the office feels almost like a start up incubator with people doing lots of different things.
Displaying everyone’s company logo in the reception area seemed too hard to make it look good.
Here’s what we did.
An old PC that was waiting to be binned got reborn with a Ubuntu Desktop install and a copy of OpenOffice. With not too much fiddling around we managed to get the box to go automatically from power up into our slideshow with no keyboard or mouse needed. The system was then subjected to some severe power disruption testing (we pulled the plug a few times) and survived without issues.
The display was going to be a second hand LCD TV from Ebay, however we were lucky enough to source a brand new plasma TV for a nice price. The end result has been a very effective and flexible signage solution for a price everyone is pleased with.
The impact of our new corporate signage has been even better than we had hoped for with suitably positive comment from passersby.
There is still plenty of office space available if you would like to join us.
The above tweet by Thomas Shaw was the impetus for this post.
Often candidates want to present their information in different formats for various reasons, perhaps to highlight their skills with a product like Flash, or so that consultants can’t corrupt the original content (pdf) or sometimes for no reason at all (docx)
While we can work with varying formats, the tried and true Word (.doc) format is the one we really prefer, and here’s why.
The majority of candidate resumes received are in response to advertisements on Seek and other job boards. When you apply for an ETX Seek ad you start interacting with the ETX database straightaway, our software will try and match you with any previous registration by using your phone number, your email address as well as your name – mostly that works and duplicate versions of your details are avoided.
Uploading your cover letter and resume in the application screen, firstly tries to figure out if you are already registered with ETX, then merges the cover letter onto the resume (we can do that with Word but not with something we can’t edit). The whole content of the document is then scanned for “buzz” words that help to identify different skills and experiences (not something we can do with image formats). That’s far from the end though, once uploaded the resume is indexed to support full text searching by our consultants, similar to the larger Internet search engines.
Consultants and clients, to whom your details are legitimately available, are able to review your resume online, to improve the speed of live delivery your details may be presented in plain text – again this is something we can do with Word but not with graphic formats.
Within ETX there is only one version of your details, if you ever want to see what we present to a client you can log in and access your complete details. Upload a revised version of your resume anytime at all – give it a try. The only thing you wont see are the consultant’s summarising comments provided to the client in relation to the candidates shortlisted which would compromise the confidentiality of other candidates.
If you recruit, ETX software is available as a service.
Probably like a lot of other businesses we have been looking forward to the arrival of Windows 7 so that we could update our old PCs.
To start the process we purchased one machine to setup and learn, things were going fine until we encountered some issues with a tool that we use a lot. It seemed such a trivial thing and perhaps even a novelty item when we first wrote it, but click-to-dial is now such a part of how consultants work that an updated PC running XP and the phone dialer quickly became the preferred option.
While ETX have long advocated web based applications that need only a browser to function, there is however one piece of local code that no one wants to be without. At least for the short term any new PCs purchased will continue to be XP systems, hopefully our registration keys will be accommodating.
Around the ETX office there is always talk of how things should be done and cloud computing has had it’s share of advocates, but no one had actually done it.
Over the last couple of weeks we have been seriously exploring how things work, with a live account and installing some real applications. Starting with a small RedHat 5 instance, no swap space? – fixed that. Updated everything with yum, rebooted, dead, support booted with old kernel. Installed Oracle, java install trouble, a few days searching for the answer to that one. Oh yeh, custom build for Apache and PHP with Oracle, luckily the same as we did for Fedora Core 5 and that was in our wiki. Installed MySQL, Wikis, WordPress all fine.
Support have been great, the chat window has been useful, the ticketing system has worked. At this point we are thinking this is a great way to go forward, providing we find a way to cap a runaway bill. Storage space is cheap and uncapped, incoming data is not charged, however outgoing is again cheap and uncapped. The potential for some super popular post or perhaps a bot attack to generate excessive usage still remains to be solved.
Watching a development manager do recruitment recently by advertising on Seek and working his way through the responses.
Advertising response was strong and his inbox quickly filled up with applications. Then came the tedious business of recording the applications, sifting through the CVs, calling up candidates and shortlisting them for interview.
While this particular manager has lots of online tools to help with looking after contact records, he doesn’t have anything specifically built for recruiting. So no automated interface to Seek, no call integration, no simple recording and response mechanism.
Will he talk to ETX about a subscription to our recruitment software or enlist our help to shortlist candidates for his next requirement? Perhaps, there’s no doubt the process could be improved without necessarily committing ETX to a full recruiting assignment.
I wonder if all applicants received a professional and timely response, or if some were left with a negative impression of the company to broadcast to their contact network? Many companies who recruit directly see the positive brand effects of getting their logo out there, however they often don’t consider the flow on of poor execution.
After lots of phone calls and meetings with our landlord’s agents a deal was struck that has seen ETX pack up and move to a different area of our building. The outcome seems like a win for everyone involved, ETX received some concessions to move, the landlord has locked in a very big new tenant and the agent has had a successful outcome in putting it all together.
Apart from a whole lot of work in packing and unpacking, our move really couldn’t have been much easier. The space we moved to was already fitted with LAN cables and our phone company simply moved our Internet and ISDN connections by patching the connections to the new floor.
With no servers to worry about, they’re all external now and VoIP telephones, getting people running again was just a matter of plugging in some network leads.
One noticeable area I need to work on though is record keeping, we moved a bunch of paper financial records that really should be converted to digital format. I can see one of those fast little scanners getting a workout shortly.
Lately I’ve noticed a number of people online whose business involves writing and editing resumes and cover letters and have watched their marketing claims a little sceptically.
However in today’s employment market I’m beginning to think that paying someone to help produce a professional resume could be a good investment. A recent assignment has highlighted the level of scrutiny clients are applying to resumes now that there are so many really good candidates to review.
While it has been the case for a long time that clients like to view a candidate’s original resume without tampering by our consultants, most reasonably presented resumes have until recently been quite acceptable. Now however we are starting to hear client comment on layout, page balance, grammar and clarity of description with the result that equally skilled candidates are missing out on the opportunity of a client interview as a result of their CV.
While everyone can generate a Word document, very few people are skilled in layout and font selection or enjoy the gift of good copy writing. While there seems no magic formula as to what works, it is becoming very clear that a more polished CV could make a very big difference to your job hunting.
On a recent rainy Sunday of browsing I installed a copy of Boxee, which had only recently been released for Windows.
As I fumbled around exploring the features offered there seemed lots of things that would make Boxee a great way to integrate content from my local network, together with all sorts of offerings from around the world, into a household entertainment system.
Being a recently released product I wasn’t really surprised or concerned when at one point Boxee failed to cope with a movie somewhere and crashed with an error. Almost as an aside I tweeted “playing with @boxee breaks with bxflplayer-win32.exe – is it me?”.
A day or so later this tweet appeared
“tsella@twiet @gordon_j no issue running under xp, vista or 7. we have identified an installer issue though, so uninstall then reinstall for bliss”
@tsella turns out to be Tom Sella one of the founders of Boxee, his simple response seems a great piece of PR we could all learn from, his personal contact has greatly reinforced my interest in keeping up to date with what Boxee has to offer.
If you aren’t searching the Twitter stream for references to your business and the industry your work in, then there are opportunities passing you by.
Making voice calls over the Internet is not really new, however all VOIP providers are certainly not the same.
When our office installed a new PABX we made sure it supported VOIP and initially focused on integrating telephones with our computers for dialing and incoming call routing. Then we started looking at options to reduce call costs, primarily fixed to mobile calls that are by far our major call expense.
Skype received some attention, but didn’t integrate easily with our PABX, we tried our ISP’s VoIP offering which seemed to be someone else’s product and came with flagfall charges and 30 second charge intervals. Now things started to get interesting looking at cost of calls, minimum call cost is $flagfall + one call interval. Looking around some more we found providers with no flagfall and 15 second call intervals and even one second interval charging. Quick calls now can cost a just few cents.
Guess what else we found? The cheaper the service the less customer service was available, but by now we really didn’t need much help and assistance and went with a provider who charges by the second for calls to mobiles, although we also have another account that charges per 15 seconds as a fallback provider.
Using VoIP has had a major impact on our phone bill, decreasing call costs by about 80%. The next step will probably be to use VoIP for incoming calls as well but the payoff in eliminating line rental even further isn’t as compelling.
It’s hard to throw out old PCs that still work but aren’t really up to what you want to do today, and there’s no point putting them in the cupboard because in a few years they will still end up in the dumpmaster.
Probably like a lot of other businesses we have been looking forward to the arrival of Windows 7 so that we could update our old PCs.
Around the ETX office there is always talk of how things should be done and cloud computing has had it’s share of advocates, but no one had actually done it.
Watching a development manager do recruitment recently by advertising on Seek and working his way through the responses.
It has been a busy few weeks.
