Controlling your web image while seeking employment

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With the shift in the economy I’ve seen a fair amount of my friends, including myself at one point, unexpectedly find themselves back in the job market. In such a situation it’s more important than ever to control your image on the web.

If you’re in a technical industry such as web development/design or digital media, it’s expected that you have your own website. Even if you’re not in such an industry, having a website to serve as your “online business card” is a wise move. Your own website is the best way for you to control the first search result for your name.

Having your own website does not mean having a Facebook page, a MySpace profile, or even a Twitter account. While it’s great to also have a presence on any one of these social networks in order to connect with friends old and new, this is not how you want potential employers to get to know you. If you’re not careful, these social networks—Facebook and MySpace moreso than Twitter—have great potential for tarnishing, or even ruining, your online image in the eyes of a potential employer.

The first step towards having your own website is to purchase your name as a domain–preferably .com and/or .net. It’s important that your name is the domain (ex. firstnamelastname.com); don’t try to get creative! The domain name is one of the highest, if not the highest, ranking pieces of information in the eyes of a search engine. If your website’s domain is firstnamelastname.com, your site will undoubtedly be the first result for “firstname lastname.”

The next step is to setup your website. You’ll need to purchase webspace along with your domain. Typically the most basic Linux hosting package will be sufficient. Next, I’d suggest an easy-to-use content management system (CMS) such as WordPress. A CMS will allow you to easily style your site as well as populate its content without needing to know how to code a website. I’m available to help setup and/or customize your website if needed. Or, if you just have simple questions those are welcome too. I assist many of my friends and just flat out enjoy helping people, so I’m not trying to increase my business here.

Your website may want to mention a little blurb about yourself such as key skills, notable accomplishments, or any other qualities that may be appealing to an employer. Do NOT start listing your activities and hobbies, let people learn those once you’re working with them at your new job.

You may want to link to some of your presences on social websites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) but first make sure that your privacy settings are in place for your profile(s). Or, just keep a clean profile! I’ve found that that is generally an easier and safer practice; nothing that your mother wouldn’t want to see.

Most importantly you should have a link to your resume so that it is quickly and easily available for download by potential employers. I’ll go over a great way to share your resume on the web in a future (soon) blog post.

Update: Part II is available, Sharing your resume with Box.net

Google is Getting Impressive with Real-Time Search

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Google has gotten very good at real-time search. We all know that they said they were going to make the attempt, but until we see such claims in action it’s just talk. Google started by targeting important real-time sources such as Twitter and it looks like other content sources are right on par.

Google is crawling the web in general with an impressive, seemingly ever-increasing frequency. My last blog post was indexed about 2 or 3 minutes after it was published. My tweet pointing out my blog post was indexed another 2 or 3 minutes after that.

Some news may not actually break on Twitter first; it’s good to know that “static” web pages are still players in the real-time search game. The fact that new content on my irrelevant site is indexed so quickly is awesome.

Feedback on Alice.com’s First iPhone App (v1.0)

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Alice.com startup screen

Alice.com just released their first iPhone application. It provides access to all of the abilities available on its website which should prove very useful for regular users of the service including myself. At first glance, however, it appears as though the app could be a usability nightmare for some people.

The interface, while clean and easy on the eyes much like its web-based parent, has not fully adopted iPhone UI “etiquette.” Information and action buttons feel packed in and some buttons are just difficult to view. Buttons for adding items to the cart and viewing further information are tiny and laid out in close proximity to other tiny buttons.

The Reorder Alerts screen provides three actions (Fix, Delay, and Order) for each item suggested for reordering. Each button is so small and close to the others that this could provide major headaches for those that aren’t super-precise or small-fingered. The “View” order button in the upper-right corner is also very small, although conceivably any touch placed near it will trigger the cart view since it’s the only option in the surrounding area. Even the “Back” button seems a bit undersized compared to most well-designed iPhone app UIs.

Alice.com app: Coupons

The coupon view shares the same potential usability pitfalls. The Info and Add buttons are undersized and very close to each other.

Alice.com could do its users a huge favor by hiding the action buttons for each item behind a swipe gesture. Tweetie 2 does this very well and it’s easy to both understand and use. The swipe gesture is widely used by other apps and has become an expected feature. This would save some serious screen real estate—something for which it seems Alice was hard pressed.

Alice.com app: My Products screen

The bottom navigation buttons are also too light, lacking enough contrast against the background color of the navigation row.

I’m hoping that Alice’s employees will start to use their own app and realize its weak points, although wouldn’t you think they’d have done that pre-public release? Here’s to version 1.1.

Join the Community with Google Friend Connect!

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Hello friends and newcomers!

I recently implemented Google Friend Connect here on the site. The most noticeable feature of this implemenation is the Google Friend Connect “Social Bar” along the bottom of the website. The Social Bar contains four features:

  1. Sign in to the Social Bar using your credentials (Google, AIM, Yahoo, and more). Signing in will enable the commenting feature (#3).
    Google Friend Connect Sign-in
  2. View recent activity on the site.
    Google Friend Connect Social Activity
  3. View current comments regarding the page you’re viewing as well as add a comment regarding the page you’re currently viewing.
    Google Friend Connect Comments
  4. View the members that are a part of the community already; see who is already interacting!
    Google Friend Connect Members

Feel free to join the community and interact with other members by commenting on pages and blog entries. If you have a technical support question, feel free to post it as a comment on the Technical Support page and I will do my best to answer it as soon as possible.