Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Implementing Google’s ‘20% Time’ in a Small Contracting Firm

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Background

Google is one of the most successful and innovative companies of the digital age. They have been so successful that ‘Googling’ has become a synonym for performing an Internet search, and Google’s web sites are quickly becoming the main Internet destinations for news, maps, email, and more. Their original search site remains the most widely used search engine on the Internet by a significant margin.

One of the keys to Google’s success has been a program known as ‘20 percent Time’ or, officially, ‘Innovation Time Off’. All of Google’s software engineers are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time—one full day per week—on an unofficial project that interests them. Some of Google’s newer services, including Gmail and Google News, were hobbies started by company employees during their ‘Innovation Time Off’ that were later expanded into official, flagship Google projects. These projects, each now recognized as innovation leaders in their respective fields, would not exist if employees were expected to spend all of their time on their assigned projects (or, in terms employees of contracting firms might be more familiar with, if their employees were completely ‘billable’).

Read more . . .

Hosting Change; Significant Performance Improvement

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Forgive me for posting two ‘site’ postings in a row, but I’ve been hard at work quietly getting the site moved to Dotster, our new hosting provider (and long-time domain registrar). The move went smoothly and everything seems to be working fine. Dotster’s servers are known for being much more speedy and reliable than the servers at PowWeb, our previous host, so you should notice significant improvements in site performance.

One-by-one, Melissa and I are moving all of our web sites over to Dotster. Pretty much everything except Melissa’s is done already, and tying the rest up is my project for the weekend (working out some minor kinks with the host before I dive into moving Melissa’s site). Enjoy!

Update April 27—We’ve completed the move and all of our web sites are now hosted on Dotster. Additionally, I performed some long-overdue maintenance on Melissa’s store (poke poke).

New Feature: ‘Tagging’ (Archives by Subject)

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I just introduced a new feature to Off on a Tangent called ‘Tagging’ or, in my personal nomanclature, ‘Archives by Subject’. This is a built-in feature of the WordPress blogging and content management system that I’m using that will hopefully help you to more-quickly find related content. For example, if you click on the ‘Politics’ tag, you’ll find all of my political content (whether it be opinion, reporting, endorsements, or analysis). If you click on the ‘Technology’ tag you’ll find all my technology content (whether it be reporting, analysis, or reviews). And so on.

Some of my older content isn’t tagged yet, so it’s not a ‘complete’ implementation, but it’s getting there. You can see the full list of subjects in the right column of the site.

Treason Goes Unnoticed

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It wasn’t that long ago that I pointed out Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had committed a felony when she went to Syria and met with its leaders in a foreign-relations capacity without authorization from the president. The so-called Logan Act (USC Title 18, Part I, Chapter 45, §953), passed in 1799, prohibits U.S. citizens from engaging in foreign relations without the ‘authority of the United States’ (and the executive, not Congress, is granted Constitutional responsibility for foreign affairs).

Now, former President Jimmy Carter (D) has committed a similar act. Again, nobody seems to care.

Carter, against instructions from the Bush administration, traveled to the middle-east and held a meeting with the leaders of Hamas. Hamas is a recognized terrorist organization that holds de-facto control of the Gaza Strip and legislative control of the entire Palestinian National Authority. Jimmy Carter might not have noticed (too busy polishing his Nobel Peace Prize?), but we’re in the midst of a War on Terror. An argument could easily be made that by meeting with Hamas leadership, Carter not only violated the Logan Act but also committed treason. A former U.S. president meeting with a known terrorist leader grants that terrorist leader legitimacy. If giving a terrorist leader legitimacy isn’t giving ‘aid and comfort’ to avowed enemies of the United States (U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 3), what is?

The Gradual Disintegration of Windows?

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I do basically all of my computing these days (excluding time at work) on either Mac OS X or Ubuntu Linux. I also have high-hopes for the Haiku OS, even though it’s not ready for prime time just yet. I am not a fan of Windows, as any long-time reader will be well-aware, and only use the wayward Microsoft operating system on the computer provided by my employer and in a Parallels Desktop testing environment.

I just read a really interesting article by Peter Bright at Ars Technica that provides a great—albeit technical—background of Windows and Mac OS as they exist today from the perspective of a former software developer on the Windows platform who has left for the greener pastures of Mac OS.

All-in-all, I agree with Bright. Apple and Microsoft both had aging operating systems in the mid-to-late 1990s that were not well suited for modern applications or for the constant networking (and networking threats) brought by the Internet. Apple started over with Mac OS X, a ground-up redo of Mac OS based on the work of the UNIX community and NeXT. Microsoft, while leaping forward with the technically advanced NT Kernel (the ‘core’ that runs Windows NT, 2000, XP, and Vista) long before Mac OS X made it to market, failed to remove all the cruft that surrounds it and continues to hobble Windows today. Here’s hoping the next version of Windows goes back to the drawing board and brings us something great.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.