Smalltalk with James Robertson

Here's something that young adults are going to need to pay attention to:

Maximum PC (April 2010, page 10), of all places, reported on a study by Microsoft which found that 70%-yes 70% of HR professionals turned down a job candidate based upon their online reputation.

More specifically, what does reputation mean here? Well, the sorts of things too many people do on Facebook (etc):

The top three reasons cited for rejecting a candidate were concerns about lifestyle, inappropriate comments, and unsuitable photos and videos.

This may change over time as hiring managers are drawn from the net generation, but then again, it may not - and I suspect that a lot of young people are in for a rude awakening

Technorati Tags: social media

Spotted in Rob Fahrni

Stuff like this is fun. Standing in line with your fellow geeks, talking shop, staying up all night, and scoring that new geek toy early. Yeah, I could do that, and I know a couple of guys that would probably stand in line with me.

Not me. I'd much rather wait 24-48 hours, stroll into an uncrowded store and be back out in under 5 minutes. Heck, think of all the DragonAge I could play in that time :)

Spotted in Doc Searls Weblog:

The system isn't one. It's all very ad hoc and not very reliable. Nobody yet has the right formula to reconcile their own costs and programming with the barely-known users and usages out there. How many streams should they support? Should they stream at 128kb and be audible only over ethernet and good broadband land connecitons? Should they stream in lo-fi at 24kb or 32kb so they stay audible on iPhones over 3G connections after those go away and the connection drops down to GPRS? (That's my recommendation, generally.) Should they have multiple streams? (I also recommend that.) For radio on the Net (which also includes podcasting and on-demand), there isn't enough common usage yet, much less common wisdom about how to serve it on the supply side. It's like AM radio in 1924. The difference is that much more of it is outside regulatory control. The rules that matter are copyright more than engineering. Ever notice how little popular (or even known) music is on podcast? Thank the DMCA for that one.

I don't follow this field like Searls does, but I can certainly note that I listen to a whole lot less radio. I tend to have one of three things on, whether I'm in my home office or the car:

• iTunes
• Pandora
• AM Radio (I periodically listen to talk radio to get an idea as to what the outrage of the day is)

The thing I spent most of my younger years with - music radio - I almost never have that on. As Searls says though, things are in a very ad-hoc state right now, and they haven't settled down into anything like what they'll look like in, say, 10 years. Getting rid of the DMCA would help a lot, but I don't expect that to happen. Too bad, really; the whole shape of the future is constrained by that stupidity.

Technorati Tags: radio, music

Every few months you find a hand wringing article about "the next generation" and how they are being influenced by technology. Sure enough, I ran across the Times fretting about the impact of IM and social networking on the younger set:

"I worry that young people won't be able to summon the capacity to focus and concentrate when they need to," said Vicky Rideout, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which will release a sweeping survey on the technology and media habits of children and teenagers this month.

Way back in the late 60's and early 70's, this researcher's predecessors were fretting that TV was doing the same thing to my generation. Later on, video games were doing it. The symptoms never change, just the technology being ranted at.

Technorati Tags: behavior, children