Health Tracking

Learned about a site sponsored by the US Department of Agriculture called My Pyramid that basically allows you to track your nutrition and physical activity online as a way to increase your overall dietary and physical health.

Learned about it from a friend who's has her degree in nutrition and been tracking results for almost 3 weeks now and have seen a drop in my weight of about 5 pounds. Not bad for self tracking purposes.

Blur of activity

Been very busy as of late due to the apparent uptick in activity relating to the economy appearing to shift towards rehiring great talent again in greater volumes. Had some interesting recruiters contact me - including one from Singapore looking to hire talent for a European bank. Didn't even occur to me that folks would be looking to staff for banking positions in Singapore in this worldwide economy. Very interesting indeed.

Celebrated my birthday with some close friends and am looking forward to my first Father's Day.

Jobs with the government

Just recovering after trying to submit an application for a project manager position with the US Department of Labor. Whomever designed the application process should seriously re-review the end to end experience for online job applicants new to working with the federal government. Not only do you have to fill out the usual resume application and cover letter sections, you then get presented with a questionnaire asking if you're familiar with the policies outlined by various government regulations using arcane nomenclature and acronyms unique to the government. 

Finally, after getting through the lengthy questionnaire section, one is required to submit 4 forms by fax which coincidentally do not even present you codes for the forms nor where you're supposed to get said forms. Total time? 1 hour from initial submission to presentation of the 4 fax forms. 

Not a very good initial experience with wanting to work with the U.S. Department of Labor. But, it at least demonstrates considerable opportunity to improve. 

Google Docs

Sharpening the professional saw today as I experimented some more with Wikipedia pages, Twitter and using the Google docs Beta function. Amazing what Google is trying to do with cloud computing integration of its documents, images via Picasa, and video. Once you throw mobile Android into the mix it's only a matter of time before Google becomes the Apple of making cloud computing integration appear seamless.

Google Profiles

Just learned from www.efinancialcareers.com that Google is now beta testing its profile feature. Basically anyone who does a Google search on you will return a Google profile. Better to go ahead and update the profile such that you "own" the content of the profile ASAP.

SEO and Twitter

Am spending quite a bit of time these days trying to get my hands around Twitter and just what exactly is SEO. Turns out that's exactly my problem.

It took an article in Wired magazine and a special on the Tyra Banks show for me to realize that the folks who use Twitter and just update it every 30 seconds with inane commentary about every little thing they're doing at the moment is just plain wrong and clearly don't get the real power of a collaborative environmental insight tool like Twitter.

I'll be the first to admit that I didn't get it for the first 6 months I was using it. It actually took me adding Guy Kawasaki's Twitter (former Apple evangelist) for me to get my "a-ha" moment.

When I began following Guy Kawasaki's Twitter, all of a sudden I had 5 followers within the first 10 minutes of adding him. The entire principle behind Twitter rests in some deep rooted paranoia that all of us possess that someone else knows something that we don't, and Twitter capitalizes on our innate search for knowledge and our fears of not wanting to be left in the dust in the information age.

As long as you're contributing something new in the form of links, articles or a new perspective to the Twitter online community, your followers will begin to grow organically. If you do something truly groundbreaking or infamous as the case may be, then you're followers will grow exponentially.

This is the magic of Twitter and one that I intend to explore more fully in the months ahead.

Phishing scam for job hunters

Just received an email today from a guy responding to an email I sent via Craigslist inquiring about a potential open position.

I received an email from a Gmail based account that sent me a job description, a company description, and a "pre-employment questionnaire". Not only did the email not originate from the company's domain, but the company description in the attached document didn't even resemble the online company description, and the job description was very vague with some pretty lofty promises.

Just a word to the wise to exercise common sense when checking out job requests - as always, if it's too good to be true, it usually is.

Needless to say, I'm not filling it out because it smells too much like a phishing expedition.