technology

Data Science for the Non-Scientists

Tom Burg on April 15, 2013

Last week, The New York Times discussed the emerging academic discipline known as Data Science, and how students will be able to become what’s known, according to Rachel Schutt, as “a hybrid computer scientist software engineer statistician.” I have no doubt that data science will supplant computer science as one of the hot degrees for the ambitious and intelligent over the next decade. But what about the rest of us? We’re out of school and in the workforce. Are we also on the road to becoming obsolete? Read More →

Too Much of a Good Thing: The Problem With Related Content

Lisa Schneider on November 16, 2012

“We should give the user more of what they obviously want.”

It seemed like such a good idea at the time, didn’t it? Reading about holiday entertaining? Then you must want to see more recipes and decorating ideas. Checking out career success tips? We’ll give you a ton of career success tips.

Here at Budget Travel, I have yet to talk to a single partner or advertiser who doesn’t want to target users based on what they’re already looking at. Selling deals? Put a deal to Paris on a page about — wait for it — Paris! All of this makes sense…up to a point.

Why Math Matters: Practical Lessons in Big Data from an Unlikely Source

Tom Burg on November 13, 2012

I was reminded again of the importance of knowing how to harness and utilize big data in the run-up to this month’s US presidential election. By many accounts, more than $2 billion was spent by the two main candidates this election cycle. On the basis of being able to aggregate and read massive electoral datasets, that money was well-spent. Deciding how to spend that money was largely a function of being able to correctly analyze electoral “big data” – demographics, likely vs. registered voters, the public’s responses to various issues, etc. One side, however, utilized big data better than the other. Read More →

No One Goes There Anymore: Home Pages and the New Wisdom in Traffic Patterns

Lisa Schneider on September 24, 2012

Back in the day (I’m talking 2002-ish), our sales team was keen on promoting a “home page takeover” or other home-page-based advertising executions to really give clients that WOW factor. After all, everyone comes to the home page!

Today (10 years later, if you can believe it), I still hear salespeople get all worked up about pitching a home page takeover. But no one goes there any more. Read More →

Who Says Moms Can’t Launch Successful Startups?

Jan Brown on June 14, 2012

Last Saturday the New York Times’ business section ran an article (“Nurturing a Baby and a Start-Up Business“) about women with small children who launch high-growth tech companies. It profiled several women launching and running highly successful start-ups while they are pregnant or have very young kids and how their success is “dispelling the image of the tech entrepreneur as a single, usually male, wunderkind.”

The article goes on to say that the investing world remains skeptical about a woman’s ability to launch a tech startup and make it work while also raising young kids. Apparently some — but not all — venture capital firms are concerned that women with small children won’t put in the long hours and give the 150% required to make a fast-growth tech company work in the first few crazy years. Read More →

What I Saw at the New York Tech Meetup

Sheryl Victor Levy on June 14, 2012

We’re pleased to welcome Sheryl Victor Levy to the blog. As a coach for businesspeople who don’t want to be left behind by technology, and as a digital strategist in her own right, she always aims to be a little bit ahead of the curve. She’ll be blogging for us about the ways that digital marketing, advertising, and media are changing just about every other aspect of business — and what you need to know to use this knowledge to your advantage.

Last week I attended the June New York Tech Meetup, along with nearly 800 other guests. Given that the group as a whole has some 24,000 members, these Meetups are always in demand. I had an extra ticket, and I received more than 25 emails in less than 24 hours asking about it.

The event consists of two hours of presentations by local startups, and then an after-party (which yours truly was way too tired to attend). I have to say, the evening was pretty cool. Read More →

Asking “Can’t We Just … ?” Won’t Get You What You Need from the Digital Team

Lisa Schneider on February 1, 2012

I hear the phrase “Can’t we just . . . ” around the office a lot. Actually, I should correct that. I used to hear that phrase a lot.

Now I have a Post-it on my computer with those words in a circle with a line through it, and I’ve pointed to it enough times that I hear it less often.

Here’s what used to happen when people said that: I’d take a deep breath. Downward glance to compose myself. Pause-filling smile. Another pause filler, maybe sip my tea, or save my doc, or anything to buy a few more seconds to still my beating heart. Read More →

Bullet Points: When a Resume’s Too Good to Be True

The Hired Guns on January 24, 2012

It’s a jungle out there, and it looks to HR folks as if more and more job candidates have been “inflating” their experience, titles, and just about everything else. [CNBC]
Business cards are often pretty. But are they also irrelevant? [Lifehacker]
Given that we want to teach the children well, should they be learning how to be entrepreneurs rather than employees? [The Next Web]
Giving your just-bought Android phone a tune-up. [BI slideshow]
Are smart phones ushering in the “death of street smarts“? Sara Goodyear, writing for The Atlantic, argues that maybe we should all be spending more time with the GPS off.

4 Things You Need To Know About HTML5

Lisa Schneider on December 15, 2011

Lisa Schneider writes for The Hired Guns blog about the technological changes that everyone in digital organizations needs to know about, whether it affects their own job directly or not. Questions about technology or making the transition to a primarily digital career? You can either put them in the comments or ask them via Twitter.

Recently, a colleague left a dinner where there was lots of talk about HTML5. “What does this mean for our website?!” was the fairly panicked email I received.

Gone are the days (if they ever existed) when people outside the digital or IT teams could ignore the technology behind websites and applications. And while not everyone needs to know how to code, workers in management, editorial, marketing, and other areas all definitely need to know enough about the technology to understand its implications.

HTML5 is simply the next iteration of HTML. But what’s different, and why are people excited? Read More →

Bullet Points: Talking Tech Turkey

The Hired Guns on November 23, 2011

A cool chart breaking down the internet users around the world: less the 5% have access to broadband, although 30% have access to the internet in some form. [via Alltop]
Does someone in your family have a wonky computer full of dusty software and an operating system that’s on life support? Lifehacker has a gameplan for using Thanksgiving’s downtime to make things better . . . . See also The Atlantic’s Forget Shopping, Friday Is Update Your Parents’ Browser Day!
The Times tackles Google X, the secret labs where it dreams up some of its craziest ideas (yes, there are lots of robots).
NPR on how technology can kill the white-collar jobs that were immune from earlier structural changes. Legal discovery was one of the earliest of the low-hanging fruit. As one researcher says, “… by one estimate, it lets one lawyer do the work of 500.”

Cut Through the Dithering and Pick Up That Phone!

The Hired Guns on November 7, 2011

These days, it’s much more normal to start a “conversation” with colleagues and clients or to bring up an issue with them through an email rather than a phone call. Emails are great for creating a paper trail, and their convenience is hard to beat, but their drawbacks are often overlooked. And good old phone calls have a lot going for them.

Writing for the Harvard Business Review, the venture capitalist Anthony Tjan makes a good case for using the phone and face-to-face meetings much more frequently, especially “when people are trying to resolve a conflict or communicate an important business decision.” Read More →

Ad Agencies Hunting High and Low for Tech Know-How

The Hired Guns on November 4, 2011

If you’ve got a head for marketing and your skills extend beyond pretty words and images to include being savvy with numbers, stats, and analyzing data of all sorts, then your career prospects ought to be very bright right now.

Ad and marketing agencies want people like you, and there just aren’t enough of you. As John Ebbert, the managing editor for a Web site devoted to ad technology, told the New York Times, “There is pain for hiring in digital at all levels.” Read More →

Bullet Points: The Tech Uptick in Silicon Alley

The Hired Guns on October 4, 2011

There may not be much to cheer about in the economy as a whole, but technology remains one rare bright spot. Here are a few factoids that help make that case.

All that online socializing does more than keep us up-to-date on our friends’ favorite pet causes. A study from the University of Maryland, released last month, found that the so-called “Facebook App Economy has added at least 182,000 new jobs and contributed more than $12.19 billion in wages and benefits to the U.S. economy this year.” [TechCrunch]
Last year, New York City’s tech employment finally outstripped its previous record in 2000, during the first tech boom: there were 47,300 people employed in technology in 2010, as opposed to 45,000 a decade before.
New York has nearly outrun Boston as the #2 destination for venture capital investment (Silicon Valley still holds a commanding lead for first place, although that doesn’t mean that NYC won’t keep trying).
Recruiters have done a 180 from the doldrums they were in just a year or two ago: some of them can now be seen going after software developers and other techies with a devotion that borders on the stalkerish.

Bullet Points: How to Sink That IT Job Interview; Google Worker #59; Should Women Bother with Tech Conferences?

The Hired Guns on July 29, 2011

Susannah Breslin’s experiences at TechWeek made her wonder if women should even make the effort to go to tech conferences at all: bottom line, “it makes them depressed.” As you’d except, lots of discussion about this….
Mashable celebrates its six-year anniversary with an infographic of the developments in tech during that time.
Lying and being unprepared—they’re but a few of the ways you can 86 yourself from the IT job you’re after. [InfoWorld]
“… college graduates who enter the labor force during a recession make significantly less money—in their first year and over the course of their careers—than grads who walk into an economic boom.” [NationalJournal]
Douglas Edwards’s book about being Google brand manager—the 59th employee to be hired—is shaping up to be one of the major tech reads of the summer. The WSJ recently ran an excerpt from “I’m Feeling Lucky.”

Bullet Points: Ways of Thinking That Sink Startups; No Tech Bubble (This Time)

The Hired Guns on July 12, 2011

“This bubble talk is about everybody being unbelievably psychologically scarred from 10 years ago.” Mark Andreessen puts us all on the couch to explain why there’s no tech bubble. [NYT]
Goldman Sachs Won’t Let Its Employee Work At Dealbreaker Without Taking 60 (Paid) Days Off First [Business Insider]
Why are people using LinkedIn? A survey of 500 users gets the pretty-infographic treatment . . . [Lab42, via Mashable]
What makes a great company name? Inc. magazine finds some common threads.
At Businessweek, Karen E. Klein looks at the tech incubator Idealab and the “thinking traps” the company tries to avoid.

Bullet Points: Wall Street Optimists; Building Your Own Empire

The Hired Guns on July 7, 2011

Among recent college grads, “Google (GOOG) would be the most eligible bachelor among all sorts of personality types. Apple (AAPL) and Walt Disney(DIS) wouldn’t be far behind.” [Businessweek]
Biz owners and bankers feel good about the economy. [BNET]
And ridiculous tech company perks are back in style, notes Adrian Chen. [Gawker]
Will the company who gave the world FarmVille go down in flames once its employees become rich? Zynga’s IPO lists this as one of the risk factors with going public. [WSJ]
“Serial entrepreneur” Jenn Houser gives “5 Ways to Stop Dreaming and Start Building Your New Business Now.” [Inc.]

Google’s Eight Best Tools for Online Creators

Daryl Lang on July 1, 2011

At Google, some very bright engineers are working tirelessly to make sure everything you do all day somehow involves one of their products. It’s a little bit scary. Fortunately, lots of Google’s valuable tools are available for free, to help anybody learn from the vast volumes of data the company collects. So if you’re working on an online marketing campaign, building a blog, or just maintaining your personal website, you should put Google to work for you.

As someone who writes a blog about copywriting, I find Google beyond helpful in tracking how people use language. Here’s a list of my eight favorite Google bookmarks, going from serious and pragmatic on to fun and frivolous.

Google Analytics

Thanks to its longevity, reliability, and unbeatable price (free), Google Analytics is the standard way that many of us measure website traffic. It takes some technical aptitude to set it up, but when you get it humming, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Google Webmaster Tools

This is Google’s way of showing you how its search engine analyzes and crawls your site. Again, it takes a little bit of technical work to set it up. But if you’re trying to attract search engine traffic, it’s worth your time to understand Google Webmaster Tools. Read More →

Is Your iPad Ruining Your Writing?

Daryl Lang on June 15, 2011

Ask a writer to describe his or her favorite tool of the trade and you’ll probably get an earful. Some writers are loyal to a particular kind of pen or pencil. Some have a thing for typewriters. Personally, I fondly remember the old computer keyboards that had a satisfying snap to them, like the click of a switch. I like my keyboards loud. That clattering racket is the sound of progress!

Which brings us to the iPad. Over the last year a lot of people have switched from carrying laptop computers to iPads. And that’s great.

But despite all the things the iPad does well, it is a mediocre tool for writing. Mashing your fingers on that slippery, smudge-prone glass ranks among the least enjoyable ways to input text into a computer. You would probably have to ask a hundred writers to find one who enjoys typing on an iPad. Read More →

Internet Week: How Technology Helps (and Hurts) Small Businesses (NYC)

The Hired Guns on June 9, 2011

Tomorrow, June 10, from noon to 1pm, The Hired Guns founder Allison Hemming will appear on a panel as part of the day-long Some Things Digital: Business 2.0 seminar. She and other small-business owners will talk about how technology and the Internet have changed the way they run their companies.

Some Things Digital is completely free, but you need to register in advance. Find out more here.

Bullet Points: Facebook Firings; the Tech Bubble; Escape from New York

The Hired Guns on May 13, 2011

Still need convincing that what you put on the internet matters? Business Insider has a slideshow of 17 folks fired for using Facebook.
Is the funny guy you’re following on the Twitter really a… bot? [Atlantic]
A Marist poll found that 36% of the residents of New York state who are under 30 plan to leave within five years. They’re motivated by taxes, a shortage of jobs, and the cost of living. [Daily News]
Things Organized Neatly is exactly what it says it is.
The author Douglas Rushkoff has argued that in the near future, being able to program at least a little is essential to understanding our world. Want to get your feet wet? Mashable has four free places to learn to code online.
Happy Friday the 13th. Maybe today’s the day to learn about some interns from hell. We like this dialogue:

Me: Please be patient with me and all the changes I’m requesting. I promise that for the next issue, the process will be smoother.
Intern: It’s all good. You’re doing a GREAT job!
Me: Uh,…thanks.

Bullet Points: Silent Coffee Shops; Tech’s More Than Ads; Shrinking the Commute

The Hired Guns on May 9, 2011

• D.C. launches a pilot program to encourage employees to live near either their workplace or the public transportation that takes them there. [Good]

• If coffee shops are now the de facto place where freelancers and other floating workers get stuff done, does that mean that everyone should be quiet little mice while slurping their macchiatos? [Gizmodo]

• What’s the legacy of the current tech boom going to be? “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. . . . That sucks,” says an ex-Facebooker who’s now running his own startup.–”This Tech Bubble Is Different,” Businessweek

Bullet Points: Spring Brings Some Hopeful Job News (and Spring Cleaning)

The Hired Guns on April 14, 2011

Some good signs for those looking to make a move: there were more job postings in February than there were at any time in the past two years. And the unemployment rate, though still at an elevated 8.8%, is at a two-year low.
If you’re thinking that you might leave your job in the next few months, now (not later) is the perfect time to get your affairs in order. This includes building your list of contacts (for home use after you leave the job) and pulling together any portfolio samples you may need down the line. The accounting blog Going Concern has some tips on cleaning up your workplace computer, “just in case a team of nerds will be scoping out your computer and any embarrassing data contained therein” after you leave for greener pastures. “This includes your music collection, no reason to give them free MP3s.”
Whether or not you’re planning to leave your job, it’s always a good time to tidy up the cubicle or corner office. As this chipper article reminds us, cleanliness is next to godliness at work as well as at home. The Dumpster awaits.

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