Just now, on the morning CNN Headline News, I saw a quick stat in honor of, I can only imagine, Valentines day.

And it pretty much embarrasses women.

Have you ever slept with the boss?
Women: 30% yes
Men: 19% yes

The question, on the surface, implies that more women than men have slept with their boss. There is also the likely (and planned) possibility that one might interpret this to mean “for the purposes of getting a promotion.”

You cannot read into this!

Possible explanations:

• Despite what a vocal minority of militant feminists say about not using your sexuality to get ahead, a large percentage of “normal” women do it anyway.
• There are more male superiors than female superiors in the office, and fewer subordinates are homosexual, resulting in fewer males sleeping with superiors.
• Men have fewer superiors altogether, whereas women are much more likely to have male superiors, indicating that women, by and large, have lower positions in any given company.
• Men lie more often than women on CNN Headline News surveys.
• And on and on and on.

So, why do they put this out there? Well, they’re counting on your ignorance, your laziness, your lack of will to even consider possible explanations that are different than their implied explanation.

It’s times like these that I almost hate blogging. I read what might be the most insightful article comparing and contrasting Flash and HTML5 that I’ve ever seen, yet I’m compelled to belittle the crap out of the content. Why? Because this wasn’t about HTML5 at all! It was about excuses for Flash.

In Ray Valdes’ recent article, HTM5 and the future of Adobe Flash, he make some very interesting points… that is, if you can avoid looking through what are obviously Flash-apologist-tinted glasses. To help you out, here’s a hit list of items I felt were inaccurate, along with my personal commentary.

All in all, it’s a great article, and I highly recommend giving it a read. Oh, and if you want my comments to make any sense at all, you need to at least skim the original article. Just sayin’.

“Many of the issues that impact Flash also impact these other approaches.”

I disagree. I’m not really assaulted by Silverlight or Java ads, banners, and splash pages. Nor do I have to have a plugin to use the web “normally” (as in, watching videos, clicking a menu, etc).

People are targeting Flash because of their poor experience with it, not because somehow the iPhone debacle has brought the spotlight upon it.

“HTML5 is the future of the Web, but that future could take a very long time.”

A very long time? You realize Adobe will likely launch at lest TWO full CS packages — very expensive packages — in that time? We should all bide our time, keep our mouths shut, pay our money, and put up with more and more rancid mana from the Adobe gods, shall we?

“The HTML5 is large and complex, and current projections by the people working on the spec (Ian Hickson of Google and David Hyatt of Apple) are for all parts to be finished in the year 2022, some 18 years after the process began (in 2004).”

It’s actually 2012… less than 2 years away.

“This aggregate mass will take a long time to shift to an alternative, no matter how good that alternative may be, due to sheer inertia of large scale systems that are operationally functional.”

Perhaps that used to be the case. These days, the web is agile, software development is getting leaner and leaner each year, and the days of heavy Java-based “enterprise” apps are in the past.

“Apple says that Flash is low-performance, insecure, drains battery life…”

It is.

“…Adobe programmers were “lazy” because they did not improve Flash.”

To be fair, it was Adobe programmers who, for years and years, refused to port their software from Carbon to Cocao, and who didn’t make a 64bit version for Macs. Yet, their software costs the exact same for Mac users.

So is it Adobe getting back at Apple, and consequently Mac users? Or is it Apple seeing their users being left out, and making a decision to avoid dependence on Adobe?

“However, Apple seems to grant Google a “most favored nation” status despite increasing competition with Android, which is why Apple’s objections to Flash seem irrational.”

Perhaps you missed the part where Google voice was denied in the App store?

I suppose you also missed Apple’s iWork.com service release, a direct competitor to Google Documents.

“Any large powerful app will consume CPU and battery , whether that app is written in Flash, Silverlight or HTML5. Simple apps consume minimal resources, and most HTML5 and Flash apps are simple.”

So that’s why most versions of Adobe Air-based Twitter apps are such resource hogs? Because parsing XML is computationally-intensive?

Let’s be realistic, Adobe does not make efficient apps. Ever. Never have.

“The choice among these technologies is not “all or none”. “

Careful with that line of thinking, sir. That’s how we end up with entry-level job listings demanding 5+ years proficiency with a dozen or so platforms.

There’s nothing wrong with realizing there’s no silver bullet. That said, let’s not get so crazy that we’re duck taping all our various disparate crap together with Perl and XML. Again.

“The old anti-Microsoft alliance of Google, Adobe, and Apple is splintering.”

Perhaps, but the end result is a more cohesive, standards-centric domain, including hardware, software, and web.

The other thing to consider is that it’s never been about Apple versus Microsoft. It takes a very narrow lens to even see things that way.

“Adobe sees the writing on the wall and is responding.”

So in the end, it’s the big bad wolf (Apple) forcing the ugly beast (Adobe) to change his ways?

Seems reminiscent of the days that the iPhone revolutionized the concept of a smart phone, and every other manufacturer launched their “me-too” versions.

In the end, isn’t it about the users? Isn’t it about US getting better quality? That’s exactly what’s happening, so why complain?

And, in case you were wondering, this was intentionally somewhat abrasive and aggressive. Tit for tat, I say.

Let’s hear it, what are you thoughts on this whole apparent schism in the community?

There’s a lot to be desired as a freelancer looking for short to medium term work. Many sites are crowded with junk, look and function horribly, provide little to no customer service, or have such a loose vetting process (looking at you, Craigslist) that you’d be hard pressed to find a worse waste of your time than using them.

What’s this all about then?

One less-discussed aspect to freelance work is job boards. I don’t mean which job boards to use, how to use them, or if they even work (I’m convinced they rarely work out for BOTH the client and the contractor).

Rather, this is regarding the structure of membership on job boards, and what particular business model seems to work more effectively.

I thought you had a job, what happened?

I am still a developer at IU, but I recently completed a few projects and had a bit of time free up for some side work, so I set out exploring the always interesting world of freelance web development.

To start, of course, I simply posted on my Facebook and Twitter accounts that I was available for work. I can’t hurt, right? And by the sheer numbers, there’s at least a small chance that someone on one of those networks either has some work, or knows of some work.

Result: Pending o_0

So social networking doesn’t work, what next?

Then I tried some freelance job boards. I’ll provide a list of the boards I signed up for at the end of this post, and after I have a bit more time working with them, I’ll post my general observations about them.

Free and Free

The first is elance. Very popular, but utterly full of junk. elance works by charging a commission, or finder’s fee, on the resulting transaction total. It’s free to post projects, and free to join and apply to work on projects. Sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it?

Not so fast.

Far too often, you get clients posting that they want 5+ years experience with everything under the sun, they’re developing some massive site that will be the “next big thing”, oh and by the way, they’re offering a handsome sum of about $500. And it’s on a Net 60 pay schedule. Ugh, no thanks.

On the flip side, you get designers and developers who are charing cut throat rates, undercutting everyone, and delivering horrible results. Way too many of them apply for way too many jobs with a copy/paste response about their Chinese* or Indian* “firm” that can create wonders. Few actually deliver.

* Note: This doesn’t mean only low quality contractors come from China or India. I’m just posting my direct observations.

Free and Paid

Now, moving on to a different model… FreelanceSwitch (FSw). How this works is that it’s free to post projects, but only paid members can view and apply for contractor positions for the projects. The cost is $7/month, a nominal fee, even if you get a single project out of it, in my opinion.

However, it, too, suffers from some major junk issues. While one would expect the quality level of the contractors to go up, it’s not guaranteed. The cost is high enough to drive out most spammers and junk contractors, but it’s low enough that it’s still worth it for a few to slip in.

Additionally, the quality of the projects posted, since it’s free, is abysmal. The “throw mud against a wall and see what sticks” mentality is pretty damn clear.

One of two things are common:

• 1) The project demands the sun and the moon and pays like crap, or
• 2) The project is crap and pays like crap.

Frequently, the same position posted on FSw is posted many other places online, and since there’s no cost, why not?

Paid and Free

There is a site that does the opposite of FSw in that they charge the client posting the project, and access to apply by the contractors is free. It’s called Authentic Jobs, and I have to say I haven’t spent much time there yet. I guess I’m not really desperate enough to force myself to try every single board out there. But I will be using it soon and writing a true review if warranted.

They do offer a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee to paying posters, and I have no idea what that’s for, or how good they are about honoring it, but I can tell you one thing… the rate of $250 for a full time position posting and $75 for a freelance position is guaranteed to make the poster think twice about their project and description.

There are the same issues at Authentic as FSw, but in reverse. You get a ton of replies to jobs. Some don’t reply with the correct information, some are obviously not qualified for the position, and some, well… who knows what some people are thinking.

That said, Authentic Jobs is a happening place, and many of my freelance acquaintances swear by them.

Paid and Paid

Now, here’s my ideal setup: Charge a relatively high fee for BOTH the client AND the contractor.

B-b-but, David, that’s just greedy! Possibly. But it solves a number of problems the other sites have, and if you make enough margin from charging both ends, you can afford to provide better service, better vetting, and better marketing to attract new clients and contractors.

I’ve yet to run across a site like that, but I encourage you to post in the comments if you’ve seen one. I’d love to give it a whirl and a thorough review.

Sites:
elance
FreelanceSwitch
Authentic Jobs

Oh, btw… if you’re looking for a developer, give me a ping!

I was just alerted that we have an internet meme creeping out into the real world. Courtesy of Martin J. Wagner, Project Manager for all podcasting initiative at IU (such as the fabulous IU Podcast Portal). Previously a sort of internet joke, these T’s are all over the place now.

Amazingly, someone even painted it on their car. When will the madness end?

PCWorld reports that a “next new thing” optical disc outsizing even Blu-Ray is on its way:

TDK has developed a prototype optical disc that can hold up to 320GB of information — that’s more than six times the current highest-capacity media available. The 12-centimeter disc has 10 recording layers, each of which can store 32 Gigabytes. In comparison a Blu-ray Disc can hold 25GB on each layer, and a dual-layer disc is the highest capacity generally available at present.

The only problem is that we really don’t need this. I know, you’re thinking “640K ought to be enough for anybody,” but hear me out…

Our digital lives are getting more and more bandwidth- and storage-demanding. That’s just a fact. So it would seem that our optical media should also grow with us, as have our hard drives.

The problem with optical media is that it takes only one scratch to render the data irretrievable. Granted, hard drives have their limitations, too: Need a power source, have fine motorized parts (if HDD and not SSD), and are as fragile as any electronic equipment.

However, the “death scratch” on optical media could come from something as simple as putting it in a sleeve or case wrong. Additionally, some optical media players have been known to get out of balance and scratch the holy hell out of your discs whilst spinning them.

And 320GB is a SHIT TON of data to lose all at once from a single scratch. Perhaps this wouldn’t be an issue if the discs were as cheap to buy, and fast to write to as regular CD’s… but I assure you they aren’t, and won’t be for quite a long time.

So how about it? Can we move past optical media already?

link: TDK Develops 320GB Optical Disc – Business Center – PC World