I just read 200 undergrad and graduate student resumes

My eyes are killing me.

Why the heck are you cramming so much unimportant information onto your single-sided single-page resume? You make it completely unreadable! Especially when someone (like a hiring manager) is trying to scan through hundreds of scanned pages.

Also, a new tip. Your paper resume will be scanned. It will be OCR’d. If you use tiny text on a background that provides low contrast with your text, no one will call you. EVER.

I found myself starting at the top of the page and letting my eye fall naturally down it. If I couldn’t get enough information to decide if I wanted to actually read it quickly, I just skipped to the next one.

It turns out that a good and specific objective statement is worth more than I ever gave it credit for. It was how I could tell a computer graphics grad student from a business undergrad.

Another question: why do you think anyone cares what high school you went to?

It’s great that you were a summer camp counselor, if I’m hiring a summer camp counselor. But I’m not, and it is just crowding your already crowded resume. Leave it off.

What, you are studying Human/Computer interaction, and you produced a resume that I need an electron microscope to dis cipher?

Sigh…

So, if you found me because you just got e-mail from me to talk about an internship, congratulations! Your resume is legible and clear, or your name begins with a letter from the beginning of the alphabet before my eyes started to glaze over.

Tips for Talks from Rands

I’ve been giving a lot of talks over the last few years, and I’m starting to get better at it. Rands does a great how to on creating a good presentation.

Rands In Repose: Out Loud

I would add one suggestion: go watch presentations from Lawrence Lessig, Al Gore and Scott McCloud. All were really great speakers, some of the best presentations I’ve seen in the slide-deck-style. Another tip: use as few words on slides as you can. The more words you have the less people listen to you and the more they read the screen. I’m working my way towards the zero words talk. I was pretty close in my last one, maybe by my next one…

what the hell is Microsoft doing?

$6 Billion for aQuantive – a company I’ve never heard of with $442M in revenue. Umm… ok. Seems high.

$500M for Danger, a competitor for Windows Mobile written in Java. $56M in revenue last year and has never turned a profit. Uh, who is doing MS’ accounting?

$44.6 Billion for Yahoo! This isn’t a crazy valuation for Yahoo! however, I just found out that MS was going to have to borrow money for the first time in its history to purchase this fading internet darling. Yahoo! hates the idea so much that it is looking to be purchased by AOL or selling off it’s search to Google in order to stave off Microsoft. Way to read the valley culture morons.

Who is the genius behind Microsoft’s acquisition strategy and how the hell are they still employed? 

IPod and disconnectedness

Music: IPod Backlash (Seattle Weekly)

This social isolation is another likely outcome of iPod use, according to Areni, a professor at the University of Sydney who studies environmental psychology, music, and cognition. “Have you ever tried saying ‘hello’ to somebody listening to an iPod? If I see the white or black wires sticking out of somebody’s ears, I don’t even bother, even if it’s a friend. Again, in crowded public spaces, this may be a desirable outcome.”

I found this article fairly interesting. I’d be interested in seeing the psychological effects of wearing an iPod in public. I am one of those folks who wears mine constantly when I’m out and about on my own. I leave my earbuds in sometimes even if the iPod isn’t on. This is mostly due to the fact that I live downtown and 95% of contact with other folks on the street is other people asking me for spare change or directions. It does grow the perceived bubble of my personal space and makes vying my way through crowds more pleasant. I also like the choice of deciding with whom I’ll interact. If I see a friend or enter a business, I’ll take my earbuds out. If someone I don’t know speaks to me on the street, I have the choice of talking to them or pretending not to hear them.

Given a choice between the isolationism of iPods or the fuck-you-all-I’m-talking-here cell phone behaviors, I’m definitely feeling like the isolationism trend is the better of the two.

White House conveniently forgets to save some of their e-mail

From the Seattle Times

Apparent gaps in White House e-mail archives coincide with dates in late 2003 and early 2004 when the administration was struggling to deal with the CIA leak investigation and the possibility of a congressional probe into Iraq intelligence failures.

The gaps — 473 days over 20 months — are cited in a chart prepared by White House computer technicians and shared in September with the House Reform and Government Oversight Committee, which has been looking into reports of missing e-mail.

Among the times for which e-mail may not have been archived from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office are four days in early October 2003, just as a federal probe was beginning into the leak of Valerie Plame’s CIA identity, an inquiry that eventually ensnared Cheney’s chief of staff.

Wonder how that excuse would’ve gone over in the MS anti-trust case or the Tyco case… Wonder how that excuse would have gone over when President Clinton was in office. Yet again, this administration shows just how little they think of the American people’s intelligence. Like no one in the country would notice.

MacWorld Keynote… feh

The coolest recent Apple announcement is the upgrade to the MacPros, in my book. The Air is cute, but for a little extra heft, the MacBook is still a better computer in every way. And the MacBook is still underpowered for my taste.

Who really cares about thin? Once you are hitting that sub 14″ category, isn’t weight the most important thing? My 12″ PB is a better mini-machine than the MacBook Air.

The ModBook is a more exciting machine to me.

The new iPhoneOS? Cool, but I’m still going to wait for 3G.

The new AppleTV, nice, but not a major improvement.

Renting movies, over due. Available one month after DVD? Sucky.

Wireless NAS? Cute form factor, nice price, but not revolutionary.

Was anyone really blown away by today’s announcements?