Many services are structured as follows: Person A pays Person B for a task or item, and the “finder” or “connector” service takes a cut. It’s a wonderful business model – someone else is doing all the “real” work, and you get a bit off the top. The problem is that users are wise to [...]

If you haven’t checked out PeopleOfWalmart yet, you’re in for a treat. Pages of entertainment from America’s classiest individuals (yes, mother of mullet-baby, I’m speaking to you). One of my favorite websites just got a little bit better: it just launched EmptySpaceAds! Move your mouse to the margins of the page and you’ll see the [...]

Since discovering the wonder of outsourcing nine months ago, in October 2008, I’ve outsourced approximately 300 hours. That’s 300 hours that I got to spend reading or playing (or working…) while various assistants re-formatted an e-book, researched traffic stats for competing sites, scheduled apartment visits, got price quotes for vacation rentals, designed posters for an [...]

A guest blog post I wrote for Women Grow Business: Working for Microsoft, Google and Apple, I not only became a better engineer – I became a better entrepreneur. Their successes and failures, encapsulated in these five lessons, provided me with invaluable instruction in how to build a company and effectively compete. #1. Build a [...]

Good news bloggers and website owners!  CareerCup has just launched its new affiliate program.  CareerCup’s affiliate programs allows website owners to post a link / ad for CareerCup’s interview guide and, in return, collect some of the revenue from any sale.  Best of all, it’s super-easy to use! We offer two designs: Horizontal (example) and Vertical [...]

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve started outsourcing. A lot. Most of the outsourcing goes to an (awesome) assistant in the Philippines, who does everything from online research to document editing. She’s great, and she’s quite literally changed my approach to working. Although most people are merely intrigued by my hiring a remote assistant, a surprising [...]

While I can’t exactly call myself an avid photographer – as I have zero skill in this art form – I do have a lot of photo albums. I call it the “quantity over quality approach.” Unfortunately, when I want to look up, say, pictures from my Microsoft internship in 2003, it’s a mess. Picasa [...]

Microsoft Loyalty Scorecard:+ 1: Using Microsoft search at work.- 1: Using Microsoft search to prepare for your upcoming interviews… at work. Kumo is Microsoft’s new search engine that was released internally this month. No one seems to be talking about it much externally, and it doesn’t show up in Google Analytics under “Search Engines”. Kumo [...]

I spent six weeks in Argentina learning Spanish, and I’d love to keep up my limited skills by reading in Spanish. But, the fact is, my vocabulary just isn’t good enough, and whipping out a dictionary at every other word is too cumbersome. With a few relatively straight-forward changes, the Kindle 2 could really help [...]

I said I wouldn’t buy a Kindle 2, as I already own a Kindle 1, and I made it a whole five days. As one friend said, I’d make an awful POW. Fair point. However (this is where I try to justify my choice), my Kindle is probably my most used device, so upgrading isn’t [...]