Category: News-Politics

High Tech or High Stress?

A survey shows that IT workers suffer from more stress than any other professional. The study is a general health study, but the IT relevant sections are summarized at BrainFuel: IT Jobs Most Stressful Study Says.

Education and training play a part in this problem: “Kevin Young, managing director of SkillSoft says: “Our research was sparked by a recent Gartner report which claims that the untrained or under-trained desktop user will cost an organization five times more to support than a well-trained worker. This led us to thinking about how much pressure this must also put on the IT professionals who have to provide such support.”

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Media Report to Women Home page

Media Report to Women Home page Media Report to Women stands alone in providing information on all types of media — television, cable, film, radio, newspapers, magazines, newsletters, the Internet and other emerging media — and the way in which they depict women and issues of interest to women.

The story is still a sad one in terms of women in the media, news coverage of women in congress or in business, women on talk shows, women’s portrayal on TV, women in media careers.

The one spot where I see a possible tipping point is women’s use of the internet. Men and women have identical rates of internet use. That’s right: women have an equal voice on the internet. This fact can make a big difference if women take advantage of it.

Get out there an publish, women! Make that blog, talk, tell it, be opinionated, be informative, be part of the female voice.

This makes me crazy

Who is that woman with Barry White on the new Black Cherry Vanilla Coke ads? Not being able to identify a voice I know I should know drives me nuts. Hey, I got Barry White, so I’m good for 50% of it. But who is the woman? Have you looked at the cocacola.com web site? I did. Thought I might find an answer to my question, but no luck. Plus it’s all in Flash, which is cool but annoying.

It’s a bad, bad thing

There’s a new trend in websites that I don’t like one bit. It is the site that’s nothing but Google ads. It looks like a site, it acts like a site, but it’s just ads. A web designer picks some niche topic and does some research on keywords and lines up some ads. There’s a carefully selected domain name, site name, page titles, a menu with well chosen keywords, but nothing on the pages except Google ads. The Google ads may lead you to actual information about the topic you are looking for, so you eventually get where you want to go. But in the meantime, a web designer and Google both made money by tricking you into clicking through what is basically a scam, or spam, or ripoff site to find the true content you seek.

These site designers have done their homework. They are getting good rankings at Google. And they are making money. Some are making enough to live on it as their only source of income. We’re talking thousands of clicks here to generate an income that will support you. But they are providing nothing of value.

I have nothing against Google ads in and of themselves. I have them on this site. But they are not the content of the site. I make an effort to provide something of value here, and the ads are merely incidental to that content. If they generate a few bucks to help with overhead I am satisfied. I’m not cheating you by including them.

Sites that are nothing but ads should get thrown into Google’s spam category. This may not happen, because Google makes money from Google ads, too. Nevertheless, I think Google should stop giving these obviously exploitative sites high rankings. Technically, it’s legal. Morally, it stinks.

The Invisible Woman President

It isn’t just women on the web who are invisible. It isn’t just Cindy Sheehan who can sit outside the door in Crawford for weeks and never even be noticed by the person inside. It is also women who become president. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was inaugurated in Monrovia, the first woman ever elected as President of an African country. Our country sent Laura Bush, who normally doesn’t take on diplomacy tasks, as its representative. Talk about a slap in the face. A woman just got elected President of Chile, too. Wonder if any of our male leadership will notice?

Adobe reveals its business plans for the Macromedia merger

Company News Adobe finally released some info about how they plan to bundle and release products following the completion of the merger with Macromedia. One statement: “Ultimately, the goal of the merger is to make Adobe’s ubiquitous portable
document format (known as PDF) and Macromedia’s equally widespread Flash
technology a single platform.”