From the monthly archives: July 2012
Some great tips on using LinkedIn from OnLineColleges:
On most social media networks, it seems like anything goes. Things are a little more loose on Facebook and Twitter, but LinkedIn is strictly professional, giving it a different kind of status when it comes to etiquette. You have to be careful about what you put out there, how you make your requests, and remember to be polite. Are you stepping on toes without realizing your mistakes? Read on to learn about 17 unspoken rules of LinkedIn etiquette.
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Only do what you’d be comfortable doing in person:
On the LinkedIn Blog, Lindsey Pollak shares a priceless gem: “If you wouldn’t do it in person, don’t do it on LinkedIn!” This is a good rule to keep in mind even if you can’t remember lots of little rules. Be polite, professional, and don’t let your manners go out the window just because you’re online.
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Be personal:
When connecting with strangers on LinkedIn, it’s easy just to send the default message, but it’s much more polite and friendly to create a personal message. It doesn’t have to be an essay, but you should share a quick note about why you’d like to connect with that person, instead of sending an impersonal request.
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Mind your Ps and Qs:
Please and thank you don’t take much time to say, but it’s amazing how many people forget about these polite words online. Make your etiquette stand out and offer a please any time you ask for something, and a thank you any time someone does a nice thing for you.
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Don’t cause a traffic jam:
Status updates are always welcome, but if you’re posting more than 10 updates before your connections have had a chance to sip their coffee, you need to slow it down. Three updates within a short period of time is enough; if you have more consider spreading them out throughout the day to avoid a traffic jam.
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Give recommendations:
What goes around comes around. If you would like to get recommendations on LinkedIn, don’t forget to share your own, too. People like being recommended, at it’s great for building your social capital. Write a good recommendation; hopefully you’ll get one, too.
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Ask for recommendations strategically:
If you’re going to request recommendations, don’t send them out to everyone you know. Think about who, specifically, can share valuable insight. When requesting your recommendation, ask for recommendations on specific projects or work history that you know they’ll have something to say about. It helps them come up with something easy to say, and lets them know that their recommendation is important enough to you that you’ll make it personal.
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Keep it professional:
Remember that LinkedIn is a professional site, not a personal one. Vacation pictures, whining, and drama are not appreciated. Stay professional, offering business discussions, events, and opportunities instead.
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Avoid making it all about you:
It’s great to share what’s important to you on LinkedIn, but be careful not to get too full of yourself. Remember that LinkedIn is all about connections and nurturing your network. Ask yourself what you can do for your contacts, instead of frequently requesting that they do things that only benefit you.
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Don’t add connections willy-nilly:
It’s fun and useful to have a large network, but add too many strangers, and you’ll devalue the real connections you have. Plus, it’s unnerving for people on the other side of the request: they have to decide whether they’d like to accept an invitation from a stranger or not. Play it safe; only add people that you really have a connection with, whether you’ve met them in person or conversed online.
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Make it easy for people to remember you:
If you are going to connect with someone that you aren’t very close to, help them remember who you are. Remind them how they know you, mentioning that it was great running into them at a conference, chatting on a podcast, or however else you met that person.
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Take a real photo:
Be sure to keep your LinkedIn profile photo appropriate for business. Photos from the beach, images from your favorite sports team, or ones without you in them at all are not really appropriate. Take the time to get a professional photo, or just get a friend to snap a nice one of you. It will help you put out the right impression.
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Don’t be spammy:
This one should be obvious, but judging by the amount of spam that still plagues LinkedIn, some people still need reminding. When posting press releases and other marketing materials consider whether your posts are really relevant to a group or your LinkedIn followers, and whether or not you’ve already shared this information before. People don’t like to see irrelevant information, or the same thing over and over again. And it should go without saying, but sales pitches aren’t welcome.
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Avoid getting into fights:
Again, this one’s obvious, but worth a mention. Be careful not to get into spats in open forums, or at all. It looks bad to fight publicly, and it feels bad even to do it in private. Do your best to smooth things over and keep LinkedIn a positive place to connect.
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Keep Twitter on Twitter:
A common LinkedIn etiquette complaint is about users with constant status updates, and those that link their Twitter accounts with LinkedIn. Chances are, your professional contacts do not care to hear ultra-frequent updates, and your Twitter account may not be 100% professional. Sure, it’s tempting to save time, but it’s much more polite to craft specific messages for LinkedIn, and keep them to a polite volume.
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Be patient with the new guy:
You may be a LinkedIn pro, but new users are still jumping on every day, and they don’t necessarily know what they’re doing. As they try to figure out how best to use LinkedIn, be patient and kind, and even offer to lend them a hand.
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Know and follow group rules:
When you join a LinkedIn group, be careful to find the rules and follow them. You’ll be able to avoid awkward emails from group owners and embarrassingly getting called out as a rule breaker.
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Write back, no matter what:
If someone contacts you, acknowledge the message. Even if you don’t have a real response for their question or request, it’s still polite to write back. Ignored messages hurt, and every connection merits a response. If you’re too busy to take care of it at the moment, just say so. Chances are, your connection will understand.
Wow – this is a hard landing! From Gizmodo:
Watch this landing of a Boeing 767 from All Nippon Airways. It’s pretty rough, with the nose gear violently bouncing off the runway. Still, nothing too spectacular… until you see the consequences. Keep watching till the end, past the 0:33 mark.
The impact was so hard that the fuselage was bent before the wings. You can clearly see the aluminum skin crumpled by that twist in these two videos.
I’ve never seen this happen. Unlike its successor, the fully composite-made 787 Dreamliner, the Boeing 767 uses aluminum alloys. It also uses Kevlar fairings and access panels, plus carbon-fiber reinforced plastic composites on the wings.
The 767 is a very popular wide-body twin-engine airplane, still in production since 1979 in different variants. In fact, it became the most popular transatlantic plane in the 90s. [Thanks Jorge Mozo!]
This sounds yummy! Especially this summer. Fresh watermelon juice from a drill and a hanger! Cool from Instructables:
It is a HOT Friday at TechShop Menlo Park and everyone is sweating and working hard on their projects. Some watermelon juice sounds great but how do we make it with what we have around? 
Step 1 Supplies
We found a large watermelon, a coat hanger a drill, a strainer, some ice, a bowl and some cups. That’s all we need.
Step 3 Shape hanger and insert into a drill
We shaped the hanger to resemble a whisk and popped it into a drill.
This is a good tip from Lifehacker:
When you’re looking for a job, you don’t want your resume to end up at the bottom of the pile. Increase your chances of getting your resume looked at by recruiters by reuploading your resume on online job boards frequently.
Reddit user FancyApple offers this tip:
If you’re posting a resume to online job banks (Monster, etc), repost it every few days. Recruiters look at recently uploaded resumes first. I posted resumes on a few sites 2 months ago and got calls from 4 recruiters within 2 days, then nothing. Reposted it 2 days ago and got calls from another 3 recruiters that same day.
Recruiters only look at resumes for about 6 seconds, but at least your resume will have a better chance of being found.
LPT – Posting Resumes Online | Reddit
I love the binder clip! There is always some problem that can solved with it (as well as with some duct tape and/or velcro!). Take a look at the top 10 DIY Miracles you can do with a binder clip from Lifehacker:
When it comes to DIY projects and MacGyver tricks, the binder clip is one of the most versatile things around. Here are our top 10 favorite hacks you can pull off with the $1 office supply.
10. Make a Smartphone Stand
You can make a smartphone stand out of just about anything these days, but it doesn’t get much simpler than sticking your phone between the tabs of two binder clips. That way you can watch your movies or take your pictures without having to hold it in your hands the whole time. Of course, if you want something a bit more professional for picture-taking, you can always hack a binder clip onto your tripod for super steady smartphone shots.
9. Display Photos Without a Frame
If you have a few small binder clips lying around, they’re perfect for displaying photos or drawing attention to a note on the counter. Just close the clip, put the photo between the two arms of the binder clip, and stand it up on end. If the surface isn’t stable, a bit of sticky tack or silly putty can help keep the binder clip in place, too.
8. Keep Your Sponges Dry and Grime-Free
Sitting your sponge on the edge of the sink can set the stage for mold and mildew to build up on the wet underside, but a simple binder clip can solve all those problems. Just like the above photo trick, just put your sponge in the clip and stand it up on end. The sponge will dry much quicker and last you longer.
7. Gather Your Notes Into a Hipster PDA
The Hipster PDA, invented by productivity guru Merlin Mann, is essentially a stack of index cards held together with a binder clip. It’s a pretty cool way to keep track of your to do list and other notes, and you can make a lot of improvements on the idea with labeled binder clips or leather tabs. Check out ourintroduction to the Hipster PDA for more info.
6. Make Your Keyboard More Ergonomic
Everyone should take a look at your office and make it a bit more ergonomic, and the first place to start is your keyboard. Lots of keyboards have feet on the ends to elevate them to a more friendly height, but if yours doesn’t—or if the feet are broken—a couple of binder clips will get the job done nicely. Just take two of the metal wings off and stick them into place.
5. Close Up Toothpaste, Potato Chips, and More
Of course, don’t forget the more obvious household uses for a binder clip: clipping things together. Can’t find a chip clip? Keep your chips closed with a binder clip. Toothpaste tube giving you trouble? Roll it up and stick the flat end in a binder clip. And when you run out of chips and toothpaste, it can hold your grocery list on your cart, too, so you remember to buy more.
4. Neatly Wrap, Shorten, and Store Cables
Fighting tangled cables can seem like a losing battle, but a few well-placed binder clips can do wonders for keeping everything neat and organized. Clip your cables together for storage, hang them on your desk, or even use them as a cable shortener for your headphones. If done right, you can avoid a lot of the tangles and knots that always seem to plague your cable collection.
3. Stack Beverages in Your Fridge
If you have limited space in your fridge, you can usually use your vertical space to fit more things in at once. One of the best ways to do that? Stick a binder clip on the shelf. You’ll be able to stack bottles and cans sideways without them sliding around, meaning you can fit more beverages into one corner of your fridge.
2. Keep Cables from Slipping Off Your Desk
Laptop users have it rough—every time they unplug their ethernet, speakers, or power cables, the cables fall right off the desk. Sure, you could buy a really expensive docking station for your laptop, or you could just give those cables something to catch on when you unplug them, and that’s where binder clips come in. Just slide the cables through the metal wings and you’re good to go. Of course, you can get a slightly cleaner solution with the addition of a few magnets, too.
1. Mount Your Smartphone or GPS to Your Car’s Dashboard
Why buy an expensive car dock for your smartphone when you can make one out of a binder clip? This project is a tad more involved, requiring you to bend the binder clip’s arms and wrap them in yarn, but when you’re done, you’ll have the cheapest, most effective car mount your smartphone’s ever used. Plus, if you clip it to your air conditioner vent, it’ll keep your phone from overheating during long GPS-driven trips. Video here: [lifehacker.com]
I like innovation! I like it when people solve problems with technology. I LIKE this EnableTalk project! Details from Mashable:
Three Ukrainian students invented sensory gloves that work with an app to turn sign language into automated speech. The Enable Talk project won first place at Microsoft’s Imagine Cup 2012 this week in Syndey, Australia.
Students on the winning Team QuadSquad — Anton Stepanov, Anton Posternikov, and Maxim Osika — beat out 350 students from 75 countries for the gold. Their Enable Talk glove gives deaf and hearing-impaired individuals the ability to communicate with those who don’t know sign language.
“A while ago, in the supermarket we saw a cashier having difficulties understanding a speech-impaired person and we thought how useful it would be to have a device to overcome this communication barrier,” the trio wrote in their Imagine Cup entry. “We were very surprised to find out that no such devices are available on the market. Later, our interaction with hearing-impaired athletes at our school confirmed that such a solution is needed for them to communicate more fully with the world.”
The glove is flexible, easy to use, cheap to produce and battery operated. Each glove has 15 flex sensors. The sensors decipher hand motions in the air. A hearing-impaired person would use the glove and app to communicate with someone who doesn’t know sign language.
The glove picks up the hand gestures and the Enable Talk smartphone app translates the data. The app is wirelessly connected through Bluetooth technology. The team uses Microsoft’s Speech and Bing APIs to translate and play what’s been signed.
The contest’s cash prize of $25,000 will cover more than half of the $40,000 needed to start pre-production. Costs will cover software development and system testing.
The current product prototype retails around $50. In the short future — with the savings and profits that come with mass production — Enable Talk sets will likely be $20 each.
More than 275 million people worldwide have hearing impairment. Do you see this product helping that huge population? Share your thoughts with us below.
