Author: Ash Nallawalla

About Ash Nallawalla

Ash Nallawalla is a consultant enterprise SEO with a long background in large companies with complex websites. He is a published author of several books and thousands of magazine articles.

Symantec Norton 360 – Review by Ash Nallawalla

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Norton 360Norton 360 is billed as an all-in-one security solution from Symantec. Peter Norton’s famous crossed-arms image is nowhere to be seen, let alone his full name. In fact, the Symantec corporate name is underplayed in this product.

Certified for Windows Vista, Norton 360 will require a minimum of Windows XP Home or betterCertified for Windows Vista and a fairly modern PC, say bought in the last five years. So what is it? It is a suite of products that covers:

  • PC security
  • Transaction security
  • Backup & restore files
  • PC clean-up

You can install Norton 360 on three computers. Each has its own serial number.

PC Security

PC Security is the heart of the application suite. It covers the following essential tasks:

  • Protect against viruses, spyware and other risks.
  • Act as a firewall to block intrusions over the network and the Internet.
  • LiveUpdate, which fetches the latest updates for Norton 360.
  • Email scanning, which checks incoming email for dangerous attachments and infections.
  • Checks your Windows Update settings.
  • Checks for weak passwords.
  • Checks your browser for vulnerabilities.
  • Checks your network addresses for the possible hijack.

Transaction Security

Transaction security refers to warning you if you try to go to Web sites that have been marked as conducting fraudulent activities such as phishing. It also authenticates genuine Web sites. This protects you when you shop online or do your banking.

Backup & Restore

You can back up your files to a CD, DVD, USB drive or an external hard disk, including mapped network drives. You can even back up to Symantec’s Web-based drive, with a limit of 2 GB. Trust me, you will not want to do that with the kind of bandwidth we get in Australia. Needless to say, you can restore from those locations should the need arise.

PC Tuneup

The PC Tuneup routine covers the following tasks:

  • Cleaning up Internet history, which is set to run manually.
  • Cleaning up Internet temporary files, such as the ones created by your browser.
  • Cleaning up Windows temporary files, which can get out of hand if you are not deleting them manually.
  • Disk Optimisation, which defragments the hard drive to speed up access to your files.

Norton Add-on Pack for Norton 360

Buried in the Tasks & Settings menu is a link to Norton Add-on Pack for Norton 360, which is downloadable from the Symantec Web site. It also works with Norton Internet Security 2007. Curiously (because these features are expected in an “all-in-one” security solution), it is not mentioned in the packaging. Its features include:

  • Email spam protection.
  • Parental control over inappropriate Web sites.
  • Prevention of your confidential information being sent over the Internet without your consent.
  • Blocking pop-up/pop-under windows and banner ads while surfing the Web.

In Use

I uninstalled Trend Micro PC-cillin, which I reviewed some months ago. It was doing a good job but it used to take over my PC to perform its tasks and slowed down my work. I wanted to see how Norton 360 behaved in this regard.

The installation and fetching updates procedure was very quick, compared to PC-cillin. Norton 360 seems to be perpetually scanning my email but it has not hogged system resources so far. This is usually the irritation that other products cause – you want to be protected without being constantly reminded about it. While Norton 360 isn’t totally invisible, it is not unduly intrusive.

I keep my Outlook data file on a separate Data drive, not the default location. The backup wizard found the original, unused outlook.pst file and my Outlook Express newsgroup .dbx files, but not my real file. I had to select Add A File to ensure that the required files were selected. It correctly identified my external backup drive.

Once configured, Norton 360 can be left to its own devices. It sends me an email at the desired interval to remind me to clean up my disk or to perform a backup and so on. I have entrusted one of my home PCs to Norton 360.

Availability

You will get the Norton 360 3-user pack from various outlets around the AU$100 – $110 mark including GST. You can also get it from Amazon.

Jaxtr trying – yes, it is trying me

Reading Time: < 1 minute

My contact got the system-generated email to collect my jaxtr voicemail, but when she tried to collect it, it presented an error to the effect that there was no message. Megan from jaxtr wrote to me from a Stanford.edu address, which bounced when I replied:

     host mx3.stanford.edu[171.67.20.23] said: 550

    <deleted@stanford.edu>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in local

    recipient table (in reply to RCPT TO command)

Netspace ADSL Speed

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I upgraded from 512/128 to 1500/256 at Netspace and their customer service says that the upgrade took place on 3 August. Upon checking the speed with the ozspeedtest.com tool at its Netspace mirror, I got what I did with the old connection. The modem is an Alcatel Speedtouch Home (rated to 8 Mbit/s) and there is a Netgear MR314 router in the network (which should not affect the WAN connection).
ADSL speed test
Solved!
All I had to do to solve this problem was to power down the modem and router and switch them on again. The new connection was at a higher speed (varies between 900 and 1000 Kbit/s).

Jaxtr – Getting There

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Jaxtr is in beta, granted. It enables others to call you for free. It took several attempts to get three of my numbers to be registered, particularly a Vonage VoIP number and a SkypeIn number. These two just wouldn’t cooperate, but in the end I have linked them. What has been your experience?

My Nokia N95 is half baked – Review by Ash Nallawalla

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Nokia N95-1On 25 June I signed up for a two year contract with 3, as I have been waiting to get the Nokia N95. My Nokia 6310i was five years old and out of contract. I was paying more than $120 per month on my $20 contract (I am a light user with some regular overseas travel, which causes this variation).

I was attracted by two features of the N95:

  • 5 Megapixel camera
  • GPS

Mobile CodeMobile code for this blog

Here is the barcode (not really bars) for this blog. If you have a mobile code scanner in your phone, you can bookmark this site by scanning this picture. Permalink.

Bad Points

Poor battery life. I have to recharge it daily, despite charging it for 24 hours on its first use, more than recommended by the 3 retail booth at Werribee Plaza. Overseas websites suggest many ways to reduce battery drain including changing from 3G to GSM. They say to use this set of steps:

“Tools | Settings | Phone | Network” but I don’t see such a sequence of steps on this phone, so I cannot change from 3G to GSM.

In fact I have two parallel top level options:

  1. Tools
  2. Settings (among others).

From Settings, I have:Network > Operator Selection (manual or auto)
and Network > Cell Info Display (which doesn’t work on 3)

The only network operator I see as GSM (antenna icon) is Roaming, whereas 3 is just 3G. Am I out of luck as far as GSM goes? Yes, 3 has chosen not to let us opt to only-GSM, as is possible on an unbranded phone.

The N95 is set to transmit WiFi at 100 mW, so I reduced it to 10 mW.

Where to Register? The N95 in Australia comes with a plastic card telling you to register at http://www.nokia-asia.com/mynokian95, but no such page exists. Didn’t they check this URL before printing the cards? In fact the site map for nokia-asia.com does not mention anything about registering a phone.

Unwanted Subscription. I got my first bill from 3 and noticed $3 for a Sports Pack subscription. I am not very interested in sports and certainly not enough to pay for a monthly subscription. After calling the 3 call centre in Mumbai, I had the amount reversed and the subscription cancelled. Upon checking my paperwork from the purchase, I noticed for the first time that the dealer had signed me up for it and had ticked a dozen or so items that she had allegedly informed me about. I should have stopped to read the three pages properly – you should, if you buy any modern phone that loves optional subscriptions.

The Nokia World

This is my first smart phone, as I am not on Nokia’s press list and didn’t get junkets to Finland or Singapore as did some of the commercial reviewers over the years. I just get to play with other people’s phones and you don’t find out their shortcomings in a couple of minutes. So, I explored the web and can recommend the following N95-related URLs that you can read at your own peril or pleasure:Screenshot of my trainsem.com site

Half-Baked

So, why did I say that my N95 is half-baked? As I said earlier, the GPS was the main attraction for me, but a few things were news to me:

  • You cannot just walk out of the shop and use the GPS immediately in the car park. I know a few N95 owners who haven’t figured out how to enable the Nokia Maps and Asia Maps applications or how to download a map.
  • I haven’t worked out the reason for having both Asia Maps and Nokia Maps. The Asia Maps feature is a waste of space to me because it gives me maps of SE Asian countries I have no desire to visit anytime soon (Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia). I have to register to get voice-assisted turn-by-turn navigation and that too for a trial period. Nokia Maps works well with the GPS satellites.
  • Nokia phones seem to come with fewer accessories as the years go by. A mobile charger is essential if you actually use the phone while driving, but I haven’t bought one yet.
  • It takes 2-3 minutes to get a satellite lock. Apparently firmware revision 12 gives us aGPS, which uses mobile tower positioning data to give an approximate fix that appears to speed up the result – except that this will cost a phone call to use. Whether that is one call per GPS session or dozens of calls are needed along the journey, I know not.

I had to rebuild my PC recently and I found the installation of the Nokia PC Suite and the phone-to-PC connection quite a performance that took a few reinstallations to fix. The PC went into a continuous loop of “New hardware detected” and “Nokia N95 disconnected via USB” that prevented the firmware updater from working – just as well, as an interrupted update would have made my phone less useful than a brick. After fixing that, it turned out that 3 hasn’t released it for our use.

What Usability?

I have worked in and around Usability and Editing for many years in the IT industry and I suspect that Nokia’s usability and editorial team cannot keep up with the number of new designs that are churned out. The buttons are very firm and slippery, so the keypad isn’t a joy to use. Thankfully I don’t send many SMS messages or surf the web with my phone. Calling someone who is in my address book is not as simple as the old dumb phones where I merely scrolled down to find a name. I now need several clicks to navigate to a number. On the other hand, I like the voice recognition – I press the headset button, say “Home” and the phone dials my home number.

The User’s Guide and the accompanying booklets are disappointing (I was an editor at Unisys, so I can be anal about this). I don’t know whether 3 has customised the menu so that it differs from the printed manual, but I want to comment on two points:

  • The icons used in the user’s guide are not listed in a table, so you have to guess what some of them could mean. Being so tiny and in greyscale, you don’t know whether they are phone buttons or icons on the screen.
  • Many instructions start with “Options”. It took me a while to realise that there isn’t an iconised option with that name that leads to the next level, but it refers to the physical button to press within any given screen. When you open this booklet in the middle – usually to solve some immediate need – you can get into my kind of problem. I was trying to pair my Jabra BT-150 headset and couldn’t work out where to begin.

The headset problem wasted a day of my time going to the retailer, going back again to meet with the “technical guy” who worked the late shift, only to be told by him to see the original manager the next day, who told him to check my phone! It turned out that the phone was not faulty and neither was the BT-150. I had set the Bluetooth visibility to Hidden, because the phone’s embedded Help says that already paired devices can still connect with it but the rest of the world could not. He changed the setting to Shown to All and my headset worked fine.

I still have occasional glitches when the headset doesn’t come on immediately or I manage to hang up on the caller when I press its button. I miss the car cradle of the old 6310i but still find the N95 a great device, half-baked or not.

WordPress SEO Plugins

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I use a few search-engine friendly features on this blog, mainly consisting of these Plug-Ins:

  • All-in-One SEO Pack, by uberdose. I can:
    • place a customised Title and Description meta tag on the home page and add tags (keyphrases) to every post.
    • Rewrite Titles
    • Use Categories for META keywords
    • Use Category Description as Title
    • Use noindex for Categories
    • Use noindex for Archives
    • Autogenerate Descriptions

I could pay more attention to the first sentence of each post, as this becomes the re-written Description.

  • Duplicate Content Cure, by Badi Jones. One of the problems with WordPress is that the same post or page can get several URIs, leading to duplicate content, which is “a bad thing” as far as search engines are concerned. This plug-in enables me to exclude the Categories/Archives by placing a meta tag <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"> automatically. (I no longer use it as the All-in-One SEO Pack above does this as well)
  • Sitemap Generator, by Arne Brachhold. This builds a Google Sitemap and submits it.
  • FeedBurner FeedSmith, originally by Steve Smith, now managed by FeedBurner (owned by Google). This manages all RSS subscriptions.

I also use a custom Permalink:

/%postname%-%post_id%.html

Give these a go and you should be set to have a search engine friendly blog!

ACCC takes Trading Post and Google to court

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Google and the Trading Post are unusual targets for the ACCC, which issued this press release:

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has instituted legal proceedings in the Federal Court, Sydney, against Trading Post Australia Pty Ltd, Google Inc, Google Ireland Limited and Google Australia Pty Ltd alleging misleading and deceptive conduct in relation to sponsored links that appeared on the Google website.

The ACCC is alleging that Trading Post contravened sections 52 and 53(d) of the Trade Practices Act 1974 in 2005 when the business names “Kloster Ford” and “Charlestown Toyota” appeared in the title of Google sponsored links to Trading Post’s website. Kloster Ford and Charlestown Toyota are Newcastle car dealerships who compete against Trading Post in automotive sales.

The ACCC is also alleging that Google, by causing the Kloster Ford and Charlestown Toyota links to be published on its website, engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in breach of section 52 of the Act.

Further, the ACCC is alleging that Google, by failing to adequately distinguish sponsored links from “organic” search results, has engaged and continues to engage in misleading and deceptive conduct in breach of section 52 of the Act. More…

Google Australia spokesperson Rob Shilkin has issued the following statement:

“Google Australia believes that these claims are without merit and we will defend against them vigorously. They represent an attack on all search engines and the Australian businesses, large and small, who use them to connect with customers throughout the world.”

Peter Coroneos, Chief Executive of the Internet Industry Association, said:

“The internet industry has always had a positive relationship with the ACCC. It’s very unfortunate that the ACCC has decided to pursue a litigious strategy against one participant, rather than consulting more broadly on an issue that affects the entire industry.”

The ACCC statement suggests that the Title of the ads read “Kloster Ford” and “Charlestown Toyota” but the Destination URL (which is hidden from view) took the clicker to the Trading Post. I agree that I would be pissed off if my competitor used my brand name in their ad title, but I have to shake my head that the ACCC has been brought into this matter.

Today, a search for “Kloster Ford” in Australia (use &gl=au if you are overseas) brings up an ad for some company, but the Title text and ad copy do not mention Kloster Ford:

SERP

It is likely that this advertiser used “Kloster Ford” as an Exact Match keyphrase, since the ad does not show for just “Kloster” or “Ford”, or “Kloster Ford is beaut”. Similarly, a search for “Charlestown Toyota” brings up some other company’s ad, but it appears to be triggered by the word “Toyota” so no big deal there. (Incidentally, search for just “Ford” and see whose ads come up!)

This type of activity happens a lot in PPC search engines – until the advertiser complains.

Today, Google’s Editorial Guidelines include this advice:

Target Specific Keywords

  • Use specific keywords that accurately reflect your site.
  • Use keywords that reflect your location if you offer a location-specific product or service.

Example:
A Sydney apartment rental agency would not be allowed to run on only the keyword “rentals.” The agency would have to use keywords such as “Sydney rental agency” or “Paddington flats.”

and

Follow Proper Trademark Usage

  • Trademarks are important business assets that can diminish in value if they are not used correctly. To learn more about how we handle trademark issues within the AdWords Program, review our trademark policy.

which says, in part:

Also, our Terms and Conditions with advertisers prohibit intellectual property infringement by advertisers and make it clear that advertisers are responsible for the keywords they choose to generate advertisements and the text that they choose to use in those advertisements.

I can confirm from experience that a trademark owner can ask Google to disallow anyone else from using their marks either as Keywords or in ad copy (outside USA and Canada) or just in the ad copy (in USA or Canada). I have done this on behalf of clients, as would any other competent Google Advertising Professional, even before a breach occurs. Standard procedure.
I don’t remember what the rules were in 2005; no doubt, they will be explored deeply in court. Perhaps, Google will build a massive database of every trademark on the planet and their owners, so that misleading and deceptive ads can never see the light of day! 😆

As for “failing to adequately distinguish sponsored links from ‘organic’ search results” – even in 2005, it was easy for anyone with a working eyeball to tell one from another. Here is a comparison between 2003 (left) and 2007 (right):

Click to enlarge Click to enlarge

In 2003, the ads were quite some distance from the organic results (picture from my article in APC magazine). There are plenty of screen shots from 2005 on the web that are clearer than my image and which show a similar separation between the organic and PPC results.

Anyway, the SEO in me is asking, “who said that Google needs to place ads in any particular place, font, or colour?” As a user of the Web, I don’t remember signing any agreement with any search engine that protects me from clicking an ad.

If the ACCC really wants to see ads that are cleverly placed alongside non-ads so that it is hard to spot the ads, they should visit some Made-for-Adsense sites. I noticed that ZDNet.com.au also has “Sponsored Links” at the bottom of the page. Oh my, it is the same font and colour as the block next to it. Will it be next on the ACCC’s radar?

SanDisk Cruzer Contour 8 GB – Review

Reading Time: 4 minutes

 

by Ash Nallawalla

You might think that a Flash drive is just another Flash drive, but is it really? The first 512 MB drive I bought set me back US$88 at Fry’s Electronics. Today, I can buy the same capacity drive locally for less than $15. OK, prices have come down and capacities have gone up, but that is just part of the USB Flash drive’s evolution.Click to enlarge

Those of us who use Windows Vista know about ReadyBoost, which enables the PC to use the Flash drive as additional RAM. For laptop owners, this is perhaps the cheapest way to get a RAM upgrade. Flash drives are sold in various form factors – ranging from fashion accessories, watches, attached to a Swiss Army Knife, hanging on a lanyard, with removable skins, with a fingerprint reader, and so on.

SanDisk Cruzer Contour 8 GB

Click to enlarge

SanDisk Cruzer Contour is a USB Flash Drive. Available in 4 GB and 8 GB capacities, this smart device makes the concept of portable applications a reality. Yes, you can carry your own configured programs in your pocket and run them on someone else’s computer.

Click to enlarge

The Cruzer Contour hits the 8 GB capacity mark. In January, I picked up a 2 GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro to supplement my Windows Vista laptop’s existing 2 GB RAM. I have seldom filled my 512 MB Flash drives to capacity, so why would someone need an 8 GB drive? The answer is partly U3 (see earlier post) and partly our desire to make our data portable. It is certified for Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Mac OS X (The device comes with a “Works with Windows Vista”Works with Windows Vista label, not a “Certified for Windows Vista” one.)

I have already lost one cap from my existing SanDisk Cruzer Micro drive, but this won’t be an issue with the Cruzer Contour, as it has a sliding cover that hides the USB connector when not in use. It features ReadyBoost and includes the following U3 compatible programs:

  • CruzerSync – Desktop synchronisation tool
  • SignupShield – Password manager
  • Skype – PC to PC video and audio calls
  • Avast – Antivirus
  • HP Photosmart – Digital photo organiser/editor
  • Sudoku/Mahjong – Games

Storage is, as Rolls Royce once used to describe their cars’ horsepower, adequate. I could describe it as “whopping”, but I know that in a few years, 8 GB will be considered tiny. Today, the 8 GB Cruzer Contour can hold up to:

  • 19,200 photos
  • 1920 tunes
  • 2560 minutes of MP4 QCIF videos

In theory, that is just under 43 hours of movies! I suspect that you could watch more movies on a battery-powered laptop using a USB drive than by running them from its hard disk or by playing the DVD drive.Click to enlarge

More realistically, you could take your email, browser bookmarks, and many large files with you. The drive synchronises with your PC when connected but it will not leave any trace on any other PC. The supplied programs and the U3 software took up 110 MB, leaving 7.52 GB free. The file system uses FAT32, which makes it compatible with older PCs. You can remove U3 completely, but then the U3 programs won’t work and you will have a dumb 8 GB storage device.

Performance

SanDisk claims that its write speed is 18 MB/sec and read speed is 25 MB/sec, which is twice as fast as SanDisk’s previous top-of-the-line model. Windows Vista ReadyBoost needs a much lower performance to work. Using the Vista Event Viewer and looking for Event ID 1000, I noted that the Cruzer Contour has a random read speed of 4.736 MB/sec and a sequential write speed of 5.815 MB/sec. I don’t know why the numbers are so different from the claims. (By comparison, my 2 GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro reports read speed of 4.961 MB/sec and a much slower 2.946 MB/sec for write.)

Microsoft’s specifications are:

Premium flash storage must meet the applicable standards for the connected bus and have the following features:

  • At least 500MB available for ReadyBoost cache
  • 5 MB/sec throughput for random 4k reads across the entire device
  • 3 MB/sec throughput for sequential 512k writes across the entire
    device

In Use

Opening the box was a challenge for me, as I missed the black sticker (on a black box) on the left and opened it from the right. I could not believe how tough it was to peel off the layers as I fought my way to the tightly wedged device. Then I realised my mistake! There is no lanyard provided – indeed the drive has no hook, but it comes with a leather pouch with a hook for the lanyard or keychain. It is a snug fit, so the drive is not going to slide out.

Now, sliding the Cruzer Contour’s cover off and on was not as smooth as I expected. The USB connector’s dust protection flap is folded when packed, and has to hinge outwards as you slide it. After several uses, it still takes some effort to get the USB connector to slide out and it is equally tricky to close it. Perhaps this will settle down after regular use.

Compatibility

You will need at least Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP or Windows Vista to use U3. For storage only, you can use Windows 2000 or later, Mac OSX+, or Linux. The PC must have a high speed USB 2.0 port, which will be found on most PCs bought in the past six years.

Software

I downloaded the Firefox browser for U3 which is 7.84 MB, compared to the standard version which is 5.7 MB. I thought that the U3 version would be smaller. Other free programs I downloaded were OpenOffice.org, Opera, PuTTY, Trillian Basic, WinSCP and FileZilla. There are dozens of free programs that I could download and not make a big dent in the 8 GB capacity! OpenOffice was the biggest among my downloads, at 222 MB (during the download it turned out to be 76.3 MB). There are not a lot of PCs that don’t have Microsoft Office on them, but if I encounter one, I might be able to use OpenOffice.org (OpenOffice did not work under Windows Vista in my test).

Availability

You can get the SanDisk Cruzer Contour 8GB drive from Amazon for about US$116. The 4 GB model costs around US$60. You are paying a bit more for the U3 and ReadyBoost functionality but it is worth it for the convenience of having customised programs and passwords in your pocket.

[youtube width=”425″ height=”335″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnRIlv8-z9o[/youtube]

U3 Smart

Reading Time: 2 minutes

by Ash NallawallaU3 Smart

U3 is an initiative of SanDisk and msystems. They transformed USB flash drives from simple storage devices into USB smart drives that people can use not only to carry data, but include password protection, anti-virus software and the ability to launch popular Windows applications on any PC wherever they went.

U3 Smart drives solve a common problem – when you use a new computer or borrow one, it does not have your familiar programs, files and browser bookmarks and preferences. U3 drives contain special versions of popular programs and make it feasible to use other computers without being tied to yours.

How It Works

When you insert a U3 enabled drive into a USB port, a U3 icon appears in the System Tray. You can click it to launch the U3 Launchpad, which is similar to the Windows XP Start button. This designates the USB drive as a U3 Smart Drive.

U3 Smart drives are available from several manufacturers, including:

  • SanDisk
  • Kingston
  • Memorex
  • Verbatim

You can run the supplied programs, or download more from http://software.u3.com. Many areYahoo's giveaway Flash drive has this laucnpad free, some are not.

Some of the more interesting free U3 programs include:

  • Open Office application
  • Mozilla Firefox browser
  • Avast! Antivirus
  • Sudoku game
  • Opera browser
  • Mozilla Thunderbird email
  • Skype Internet phone
  • Trillian instant message manager

You get to use your own desktop wallpaper and familiar icons when using a borrowed PC. You are not hampered by the lack of administrator privileges on that PC because your portable applications are already on your U3 drive. This is great for backpackers and other travellers who don’t need to take a laptop PC with them.

There is a strong U3 developer community, which is releasing new, compact versions of popular desktop software. For more information, see http://www.u3.com.

You cannot install regular PC programs such as Microsoft Office on a U3 device because desktop programs require much more space than the U3 drive can offer and they need to write some information to the PC’s Registry. Here is an informative video:

[youtube width=”425″ height=”335″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZN99pgivUM[/youtube]

Peel Away Ads

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As a web professional and marketer, I am excited by the technology used online – it is mainly clever programming and scripting. I bought a script that displays an enticing “peel-away” edge at the top right of the page. I am not showing it on the main blog, but you can see it on the Peel Away Ads page linked from the top of the screen. I won’t leave it up for long as it detracts from this site but I may use it on some of my affiliate sites.

Google from a Microsoftie’s perspective

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This post has been backed up at Blogspot in case it disappears. It is about the alleged work environment at Google (USA) versus Microsoft (USA). It covers topics such as:

  • What is the culture really like? How many hours are people actually working? What are the least amount of hours you can work before you are looked down upon?
  • 20% of your time on personal project. How many people actually get to use it? If so, how do they use it? Does Google own your personal project?
  • What are the office arrangements like? Do you have an office or cube space?
  • What is the management structure like (hierarchy)?
  • Do they actually have plans for career development?
  • Who would you recommend Google to? Is it for the college kid or family type, worker bee or innovator?
  • Please provide any additional information that you believe will help in our battle for talent against Google?

I have worked for a San Jose company that offered some of the benefits such as free food and snacks and agree that it makes a lot of sense (for the company) to keep the employees anchored to the workplace. I have visited a few of the Redmond buildings at MSFT too and I agree that the latter does not resemble a sheltered workshop for college grads, as the Googleplex is made out to be.

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