I found this really cool free flash photo gallery maker tonight. Literally took me about 10 minutes to add the photos and set it up. Now if I only had a Wordpress flash plugin to post the output right here. Definitely worth a look for any webmaster.
AnvSoft Flash Slide Show Maker – free flash photo slideshow templates
So my trade predictions were a bit off, but my aftermath ‘winners and losers’ predictions were pretty good. It’s going to be a great playoff, let’s get down to it.
Western Conference:
Detroit/Nashville: Detroit in 4. The Wings have had quick exits the last few years, but this year will be different. Sure they have some key injuries, but goaltending will be the biggest difference. Boring series to watch, but Detroit will steamroll them.
Dallas/Anaheim: Ducks in 6. What a series this going to be. At least 4 or 5 great looooong overtimes will happen in this series and it’s going to be low scoring and hard hitting. Sure 2 of the Ducks star players had half the season off and are well rested, but with Zubov out and Richards not playing well going into the playoffs it will take a Marty Turco miracle for the Stars to stick around.
Calgary/Sharks: Sharks in 7. Best series of the first round. Speed, hits, fights, great saves and great goals. San Jose is due and Brian Campbell will be the difference. San Jose’s roster is just too deep and they’ll wear down the Flames. For the record, I hope the Flames win but SJ is just too strong.
Colorado/Minnesota: Minnesota in 5. The Wild will pound the snot out of the Avs. Forsburg will get hurt in the first game and I don’t think Jose Theodore can return to the form he was in a few years back when the Habs ousted the Bruins in the first round. The Avs don’t have the size to combat the Wild. This will be a boring series to watch. Thanks Wild.
Eastern Conference
Ottawa/Pittsburg: Sens in 6. Sorry, they tanked that last 3 months of the season but a team this great cannot be stopped by the Pens. Being the underdog in this series is the best thing that could have happened to the Sens. Alfredsson *might* be back for the latter games of the series but Ottawa’s defense is much stronger than Pittsburg and you can’t ignore the playoff experience difference.
Philadelphia/Washington: Caps in 7. No one can stop Ovechkin. If he needs to triple-shift and score every goal in the series, he’ll be the difference maker. Biron is hot going into the playoffs but Kolzig’s leadership and the pickups at the deadline for the Caps will boost them over the Flyers.
New Jersey/NYR: New Jersey. Brodeur. Enough said.
Montreal/Boston: Montreal in 4. The Habs swept the season series and that trend will continue. I know I said Price won’t get them out of the first round before, but my mom and 4 of her friends could beat Boston. Outside Chara, the B’s have nothing.
Well, I rushed through this since the playoffs start in 6 minutes, but to cap it off, San Jose will win the cup this year and my conference picks will come shortly.
I’ve been working for startups for about 8 years now and have worked through some rather intense and explosive growth periods. I’ve always been big on process. If something isn’t working right more than likely there’s a missing or broken process. At my current gig, I’ve had the fortunate opportunity to build quite a bit of internal business systems and processes from the ground up which is what I love to do. The most difficult thing I’ve been up against is always the fact that in a startup, your job isn’t necessarily your job. Your job is actually what you thought you were hired to do plus about 50 other things. Sorry, not a fan of the “I wear multiple hats” line. Reminds me of something you’d read in “Why Business People Speak Like Idiots” (which I’m reading right now by the way, click that link and buy the book to help with my hosting bill!)
So what’s the point?
Simple, really. In a startup, common sense goes much further than forcing yourself into the preachings of any single methodology or following standard process protocol. You don’t need fancy graphs and charts, you don’t need bloated, strict processes and you definitely don’t need idiot speak. For example, I’ve read a lot of traditional “change management” blogs/articles/books and the common sense approach will save you a great deal of agony building change management processes into your startup. Stuff is going to change. Write down what changed along with how to back out if that change breaks something. As you grow, your systems and processes will evolve accordingly due to the complexity that comes with growth, but if you’ve paved the foundation of a common sense approach, you’ll be that much more adaptable down the road.
As mentioned in my opening, I’m big on process, but having process doesn’t mean sacrificing creativity or agility. A process doesn’t need to be bloated to be effective and you don’t need to meet 20 times and write a 40 page document about the process or how to implement it. Simply put, get the cow out of the ditch (react to the problem), figure out how the cow got into the ditch (analyze your process to find the breakdown) and then prevent the cow from falling back into the ditch (adjust your process)
In the end there is no rule that says you can’t pluck parts of different methodologies or standard process protocols and use them effectively together based on the situation. By exercising a bit of common sense, you’ll spend a lot more time getting stuff done and less time trying to figure out how to pound a square into a round hole.
Whee! Can’t wait for this! This will be perfect for our office Wii Friday’s!
What a fantastic piece of news to wake up to with my morning coffee! My company was just selected by the Branham Group and Backbone magazine as one of the Branham300 Top 25 Up and Comers. The list is composed of companies established within the past three years, no earlier than Jan. 1, 2004.
That’s quite an impressive honour considering we’ve only been operating for just over 2 years now. I know since I started about 10 months ago we’ve more than doubled our client base, launched our second disclosure compliance product and I am absolutely ecstatic about this award!
My Company is looking for a kick-ass senior .NET developer. If you are a technology junkie and your idea of fun is spending a Saturday night reading about Team Foundation Server 2008 or playing with Silverlight 2.0 just because it’s cool, my company wants you!
You will become assimilated into our product development team where you will be responsible for the product advancement of our 2 application suites. You will participate in design and architecture reviews, code reviews and write code with automated testing in mind.
You can contact me directly or check out the full job description on our site. Obviously I’m biased, but simply put, this is an awesome place to work. The team is great and the work is challenging. We kick back on the last Friday of each month and hook up a Wii to the projector in our boardroom and rock out to Guitar Hero III.
I can across a really neat, or so I thought, extension for Salesforce that would come in handy at work. We use a few different tools for sharing information much like any other company so when I saw Attensa Web Feeds for Salesforce it sounded like a really cool extension that would save me from having to build it myself.
No such luck.
Considering this is a SPONSORED application by Salesforce I believe that my reasonable expectation that this actually works is justified. The best feature about this app is the fact that at least it DOES install, but that’s as far as it goes.
Other than the fact it doesn’t work at all, here is what’s wrong with it:
Granted it’s free, but c’mon… How can ANY company put out a product like this? Even worse, how can Salesforce.com PROMOTE a product like this?
I used to have an Audiovox PPC 6000 and one of my biggest complaints was how slow the thing was. It did just about everything, but I had to soft reset it pretty much daily under moderate use. Once I got over my most recent gadget craze, I sold it and went back to my trusty Samsung A520. About 6 months ago I picked up an HTC 4000, running Windows Mobile 6. It’s a bit lighter, more well thought out and does everything. Bluetooth, Wifi, Media player, email, 2.0 MP camera, Micro SD and the list goes on and on.
Surprise surprise, it started running slow after heavy use. You can optimize the on-board memory use or use the micro-SD card to load programs or store data, but I still couldn’t seem to get it to run really fast. Enter Mem Maid. This is easily the best utility I think I’ve ever used. Bar none. It gives you the ability to clean out and compact your RAM at the click of a button, it can be scheduled to run nightly and clean up all your temp files, fragmented files, memory, old notifications, close running programs etc.
Since I picked up Mem Maid, I can recall 1 time I had to reset the device and that’s only because my wife tried to drown it by accident! Speaking of the scheduling, I run mine at midnight and it’s sitting right beside me here restoring my memory…waiting….waiting…553.34 KB freed up from unwanted stuff. It even has built in optimization profiles based on usage. For $20, that’s a helluva bargain IMO.
Anybody who owns a PDA definitely should give this tool a look.
Jeff Healey passed away in Toronto at age 41 yesterday. Most people likely remember him for his hit single Angel Eyes and his appearance in Roadhouse, but Jeff was one of the great blues-rock guitar players of this era. In 1990 he won a Juno for Entertainer of the Year and was set to release ‘Mess of Blues’, his first record release in almost 8 years on April 23, 2008. Guitar players and fans alike all over the world will sadly miss Jeff.
I had my first experience with the Wii yesterday. I’m a PC gamer, not a console guy, but now I have to have one. We rocked out to Guitar Hero after work on Friday and it’s hard to get used to especially since I play guitar but it was a blast. I was leaning towards getting a 360 just for the downloadable song updates but now the Wii is getting them as well.
DailyTech – Nintendo Opens Up to Downloadable Games, Content for Wii
Help me with my first annual Sick Kids Foundation campaign! I want to raise $500 in support of infants like Liam and thousands of others who rely on the generosity and expertise that the Sick Kids Foundation provide. click here to help contribute to my campaign!
