Wolfram|Alpha

Been playing with Wolfram|Alpha today:

Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

Wolfram|Alpha aims to bring expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people—spanning all professions and education levels. Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity.

Wolfram|Alpha is an ambitious, long-term intellectual endeavor that we intend will deliver increasing capabilities over the years and decades to come. With a world-class team and participation from top outside experts in countless fields, our goal is to create something that will stand as a major milestone of 21st century intellectual achievement.

Achieving work-life balance

BusinessWeek is running a piece on how people have - and haven't - successfully achieved that state of enlightenment known as "work-life balance".

Does this sound familiar? 350 e-mails a day in my inbox. BlackBerry, cell phone, and laptop constantly in tow. Check my Outlook calendar and see that I'm double- or triple-booked in meetings every hour, plus a 7 a.m. global conference call. Being told by management that we cannot hire additional head count because of a hiring freeze, despite the hefty increase in responsibilities for my team. That was me a year ago. The red tape, politics, ridiculous expectations, and meager resources made it nearly impossible to do my job as an advertising and brand manager for a large tech company...

...I quit. So did my husband, who worked in a top advertising agency. In fact, we both quit on the same day: Sept. 11, 2007. We decided that life was too short and we had had enough. What was our worst-case scenario if we quit? Having to sell our home and look for jobs elsewhere? Better than losing our marriage and our sanity.

Our friends and colleagues could not understand it. Rumors were flying that we had come into some family money. Nope. Just several years of saving for a rainy day. And boy, was it pouring. My husband started consulting immediately. I wanted to spend some time with my ill father. The marketing consulting business my husband started took off, and because of our similar backgrounds and experience, it was a natural fit for us to work together.

Ten months after quitting, we have more business than we can handle. My husband named the business reeboot strategy because in explaining our rationale for quitting our big corporate jobs he would say: "We needed to hit Control + Alt + Delete on our lives and start over."

Work-Life Balance: How To Get A Life And Do Your Job (BusinessWeek.com)

Macs in suits

Millions of consumers are seeing the Mac in a new light. Once an object of devotion for students and artists, the Mac is becoming the first choice of many. Surging demand for the machines led Apple to predict revenues will rise 33% in the second quarter, to $7.2 billion, even in the face of an economic slowdown.

What's less obvious is that the enthusiasm is starting to spill over into the corporate market. It's a people's revolution, of sorts, with workers increasingly pressing their employers to let them use Macs in the office. In a survey of 250 diverse companies that has yet to be released, the market research firm Yankee Group found that 87% now have at least some Apple computers in their offices, up from 48% two years ago. "There's always been this archipelago of Macintosh use" among graphic artists and advertising managers, says Scott Teissler, chief information officer of Turner Broadcasting System (TWX). "My sense is that CIOs are more willing to see that expand without putting up as much resistance as in the past."

[...]

Mark Slaga, chief information officer of Dimension Data , a large computer services firm based in suburban Johannesburg, says he has received 25 e-mails recently from employees who want permission to use Macs at work. So far he has refused, because he doesn't want to hire people to provide Mac tech support, but "it'll happen someday," he concedes. "Steve Jobs doesn't need a sales force because he already has one: employees like the ones in my company."

BusinessWeek: The Mac In The Grey Flannel Suit (12 May 2008)

The interrupt-driven life

Several research reports, both recently published and not yet published, provide evidence of the limits of multitasking. The findings, according to neuroscientists, psychologists and management professors, suggest that many people would be wise to curb their multitasking behavior when working in an office, studying or driving a car.

These experts have some basic advice. Check e-mail messages once an hour, at most. Listening to soothing background music while studying may improve concentration. But other distractions — most songs with lyrics, instant messaging, television shows — hamper performance. Driving while talking on a cellphone, even with a hands-free headset, is a bad idea.

[...]

In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.

“I was surprised by how easily people were distracted and how long it took them to get back to the task,” said Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft research scientist and co-author, with Shamsi Iqbal of the University of Illinois, of a paper on the study that will be presented next month.

“If it’s this bad at Microsoft,” Mr. Horvitz added, “it has to be bad at other companies, too.”

Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don't Read This in Traffic (New York Times, March 25, 2007)

The collaborative nature of the modern workplace, especially in technology, seems to doom us to constant interruption. If I'm in a meeting, and especially if I'm meeting with a customer, it might well take me more than an hour to respond to an e-mail--it might take me more than a day--but in general, because of the nature of the work I do (proposal management), I am in constant contact with my colleagues, and I live in a world that is both deadline-driven and "interrupt-driven," to borrow (and misuse) a technical term of art.

Waiting an hour to check e-mail, ignoring IMs, or letting voicemails pile up just isn't an option. If I'm in the office and there are no meetings on my calendar, my co-workers feel free to just walk directly into my office and start describing their problems, and vice-versa... it's how things have to work.

It is absolutely true that long, uninterrupted stretches of time are required for work that involves heavy concentration and focus. I've done technical and marketing writing for so long that I can do it with one hemisphere of my brain (I'm not saying which one) tied behind my back, but if I'm working on something new and different, I leave the room with the humming and beeping electronics, turn the cellphone and Blackberry off (or mute the ringers), and sit in a quiet room with a notebook, a fistful of sharpened #2 pencils and a cup of strong coffee.

I recently worked on one of my favorite kinds of jobs -- an information architecture project, where I was working with a couple of very bright colleagues to design a new document storage and retrieval system for the office.

My final "deliverables" took the form of Visio diagrams and hierarchical Word outlines... but all of the design work involving skull sweat was done with a Ticonderoga on a really big pad of graph paper.

In a quiet room.

Survey: Outsourcing does not save money

Outsourcing may be commonplace, but it continues to confound IT executives’ expectations. Take the common myth that companies outsource to save money. Not only is this not true in half the cases, but our survey shows that most companies aren’t saving money by outsourcing.

And that’s not the only surprise: Insourcing and outsourcing, though polar opposites, are both on the rise. Companies spend more on offshore vendors than domestic ones, despite problems with quality and delivering return on investment. Dissatisfaction with outsourcing vendors is widespread, yet most of the 401 IT executives who took our survey blame their own companies most of all for the disappointing performance of their vendors.

CIO Insight: Outsourcing Does Not Save Money

How today's techies work

Do you match the profile of today’s typical high-tech worker? You do if e-mail is your main way of communicating, you spend half your day in meetings, and you search the Internet for the latest research instead of reading print journals.

That’s according to a study of how engineers work, commissioned by the IEEE Publication Services & Products Board. The study was carried out at some of the most innovative technology companies in the United States and India. The hope was to learn how to design new products and services for high-tech workers.

How Today’s Techies Work (IEEE)

Hat tip: Greg

Media Convert

Carrie has found a very useful online file conversion tool, Media Convert, which she has posted about over at Knowledge Work.

Is there virtue in bad workplace behavior?

Bob Sutton employs his signature frankness to discuss whether the bad behavior of workplace bullies and jerks should be tolerated in the name of success. While referencing such famous assholes as Steve Jobs of Apple or Hall of Fame baseball player Ty Cobb, Sutton debates the value of getting results with a strategic temper tantrum.

ChangeThis: The Upside of Assholes: Is there Virtue in Bad Workplace Behavior?

70 hours a week: the new standard?

Before Barbara Agoglia left her job as a director in American Express’ small business unit, she was on the verge of burnout. Aside from logging upward of 50 hours per week, she had a 90-minute commute to and from northern Westchester and had to be reachable to clients nearly 24-7.

The breaking point came when her son started kindergarten and she didn’t have time to wait with him at the bus stop. “The hamster-on-the-wheel analogy is the best way to describe how I felt,” she says. For Agoglia, quitting felt like her only option.

It’s a feeling shared by many Americans who know that simply working hard isn’t enough anymore. To get ahead, a 70-hour work week is the new standard.

Crazy hours becoming the new standard - Forbes via MSNBC.com

Automation, not outsourcing, will take your job

By 2015, 40% of today's IT job roles will be lost to automation, predicts [the Gartner Group.] Although the number of people employed in the US manufacturing sector has declined steadily during the past 50 years, productivity per worker continues to rise and has doubled in the past 20 years.

'The same trend will be true of IT-related jobs as we move further into the information age. Multiple, simultaneous trends are converging in IT departments' say the analysts.

Gartner predicts: Nearly Half of IT Jobs will be Lost to Automation by 2015 (Usability News, February 4 2005)

Jumpstart your career in 2007

Careers are easy to neglect. If the paychecks keep coming and the boss is tolerable, most people get into a routine and direct their attention elsewhere.

While that's an adequate way to put bread on the table, it probably won't win you any big raises or promotions.

So, whether you're hoping to stay at your current employer or thinking you'll move to another firm at some point, here are eight job resolutions to help you jumpstart your career in 2007.

Here's one tip that everyone in IT (and other industries, too) ought to memorize:

Take the time to review potential employers. Don't assume a company is growing - and therefore a good place to be - just because it has several tempting openings. The openings may exist because insiders were eager to jump ship.

Eight Resolutions to Enhance Your Career - Wall Street Journal Online via Yahoo! Finance

(Cross-posted at Knowledge Work.)