Jeremy Zawodny recently posted that he's going to be speaking about blogging at the Direct Marketing Association's annual conference, and asked his readers what he should tell those folks.

Many people, understandably, responded that he should basically tell them to drop dead. Given the DMA's, ahem, relationship-challenged practices in the past (e.g., supporting opt-out, rather than opt-in e-mail lists), that's hardly surprising.

With that said, though, I figured it'd be worth it to suggest a few more friendly guidelines for the DMA folks, at least those genuinely interested in communicating decently and effectively with others online. Specifically, here's what I commented on Jeremy's blog:

So the cops in Louisiana that beat that defenseless guy bloody are pleading not guilty, despite all the video evidence.

This just makes me sick. I can totally understand issues regarding extenuating circumstances (insane overwork, high stress, etc.)... all of which might reasonably serve to mitigate punishments.

But to actually claim, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that you're not guilty? For crying out loud, I want to live in a society in which people freely offer the following:

"Yep, I'm guilty. I did what I'm charged with doing." plus one or more of the following:
- "And I'd like to sincerely offer apologies to the following people..."
- "And here's why I respectfully ask for leniency."
- "And here's what I plan on doing to insure this never happens again."
- "And here is how I propose to compensate my victim(s) / society..."

I'm doing the whole job-hunting thing again... searching for interesting contracts (I luckily am still blessed with several cool ongoing ones!) or a really smashing full-time opportunity. The latter option in particular has gotten me to do some deep soul searching about career / relocation criteria, and I thought I'd share a list I've been compiling.

Your feedback is VERY welcome! Any major missing categories / criteria, or some that should absolutely be split up or combined?

* * *

Oh, and I'm such a geek, that I'm thinking about making an Excel sheet out of the criteria list below, along with spots for optionally specifying item weights and having the sheet calculate optimal choices... e.g., you could specify that you especially care about being mentored and getting free food, and the spreadsheet would give more weight to jobs that offered those things.

Ideally, this list could be used to help one determine if they should stick with their current job or transition to a new one (with the same or a different company)... and also assist people who are unemployed and evaluating new opportunities.

So without further ado, here is my list (and yes, I realize there are parallelism -- or rather, lack of parallelism issues -- but this is just a first draft... I'll smooth over that later

A few weeks ago, I already started transitioning all of my feeds off of Bloglines. Why?
- It's slow.
- It's down too often.
- Reorganizing feeds (moving them to different folders, etc.) is worse than being stuck in a closet with Vanna White. Night after night after night after night.
- It's similarly painful to mark just a few articles in a feed as read or unread.

I've moved over to Newzcrawler, a stellar newsreader app for Windows. Beyond just tons of cool power features, it also lets me pretty easily sync my feeds between my desktop and laptop using an external FTP site (okay, geeky, I know).

* * *

With that said, I've still been hoping to see some vast improvements in the online-reader front. Rojo seems to be getting better. And I've heard rumblings over other cool services as well. When I learned today that Google had entered this space, I was extremely excited. Please, I thought, give us another Gmail. Or Maps! :D If not for me, at least for my less-geeky friends whom I'm dying to get into feed reading.

So far, alas, I'm rather disappointed in the Google Reader. I know it'll get better, but for now, Googlers...

1) It's too cluttered and overwhelming.
Hide some stuff. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but blog text blends into all the other text and I find it just tiring to spend more than a few minutes in Reader.

2) No mouseovers?!

3) Ambiguities
Is "Read items" a description or an action? Okay, admittedly this is rather a nitpick, but it is a top-line link .

4) Search what?!
When I see a search box at the top of the page, I expect to be able to search the content-in-context. In other words, if I'm in my Gmail account, I expect to search my mail. If I'm in Reader, I expect to search for a string in my read and/or unread feed items. From an expected user-action standpoint, what's likely to be more common: adding new feeds, or working with the feeds one already has?

5) Save me from overload!
There's no way to mark an entire feed as read. Or group of feeds.

6) Why the weird quasi-breadcrumbs in center focus?!
Why do I want to see "New Subscription" "New Subscription" article article article... Just show me new articles. If I want to see what I'm subscribed to, I'll go to the Your Subscriptions tab!

One of my computing dreams is for me to have all my data online.  No, not all my applications (though, to some extent, that's a neat idea, too)... but rather, all of my documents, photos, songs, chat logs, etc.


Here's why I would love to see all my data online:

• Safe keeping and effective backups *others can generally store backup my data more effectively than I can). 
  
• Easier sharing and collaboration
• Accessibility anywhere... home computer, laptop, friends' homes, internet cafe, etc.
  
• Efficient mashup / mix-n-match / integration potential; e.g., mailing a doc from Y! Briefcase via Y! Mail or collaborating on it via a hypothetical Y! Whiteboard.
  

Of course, there are certainly many concerns related to having data online instead of on one's hard drive:

• Access speed
• Longevity of storage solution (it'd be a pain to have to download, then completely re-upload all of one's docs)
• Security (these services'll be much more of a target for hackers than my stupid hard drive)
• Flexibility (difficult to edit large audio or video files without fully downloading them, etc.)
• Accessibility and search (easy to search across my hard drive, hard to search across disparate services like Writely, Gmail, JotSpot, etc.)