Cam Balzer's Web-Cite

Would the same approach work for recruiters?

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief at Wired and author of The Long Tail, recently went all blog-al with PR flacks contacting him with irrelevant PR pitches: Sorry PR people: you're blocked. He published a list of the email addresses of offenders, hoping to expose the "negative externalities" of mass marketing techniques. PR types buy contact lists and send mass emails hoping for one hit among a thousand emails. They don't perceive any cost for the 999 misses, but lots of value from the one hit, so they keep at the strategy. Anderson writes in a subsequent post:

My post, listing their email addresses, was an attempt to make those costs explicit, in a sense taxing the senders for the use of my time and patience by charging them some reputation credits, to whatever extent being shamed in public on a blog can do that.

Do you think the same approach would work for recruiters?! Or would it just attract the attention of additional recruiters? 

all my ipod needs is a pop-up menu

Someone PLEASE tell me why it is so hard to do the following on my otherwise handy iPod:

1. while listening to an album or playlist, switch from shuffle to regular play mode. Currently takes the following:
   1. click and hold center button to get to main menu
   2. scroll to settings and click
   3. scroll to shuffle and click to the desired mode
2. when enjoying a song in a playlist or shuffle play mode, to start listening to that album or artist instead of the playlist. Currently takes the following:
   
   1. click and hold center button to get to main menu
   2. click music
   3. click album / artist
   4. scroll to selection
   5. click play to pause playlist
   6. click play to play album / artist
3. clear the on the go playlist
   1. click and hold center button to get to main menu from wherever
   2. click music
   3. click playlist
   4. scroll to on-the-go and click
   5. scroll to end and select clear

Wouldn't all of these tasks be reduced to one or two clicks with the addition of a pop-up menu? Hold the center key til a pop-up menu appears, then scroll to shuffle or regular mode option and click. Or scroll to "play album" or "play artist" options? Or to "add to playlist" or "clear playlist"? Or, for that matter, the options you currently click multiple times to get to, like rating a song or viewing other views of the song, could also be handled in the same pop-up. Make that pop-up menu contextual and it means even less scrolling?

Seems simple 'nuff... You've been cited Steve!

"sign up all your friends"... too easily

There's "going viral" and then there's just plan sneezing! Sites like Tagged are WAY too aggressive in helping you "send invitations to all your friends". As part of the sign-up process, you can provide your web email account log-ins, and they will help you connect with friends already in the system. They also "let" you send invitations to other pple in your address book who aren't already members. However, Tagged DEFAULTS to sending invites to everyone and doesn't warn you that you're about to send hundreds or thousands of emails. Clearly their intention is primarily to spam their member's networks and they have no confidence that their site has real value for users.

Reputable social networking sites, like LinkedIn, Facebook or Socializr, also let you tap address books, but they default to NOT blasting all your contacts.

Take it from personal experience, use caution when giving pseudo social network sites like Tagged access to your web mail accounts. Tagged, you've been cited!