In another life or some fantasic parallel world I’m full time game programmer. I enjoy programming games and it’s usually one of the first things I do whenever I’m learning a new world: put together a quick game. Though I may stand corrected, but I believe I’ve programmed a game in every programming language ever ‘learned’ to date. I hesitate to use the word ‘learned’ as I feel like programming is an ongoing learning process, not something that you ever wake up one day and say: “I’ve learned it, next!”

Sony is celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the Everquest Massive Online Multiplayer Role-Playing Game and Beckett magazine has an interview with the EQII team where the subject of what it is like working at a game company:

Some people have the impression that working in a game company is a lot of goofing off and playing games all day long. It’s a business though. The ultimate goal is to put a roof over our heads and food on the table. It’s like a regular job, but with even more stuff and benefits from it. I think as a team, and as a company, there’s probably 30-40% more dedication than I’ve seen in any other environment. People are willing to stay extra hours at night to get something done, or come in on weekends. It’s not like we’re out for four hour lunches every day. We don’t ride scooters in the hallway. There seems to be a perception that working in a gaming company is just all fun and games, but it’s not. It’s really a business, it’s hard work, and the people who work here are very passionate about making sure we make every effort to make sure that the game stays fun.

I’ve always envisioned that actual work at a game company isn’t just playing games and entertainment so the above paragraph isn’t sobering. Even if you are a games tester you still have to report back on what you are doing and often times play the same levels over and over and over and over again. That could be more boring that debugging tens or hundreds of thousands of lines of code. But even so, I think it would be a lot of fun working at a game company.

Our middle son, a teenager, wants to get into working at a games company or being a pro gamer or perhaps even both. I’m going to be showing him this article and reminding him that no matter how fun any job appears to be on the outside, it’s still work on the inside. And work isn’t always fun.

As I sit tapping away at the keyboard, listening to ZZ Top belt out “Legs” it is a couple legs past 10pm PST on New Year’s Eve and time to reflect on the big changes in our professional lives starting, well, pretty much now. Before this post is done and published we’re going to cross into a new year.

I don’t write here about our offline business very much other than to refer to it as our “offline business” – in fact the number of times I’ve mentioned specifically what this business does and/or how it might be related is in at best a scattered few posts. Nowhere in the site about page or my bio at TD Scripts does it indicate what our offline business is about either. Is there some reason I’ve kept this business a bit mysterious?

Yes, a couple reasons.

But before we get to those reasons, let me tell you briefly about the business. My wife and I have owned and operated an insurance agency since 1994. I am licensed to do business in both Washington and Oregon (non-resident). It’s mostly our gig together, although we have had some hired help, mostly part time over the years. I’m not one of those in your face, let me quote you ASAP insurance agents and thus haven’t written about this here because there isn’t much internet-related stuff we’ve done to talk about. What the business is and what we do is not that relevant to the vast majority of post topics I write and publish here. It’s not that I’m trying to avoid promoting or even mentioning our offline business or anything, it’s that we just aren’t doing that much online where it makes sense to bring it up here. Also, without going through the site demographics (but I do intend to do that), I’m not sure exactly what percentage of readers here are locals which is where we’re doing the bulk of our insurance business. I know a few readers are nearby like Sterling but even he’s not exactly in our backyard. He’s still a good 45 minute drive or so away.

I’m also careful, very careful, that my clients might not perceive that this blog – if any of them have ever connected the dots (to my knowledge, not yet) — in any way has anything to do with them and/or our business with them. This site, even the pen name you all are used to me using online, only has my heart, energy and passion in common. Almost nothing else online has anything to do with our offline business. Conversely what happens online is very rarely mentioned to our insurance clients offline.

Client’s lives are very private and confidential between us and them and it’s wrong to write about our business with them in any way that is other than very, very generic without their knowledge or consent. If you happened to be one of our clients the last thing I’d want for you to do is go online and Google your name and find something here at MakeYouGoHmm (or our other online properties) about you without your knowledge and consent. I’ve been very careful about making sure this doesn’t happen. It’s part of demonstrating our trust level with clients that what we know about them stays with us and companies that have a need to know basis to conduct business.

It’s our client’s business how little or how much they want their names to be used online. I have and will continue to respect that immensely. I haven’t even used my own name online to date very much, so why should I not treat clients the same? The answer is I should give them even more consideration than given myself – and will continue to do so in 2009 and beyond.

But there are some times when businesses we insure might want us to provide a little spotlight on them and what their business is and does. Sort of promotional and personal. Especially in these economic times. So we might be able to use our business website to help from time to time promote some of the businesses we do business with.

Now back to those reasons for me keeping the offline business away from this blog.

For one, this is a business where we have barely used the internet to establish and foster client relationships since 1994. This doesn’t mean we’re behind on technology or anything, quite the opposite. We were among the first in representing our primary insurer (company) that started capturing and using email in the nineties for communication. At the time this was so controversial that I actually received a cease and desist order from the company threatening to terminate our agency appointment if we continued. A couple years later I was at a meeting when myself and other similar business owners were told by a company executive that we were “behind the times” if we didn’t have a program for collecting email addresses.

Smile, I did. I still have that letter and have thought about framing it and putting it inside the foyer of our office. I may do that in light of the big 2009 changes upon us. I think some clients would get a kick out of it. It’s one of those stories I’ll probably never tire of telling.

We did have a business presence website on our own domain – basically a one page deal – for several years. I also own and operate the city’s domain where we are located for over 10 years now. Our original business website and domain has since been deactivated because I hated the domain name and fact that we were handcuffed as to what we could do there without jumping through a bunch of company hoops. The domain was way too long to remember and type. It wasn’t the type of thing that clients were going to remember easily – and thus we didn’t even bother telling many clients about it, much less use it as any sort of marketing.

Big change #1: we’re going totally independent

After almost 15 years our agency is going totally independent in 2009. What does this mean when we already have been an independent contractor? That word independent in the insurance world can have an asterisk depending on the type of companies the agent is appointed to do business with and the contracts they sign.

An independent agent has one major difference from an agent who is captive or as was our case for many years: semi-captive. State Farm and Allstate insurance agents, for example, are captive agents. These agents cannot place business “outside” with other carriers by contractual obligation. Yes, even if the best premium price with an equally stable financial company involving their client’s risk is elsewhere.

The contract with our primary carrier has been semi-captive in that it required us to place all business that qualified with them, regardless of price (premium). I’ve never liked this aspect of the contract. That we were forced by contract to place business with a single company when we could find a less expensive rate from an equally respected company elsewhere.

Now we can do what other independent agents have been used to doing: match client needs with the best companies and rates in their area. So if you reside in the state of Washington or Oregon and are looking for an online-savvy independent insurance agent – hey, a softball pitch here - who has this as a guiding principle drop me an email and we’ll see if we can find a good match for your insurance needs.

This is nearly a complete reboot of our offline business.

We are starting almost, almost completely over. This means we’re going from a very comfortable monthly income (in our offline business) to almost $0/month since the primary carrier we’re separating from is keeping all the client files. We have always been commission only, but the longer you are in business the more renewals you tend to amass. We aren’t going to have those renewals any more from that carrier. The carrier even get our primary business phone number, by contract, that we’ve used since 1994. The contract also allowed for them an option on our physical office location but they aren’t executing that right (yet). If they do, there is a spot right next door and we’ll lease that in a heartbeat.

So our main business phone line is changing, our signage, business cards, logos, etc, but not our office location. This should be a very interesting year. We could fail with this change. Badly. As mentioned earlier in this piece, the economy is not stellar. We’re gambling that by going independent and helping clients find the best companies with great rates, we’ll be better positioned in the future. Ask me in a year or two if this was a smart move and I’ll be better able to answer.

Scary? You bet. But exciting too.

The disadvantage of being an independent agency – and to be fair, I have to bring this up - is one of company loyalty from both sides: agent and client (insured). Clients who move their business around more frequently will lose loyalty discounts for companies that offer them. Agents who have less profitable books of business seem to tend to receive less leeway by non-captive companies and the fewer number of clients with each company means less premium in the pool for the agency to draw from to establish overall profitability (one big claim can devastate a smaller agency’s profitability). Since we’re still very new to the independent side, this is partly based on how much emphasis is being placed on profitability with the carriers we’ve started talking to.

Add to the above that insurance carrier underwriters at renewal periods tend to treat accounts a little better who have longer history versus those who are newer and less established when it comes to deciding to non-renew over increases in claim activity. It’s not a risk-free proposition to switch insurance companies only over price if that happens to be when bad times fall upon you and a few claims roll in.

So just because we will be able to find clients the best possible price we’re still going to do our due diligence making sure that the company with the good rates is highly rated and a good about paying claims in a timely and fair manner. We aren’t going to go with some fly by night outfit just to get clients the absolute lowest price.

As an independent we’ll try to measure risk, price, company and individual client needs against this principle. It may be in a client’s best interest to stay with an insurance carrier that has a higher premium for this loyalty factor even though our agency would not be contractually obligated to keep this business with said company. This is a major procedural business change for us and will be interesting to see how we balance this with each client individually.

I suspect from experience that customers will tell us that they want the lowest rate coupled with our established, personalized agency service over company loyalty discounts, as that’s what we’ve been hearing. The decision, of course as always, will be up to them.

Big change #2: increase offline business internet presence

This brings us to our second big change and one of the reasons I’m writing about this here and now: a (much) bigger internet presence. We’re working on a separate, brand new website, one which I’m building mostly myself from the ground up, including all the backend scripting for our agency related functions. I am planning a business blog on this new site and am hoping it won’t suck like a lot of the business blogs I’ve seen. I notice a lot of our local area insurance agents don’t even have blogs, so am hoping to capitalize on that inequity somewhat.

I would like our blog to be both professional but also personal because that reflects our service level. And it should be informative and comment on insurance-related issues. I would also like to use this blog as a platform for communicating how our independent agency gig is going with our clients.

Where in the past I wouldn’t have done so here, I might also meta comment on a few posts like I’ve done with the group blog I contribute to at VTOR. It won’t be every other post or annoyingly frequent as I believe strongly that a little goes a long way on the web. Those who are interested in following in greater detail my virtual world happenings should know by now that VTOR is the best place to do that, not here, and likewise those who want to follow our independent insurance related experiences will do it at the new blog (and it’s not live as of this writing, so no link).

That brings us to big change #3. Well, big change if you read this blog and for some reason decide to start reading the insurance agency blog too.

Big change #3: hi, my name is Todd, nice to meet you

The biggest change at our new business blog for readers of Hmm will be my name. And forgive the liberal use of the third person in this section, it’s awkward for me too, but readers here that visit/read the new business blog will not see me writing under the pen name of ‘TDavid’ – ever. It will be my first name which I’ve rarely used here or anywhere else online. In fact, I’ve demanded that ‘TDavid’ or ‘TD’ be used and not my legal name when it has anything to do with our online business ventures to date.

When it involves insurance-related matters things will be different going forward.

It goes beyond the business blog and website though, I’ll also be signing up for services that ‘TDavid’ may also be signed up for and some that ‘TDavid’ doesn’t use (either at all or very often) like Facebook which requires your real name. LinkedIn is another. Not sure about MySpace. Twitter? Maybe. Friendfeed? Doubtful at the start.

The thing is that there is going to be some crossover here and there and it will be interesting to see how to deal with essentially three online personalities: ‘TDavid’ that most people know me as online is still going to be around, TD Goodliffe and various other virtual world identities and the introduction and promotion for our offline business under my legal first name.

I’m going to try to avoid having a personality disorder in 2009, but in some ways I’m concerned that might happen, which is another reason I’ve been ‘TDavid’ online. Just to be clear, I’ll still be writing as ‘TDavid’ here and anywhere that doesn’t have to do directly with our insurance business but since my picture is going to appear from time to time under my legal name, I want to be sure to disclose why this will be happening and that I’m not trying to be two completely different people or anything, I’m just trying to keep different businesses separated.

You might see some overlap between the same entity under different names, just as there have been with my virtual world adventures, I guess is the one sentence way to describe this change.

With that in mind, I’d still appreciate if you would continue to refer to me as TD or TDavid on this blog, BTW – and please not the hatcheted name without the ‘T’ in front. Let’s save the Todd stuff for the business site/blog and the TD Goodliffe (or other virtual name) for the virtual world side. If you were playing Everquest II with me as my character Humosorf and we were role-playing, that’s the name I’d expect to be used there as well. This will all be much easier to explain in this business than our insurance business which I’m not sure how or when I’m going to try and do so. Little steps first and too many other priorities ahead of that.

Anyway, I’m hearing fireworks outside. Woohoo, 2009 is here! Change has arrived. Are you ready? Let’s seize those golden 2009 opportunities and make the best of them. If you can help other people even more in 2009 like I’m excited that we’re going to be able to do, then go for it.

Thank you for reading and Happy New Year!

CNN just ran a story on company budgeted cuts in 2009. I’d vote for the holiday party being slashed (18%) in a heartbeat over the other options: lay off workers (26%), freeze hiring (25%), cut training (18%) and cut 401k match (4%).

Not to go all party pooper but holiday company parties aren’t what they are cracked up to be from either side. From the executive side, they are a liability as long as booze is involved. It’s rare in a big company to have everybody liking everybody else, so there are those weird, phony friendly exchanges. I’d much rather meet with people I work with in a smaller gatherings than one big holiday bash.

The last big holiday party I went to for our offline business was with other independent contractors in our area. Didn’t drink any alcohol but watched several people indulge too much and get stupid. Doubtful any read this blog, but if they do and if they are paying attention: don’t get too crazy drunk!

Here’s how I’d rank the pain from the list above from first item to be cut to last:

1. Slash holiday party - smaller, less expensive gathering would be better
2. Freeze hiring - no sense hiring more people
3. Cut 401k match - if the money isn’t there, no need to contribute
4. Cut training - without education it’s tough to turn things around, I’d prefer to see this slashed before removing warm bodies
5. Lay off workers - should be last resort option for companies with vital employees, temp help or contract work could be pared back if it’s non-vital

How would you rank the pain?

According to the data presented in the table on infoplease average annual income for men who completed high school as of 2004 was $35,725. You can watch this calculate in real time with the salary generator.

Dividing into monthly reveals the $2,977 monthly amount shown in the screenshot of the payment calculator above. This accumulates at a rate of $145.21 per day and 30 cents a minute.

Now what does it look like if you make a million dollars a year? Just enter in $83,333 and watch how fast the dollars add up: $4,065.02 per day, $8.46 per minute.

How about all you billionaires out there? Just move the decimal over. $40,650 per day, $84.68 per minute.

I’ve commented positively on the site Zillow before, with my only serious criticism being their zestimates can be way off. A fact which has led to legal challenges for the company in the past.

Yes, I realize these are just glorified computer estimates of how much homes are worth based on sometimes suspect data sources and maybe they are more accurate these days (haven’t checked in awhile), but after reading they just raised another $30 million for a total of $87 million in investment capital and have 155 employess, I have additional criticisms. The first is excessive manpower.

Maybe Zillow employee #156 will stop by to tell me how busy s/he is. At the rate Zillow is hiring, they should have enough warm bodies to generate non-mechanical replies to every blog post ever written about them. A Google blog search for “zillow” finds 48,158 posts as of this writing. Heck, that’s a mere 310 comments per employee.

Why aren’t investors asking what reasons a site like this need so many employees? This strikes me as an absurd number of people to run a website like Zillow. I’ve done contract work on very profitable websites that did millions of visitors a day with a fraction of the help.

This is another glowing example to me how most Web pooh point oh sites are not sustainable business models. Heck, many are not businesses at all. Another website/company that seemed to have excessive staffing (at least to this outsider) was Meetup. No clue if they’ve cut back on help by now, but for the bottom line’s sake, I sure hope so.

The money — which [Chief Executive Rich] Barton hopes will carry the startup to profitability — will be used for employment growth and new product development. One of the products — set to launch in the next three months — is a tool that will allow real estate brokerages to quickly upload hundreds or thousands of for-sale listings to the Zillow site.

Did I read that right? Their CEO “hopes” this move will carry them to profitability? Truth and transparency in Zillow’s profitability is my second criticism.

One would think a site like Zillow could operate more effectively (and perhaps closer to profitability) with 10-20% of the manpower currently being utilyzed. With the downturn in the housing market, it wouldn’t be surprising to hear that Zillow is downsizing their staff within the next 6-12 months and blaming it on the market.

While it can seem like a health sign for a company to be bringing on a new people, it can also be a caution flag when more investment capital is being sought at the same time. Great things are on the way. You’ll see.

According to Zillow’s jobs page, they’re still hiring — for what? 12 openings, as of this writing, all for tech-related positions. See this ad for a test/quality assurance position which reads (emphasis mine, and backup screenshot made in case the ad is pulled down/changed heretofore):

Here at Zillow.com, we are transforming the way people view the real estate industry. We build scalable software — not “spec-ware” or “prototypes,” but real, useful, profitable, Web 2.0 solutions. We’re looking for people to help us change the way people access and use real estate information.

“Profitable” … really? Doesn’t the Seattle PI piece quoted above clearly indicate Zillow is not profitable yet? Why are they suggesting to their prospective employees otherwise? No, they aren’t getting an infusion of $30 million dollars from their unprofitable web 2.0 site, they’re tapping more investor’s pockets. Come on.

AOL continues to face hard times. Or though it would seem by the news coming out.

Yesterday, I peeked up briefly from working on a new site launch to read speculation that AOL might be planning lay off over 2,000 employees. I don’t like hearing about people losing their jobs and hope this doesn’t happen but a gig at AOL doesn’t exactly spell job security to me. You?

This morning I read that the Netscape digg clone idea that Jason Calacanis and crew masterminded is being moved … somewhere:

Visitors to Netscape.com will see a more traditional news experience very soon. Don’t worry, the social news site isn’t going away! We will keep you updated on where you will be able to find the social news site as we get closer to making the switch.

Why wouldn’t they want to announce where it’s going? If I was part of the Netscape digg clone crew, I’d be toning up the resume now. Quickly. Calacanis bailed before there was time to evaluate the fruits of his second labor (the digg clone results). He now has the convenience of saying that if he was there this change wouldn’t have been made.

Sadly, it’s in the AOL DNA to fail. Just as they’ve ruined other properties like Winamp and put too much stock in dial-up when broadband was the future. Here’s something I’ve written before and might sound a little crazy, but I wouldn’t be shocked if Engadget and the rest of Weblogs, Inc properties end up being deprioritized or sold off too. AOL doesn’t seem to know how to take care of good people, good products and good ideas.

Hold on now, I must add the disclaimer that I didn’t think the digg clone thing for Netscape was ever a great idea, but once they chose to go that route they should have stayed the course. Now they just look like they can’t make up their mind about what they want to do with a once great browser and website. What happened to the Netscape browser is shameful.

AOL and writers: a firsthand story
When Weblogs, Inc sold to AOL I wrote a rather lengthy post that deals with how AOL handles writers and the talent behind their web properties. What do I know about this? I was a volunteer at AOL back in the nineties, my first gig on the web you might say. The following post has been sitting in the preview bin for some two years and this morning I decided to finally publish, unedited. You’ll note, for example, that today is not Thursday and it’s not 2005. Readers can judge if this should have stayed in draft status or is tangentially related. I think it is, and adds a first party dimension to life inside AOL in the early phase of their business when many thought they could do no wrong. Life behind the walled garden wasn’t exactly roses.

As the AOL acquisition of WeblogsInc (WIN) continues to circulate the web today, I continue to ponder the unspoken part of this story that I’m sure at least weighs prominently on the minds of the 130+ bloggers at WIN: what will happen to us?

Writers are always wondering about something. The hard drive mind never stops clicking and whirring. That’s what we do. We think, dream, research, plan and at then write. We don’t always think of the business side of things, which might be the ultimate subtext to this story, but I guarantee the writers in that WIN group are thinking. And what are they thinking about?

Will I get a raise out of this deal? Will AOL come in and change the editorial guidelines? Will there be an emphasis put on more profit-producing material than material I find interesting?

Some of the braver writers will ask these questions, most will keep quiet because the money they do earn, however small or large, they need to pay for roof over head and food on table.

Some might even quit over the deal.

Apparently an internal WIN memo has already gone out explaining that the deal is real, WIN management will be staying, no AOL filtering of content will be instituted, but a new contract will need to be signed.

The alleged kicker? No raises. There is some vague reference to making more money, allegedly.

That is the WIN side of things, but what about the AOL side? AOL has been downward spiraling for some time, their dialup business on fire (in a bad way), their controversial process of not letting customers leave easily and perhaps their most positive move to date: the decision to open up their members-only content to the web. And remember what happened to Nullsoft?

So what does AOL think of writers? Really?

I know something about this from personal experience. We have to get in a time machine for a little bit though and go back 8 or so years ago when a 28k connection was considered fast. Remember those wonderful times?

Close your eyes and let’s travel.

One of my first writing-related gigs on the internet was at AOL in their keyword: novel area marked the Amazing Instant Novelist area (AIN). This area was a delightful place for writers to hone their craft and I immediately gravitated there. This was a period that ran from 1996-1998. I became so involved in this area that I was eventually invited to be one of their NOVLs. I was and remain (at least to my knowledge) the only NOVLWrite to exist on AOL soil. Seemed odd to me that nobody else would have chosen that NOVL name and perhaps it was pretentious on my part that I would be the only NOVLWrite on the web, but my AOL screen name actually had “write” in it too, so it made sense. I had to be NOVL something. I supposed I could have been NOVLHmm … but that would come much later.

From the minute I got online, the first thing I wanted to do was share my creative writing with others. So I sought out places to do that within our ISP, which happened to be AOL. Back then I remember how you had to fight to get connected, particularly in the evening hours, as everybody wanted to be online and there weren’t that many dial-up numbers available.

So, who are NOVLs and what did they do at AOL? NOVLs were the gatekeepers, TOS enforcerers and contest judges in the keyword: novel area of AOL. These people chose who won or lost the various weekly writing contests. There wasn’t a lot of words to work with. First it was 250 but it later would be expanded to 1,000 words.

250 words is about the size of an average blog post — to tell a short story! Easier said than done.

The prizes for winning were quite unspectacular and so was the NOVL pay (zero pay for the writers). NOVLs like I only had our AOL accounts comped, no actual money changed hands. Still, I enjoyed this place immensely. It was a place to work on the craft of writing and maybe win some “points” which if you had a zillion of them you might actually be able to redeem for some prize. I never cashed in any of the points I earned before or after becoming a NOVL.

Once I became a NOVL I couldn’t compete in the regular writing contests any longer, but I was able to compete in the NOVL competitions which were even more challenging.

Ultimately, I found that the time involved in being not only a NOVL and contributing short story fiction writer to be too time consuming and I had to move on to other things. You know, that business stuff. Our business couldn’t suffer because my time was being increasingly absorbed volunteering at AOL. Even if that volunteer time was spent doing something I enjoyed. Writing, I love, that is no secret. I also enjoyed working with newer writers, fostering them, encouraging them and reading new works of fiction.

This would be the last chapter in me writing fiction for the next six years. Totally backburnered fiction writing, in fact. I haven’t published any fiction since leaving that area which now makes it 7 years. That’s not AOL’s fault, of course, that’s mine. I spent that time building and expanding our business ventures online. It was a tradeoff in time that up until last year I had accepted.

Such is the cosmic truth of writers and writing: that those of us who love to write are often pushed and pulled in other directions because of real world finances. The real world is much colder than any of our fiction landscapes, no matter how arctic and inhospitable.

Meanwhile we continued working our growing offline business (totally unrelated to writing). I didn’t absolutely need to leave this AOL area to make money in other business online, but I wanted to do so because I felt on the business side of things AOL was getting the best deal. I wanted some of that ad revenue in exchange for content.

Just couldn’t see being part of the free content machine any longer for AOL. Here, AOL was getting all this content and an area that was run primarily by volunteers for almost nothing. There was never any discussion about sharing ad revenues with writers, only those pretty much worthless points that could be win for first place, second place and third place each week in the writing contests.

Sure, a lot of the writing in this area was trash. Hey, it was filled with writers of all skill levels, most of which were unpubished beginners, but everyone has to start somewhere.

Maybe not a huge number of serious, professional writers were contributing to this area, but some of the material that came through was at or darn near pro-quality, particularly from the NOVLs. All this content AOL got in exchange for bandwidth, comping some accounts and paying The Amazing Instant Novelist, Dan Hurley and a few of Hurley’s people. I’m guessing Hurley himself scored the biggest deal because they used his name for everything. All this time, AOL could run its own advertising deals around the area and in a small sense this was their Adsense program. Remember, this was before Google even existed, must less their Adsense program. AOL was pretty smooth about those ads too. And I remember hearing complaints more than a few times that there wasn’t much money to run better contest prizes.

Maybe “the area” (AIN) didn’t have much money, but AOL was doing just fine. The cries of poverty for AOL nobody really believed. Perhaps an early sign of greed?

The business side of me started believing that this AOL area wasn’t such a great deal for the writers after all. Yeah, a decent place at the time to get some exposure and to hone the writing — perhaps with a nom de plume — but not a significant place to build any professional credentials. Heck, years later blogs would provide a significantly better avenue of getting public exposure than any fiction piece published in the keyword: novel area at AOL. And definitely not the place to make any money from the writing. No Stephen King stories to speak of coming out of there.

There were stories of a couple writers who landed book deals, but I’m not sure if these deals were as fictitious as the content inside AIN. No idea if any of those authors ever actually got published or were just deals that died. So many books “almost” get published. My guess is there was at least one marginal success story, but I don’t know of any success stories at all.

The reality is this area was a business area for AOL, but not a business area for the vast majority of writers who frequented it, despite the fact that it was billed as this great place to learn the craft, cut your teeth, compete in weekly contests, oh, the community, yadda, yadda. Reality: a moneymaker financially for AOL and a fun place for dreamers and writers to compete against each other.

Before anybody except maybe Dave Winer even knew what blogs were, before RSS, before much self-publishing and promotion on the web really.

As it turns out, unfortunately, AOL didn’t do a very good job of archiving or promoting the writers who won these contests either. It was like you won something inside a vacuum which mattered primarily to the other writers but didn’t penetrate outside the walled AOL garden. They pretty much left the area run by Hurley and the NOVLs as long as nothing violated their sacred TOS. So much content, some great, some good, most bad, locked behind the door of subscription and not seen by the rest of the web.

I wonder how many writers thought: hey, if I share my writing here and win contests maybe it will get me noticed? That’s the irony. The model set up writers for the exact opposite. They weren’t going to get noticed unless they went out and promoted themselves beyond the AOL walls. AOL wasn’t going to do it, the AIN area wasn’t going to do it, it was as it always has been: the responsibility of the writer him/herself to do the real PR work.

At best these contest winnings were accolades to put on the writing resume or in a bio. This was a learning lesson for beginning writers, so I suppose on that front it was successful.

Also, because a lot of those contests winners, myself included, became archived and ultimately rolled off the AOL backend third party verification was difficult if not impossible. The WayBackMachine wasn’t going inside AOL’s member’s only areas. So if a prospective publisher or agent had actually wanted to validate the existence of these contest winners they would have a difficult time doing so. Screenshots to the rescue, I guess. On our word of honor. “Yeah, you know, that contest I won at AOL’s area … the one that isn’t there any more .. or maybe it is, I won that back in 19xx”

As for digital rights? Uh oh, murky topic. Did AOL own the digital rights because it was published there first in their contest? Or did the author own the rights? Hmm, indeed.

Now let’s jump back forward in time to today, 2005.

Blogs are all the rage and these blog networks created a new type of AIN area, although the focus being on non-fiction, not fiction. A place where writers could come and then be compensated in some more meaningful, real world way than “points” and comped internet accounts. Blog networks like WIN would pay a reported $4 or so for those same 250 or less words. I guess $4 is better than points. Some progress has been made.

WIN sells to AOL and what does AOL do next? Does AOL try and replace the WIN writers with volunteers? “Just look at the exposure you’ll get now!” Nah, I don’t think that will happen. The volunteer writing model doesn’t work any more as I believe some of these new startup blog networks who rely too much on playing the exposure card will find out over time.

I don’t have much faith in AOL, the company, and I already know from firsthand experience that they don’t really seem to care or do much for writer promotion, especially if it doesn’t benefit their bottom line. So for these reasons, I wonder what will happen to the writers. Maybe AOL has changed, heaven knows they don’t have the market cornered like they once did. It’s a new world of sorts and maybe AOL can learn from WIN something about writer promotion? Maybe now they will do a better job promoting the writing, the content. For WIN writers’ sake, I sure hope so.

We can’t use that time machine to go ahead from here and see what really happens, all we can do is predict and dream. That is what brings me full circle to the writers, because it is — and will always be — the writers that help to shape the future of publishing. Without their content, no advertising or business can or will be conducted.

Am I giving writers far too much credit? Maybe, but businesses live and die. Businesses get sold or fold all the time. Someday this blog will be sold or fold. On this subject, I know only one thing for certain: creative works can and do live past the sale or the failure. The text can outlive its creator and copyright owner. The writing itself lives until it is burned, deleted and forgotten from the minds of those who have read.

Deep thinking for a rainy Thursday here in the greater Seattle area.

Yes, I think about the real writers and wonder what will happen to them because without them, there could be no sale to AOL or anybody else. Wiithout good content — and many times even with good content — readers will not come. They do not come to the area to read the ads. If they did then websites would consist of only ads. Some sites did consist of only ads at one time, just domains with banners ads only, but now people call those ‘websites’ spam. There was a time where one could put up a domain with only ads and would make pretty good money.

If AOL remembers the past and focuses on paying writers what they are worth, then a bright future could be in store in this deal. However, if the writers are used like a neverending, low value commodity — a frequent disease contracted from publishers — then this will be yet another painstaking chapter in a future AOL fire sale. I’m no Johnny Smith from the Dead Zone, but I don’t need his powers to touch the keyboard and see the vision.

As for my writings in the AIN area at AOL? Are they gone? Lost? Deleted?

I’m not sure if these writings exist there any more … or if the area itself exists any more (I don’t have an AOL account currently and though I did think about joining to research it for this blog entry, I didn’t want the hassle over cancelling later).

Note to readers with AOL accounts: go to keyword: novel and do a search for NOVL Write and see if you can find some of my old writings. Let me know what you find, if any, in the comments. There are over 100 original fiction stories I posted there during the nineties.

Recently I registered a couple new domains that I intend to republish most of what I put up on AOL in the nineties, so maybe I should thank AOL for running the material off their servers (last time I checked it seemed that way). Also, on this new domain I’d like to publish material — mostly fiction I’ve written — that has never been published, including at least one of my finished novels.

Next month is the NaNoWriMo 2005, and I’ve got an idea that maybe this year I can actually finish if I join — yes, I’m still undecided about it. Last year I choked at 26,670 words, about half-way to the 50,000 goal. I think this year’s idea is somewhat unique and curious and actually focuses on the end goal number of 50,000 which is really novella-length, not novel-length.

Like my fellow writer bretheren, I’ll keep thinking, dreaming, researching, planning and then, good health willing, writing. Hopefully at least some of these words, while the business trades continue, won’t be forgotten.

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

As a small business owner with a small number of employees for both our businesses I very much recognize the need for powerful software to help us organize things like employee performance, training, review periods and more. The current solution we use for this purpose, sad to say, is very non-automated.

Therefore I was delighted to have a review come in for software called ManagerAssistant 3.0 that might be able to help our business out in this area someday.

From the ManagerAssistant about page in a little too small font size for my weathered eyeballs:

Recognizing that line managers of corporations, schools and governments need to track and manage important information on their direct employees and themselves, ManagerAssistant.com was founded to provide the first useful and intuitive recording and tracking products to bolster the overall effectiveness of managers on Windows based computers.

So from there we find out that it’s a Windows-only affair, no Mac, no Linux. Since most businesses probably run on Windows, this proabably isn’t a big deal, but when you consider usage of this software for online businesses, it would be worthwhile at least considering a Mac and Linux version.

Site design
Using images for text, beyond logos is a bad idea. Search engines can’t figure out what the text says, so you are left with (hoping, praying) that the search engine will pick up on the ALT attributes used. In the case of this site there is stuff that looks like this:

alt=”"

For a minute consider you are a blind employer wanting to buy software to manage your employees. How would you have any idea what this site was about without text descriptions of everything. Alt attributes need to be defined for site accessibility as well as machines (search engines) to be able to understand what the page is about. Design the text of your site so that a sight-impaired person could navigate and enjoy the content. There are cases like obscuring email addresses from spam bots where using images instead of text make sense.

And while on the subject of using something other than text let me vent a bit about when not to use Flash. Some designers are just insanely in love with Flash — to your business detriment. Don’t let some Flash fanatic sell you into a design for your business that has any unnecessary Flash. You don’t need to be a techie to understand this one: what’s the point of using Flash if you don’t have Flash-type interactivity (sounds, games, video, etc)? If it’s really necessary to have Flash to be trendy or cool (a mistake in and of itself), then have a small Flash logo only and by all means do not have it play some annoying music onload. Just to clarify, the ManagerAssisant website doesn’t play any sounds, but I’ve seen too many other business sites that chase away potential customers by having music blast them the minute they hit the site. Don’t fall into that trip during a redesign and don’t fall for that with a current design.

Downloading the Free trial
On my list of 10 deadly sins for software companies near the top would be: do not force prospective customers to register to download your trial software. I know the argument, heck I’m in the software business. The argument goes like this. You want to get their information so you can follow-up personally with the sale. Ask yourself as somebody on the web how you feel about getting email from somebody you just installed software to check out? Many do not like it. Most consider it barely a step above spam. 10 years ago, maybe even 5 you could have a strategy like this, but these days you can’t. You need to provide people an OPT-IN strategy on everything, including downloads.

Now if you’re worried about the download bandwidth, say if you have a large program (Manager Assistant v3.0 that I demoed was 111.2 MB), then consider using a accessibility friendly CAPTCHA. Something with an option for sight and sound. That will prevent an excess of automated downloads. There also is the possibility of using bittorrent, although that might be risky for software. The bottom line is using bandwidth as an excuse for collecting information and offering a secret download URL doesn’t wash.

There are a percentage of people who will never fill out forms to download anything and some of them could be your best customers. Don’t lose them by stopping them before they even look at your software.

If your software is that good, they will be more than happy to register after installing and trying it out for a couple runs. I think if you absolutely must gather information before downloading than make sure it makes sense. What does knowing my name and address have to do with whether or not ManagerAssistant 3.0 will work for my business?

Unfortunately, ManagerAssistant requires the following information before allowing a download: first name, last name, title, company, e-mail, business phone, state, country and then a dropdown menu: which feature of ManagerAssistant are you most interested in (more on that shortly) and then the only box which isn’t required: what management software are you using now?

The ManagerAssistant v3.0 that I checked out was 111.2 MB, not exactly a small footprint. With our fast cable modem, it still took a good 10 minutes to download from the MA server. Not bad considering I intentionally downloaded during a peak internet usage window. This would indicate to me faster download speeds during off-peak.

First run impressions
After installing and running for the first time I ended up at an interface that looked like this:

The MA trial comes preinstalled with some dummy employee records where you get an idea of the depth of the program. When you click on the employee name a detailed screen comes up with that employees data including tabs for: status, experience, education, compensation and benefits. A handy time-off accruals screen displays vacation and sick time. In red, emergency contact information is listed. There is a photo available that doesn’t accept drag and drop, but you can add the employees photo by right clicking and finding the image on the computer.

I didn’t spot anything missing that I could think of that an employer would want to track about an employee and even if there are MA allows adding custom fields. Very nicely laid out.

The second menu choice along the left is attendance and is equally comprehensive, allowing marking for different types of attendance out reasons like: bereavement, maternity, medical, sick, late/tardy, vacation, comp time, military duty, floating, jury duty and more. There are tabs with multiple views allowed including table, employee year view and the default calendar view. This appears to be an useful tool for tracking employee dependability.

The third menu choice performance reviews offers the ability to track and grade the employee on a wide variety of performance-related items including: attitude, communication, job knowledge, productivity, problem solving and more. Each item includes a grading scale with the following choices: no rating/not applicable, exceptional performance, consistently exceeds expectations, meets expectations, occasionally below expectations and consistently below expectations.

Additionally, you can add comments and support materials and then preview the document. Make spelling errors or need to use some different wording? A spellchecker and thesaurus are included. Nice.

Other menu choices include goals, incidents, accomplishments, training, recruitment and expenses. This software is very well designed, intuitive and covers every aspect of employee evaluation and development. I was very impressed.

Summary and grade
In the ReviewMe area, the company can add comments about the site and what they are looking for in feedback, which is helpful to understand. One of their concerns was whether they should make a more “web 2.0 design” for the website. That might make this software more web-friendly, but it doesn’t seem like this is the kind of software one would use online, so there isn’t a lot that could be done/added for employees or employers to interact online through the website.

ManasgerAssistant has an impressive list of customers including: Bank of America, Comcast, Panasonic and several other big name corporations.

Could the website be updated to include rounded corners, softer colors, bigger fonts, use AJAX, and all the other web 2.0 signatures? Sure. Would it make any difference for most prospective customers? Perhaps a little. Sneeze and web 3.0 will be here so having a trendy design is primarily useful for those who want to attract customers who like using web-based apps. I’m not sure those who want to do most things using web apps will want to use something like ManagerAssistant the web version, but then Adobe announced that they are putting Photoshop online soon, so this could be a good direction for the MA folks to head. It would also make a version that a growing number of Mac and Linux users could enjoy where right now they are left out.

ManagerAssistant pricing is based on named users, not companies, so the pricing can get steep but not unreasonable for larger companies with multiple locations and managers. In the case of our business I believe we’d be fine with the $395 license which considering everything this software does seems like a good deal. It easily made our strong maybe list for future business purchases. Maybe there should be a small business targeted “under 10 employees” version for like $100-200? Perhaps a future web version could be based on a monthly price like $10-20/month instead of an upfront single license fee.

As an employer (and employee if I was still one) I’d be very concerned about security if this amount of information was available through an online interface. If MA does create a future web version, they should take every step to provide the highest level of security. Look at what web apps like wesabo are doing to make sure infomation is protected.

I can’t offer many suggestions for the software other than aesthetically it’s a bit bland like most Windows software. Maybe now that Vista is here with the Aero glass effects more apps will be visually stimulating, but then again I don’t care about pretty software and I doubt most business owners will either. We want to make sure it does what we need it to do and MA seems quite competent in that area. Still, the younger generation which are becoming more employers do care about aesthetics, so this might be something to think about in a future version.

The website definitely needs some work. The MA folks say it is two years old and in this case a more progressive design would be advised, although I would advise against making it too web 2.0-like until/unless they actually offer a web-based version of MA. There’s enough comments about the site in this review that they could do to make it a better website with a more compelling sales pitch. ManagerAssistant is a well designed, comprehensive solution for human resources. Grade: B+

As someone inching closer to the 40 year old mark, and an employer who strongly believes in equal opportunity employment, I’m becoming more mindful of sites geared toward helping us older types. Although, I haven’t looked for employment for many years, I was still interested in Jobs 4.0 for Hmm readers which specializes in helping people over 40 find employment:

Jobs4.0 means real jobs at great companies that value diversity of experience.

Hat tip to Bruce Reznick reporting at NPR (audio 3:53) and the lingering stench of age discrimination. Some interesting statistics in that short audio clip including the stats about the job age pool changing, leaning toward an older overall pool. Worth a quick listen.

Looking for employment?
Awhile back, we added an employment category here and an AJAX job listing via Krop so that readers could find jobs in their area. Feel free to leave any feedback. I thought it was a nice, helpful addition for readers. If anybody actually gets a job through there then we receive a small referral bonus ($50, I believe). If you’re looking for work, give this a try and let me know if there’s anything good in your area. If you read in RSS, you might not have realized this was available.

Just saw this over at Scoble’s blog that Chris Coulter is no longer at Podtech:

But, there’s something else that I’m sad to report. Christopher Coulter, who was running camera for me on last week’s Bill Gates’ interview, is no longer a PodTech employee. I wish him well on his future endeavors (I give him a glowing recommendation).

Then in the comments when asked the details of what Coulter will be up to next, Scoble replied:

I’ll let Chris tell you what’s up when he’s ready.

Once hired, Coulter pretty much stopped trolling Scoble’s comment section. Inquiring minds already wondering if Coulter will return to his former trollish self? Have to say most of Coulter’s credibility is shot now as far as job committment goes. The next time Coulter questions the committment of anybody else at their jobs, be sure to remind him that he didn’t make it past the probationary period at Podtech. Ouch.

Meanwhile, they hired up and coming videoblogger Loren ‘I’ll bed everyone at Podtech’ Feldman and all seems to be ok there thus far. Feldman doesn’t appear to have a Podtech show like Scoble does yet (coming soon?), but maybe he should give up the bed bit already. That was already done by Sharon Osbourne on her failed talk show (please don’t start selling breast molds, Loren) and could be tainted schtick. However, I must admit laughing very hard at Scoble doing some freaky sexual tongue thing in this video (consider yourself warned)

Troll–; // ?
Not sure what the circumstances were with Coulter and like most of these short term employment deals we’ll probably never know the gory details (and shouldn’t), but this certainly further diminishes the value of being hired as a star troll commenter. Trolls can dish, but rarely can take. And another one’s gone, another’s one gone, another one bites the …

Apparently, this test thinks I’m an ENFJ (Extroverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging), glad to meet you. Just took this 69 question programmer personality test to see what jobs it think I’d be best suited for:

ENFJ - Teachers, consultants, psychiatrists, social workers, counselers, clergy, sales representative, human resources, managers, events coordinators, politicians, diplomats, writers, actors, designers, homemakers, musicians, religious workers, writers. They have a gift of encouraging others actualize themselves, and provide excellent leadership.

Politician, psychiatrist, clergy? No thanks.

Looking through the list of suggested employments I probably would have chose one of the others. What’s your acronym? How accurate did your test turn out?