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It’s more and more common that the things we buy or are given come without manuals, documentation, drivers, etc. At least when you receive something as a gift from a company there’s no wonder the product is cheap and comes from we-know-where.

It’s a shame that (I’m generalizing here) the entire population is in favor of cheap but crappy products. Products made by companies that do not care about the final customer. They do not pursue quality at all, don’t even study a little bit of english or send a little piece of text to be translated properly.

Here I have a “USER’s Install Manual (For vendor preference only)” for a nice looking pen that also is a “USB DISK”. Look at all what it pretends to say and you’ll see that it’s bad big time.

QUICKLY MANUAL
Windows 98/ME/XP
Version 1.20/2.O
Install Driver
Turn on your computer power, and plug the USB DISK into the USB port.
For more in formation, please look out the install note.
1.Install driver for Windows 98/ME
At first, you must install “USB storage device”
1 ) Boot the computer, and plug the USB DISK info the USB port.
2) Windows will detect the new hardware, and inform you for “a new USB storage device” .Please click the  ”next” button.
3 ) Then Windows will question where the driver is.You must click the “browse” button and locate the driver. After doing it, please click the  ”next” button to continue.
5) For WIN2000/XP, the product is driverless, plug and play.

Suddenly we don’t have step 4, but with this explanation, who cares?!
We have more:

2.Operation
1 ) Format
Run command “Mangager.exe” .for first,please choose “Full Format” and click the right “format” button.  (fullformat will take offa few minutes.) After the format is finished, the USB DISK will be useable.
2) Boot set
The option will only for WIN98.Run command “Mangager.exe” and select the  ”boot disk”  option,the format the USB DISK. (NOTE:YOU MUST FORMAT THE USB DISK)  Reboot the computer,and set the BIS’s Boot Device to  ”USB-ZIP” ,the boot will enable. ( NOTE:IF YOU SELECT THE BOOT DISK, THE “ENCRYPT DISK” OPTION WILL DISABLE.)
3) Set password and operation
( 1 ) After format the USB DISK, Run command “Mangager.Exe” again
(2) Please select the “user password” option.quit and re-plug the USB DISK.
(3) Click “My Computer”  icon,entering the movable disk. Run command “Pass Man .exe” ,the default password is.
(4) After login,the  ”PassMan” windows will close in a second, then you can use the USB DISK.
4) Change password
Run “Change password” .and enter the same password in the “new password”  and “confirm password” ,then click the “OK” button. Re-plug the USB DISK,the Encrypt will be enable.

GUARANTEE ITEM
1.At normal, electric moveable hard-drive Will be change in three moth and guaranteed in a year. (It is count from the buy date. )
2.If you buy the products in three months and in troubles, please send the product to dealer.
3.The card must be marked by the sales. IF NO, please to return it to the dealer.

Got it? Finally:

GUARANTEE ITEM
Der user:
Thank you to use our products. Please seriously read the item and carefully keep of the guarantee card.

Er, yes, of course.

This week I noticed that the Starbucks near my house changed the design and names of the list of items they sell, and the prices also changed. At first it gave me the impression that the prices had gone down a bit, but after seeing the prices on purchases I made on previous days, I clearly saw that they actually increased the prices on everything.

Good trick. I wonder who they paid for the Christmas-like design that gives the impression that everything’s cheaper when in fact everything costs more now. They’re now prepared for the coldest season of the year when people consume more coffee (I think) so, at least I’m sure Starbucks won’t go out of business. Right?

I read an article that came in the September issue of the Harvard Business Review named “How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity” containing a sentence that I’m not sure if Ed Catmull, the author, was the one who said it or not, but I really think it’s true.

If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up; if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something that works.

I agree that it’s not about good ideas but about the people, talented people. Be sure to surround yourself with them.

On Wednesday I received my July copy of Communications of the ACM and I have to say that it looks nice, and new! The content has always been very good, but now the feeling is like you really have in your hands a magazine that features and talks about the latest and greatest.

Kudos to the team that produces the magazine! Well done!

I have been very interested lately in articles, studies, etc., about Virtual Teams scattered in different locations throughout the world and their interaction. Primarily because I’m in one Global Virtual Team since several years ago working on the development and support of IBM Lotus Domino for System i (including QuickPlace, Quickr, Sametime, Domino Document Manager, etc.).

Recently I found the link to this white paper titled New Methods for Studying Global Virtual Teams: Towards a Multi-Faceted Approach where one of the different findings, not surprisingly, was that of trust. This same issue of trust is something that we know happens also between people in a team working in the same place.

Communication and collaboration tools are critical to the success of a project, and thus every member of a team needs to be educated so that he or she can make effective use of the tool at hand.

I don’t remember where I found the link, but anyways I wanted to share it here.

I just finished hearing episode 27 of the No Agenda podcast and the stuff about China is pretty interesting. Worth a look.

Some time ago I read Andrew McAfee’s article “The Ties that Find” where he cites a really good article created in 1973 by Mark S. Granovetter called “The Strength of Weak Ties“. I didn’t have the chance at that time to read the article but, some weeks ago I decided to read it and I have to say that now I understand more clearly the real impact that the current social software makes in all aspects of our day to day activities, and more importantly for us knowledge workers who depend on finding the right people at the right time to be able to solve whatever the problem we’re faced with.

Definitely a good read; and by the looks of it, seems that there are a few other interesting papers in there, hope to have time later to check them out.

For several months now I’ve been interested in topics related to the technology industry, and one of them is that there are not much women doing development for Operating Systems, Applications, networking or hardware stuff. So I have been in the lookout for information, articles actually, that talk about the different skills involved (intelligence, social, etc.).

I found this article that mentions a couple of things that I agree on:

• They are more collaborative
• Groups work much better when at least one woman is in the group. They bring a different perspective and viewpoint.

Just spot on! That’s what I have seen in my team for a couple of years now. You need different “forces” to maintain a good team.

In the DSC episode 697 it was mentioned and played an interesting video that not only applies to the U.S. but to the rest of the Earth population/nations also. You must look at it, it’s The Story of Stuff.

Here’s some interesting stuff I’ve been hearing and reading lately, mostly heard on the Daily Source Code, tech5 and No Agenda podcasts which I really like.

First thing that [doesn’t] surprises me is that Microsoft won, again, a first place. This time because of Windows Vista being the Most Disappointing Product of 2007, I must say… Well deserved guys!
Did you notice how many Microsoft and Apple products are on the list?

Looks like HP paid Staples $100 million dollars to not sell inexpensive third-party ink cartridges. As John C Dvorak said, how many they’re doing from just ink? (FYI: a considerable portion of the company’s profits come from ink.) Ink definitely is overpriced. This makes me think about another company that pays to make its bad operating system be installed instead of Linux, although it isn’t working too well, right?

Another interesting tidbit is that the Intel Viiv initiative is officially dead. Hmm, I never heard about it before, could that be the cause?

And a non techy thing is that the U.S. actually “outsources” (sort of) the army (Blackwater) and jails (for example, this one) where by the way, people are put in prison even when they shouldn’t be there, but since these private companies may charge the government per “capita” then you know what that means, right? Go check the interesting commentary of it on the No Agenda podcast episodes 3 and 4.
Weird use of taxes.