5.07.2008

New Zones: Three new zones made their debut at Experts Exchange last week: Windows Server 2008, Windows Home Server, and AJAX Scripting. This is only the beginning; we will be adding more in the next few weeks. On the Premium skin, we have also simplified the core zone navigation:

• Internet is under Web Development
• Gamers is under Digital Living
• Virus & Spyware is under Security
• IT Pro is under Developer

New Staffer: m_matt is the newest member of the Customer Service team in the office at Experts Exchange. Welcome aboard!

New Geniuses: Four EE members have earned Genius certificates in the last four weeks. Leading the charge is TheLearnedOne, whose fifth certificate came in the Visual Studio .NET 2005 zone. He is joined on the Genius list by Steggs in Cascading Style Sheets; chapmandew, who earned his second certificate, this one in SQL Server 2005; and last year's Rookie of the Year, KCTS, whose third Genius certificate is in Windows 2003 Active Directory.

Milestones:

• angelIII and Sembee both went over the 21,000,000 point level, and angelIII took over the top spot in the Hall of Fame, and Sembee has gone over 19,000,000 points in the Exchange zone.
• zorvek has gone over the 8,000,000 point level in Excel.
• rorya and nobus have both hit 5,000,000 points overall. rorya has also earned 5,000,000 points in the Excel zone, and nobus has the distinction of ranking the highest on the Hall of Fame list without the benefit of a Genius certificate.

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byundt is the Zone Advisor for the Excel zone, and is a Microsoft MVP -- one of about seven EE members in the Excel zone.

If you post regularly in any newsgroup or help forum, you'll soon become aware of Microsoft's MVP program. Perhaps you'll be reading a book written by an MVP, posting a link to one of their web sites, or applying one of their tips to the problem at hand. You may even find them posting in one of your threads -- about 40 MVPs frequent Experts-Exchange.

Most MVPs post their biographical information in https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/MVP.aspx. While Microsoft expects MVPs to use that fact in their sig line in newsgroup postings, they aren't required to do so when participating in other forums. At Experts-Exchange, many people don't post their MVP status when answering questions. Some don't even disclose the fact in their user profile. It is therefore a good idea for regular participants at Experts-Exchange to learn the names of MVP winners -- you might learn something when they post, and you avoid situations like this exchange:

In my competency (Excel), the MVPs predominately come from outside the MIS/IT community. Some have advanced degrees from schools like MIT or Berkeley. Others have no college classes at all. Some work as professional developers, while others are primarily users. All of them are smart. And each one knows far more about the product than the average person.

The MVP Program was established in 1993 to salute the expertise and thousands of hours that each person being honored had donated to the user community. Microsoft soon discovered that the MVPs were passionate about their respective Microsoft product, and eager to offer feedback on beta software and planned product upgrades. As you might imagine for widely deployed products like Office or Windows, Microsoft can't possibly pay attention to all the input offered by general users. Instead, they use the MVPs as a window into problems faced by the user community -- so that problems which are repeatedly encountered can be documented properly and prioritized. Many features that delight users of the latest products had their origin in this feedback process.

Because the MVP Program has proven so valuable, Microsoft makes a considerable investment in identifying suitable candidates. The MVP Award lasts for a year, with a new cohort in each competency being honored at the beginning of every quarter. If you keep doing the things that won you the award in the first place, you can receive it repeatedly.

To pick people with the right stuff, Microsoft goes through a two-phase process. In the first phase, a person is nominated. About two months before the award date, you'll be surprised to receive an e-mail from an MVP Lead letting you know of the nomination. I was skeptical at first, and did some cross-checking to make sure I wasn't being set up like Linus, Lucy and the football. The nomination e-mail asks for help to document the various ways in which you have served the user community over the past year. Involvement in technical communities includes a mix of offline and online activities such as:

• Course instruction or training given
• Books published
• Articles and Papers published
• Speaking engagements
• Newsgroup / Web forum participation
• Technical presentations
• User group involvement

The MVP Lead then reviews the documentation submitted, compares it to standards and to the contributions of other candidates. In the process of reviewing contributions, the MVP Lead reads many thousands of posts to user groups or help forums, looking for professionalism, expertise and hanging in there until the user solves the real problem. Getting it right the first time, handling provocations graciously, and willingness to share knowledge are important qualities.

The MVP Lead looks for people who are passionate about the product and have a strong desire to help other people. Recent liberalizations in the program mean that candidates are considered even if they participate on "commercial" forums like EE. The ideal candidate is someone who would still keep helping with the same intensity even if the award weren't there. You're not going to be awarded the first year you participate in a news group or help forum. Three or four years is more the norm. You need time to develop your expertise. You also need time to master the knack of answering questions -- understanding what the Asker really needs and being able to communicate on his level.

Assuming that your nomination documentation passes muster, the next step is an e-mail from the MVP Lead on the first of the quarter letting you know that you have won the MVP Award for the coming year. The English have a word "chuffed" which captures the feeling you get almost perfectly.

Winners of the MVP Award receive a small amount of swag. We're geeks, however, so the best swag is evaluation copies of software. We also get to "join the club", and old-timers give you respect that you're not sure you have completely earned. As a club member, you may ask for help from other MVPs on truly difficult problems. You also get privileged access to the right people at Microsoft -- all the way up to Steve Ballmer if you need it.

The highlight of the MVP Award calendar is the annual MVP Summit. All 4,000 MVPs are invited, and about half attend each year. The Summit lasts four days, and includes technical sessions on upcoming products, opportunity to meet the product manager, software development team leaders, documentation managers and user interface leaders. You see products one or two versions in the future. And the NDA that you signed means you can't talk about any of that great stuff.

The MVP Summit also gives you a chance to meet the other MVPs face to face. My plane ride out to Seattle was the first time I had ever knowingly met an MVP or a Microsoft employee. And soon after arriving at the convention center, I met experts from Experts-Exchange for the first time. Admittedly, I live far from the big cities and work outside of the MIS/IT community. But it was still a wonderful feeling to finally meet guys from Experts-Exchange whom I've "known" for years.

I don't know if my MVP award will be renewed. If it isn't, the experience of the past year is something I'll cherish for the rest of my life. But if dreams come true, I'll be at the MVP Summit next March.

An editor by trade, a writer by avocation and an Expert by happenstance, ericpete puts together the newsletter for Experts Exchange.

Our friends and families know we've been on the road for the last few weeks. That, in and of itself, isn't really much of a surprise; we're at the age where we are spending our grandchildren's inheritance before their parents can get their hands on it.

Our most recent road trip has taken us to both British Columbia and Baja California Sur, and we have some observations on the state of communications systems in Canada and Mexico, which, in turn, prompts some observations about the same systems in the US, not to mention some of the technology that is available. We will admit that the observations are anecdotal, and should not be considered anything more.

We received an Apple iTouch during the holidays, and while it's nice, we didn't really use it for much until just before this trip. Since we work at home and have collected a lot of CDs over the years, we didn't really need something portable to play them on. But we'll give Apple credit, especially after the January update: it's a handy little device. We mapped our drive from central California to Ketchikan, Alaska through British Columbia, and it's impressive how clear everything is.

It isn't a perfect device, though. For one thing, there aren't a lot in the way of instructions or help included. Yes, we know we can always ask a question on EE, but it's difficult to read the page when it's contained in a little box two inches, or even four inches wide, and there is no obvious way to magnify the page. Somehow, we managed to put in our username... but we never could enter a password, so the option wasn't available. We also liked that getting our Gmail was readily available, but we won't be using the iTouch regularly for that; the keyboard is just too slow, and you can't use any kind of stylus.

Canada gets very high marks for its cell phone service, too. We were never out of contact with our driving companions (there were two vehicles), and the service was reliable, even through the mountains along the Fraser River. We are less than impressed with the folks at At&T, though. They give you a choice: pay a rather exorbitant rate for roaming, or pay a monthly fee and pay a somewhat less exorbitant fee for roaming. Given that we can't get an AT&T signal ten miles from home, in a town that is covered by a wireless broadband network, we are singuarly unimpressed.

We won't bring up AT&T again when it gets to the Mexico part of our trip. If their service was bad in Canada, it is completely abominable in Mexico. At least in Canada, you can make the call through rogers.ca. There is no such reciprocity in Baja California, apparently.

One thing that did surprise us, given the remote location in which we find ourselves in Mexico, is the reliability of the satellite-based internet connection. We will admit that the closest thing to any weather-related difficulties we have seen is a few high clouds, but still... Day or night, the ability to upload and download information has been unimpeded.

We are also impressed at the reliability of Vonage as a provider of telephone communicatons. There are no phone lines out this way, so your choices are cellular service or a broadband-based system. Vonage works like a dream, and we don't doubt that Skype or any other similar service would work just as well.

You can't help but admire Yahoo boss Jerry Yang's style. Saturday, Microsoft pulled its offer to buy the SS (for Sinking Ship) Yahoo Saturday when it became apparent that Yang wasn't going to budge from wanting $37 a share (and as high as $38) for a company that the stock market says is worth under $29 a share, and was worth barely $19 a share when the offer to buy was made.

The folks at Yahoo must really not want to become part of the Evil Empire in a big way. They did almost everything to confuse the issue. They got Fox involved, talking about getting Rupert Murdoch to ride in and save the day, although most people would say that that's trading one evil empire for another. They talked about buying AOL from Time-Warner, which a lot of people would consider like tossing a lead weight to a drowning man. (Just a note: Time-Warner may sell off AOL even if Yahoo isn't really interested.) They even signed up with Google -- another company built on being a search engine -- to provide its paying search, which is like Frontier Airlines asking Southwest to carry its passengers.

It goes without saying that Microsoft can't be very pleased with the outcome of the negotiations it had with Yahoo; there are just too many big egos at the top of the organizational chart in Redmond. Its online services division has been a sinkhole for a while -- something the acquisition of Yahoo would have gone a long way towards curing. Yahoo's tete-a-tete with Google couldn't have made MS very happy either, just because it's Google.

So what happens next? A lot will depend on what happens with Yahoo's stock price over the next week or so. The Yahoo board backed Yang, but if Yahoo's stock drops down to the pre-bid level, stockholders -- whose net worth as far as their Yahoo holdings are concerned have gotten 50 per cent richer since February -- will be very unhappy to turn around and lose a third of their net worth. CEOs -- even those who founded the company and are generally regarding as saviors -- have been known to lose their jobs for less. Considering that Yahoo was on a downward trend even before the offer, the next time someone comes calling with an offer to buy, the Yahoo board might not be so forgiving.

And that doesn't begin to address what is going on in Redmond. Microsoft's revenues are not quite triple Google's, and while Yahoo would have added to that, the difference wouldn't have been that much. Its net income is also triple Google's, but Yahoo's $500 million in net income wouldn't be that big a deal either, and in any case, Microsoft could have spent $30 million (by analysts' estimates) to acquire Yahoo in a proxy fight -- and any gambler will tell you that betting $30 to gain a sure $500 is a good one.

So why didn't Microsoft do a hostile takeover? We can think of a few reasons:

• Bad ink: We don't really think Microsoft is all that evil; for one thing, we like the MVPs we have met, and have even had a few nice conversations with people from Microsoft. We think the company is a little on the arrogant side, and we think they're trying too hard to be everything to everyone -- but so far, it has served them well, so who are we to argue. Bill Gates is doing his darndest to show the world what a benevolent guy he is, and Steve Ballmer has even stopped throwing chairs. Besides, there's always Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Or the incompetence of an organization to big to get out of its own way.
• Patience is a virtue: Unlike Oracle's bid for BEA, which started like a lion and ended like a much more -- for Oracle -- expensive lamb, Microsoft can wait. There's nothing to indicate that Yahoo is any better now than it was three months ago at figuring out what business it wants to be in. There is nothing to indicate that even if it figures that out, it will be any better at earning money doing it. Microsoft can simply sit back and wait -- and if anyone screams about Microsoft buying Yahoo, it can just point to Google buying DoubleClick and smile.
• Anything they can do, we can do better: Maybe Microsoft is more than a little arrogant, and thinks it can do better. Ballmer's email to employees doesn't come right out and say it, but implies that there aren't very many other companies out there that are big enough to help Microsoft beat back the perceived threat of Google. That being the case, Microsoft will just do what it does: "build the industry-leading business in search, online advertising, media, and social networking." If you say so, Steve.

We're going to bet on Number Two, although there's always the possibility that Google will just decide to absorb Yahoo and be done with it; the distance from Sunnyvale to Mountain View is about four stoplights on the El Camino Real. Now that would be fun to watch, especially if Yahoo's earnings numbers aren't that good this quarter.

Update: Yahoo opened at about $23 a share -- its largest drop in two years -- when the New York Stock Exchange opened Monday.

We got an email last week from a member who was ... not quite complaining, exactly, but a bit irked... that he had put a lot of effort into a question, only to be rewarded with a B grade. Most of the time, this particular Expert doesn't care much, but this one bugged him a little, because to him, it was a little disrespectful, and not so much to him personally, but to the Experts in general.

He's not the first, nor will he be the last. Now, officially, you use the grading process to judge the answer to your question. If the answer is complete, then it should be an A grade. If the answer isn't complete, then a B grade is appropriate. The C grade should be given when you, as the asker, wind up doing a lot of extra research and work, and it is customary to give the Experts a chance to improve the C grade before giving it.

But here's the thing: The Experts are volunteering their time to help you. They have gained a ton of knowledge, talent, ability and skill through a lot of hard work, and are spending their own time to help you on a problem that would likely cost you at least a service call, and in some cases thousands of dollars to resolve. So it's not too much to ask that you be fair in grading the answers.

Another bugaboo at Experts Exchange is "what do we do about homework questions." The membership agreement prohibits anything that smacks of "academic dishonesty," and when it gets down to it, cheating on tests or assignments doesn't really help you in the long run; sooner or later, someone will realize that a person who got a certification by cheating doesn't really know anything. But at the same time, EE exists to help solve problems, so here's how we look at it: The Experts can't do your homework for you, but they can point you in the right direction. They won't give you the code that solves a problem, but they can tell you generally how you would get from point A to point B.

Greed: If there is anything Apple is known for, it's the long-standing dictum that what is Apple's shall forever be Apple's, even if Apple didn't get there first. There's the complaint that New York City's apple will confuse people, and there's the deal that finally settled the long and winding road that was the dispute between the company and the Beatles.

This one is a little different, though. Psystar -- a name that could either be a take-off on film studio or a little jab at being the female sibling of the Lisa -- makes computers that come with Mac OS 10 operating system pre-installed, and sells it for quite a bit less than Apple sells its cheapest Mac. So it should be only a matter of time before Apple sues -- which it hasn't yet.

Speaking of New York -- the state, not the city -- Amazon has come to the conclusion that the state's new law requiring online merchants to collect and send in taxes is unfair. So Amazon is taking on New York the American way: by suing.

Envy: To a zealot, there is nothing so annoying as the success of that which he hates.

Wrath: One can just see the look on Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales' face. It seems that a group of people who are concerned about the veracity of articles at Wikipedia pertaining to Israel were "fair and accurate", so they did the internet equivalent of taking to the streets, and took advantage of the editorial leniency for which the site is famous. That didn't set too well with a very-similarly-constructed group that supports Palestine, but it did what any offended group would do: they complained to Wikipedia, and got results.

Pride: Everyone is a kid once, but sometimes it gets in the way, especially if you want to get a raise or a nice office in the corner. So after re-inventing themselves with their Facebook and MySpace profiles, now people are re-inventing the reinvention.

Sloth: It is no secret that we have very little use for the money-grubbing parasites who fight technology tooth and nail because they have a business model that is so irrelevant and out of touch that it can no longer legitimately support the lifestyle to which these one-step-above-lawyers-and-pond-scum types are accustomed... all of which makes us exceedingly happy that Apple has signed a deal with the studios to deliver movies through iTunes the day they are released to DVD.

Turns out that the studios were wrong about the impact of releasing digitally on the same day as DVDs (they were worried that DVD sales would fall). Of course, it also means that the P2P market the studios have been flailing against for years has been little more than a service filling a gap in the distribution chain the studios were unwilling to fill themselves. If Apple's history with regard to the recording industry is any indication, it won't be long before the studios wake up to the fact that Apple will be making a ton of money off the deal as well.

Lust: It's no secret that eBay would dearly love to get its hands on those who use Craigslist. For one thing, it would remove from the classified advertising landscape a competitor who does what eBay can't afford to do -- Craigslist gives ads away, while eBay sells them at a high price. That desire came out in a big way when eBay filed a lawsuit against Craigslist, saying it had been denied a seat on the board of directors by some nefarious means. For its part, Craigslist says that eBay broke the deal it made when the online auction house purchased part of Craigslist by starting a competing site.

Gluttony: The internet will reach full capacity in 2010, according to AT&T. Maybe if they stopped sending duplicates of everyone's traffic to the NSA or choking bandwidth from certain sites it wouldn't be facing these problems. Of course, there's always dark fiber... and for real gluttony, nobody tops the FBI.

Site of the Week: In honor of marketing departments everywhere.

Sign of the Apocalypse: "It's a Microsoft world. I'm just living in it."

Rule number one if you're considering taking an extended vacation: Figure out a way to look at your email every couple of days, especially if you look at lots of newsletters and websites. I wasn't very good about doing that over the last couple of weeks, and the result: about 8,000 emails. Most of them are junk, but grinding through all that chaff just find a few grains of wheat is time-consuming. It's also a reminder of why I have antispam software on my computer; going through all of it on webmail is just a killer.

Talking about email, I found an interesting article by a San Jose Mercury News columnist that talked about being polite and responding to emails. Mike Cassidy wrote about a San Jose State professor (who writes for the New York Times, curiously) who had his own column about what happens when his inbox has more than 24 emails in it; the word he used was "perspire". Now, I have to admit, I don't feel that bad about having unanswered emails, but I do try to answer anyone who actually writes to me.

PayPal -- which is probably the subject of more phishing scams than any site on the web -- has come out with a list of the things web companies can do to prevent phishing. What makes the list interesting is that the paper also says that PayPal is considering blocking browsers that don't go far enough in attacking the problem -- notably Opera and Safari.

Finally, I went through a phase where I was using Buy.com, Overstock.com, and a bunch of similar sites to get all my Christmas shopping done early, redecorate the house, and get a new wardrobe. Fortunately, I never did order a "recertified" iPod or anything like that -- I like "new" better -- and now it looks like my fondness for that might be a good thing.