I've recently finished reading "T...

I've recently finished reading "The Ten-Day MBA" by Steven Silbiger (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060799072/prokhorenkous-20). It's quite an interesting reading (for those, who likes such kind of a reading though ;).

You can easily get it done in 10 days (as the authors says) without investing more then an hour for reading. But you're not at your class, so why should you put more, right?

In my case, holding PMP certification, I discovered that my PMP program that I'd to be prepared for the exam, is covering more then half of the book, at lower level. It was nice to follow chapter by chapter already knowing what are all these things about. However, I wonder, is it really that much about management included into the full-time MBA program?

Overall, I liked the book, but I didn't find too much new for myself. Good reading for those who want to understand how are they about getting an MBA. ;) (read more on Everytalks)

Quick hint: A lot of people use t...

Quick hint: A lot of people use to complain about inability to launch FLIQLO (http://www.9031.com/downloads/screensavers.html) on their Mac OS X "Leopard". When you click on the FLIQLO.saver file nothing happens and it's not being added to your Screen Savers list. However, there is a quick workaround. Just open Terminal and copy your FLIQLO.saver into ~/Library/Screen Savers/ folder, and open System Preferences - Desktop & Screen Saver menu. You'll be able to find FLIQLO at the bottom of the page, under the Other section. That easy. And, yes, you can enjoy this great screen saver now. ;) (read more on Everytalks)

My Bosch WFL2090UC washer arrived...

My Bosch WFL2090UC washer arrived today. First of all, I'm so happy to get European washer here, in US. American monsters can't ever beat Bosch ;) For the second, even that I'm living in a rather tiny apartment and have no washer and dryer hookups, I was able to install it in a minutes, plugging to the regular 110/120V power outlet and piping with few hoses and faucets from OSH (less the twenty bucks for all). Overall, I'm very satisfied and hopefully will post some pictures as soon as I'll get them. The only downside is the price. It's a pretty expensive equipment. ;) (read more on Everytalks)

Forex trading techniques for newbies

I am interested in trading, particularly in currency trading, that is Forex.

I'm pretty much newbie here and I never went far away from the demo account — first of all, I'm not comfortable with dropping few $$ grands for deposit. I also not sure that minimum deposits of few $$ hundreds would be enough for me to really do something. I used to play out of $300 on the demo account and it feels pretty much limited. And at least, but not last — I still have no solid technique to rely on.

Running out of the demo account I was pretty much comfortable with short term trading. Occasional medium term trading - swings, I've tried that, too, but I never had a plan for them — it was mainly like a game.

However, a lot of Forex traders advocate short term trading as inappropriate for newbies, and, basically, require pretty good intuition for them to succeed. But these types of trading - ranging from minutes ending with days - feels like the fastest indicators to your plan success in trading.

Interesting, are there any short-term techniques appropriate for newbies that can be successful and predictable (on a certain level, of course)? I'll keep looking for that and keep the blog updated.

Reverse FriendFeed and AtomKeep

Robot Monkeys :: Reverse FriendFeed and AtomKeep

Well, I don't think it worth trying that much, Jonathan. Calling something an ugly hack even before trying it — it's a pretty wrong point. I don't buy you with my concerns? Well, I never meant to.

Atomkeep is not an "open standard" like you're proposing (but it addresses pretty much the same problem, though). We just solve the problem. People tend to use something because it helps, but not because it's a nice written spec on the table.

I'd be happy to have this discussion one day, but it looks like Jonathan is pretty much looking for Holy Grail and I'm just trying to make the things work (even when they're not supposed to, fragile and hard to maintain). It doesn't mean there is no solution that can combine both his and mine vision. Just keep looking. ;)

Test Your Awareness

YouTube - Test Your Awareness: Do The Test

Уже не новое, но все равно отличное видео. :) Я бы даже сказал inspiring.

Robot Monkeys: Reverse FriendFeed

Robot Monkeys :: Reverse FriendFeed

I wanted to leave a comment on the site, but didn't find any place for that, so I'm making up one more post for my own blog. ;)

This idea has got a rational seed and pretty much crosses with Atomkeep — people indeed have too many accounts and they need to manage them properly. Either you like it or not — the reality is that there are too many different sites with your personal information and profiles and, within time, this number is going to grow pretty fast. You've got to manage tons of repetitive and redundant data or you'll get down to the chaos.

Unfortunately, even if the problem exists, the idea like it was described, will never work. At least, not in the imperfect world like we're living in. Why is it so?

1. First of all, something that does anything without confirmation from a user can be pretty scary. Personally, I would be afraid of such a thing. I don't know when the shit is happening to my data and this is not the way I want my life to be.
2. Moving forward, something that needs to do anything on my behalf will need to know my user name and password. Even more: something will need to store this data somewhere. Keeping in mind #1 — and this becomes even more scary now.
3. Getting back to #2 — something that have credentials to many different other sites is extremely attractive for hacker attacks. There is no such way like absolute security, you can't be 100% protected even when you aware and, basically, you don't want to be the one to get the responsibility if something is going out of control.
4. Can you name many sites and networks that provide public API for changing someones information in it? I bet you can't. Trust my experience (Atomkeep ;) — you'll get "handcuffed" pretty soon with numerous limitations and policies. So now it's time for screenscrapping and this is the time when it fcuks up completely. Just a simple captcha will rip off any site transaction with no human interaction involved.
5. What will make your site sticky, or, "how will you make money"? I don't think that you can make a fortune on paid membership that can't be more expensive then a few bucks — otherwise it doesn't worth it for the end user. But there is no way to get rich out of advertisement as well — nobody needs to go to your website, because your site can do everything automatically (just imagine that ;).
6. Every single site wants to be the center of the world. Nobody will ever give up on this right, unless, it's only temporary and necessary to attract visitors at the beginning and get of the ground. At some point of time every single popular Web site will want to own the information, but not lease or rent it from other Web site. So, no central repository is possible ever. It's utopia, you know.

It's just the basic thoughts. I don't pretend them to be the only ones that are right and I'd be more then happy to enter the discussion. However, I've invested a significant part of my life into this problem, and I pretty much know what I'm talking about.

But let me also go all over these issues once again and tell you a little bit more about how Atomkeep works with them:

1. We do not do anything without user interaction and explicit confirmation. Every single step that requires access to personal information or third-party site happens only after the user confirmed it.
2. Atomkeep's policy is strict about storing usernames and password. We link accounts from other sites to the Atomkeep, but we never ever store passwords. At all. From the other side, keeping passwords was one of the major requests from many of our users, though. We're about to release a tool that will simplify the process of passwords management, but we're not storing any single bit out of someone's password and we're not going to do this in the nearest future.
3. We can be attacked, nobody is perfect, but intruder can't get much out of our database. We just don't keep it.
4. Every user is involved in every transaction. If some site will decide to introduce captchas for data updates, it will be passed directly to the user then. We're not playing dirty.
   
5. Making site sticky could be an issue and nobody knows the only one right answer for it. Atomkeep is a great tool to manage your personal information, and you have to come to our site and to use it every time you need it. From the other side, this doesn't happen too often, so we will be running pretty low on advertisement profits. We're about to introduce the paid membership that is expected to be pretty profitable according to our polls and market reviews. But we're also working hard on introducing more tools and services, that will make Atomkeep something that you might visit few times a day, every single one.
6. That's the exact problem that we're solving right now. Atomkeep is not the center of the world, but it's something that allows any single site to own the information directly.

I hope it helps.