The geniuses behind Auto Tune the News have released episode 3:
The first two episodes are pretty awesome too. The Katie Couric section of episode 2 is particularly amazing. I’ve embedded them after the jump. (continue reading…)
For starters, I think I’ve completely learned my lesson about suggesting innovation in a corporate environment. I’m just not going to do it anymore. It frustrates me more when they won’t move on anything. Unfortunately, and unhealthily, it just encourages me to sit back in my smugness and watch as they project manage with spreadsheets. But that’s easier than hoping they’ll innovate and watching them stagnate. So forget that post I just made on not being snarky.
I just brought up to one of my corporate overlords what I posted about here: that we should adopt a more web savvy approach to project management. He pointed out that everything that’s being done on spreadsheets could be done in SharePoint but users don’t want to have to learn something new.
Is that true? We hear that so much that it’s almost a tautology. I mean, don’t we all feel that way: that once we’re comfortable with something we don’t want to have to learn something new? That’s why so many office workers turn to Excel for everything. They know it already.
Here’s another perspective:
Users don’t want to learn a new piece of shit.
SharePoint is made by Microsoft and I’m sure it will come as a total surprise to you that it isn’t user-friendly. Naturally, it doesn’t look like its developers are remotely aware of the past decade of developments on the web. It includes features like a Task List and a Wiki but neither works in a way you’d want them to. The Wiki has nothing in common with actual wikis. And the task list takes several steps to add a task while simultaneously not giving you all the features you’d need in a task list.
It’s got a calendar that works all right. But similarly, the method to add an event to the calendar doesn’t quite make sense. If there’s another even on that day, you have to view it and then add your own. So you’re a bit confused if you’re adding to the existing event or to the day.
There’s a simple reason Google’s suite of tools are so amazing: they work. They work naturally and intuitively. Stick Google Calendar in front of someone and it won’t take him long to figure out how to add an event to it. Gmail may work differently than most other email apps in its conversational-style view but there’s no learning curve required to use it. And once you do, it seems natural.
Too often, we are afraid of using new tools whether on the web or in the physical world not because we’re actually neophobic but because the designers and developers of those tools haven’t put the proper care into make them work well.
The solution to getting people away from using antiquated spreadsheets for project management isn’t to move them onto another shitty tool like SharePoint. The solution is to find a tool that works easily and intuitively. Or build it. We are the web team for Christ’s sake.
I really don’t intend for my writing here to be snarky. But obviously, I feel snarky sometimes and I let it out. A couple of my posts from the weekend demonstrate this: Seriously, MTV? and Can We At Least Pretend We Work on the Web?
While I still support the snarktastic sentiment behind them, I could have been a little more constructive in each. I’ve amended them in case you’re interested.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a quick post about Staying Safe and Secret Online at Work in which I talked about TOR. In addition to keeping your browsing secret I pointed out a very legitimate work-related function I have for TOR:
TOR is also useful to me for my work. Because I work in the web department and our IT department has a lockdown on the web servers that we use, it’s a tremendous pain to try to get them to set-up anything out of the ordinary scope. So a few weeks ago, my bosses bought their own commercial hosting to use as our playground. The problem was that they couldn’t even login to our new hosting control panel because the corporate firewall blocked it. I told them about TOR and we got around that obstacle.
This morning my supervisor asked me if I’d gotten any emails from IT about TOR. I said I hadn’t. He said we were allowed to use it anymore. I replied ironically, “I’m shocked.”
A few things:
1) I never assumed we were “allowed” to use it. I wasn’t going to call up IT and say, “Hey, I know a way around your pain-in-the-ass corporate firewall. Is that cool?”
2) How did they discover we were using it? My guess: human intelligence. I had really debated whether to tell my superiors how to get around the firewall in order to use our third-party web server. Now I know I shouldn’t have.
2a) The real kick in the pants is that we’ve never used our own web server even after I got us access to it. Corporate bureaucracy is corporate bureaucracy. My superiors would rather go through all the legit, nonsense channels rather than upset the status quo and use a non-corporate web server to accomplish our tasks faster and easier.
3) I’m using TOR right now. Short of them uninstalling it and then locking my PC down so I can’t install my own programs, I don’t know how they can block it. There probably is a way. But they obviously haven’t found it yet.
4) Bottom line, while TOR may keep you secret, the fact that you’re running it may not be a secret. So use wisely.
UPDATE: My supervisor showed me the email from IT. They didn’t mention TOR. They only noticed that a few of us had installed Privoxy which is packaged with TOR. At least, that’s all they say they’ve noticed. As I pointed out before, you should probably assume IT knows everything you do on your computer all the time. But at least I got a little clarity on what exactly seems suspicious to them. They didn’t say, “your employees are visiting forbidden sites” only “we see you’ve installed a program that might possibly be used maliciously.”
Still, I keep learning that “dynamic” web team or not, we’re still super corporate and there’s no point in telling my superiors about anything “hacky” even when it improves our work. They won’t take advantage of it anyway.
