Anyway, a few days ago a pal was telling me he was looking for software to build a social website and I remembered an article I’d just seen in my Reader from Smashing Apps: How to Create Your Own Community Website for Free. I sent it along.

A day later he emailed to draw my attention to the comments section of the article (which I’d have missed since the comments weren’t in the RSS feed version of the article that appeared in my Reader).

Comment by Rubric B on May 25, 2009 @ 11:00 pm
Nice that Boonex happens to be an advertiser for this site. Article seems a little biased: what are the specific “pluses and minuses” of how to use this software?!

Comment by Andrew on May 25, 2009 @ 11:36 pm
@Rubric B… also, check out the URL… looks like an affiliate link to me…

If this is an ‘affiliate article’ then be upfront about it.

Comment by giedrius on May 26, 2009 @ 12:26 am
Whatever you do, do not use boonex. It is poorly written software : your developers will hate you if you will want to customize it to suit specific network needs (aka need extra functionality). We used it for couple projects, and it became usable once we ripped out almost all boonex code.
Also, it has security risks. If you create boonex website, put all mentions of word “boonex” in images, so worms wont find and attack your site automatically. I wrote about boonex in my wordpress blog and see bots searching for boonex on my site with cross-site code exploats.
There are good alternatives for it : elgg, insoshi, or host it on Ning…

Given that information, it does appear that Smashing Apps wrote up a piece of software simply as a quid pro quo to a sponsor. And that just makes me think the article (and others on the site) are bullshit. And that’s a really bad spot to put yourself in as a publication. They could have responded to the comments in the comments or in a separate post but they didn’t.

A week later Smashing Apps thanked their sponsors for the month including Boonex.

Hello ___, Our records indicate that you have applied for the position of ___ position at ___ within the past six months, but we have yet to have the opportunity to meet with you. We would like to meet you this Monday, June 1st! We will be hosting a booth at a career fair on MONDAY, June 1st, from 6:00pm-7:00pm and 8:00pm-10:00pm. Two of our top executives will be there to briefly interview you. This is a special opportunity to meet with them in person, so please try to attend. To set up an appointment to meet with us, please contact ___ or ___ at (___) ___-____ between 8:00am & 5:00pm. We will be accepting appointments until Monday afternoon the day of the career fair. You are being invited specifically to meet, and if this meeting goes well you would be invited for a longer, formal interview at a later date. So don’t miss your opportunity on the 4th because we’re running out of time slots!
The career fair is located at ___. This career fair will host a number of companies so be sure to look for the ___ booth and bring a fresh copy of your resume to come meet us! If you are unable to attend please still contact ___ or ___ and let either of them know as we will not keep you in consideration if we do not hear from you. We hope to see you! ___ ~Please Do Not Reply To This Email~

Other than the parts I’ve redacted, that’s the email I received verbatim, including the formatting. Yes, it was one long run-on paragraph. This is actually the second invite I’ve received from this company so obviously this career fair is a regular appointment for them.

These impersonal form letters relating to a job I applied for really rubbed me the wrong way. So after a few days of thought, I decided to let the company know. Even though the email said “Please do not reply,” it had a reply-to address that appeared to be an actual person (as in firstname.lastname@companyname.com) not a listbot. So I sent this:

Hi ___,

I hesitated to write this letter but decided to go through with it in the spirit of open communication. I hope you will share it with anyone at ___ who cares about your firm’s image.

I am greatly turned off not only by a form letter response to my application but also to the invitation to meet with unnamed executives from ___ at a career fair who will “briefly” interview me.

While I have no doubt that in this economic climate ___ will have no shortage of applicants to take you up on your offer, I will not. The invitation is impersonal and cold and makes me feel like I am just another anonymous body queuing for ___’s attention at a cattle
call. I’ve received more personal attention from HR departments at faceless major corporations.

I have ten years of excellent work on the web to showcase for any firm who can be bothered to set a personal, private interview with me. Interviews are not only a chance for you to meet me, but for me to size up the company for whom I might like to work. Since you’ve already made your impression on me, I will be showing my portfolio elsewhere. Please withdraw my application from your system and do not send me any more notices like this.

Just thought I’d share. User experience counts everywhere. Even for potential employees.

But I do work for businesses and I observe how they run and that’s what I’m about to report: my observations. So just bear that in mind as things develop.

Take for example their “content management system” — a dinosaur called TeamSite from a company called Interwoven. I put “content management system” in quotation marks because it actually isn’t a CMS but instead a file management system. The corporation has never implemented the software as a CMS (I don’t know how long they’ve had it) so all TeamSite does is upload files to their server. But in a slow, byzantine way. It serves no purpose to have an expensive piece of software like this and use it as a shabby excuse for an FTP¹ program.

We are promised an expansion to TeamSite called SitePublisher which will give us very powerful content management and presentation tools. I’ve seen several demos but I have yet to see any feature that isn’t found in the best open source CMS software and many features lacking that are out-of-the-box in WordPress. (I’d put Joomla and Drupal up there as enterprise level open source CMS packages even though I have very limited experience with them so I can’t speak to their features.)

Yet in the meantime, as we await SitePublisher, we are unable to simply put our new project online. It must first be “imported” into TeamSite and then deployed to staging (the permission to do this has so far been denied me by the IT department). Then someone with permissions even higher will deploy to the actual web server.

If this all sounds like Greek to you, let me simplify: armed with WordPress MU and $120 for a year of commercial hosting, I could have 40 sites on line within two weeks. I would charge substantially more per hour than I receive as a contract worker but I could have it done.

The web encourages immediacy, action, engagement. And I know I can’t stay for long in a position which denies all that to its web department.

¹ File Tranfer Protocol applications are programs that connect to a web server and give the user a file view of the files on the server and the harddrive. Users can simply upload files from their harddrive to the web server and they’re live on the site.

Tech and Gadget Blog Writer (Experience Required)

We are ONLY looking for experienced Tech and Gadget news writers. Inexperienced writers will not be able to keep up with the job demands. We are in business to attract readers, and are looking for staff writers we can build our business around…

- Minimum of 1 year tech and gadget blogging experience REQUIRED
(IF YOU DON’T HAVE TECH AND GADGET EXPERIENCE DO NOT APPLY)

- Must provide a link to previous work. We want to see your previous work
- (IF YOU DON’T HAVE A LINK TO YOUR PREVIOUS WORK, THEN DO NOT APPLY)

- Must be ready to start immediately
- Must have a Broadband Internet Connection
- Must have a Fast computer

Seems pretty serious, right? Here’s where they lose me:

- MUST BE RUNNING WINDOWS XP OR VISTA

- If you have a Mac do not apply
(Our software requirements are not compatible with the Mac OS)

So they want someone who’s very experienced and technical to write about tech and gadgetry but not someone who’s like technical with gadgets that they can’t figure out. What blogging software can’t be run on a Mac or Linux?

That’s some real high-tech right there.

You must be: 100% Available IMMEDIATELY, have NO other pending projects and be able to give this project your undivided attention.

So in other words, they’d like a web designer who’s good but not so good that he’s, you know, employed.

The ad was sprinkled liberally with ALL CAPS so they’re VERY SERIOUS.