All to often, I read a question and feel like answering with “it depends”.

If you want a good answer, you need to ask a good question.

Here’s how to write a good question:
1. Explain your end goal - why you’re doing this

example:
I want my mother who lives out of state to see some videos of my daughter.

2. Provide detailed information:

ok: I have a digital camera that I’m using to take videos. It saves avi files.
better: I’m using a Canon SD500 to take videos at 640×480, 30fps. The videos are exported as avi files.
I prefer to use a digital camera for my videos (opposed to a camcorder) since I can carry it around with me at all times.

3. Discus the requirements of the solution, and why they are requirements.
Include both the positive requirements (it should be) and the negative requirements (it shouldn’t be)
This will limit answers you might get which won’t help you as well as allow for directions you might not have thought of,

My mom is using an old mac (model XX / OS 9 / quicktime version YY)
I cannot install a newer version of quicktime because ……
I would rather not install a different movie viewer because …
I am using a PC with windows XP.
I do not have access to a mac.
I’m tight on cash so I’d prefer a free solution, but if needed can spend up to $10
I’m not a technical guru so it needs to be a fairly simple solution.

4. State what you have done so far.
bad: I’ve looking into a few options. None were promising.
better: I tried using software ABC version 3.4 for the PC. It was not able to open my file. I also did some googling and found software X, Y and Z, but they are all beyond my budget.

5. General
Use unambiguous terminology:
Don’t use terms which are relative like fast, large or cheap.
Use specific terms.
bad: How much memory do I need to edit large image files?
better: I’m trying to edit a 325MB uncompressed tif file (14,500 by 8,000 / 24bit) in photoshop 6.
My pc is a p4 2.8GHZ with 512MB ram. It currently takes 30 seconds ever time I make any change to it.
How much memory should I have so simple changes will take less than 3 seconds?

I’ve been programming professionally for about ten years. I still use my programming skills, but now I have to use many new skills such as sales, advertising, testing, typography, copy-writing, graphic design, etc.

programming is easy. selling is hard.

As a computer programmer, my tasks are usually well defined (and if they’re not, I can ask a few questions to define the task at hand). The outcome is measurable (it provides the defined functionality) and hopefully bug free.
For example I might be tasked to create a classifieds ads site. First I write down a detailed definition of what the site will (or won’t) do from a functional perspective. Then I can create mock-up screens of what the human interface will look like and finally I will write the code to implement the functionality. This is a pretty straight forward process where success is fairly well defined. Yes, I know that factors like security, performance, scalability and maintainability are not absolutes, but even with those factors you can usually reach a consensus on what’s good or bad.

The specifications of what I’m currently doing is something along the lines of “sell as many units as possible while still being profitable”. (We sell our product, on our site)
This is not easy.
There are probably a zillion different factors that come into play to make a sale. This is actually much more complex that computer programming, it’s just easier to understand each of the factors individually. More on this on a later post where I’ll break down the different factors that come into play.

I just started a new site / mailing list as a pet project.

Hebrew Speaking Parents on the Upper West Side

For those of you that do not live in New York City, the Upper West Side is a neighborhood in Manhattan.

Now you know where I live

Ophir

UPDATE: Wow - it was a year ago that I wanted to this. It’s now Sept 2006. This really never got off the ground. I still have plans for web site for parents on the upper west side, but it won’t only be for Hebrew speakers.

A while back I settled on jfax as a service to get faxes. It’s free and it works. The main problem was that they want you to download their own viewer to view the faxes. The faxes are attached as .jfx files. After a little research I found that these are plain .tif files, and you can just rename the file from something.jfx to something.tif and then use any file viewer that supports tifs.

Hope this helps someone.

OK, your probably wondering why I named a post something about blood pressure. Well folks I’ve changed lanes. I’m now the Internet Marketing Manager at InterCure. They make a device that will lower blood pressure without side effects. It’s called “RESPeRATE to Lower Blood Pressure” (that’s the official name) but everyone just calls it RESPeRATE. Yea, the funky spelling is part of the branding as well. The cool thing is that this device really works. Don’t take my word for it - check the reviews on amazon.

So since I’m doing marketing now, I’m taking advantage of my blog for some free advertising.

So I get this new job (more to come) and I’m playing around with my sub domains and I accidentally change the directory for www.prusak.com
This means that www.prusak.com now shows a directory listing.

and no one tells me

ugh

So I finally notice this today (2 weeks later) and fix it.

I just realized that I started a blog back in June 1996.

That’s right. Way back in prehistoric times. Of course back then the term blog didn’t exist. It’s just nice to see that I was ahead of my time. Of course after three entries and almost zero feedback I called it a day. So now, over eight years later I’m giving it another try.

Here is it (from archive.org) http://web.archive.org/web/19990129050949/www.netvision.net.il/~ophir/imho/

After not making any real changes to my personal web site since 2000 (other than updating my resume) I’ve decided to go down the path of Blog.

Here it is.

Enjoy.

If you really want to see the older version of my web site, here it is.