CHRISdotTODD

I had tweeted shortly after Firefox 3.5 was released that it was too unstable for day-to-day work use, and I had to rollback to version 3. Finally after successfully using Firefox 3.5 for about 3 weeks at home I thought I'd give it a go again and upgraded late last week. Today (Monday, 12-Oct-09), I've had two crashes. I suspect it is related to memory usage, as I've had many tabs opened and closed as I do some data cleanup in our CRM system. Below is the last message upon restarting Firefox. While I'm disappointed and a bit frustrated, Firefox is embarrassed. We'll see whether this is a consistent problem, forcing me back again, or if other daily tasks workout.

Most of us have Contacts spread among many systems and it takes a lot of effort to keep them in sync or they're not in sync and you find yourself re-entering contacts in each system. With the help of Outlook (2003), LinkedIn , Gmail , My Digital Life , and Contact Scrubber for Outlook , I was able to sync a majority of my Contacts. Here are the steps I used: I downloaded and installed the LinkedIn Toolbar for Outlook . With the toolbar app, I was able to add Contacts from LinkedIn into my Outlook Contacts -- the master list. Then I used TeamScope's Contact Scrubber for Outlook to merge any duplicates that Outlook hadn't already picked up. Next with the help of My Digital Life blog, I exported my Gmail Contacts and imported them into Outlook. Again I used Contact Scrubber for Outlook to merge duplicates. Then with the help of My Digital Life again, I exported my Outlook Contacts and imported them into Gmail. Notes: Contact Scrubber for Outlook is a Trial that works wi

The NY Times has posted a recent survey on tailored advertising (“ Contrary to what marketers say, Americans Reject Tailored Advertising and Three Activities that Enable It ”) released by professors from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkley. It was not a surprised to learn that 2/3 (66%) of Americans do not want online tracking. It was a surprise to learn how many did not understand our privacy laws – most assumed they provided more protection. First I want to dig into the perceptions of our privacy laws as reported in the survey. If a website had a privacy policy, 62% of the respondents thought that meant that your collected data couldn’t be share with other companies. Another 16% didn’t know. Therefore, only 22% knew that a privacy policy was information the website provides on how they may or may not be using collected data about you. Other misconceptions in regards to privacy policies were as follows. If a website has a privacy policy… 54% assum

Here's a simple trick. Some times I have data results in Excel, if combined with other URL data, it would take me to a specific record. For example, if I extracted Contact Record IDs from Salesforce.com and combined it with the URL prefix, I could view the record that corresponds to the ID. There are a few different approaches, but it all ends up using the same function: Hyperlink. Hyperlink takes two parameters: link_location and friendly_name (optional). Here are some examples: =HYPERLINK("https://na2.salesforce.com/" & B2) =HYPERLINK(CONCATENATE(A2, B2)) =HYPERLINK(CONCATENATE("https://na2.salesforce.com/", B2, C2)) =HYPERLINK("https://na2.salesforce.com/" & B2,"Joe Smith") The link location, in addition to being a URL could be a drive path (c:\foo\), a UNC path (\\Server1\folder1\), or even a "mailto:" (=HYPERLINK("mailto:" & H2)).

In a CADNA newsletter released today, they shared with us the results of the House Judiciary Committee Holds Hearing on New TLDs. In addition, CADNA has called for a full-scale audit of ICANN. For history on this issue, see my two prior blog posts here and here .) Congressional members who were in attendance expressed skepticism about the benefits that the potential TLD rollout... ICANN held their position that by adding the new, "potentially unlimited" TLDs, will promote innovation and competition. Further they stated that "protection mechanisms are being actively considered." If protection mechanisms are being considered, doesn't that indicate that even ICANN knows there's a problem with this? And if protection mechanisms are needed, wouldn't they wait and finish the work to have appropriate protection BEFORE rolling this out? Members of Congress pressed witnesses with questions about ICANN’s operations—many raised doubts regarding the benefits of

Courtesy of xkcd.com

In July 2009 I wrote about ICANN's plans to expand the Internet's top-level domains (TLDs), and how I and others believes this will have a significant negative impact on companies, big and small. [TLDs are the .COMs, .ORGs, etc at the end of URLs.] "...companies are already losing over $1 billion annually due to cybersquatters misrepresenting and redirecting traffic on the Internet through taking advantage of URLs not purchased by companies. The proposal being made by ICANN can skyrocket those losses and increase expenses..." As reported by nextgov.com , 'Judiciary ranking member Lamar Smith and Courts and Competition Subcommittee ranking member Howard Coble, R-N.C., said they are worried that a vast expansion of domains will carry "serious negative consequences"...' in a letter to ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom. Smith and Coble have reiterated the concerns over ICANNs plans for the additional TLDs and have asked for a reponse by September 22, 2009. Whil