ShadowRAM: July 28, 2008
DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?
Ever wonder what the employees at top tech vendors really think about their bosses, their work environments and the general direction their companies are taking? GlassDoor.com only launched its beta version Web site in mid-June, but it already boasts some 40,000 anonymous reviews from employees at more than 11,000 companies across a host of business sectors. Employees rate their companies and CEOs by the numbers, but are also encouraged to post pro and con commentaries about the firms they work for and there are some real doozies.
GlassDoor.com also drills down into specific employee ratings of work/life balance, as well as offering an inside look at salary scales inside companies.
You can register for free at GlassDoor.com for such inside dirt, but you're required to post a review of your own company for access. And you might want to take all of this with a large grain of saltand#8212;the anonymous nature of the site seems like an open invitation to moles of various stripes.
'DOWNLOAD DAY' SETS GUINNESS RECORD
Firefox 3, the open-source browser from Mozilla, has officially reached the rarified air that is the Guinness Book of World Records. The inclusion in Guinness comes after Mozilla launched a clever marketing campaign to set a world record for most software downloaded in a single day.
The world record was set by Firefox 3 on June 17, tallying 8,002,530 downloads in its first 24 hours. Since the initial 24-hour Download Day window, an additional 20 million people have downloaded the software, putting it over 28 million downloads worldwide. Prior to Mozilla creating the software-download category, Guinness World Records had never had an attempt on downloads in a single day.
Firefox 3 joins the elite ranks of people like Lucky Diamond Rich, who set the record for "Most Tattooed Person," with over 1,000 hours of ink work done on his body; Bernie Baker, who at age 60 in 2000, set the world record for "Oldest Male Stripper;" and in animal news, the "Largest Millipede," an African giant black millipede that measured 15.2 inches (pictured at right).
Software downloads, tattoos, male strippers and giant millipedes. Congratulations Firefox 3. Uncork the champagne and get to know your fellow record-holders.
SEEN AND HEARD
Here's the latest free-speech controversy to erupt on Capitol Hill: Members of the House Administration Committee are considering new rules that, opponents say, would rob representatives of their ability to use a growing number of Web 2.0 tools to communicate with constituents and tools like the micro-blogging service Twitter and video-sharing site YouTube.
This particularly irks U.S. Rep. John Culberson, a Houston Republican, who lists more than 800 followers of his comments on Twitter. Culberson provided hour-by-hour updates Tuesday of the controversy on Twitter itself, and protested, "They want to require prior approval of all posts to any public ... site by any member of Congress!"
Kyle Anderson, a spokesman for the committee, said a proposal is under way to limit the use by congressmen of commercial Web sites for communication, stating that "taxpayer money can't be used to support commercial Web sites."
The House of Representatives Committee on House Administration is usually in charge of much more low-key issues, such as how many constituent mailings each representative can send, or how to maintain House constituent e-mail services.