Resumay is the current project I’m working on, so let me give a little background first as to why it is the current project. This is primarily because it costs no money for me to develop. I like to develop stuff, and I noticed about a year ago that my creative mind had better adapt to my financial situation. This means that other projects kept getting put on the back-burner until, finally, I come up with an idea that cost me nothing! On top of that, it’s designed to help easily and quickly build résumé’s for use in job seeking. There were a number of different industries I was applying to, and with each came a different emphasis on my skills or experience. So, I eventually wrote multiple different résumés.

I met a handful of people who had similar experiences. So I thought, what if you could quickly and easily (I mean, “Google” EASY) create resumes? I wrote a quick and dirty method that worked for me, and that was fun. That’s when I decided to expand it.

There you have it. What is Resumay? It is a means of managing your work history and being able to selectively present that to employers. The basic version that I’m producing now will makle it possible to manage cover letters, résumés, and references; the advanced version (2.0, if you please) will include an interactive portfolio that you can direct potential employers to. Here’s how it works.

You create an account. You could even choose to use a Google or a Facebook account. Then, you fill out your work history; this is stored privately and securely, you must be logged in to view it, and not even I can see it without your account log-in. Your work history is your contact information, jobs you’ve held, skills and honors you’ve achieved, your education, and finally, references.

Once you’ve entered your work history, you can go and create different types of documents. For résumés, you can identify it by the industry you’re applying in. For cover letters, you can save it according to the company it’s being sent to. References? Same thing. What’s unique is that when you go to create a résumé (for example), you are presented with your whole work history. You can click on a job, and drag it over to the résumé page on the screen. Then maybe you’ll grab that college degree you have and drop it into the education section of the résumé, and so on. Next, you’ll get to style it. You can choose from a handful of cool, professional looks for your resume. Then, you can save it.

Any document you create, including your portfolio, can be exported as PDF or Word document. This is so that you can print it, or send it to the employer, or just host it and your potential employer can download it. SNAZZY!

Mind you, it’s not finished yet. But I thought I’d write about it (talk, talk, talk) to get myself worked up so I can be excited and keep putting it together. More to come, fellow travelers. What do you think of the idea? Would you use such a website?

Your rant is first of all demeaning and trollish itself, possibly in an attempt to vent frustration with a healthy dose of humor. I say “possibly” because I want to give you the benefit of the doubt (“maybe he didn’t know he was being trollish… oh well, I’ll keep reading his article”). Many of the observations (read “jabs”) you make about Linux users can be said about Windows users. It is sad to me to see a professional such as yourself blog in this most unprofessional manner. The comments littered throughout your rant will only fan flames.

Second, you seem to display a lack of redundancy and good testing practices. You admit to not having backed up your installation before updating. Even Windows creates a restore point prior to updating (yes I know it is automated). Then there’s the issue of no local machine test. If you want robustness, test on a physically present machine before deployment. There are countless times when the experience you’ve had deploying your code is one I’ve had attempting to deploy code on a Windows server. That one little nagging update to an API I needed to call making the whole mess of it unusable.

Thirdly, your expectation is for a system (Windows currently, formerly Linux) to be fine, robust, and flexible. No system can be all three without taking appropriate steps to account for the human equation. It’s people who mess up (in my opinion, your ISP is one of those people). With Windows and any other OS, it’s only fine if you’ve taken good security measures; robust when you test code prior to deployment; flexible when configured for the intended task. Each of these things take vigilance on the part of humans who use. I think you have a great point when you say “ the problem with today’s modern Linux is that it’s more than just the kernel.” The problem is a subculture of laziness where, as soon as disinterest sets in, documentation falls apart and code gets “crufty.”

I would encourage you in the future to post your updates at the head of your blog posts. This is more a design issue due to pagination at ZDNet. Even just a short shout-out like “Please see updated story at end of post.” This may help some already heated folks who visit your ZDNet blog to quickly see good reason behind the rant. I know the update was certainly helpful in understanding further the remarkably heated frustration on display in your rant.

Just as full disclosure, I work with Windows, Mac, and Linux on a daily basis, and have an interest in seeing each of these systems continue to grow into their huge potentials. They all have different strengths and weakness, but they all share many of the same pitfalls, as well.

Til next time, fellow traveler.

Larry Ellison, CEO at Oracle, announced on Friday October 7 that his company was joining other providers in offering a cloud service. Called Oracle Public Cloud, he promised that the service would be able to operate with other companies’ software. If you’re not familiar with Oracle, they are notorious for “locking in” their customers so that they can only use Oracle products. It is significant that their public access cloud is going to open things up a little for people who use it. If you’re not familiar with what’s known as the Cloud, that’s okay; there are lots of people who aren’t sure what it is yet! The Cloud at this point is a way for you store photos, documents, music and other things, even letting other computers process things instead of your computer.

The cloud can be a great tool! Just look at what Facebook has accomplished with connecting people, and think of the things you  can do with Google. The problem with the cloud, though, is an interesting one. The companies, like Facebook, Microsoft, or Apple, are asking me to hand over my life to them. The ideas, the events, habits, tastes all of it, and they are asking me to trust them. God has asked us to be good stewards, though, of His creation. Our lives are unique, and my life is between myself and the Lord. Everything that is personal, that He has given me to care for, that God has grown in me. These companies want me to hand this over to their care and trust that they will be responsible with what God has given me responsibility for.

For me, I don’t mind that they use data that I give them to sell me things on their sites. That’s simply good business, so long as I know how they’re using it. That’s good stewardship, I believe. Consider carefully what companies will do when uploading pictures and writing statuses and sending emails. For myself, I try to keep a copy on my own computer of everything. This is so that if I ever lose control or access on Facebook, or Gmail, or any other service, I can still be responsible with who I am before the Lord. I can certainly improve in this area, but it’s what I believe.

Maybe Larry Ellison, or the kid who runs Facebook, or Sergey Brin at Google will take good care of things. Just remember the God who gave you these things to store in the Cloud when you trust them.

Millions of Microsoft fanboys cheer, millions of Apple customers defend him, responsible news and technology people respectfully point out his accomplishments and some of his flaws as a wonderful human being. People the globe over mourn his passing. What is the response of the follower of Christ? I know many people could care less in religious circles. I believe it to be a necessary thought, and not simply because he is a personal technology hero of mine along with former friend and co-inventor, Steve Wozniak. Love Steve Jobs or hate him or have no specific feelings for him, the man made history with his business savvy and his technological prowess.

He died a Bhuddist. No matter what faith you come from, for the Christian this means he has died and gone to hell. MY response as a Christian is that I hope there was a point at which he believed that Jesus Christ was his greatest Treasure and the only means for salvation of his eternal soul. His death is the reason that technology and history and many types of events should matter to a follower of Christ. We’re dealing with eternal souls. If we do not understand the world these souls come from, how do we get across the message that Christ died for their sins and was the most incredible prize that was paid to release eternal souls from damnation?

That’s my weekend observation, and my plea to fellow believers who love technology: Pray for the eternal souls of the geeks you know. Tell them how priceless Jesus is.

Til next time, fellow travelers…

I’m back, fellow travelers.