This afternoon, I came home to find a package from Sweden waiting for me. It was a pair of Urbanears “Plattan” headphones that I had ordered a few weeks ago.

Urbanears is an upstart headphone company; they say that

Urbanears is a collective out of Scandinavia, motivated by a common interest in global relationships and shared involvement in the relevance of the living brand. Urbanears promotes a deeper connection to color, form and people while providing the freedom to transcend individuality and unify the sound experience.

High ideals, certainly, and they’re certainly eye-catching, but how do they sound?

I’ll have to admit that my very first impression wasn’t good. I had been listening to my $349 Bose QuietComfort 3 headphones at work, and my initial impression was that the sound was very flat with the Urbanears. After flipping between several songs on my favorite playlist, I soon decided that these weren’t flat; the Bose headphones were indeed very muddy, with artificially-enhanced bass and poor quality high tones.

Having spent some time in a recording studio, the best analogy I can make is that these sound like a set of highly-balanced studio monitors, with an extremely flat response. I can hear high notes better with these than I ever had with the Bose. The clarity is amazing, at least to my aging ears.

I don’t think these are for everyone. If you live for the thump of the artificially-enhanced bass lines in some music, you probably won’t like these. If you like classical, jazz, or more complex music, you’ll probably appreciate the clarity.

This is just my initial impression, so I hope to report back in a few weeks to see how they stand up to repeated use.

I recently upgraded my web server to PHP 5.3 and learned, much to my shock and horror, that many of the regular expression functions I had been using for years are now deprecated. Specifically, the POSIX regular expressions are deprecated in favor of the PCRE (Perl-Compatible Regular Expression) library.

Here is the link to the PHP page explaining the differences. It will involve a fair amount of work, but the updates should be mostly straightforward.

In the future, it should make life easier, actually, because I now no longer have to remember different syntaxes for different expressions (delimited vs. undelimited, for example).

Robert Scoble hits the nail on the head when he says that, “On my phone I only use voice about 5% of the time I use my iPhone.” He was responding to Louis Gray’s post on how he switched from iPhone to Android.

It amuses me to hear the ongoing debates about call quality on AT&T vs. Verizon vs. Sprint, etc. My personal experience is, of course, nearly irrelevant (since my personal experience may have little to do with how you or someone else experiences it), but I’ve been with AT&T for 10 years now and cannot yet find a reason to change.

I live in a house in the hills east of the Santa Clara Valley. The nearest cell towers (of any variety) are over 3 miles away. I get one bar of signal strength no matter which carrier I use. When I had an Amazon Kindle (which uses SprintVerizon for its “Whispernet” service), I often had difficulties downloading books to it. Recently, I’ve installed an AT&T 3G Microcell in my home, and I now get 5 barsstars. Likewise, at work, there is an AT&T repeater. In addition, since AT&T is a partner of Yahoo!, we get a substantial employee discount on service. So, you see, I have a huge number of incentives to stick with AT&T. In addition to that, however, is the fact that I’ve almost never had connectivity problems; I suppose that, if I lived in downtown San Francisco where I competed with tens of thousands of other users, I might have problems, but I don’t.

But, to return to the original discussion—I use my iPhone so rarely as a phone, the carrier is nearly irrelevant. I use Skype on my MacBook Pro more often for voice communication than I use my iPhone. Unlike Robert Scoble and Louis Gray, I don’t have companies tossing various models of Android at me to let me try them for a few weeks, so I can’t compare. But the essence of my argument is that, for many “mobile professionals,” the telephone carrier is almost irrelevant. Both AT&T and Verizon are “good enough,” and we should be making our purchase decisions on other factors, such as the battery life (which seems to stink on every so-called “smart phone”).

Louis Gray agrees when he points out that the call quality isn’t what moved him from iPhone:

Yes, AT&T has been dramatically underdelivering in terms of quality and functionality, but this did not drive me away from Apple as much as the lack of choice did.

If you are a person who spends most of his or her time on the phone, then call quality should be a determining factor in which phone you purchase. For the rest of us, the user experience, battery life, underlying platform, and so-called “ecosystem” of applications and support are vastly more important than which carrier we choose.

I’m also trying WordPress’s new embedded video feature—to embed a video, all you need to do is to put the link to the video in the post, and WordPress will automatically create the player code for you.

Broadband did away with all that. While ISPs insist on selling broadband as if the only important factor is the speed, the real killer feature is the fact that it’s always available. Especially in these days of ubiquitous WiFi and 3G internet access, all you have to do is open the lid of your laptop, pick up your phone, or start a web browser to be instantly connected to the rest of the world via the Internet. Having foolproof (relatively), immediate, “always on” access to the Internet is what really fostered the information revolution.

Tablet computers have been around for at least a decade, and arguably somewhat longer. Yet the Apple iPad managed to come on the scene and sell a million or more units in its first month of availability, launching it immediately into the stellar heights of technology fame. Why is that?

Contrary to what others might say, it’s not the touch-sensitive screen, or the ability to run apps, or its light weight. I’d like to contend that the true killer feature of the iPad is its 10-hour battery. For the first time, someone can truly use a computer like this all day long; based on what users have told me, it can often go two whole days between charges.

When I go to a meeting at work, it’s rare to find someone who doesn’t have a laptop with them; most of the time, they’re carrying a power supply, too. It’s heavy, and cumbersome and, most importantly, it’s enough of a pain that many people will simply leave it back at their desks when they go to a meeting, relying on paper-and-pencil notes that are later transcribed (or not) onto their computers.

The iPad is small, yes, but has a usable keyboard. And it can be carried from meeting to meeting, all day long, without needing a power cord or to be left back at the desk to recharge.

A few weeks ago, I visited my doctor—being a good Silicon Valley physician, his office has portable computers; instead of one computer that the doctor carries around with him, there’s a laptop in each exam room left continuously plugged in. Think about that for a moment: a portable computer that is always plugged in. In my mind, that’s a total failure.

If you used an iPad for medical record keeping, however, they doctor could have it with him all the time. Like the ones used by the engineers in my office, it could be used not only for medical records, but also to check his email, send prescriptions, and perform a variety of other tasks, all without needing to be plugged in.

It’s the battery that provides ubiquity to the iPad, and truly differentiates it from the rest of the tablet computer market.

Not knowing any better, I selected a Lanikai LU-21, mainly on the basis of the Amazon reviews.

It arrived last night, and I was hooked.

I spent about fifteen minutes learning some basic chord fingerings, and then I recorded this travesty of a cover of “Alice’s Restaurant”:

It was a hit! I played with it a bit more, learned a few more chords, and then had to get to sleep.

Today after work, I came home and immediately started working on it some more. My fingers are sore, but I’m having a grand old time!

So far, it’s all been done on a shoestring (i.e., non-existent) budget. I’m not taking out ads, I’m not paying for promotion; I’m just trying to build a listenable podcast and an engaging website for people to interact with.

Much to my surprise, the podcast has actually garnered a respectable amount of attention—the site, for example, is getting much more traffic than this one, for example. I’m filled with ideas for growing it and getting some more people to tell their stories on the podcast.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to make them via @OnGarnerRoad or the Facebook fan page.

People are at the heart of social media. As a long-time resident of Silicon Valley, I think that we all too often get caught up in the latest technological craze or new, shiny gadget. We forget that what really drives the growth of the Internet is people’s yearning for connection, for a relationship with others, both one-to-one and in a community.

On Garner Road is an experimental podcast that I hope will, in a very small way, bring people together. With each episode, I hope that I (or even someone else) can introduce you to someone interesting, fascinating, terrifying, or just plain normal. Because I think many podcasts are too lengthy (I have real difficulty finding a whole hour in which to listen to one), I’m hoping to keep them to between 15-30 minutes. I’ve started with my first episode here, where I’m interviewing a librarian with a fondness for Italian meat. In the next few days, I hope to record a number of other episodes, releasing them approximately once per week.

At that point, I need to make a decision whether or not to continue. In all honesty, I have no desire to inflict this upon the world if there’s not a reasonable and growing audience. So, if you’re interested, let me know! I would appreciate your comments on the goals and their execution, plus any suggestions for improvement.

MotionX has come up with a rather beautiful example of how to monetize an iPhone app. The app itself is $0.99; it include full, complete maps and turn-by-turn navigation—however, you have to pay for voice prompts. It comes with 30 days free (and they work most excellently). You can then purchase an additional 30 days for $2.99, or a year for $24.99. The advantage, of course, is that, if you’re in town for a few months, you may not need the voice prompt. If you go on vacation, then voila! you pay $$2.99 and there they are.

Having a network-connected GPS also has some advantages. First and foremost, you never have to worry about your maps getting out of date. Since the maps are downloaded via the iPhone’s 3G connection, they’re always up to date. The app is smart enough to cache maps so that you can still navigate if you don’t have a cell connection. Another advantage is that it has access to real-time traffic information so it can route you around any problem areas.

Using a GPS on the iPhone also has some disadvantages; some of which, I’m sorry to say, I had never anticipated. For example, if the GPS is taking you through a real scary part of town that you’ve never visited before, and suddenly your mother, who has Alzheimer’s, calls, then the app is no longer functioning, and you might not remember whether to turn right or left at the next pandhandler. You can, however, minimize the phone call and reopen the app.

It’s quite possible this could replace your standalone GPS, as long as you can live with some of those quirks. It’s really quite impressive, especially given the price.

As a matter of fact, people do care whether FriendFeed lives or dies, and it is to serve that community of brilliant, innovative individuals that I created the site, Is FriendFeed dead yet?. Using a patent-pending “death checker” algorithm, plus some math, I am able to determine with a high degree of certainty whether or not FriendFeed is still alive. Now, with this site, you do not even need to visit FriendFeed.com to determine if it’s dead yet—you can do this entirely from my site.

Let me know if you’d like to donate to support its continued development.

Actually, the site uses PHP and its CURL library to retrieve the FriendFeed home page, check the HTTP status code, and determine if it’s returning enough data.

It will also verify the deadness of an individual FriendFeed user, like this:

http://isfriendfeeddeadyet.com/glenc

Check out the online help for more details.

This is the ranch where we went on vacation last week.

Yahoo! announced today that Yahoo! Tech will be closing on March 11, 2010. This has a very personal resonance for me, because I was the lead engineer for the construction of Yahoo! Tech.

Yahoo! Tech represented an important milestone, not only in my personal career, but also in the history of Yahoo! At the time it was launched (April, 2006), it was the first new property launched by the Yahoo! Media group in over five years. It was one of Yahoo!’s first forays into original content, and one of the first Yahoo! sites where video (the online show Hook Me Up) was a primary factor. It was one of the first, if not the first, sites at Yahoo! to rely primarily upon original content (bloggers) rather than aggregating content that was created elsewhere. And, it was considered very “cutting edge” in its design and frontend features—the rounded corners and bold colors (green and orange? seriously?) were very much in vogue at the time (an early review called it “an explosion in the web 2.0 factory”) and a wild change from the traditional Yahoo! designs. See the Wikipedia article for more details.

From a web technology standpoint, Yahoo! Tech was also groundbreaking. It was the first site at Yahoo! to be built entirely on a service-oriented architecture, meaning that all of the content for the site was accessed via web services (mostly REST-style HTTP requests) instead of older, more traditional methods. The front-end was rendered entirely using XSLT; another cutting-edge technology that had been little-used in Yahoo! before then (and little used afterwards, too, I might add).

During the development of Tech, we had some huge problems in building what was essentially an unknown architecture on a novel platform using brand-new tools and integrating content from multiple services (original content from bloggers, ratings and reviews from an internal platform, product data from Yahoo! Shopping, and so forth). Many of those services had never been intended to integrate with anything else, and were thus somewhat surprised to discover that things didn’t fit nicely together.

Pat Houston, the original general manager of Yahoo! Tech, was the visionary who convinced Yahoo!’s upper management to invest in the idea. It was a bit radical at the time, but definitely groundbreaking. The original slogan, “Tech Made Easy,” was based on extensive research showing that technology content targeted at Yahoo!’s widespread demographic audience (as opposed to the gadget-head techies and early adopters) would be valuable to users as well as interesting to advertisers.

The initial launch was hilarious—the bloggers (the public face of Yahoo! Tech) appeared on various TV shows such as Today and Good Morning, America. There was a tent in Central Park in New York City were passers-by were invited to try their skills against a trained chimpanzee—the contest was to put a memory card in a digital camera, take a picture, take the card out, put it in a printer, and print out the photograph. Most people could not do it as well as the chimp (which was, of course, the point—these things are never as easy as they seem).

The night that Tech went live, I lifted my glass of champagne and thanked everyone else in the room for helping me build my website. It did feel like mine—I was intimately familiar with nearly every line of code in it, and could probably reproduce much of it from scratch if I wanted to. Even though I moved onto other jobs and other sites, I still retain a fondness for “my baby.” So, hail and farewell, dear Tech! It was fun while it lasted.

All these responses are probably valid, in some way or another, and I’m not going to try to argue against any of the charges made. But, in response to the statement, “this is all too abstract for me,” I’ll try to clarify the particular issue:

People behave far worse online than they ever would in person.

Frankly, as I said earlier, I’m tired of it. Every time I sign on, it seems like someone is spewing hate-filled comments. For some people, it seems like it’s not enough to believe that you’re right; you must also crush, humiliate, and ridicule anyone who holds any sort of opposing opinion. And you must do it vehemently, loudly, and repeatedly.

Maybe I do need to grow a backbone and learn how to take it. On the other hand, if this happened in a “real world” establishment like a restaurant, church, or gym—imagine someone walking up to your table, telling you that your family is contemptible and poking fun of your hair and clothing—most civilized people would not sit there and either take it or debate the point for days on end; once they’d expressed their viewpoint, they’d simply take their business elsewhere.

For me, I’ve fought the fight. I’ve tried to convince people to see reason. I’ve attempted to persuade, cajole, influence, moderate, and every other verb I can think of. Note that I don’t care if you hold a different opinion than I do—the world is full of people with different opinions, and that’s a wonderful thing. What I object to is seeing people being treated with disrespect, with downright hostility and abuse, in a very public setting—so much so that many people take this sort of behavior for granted.

So I’m taking a break. I’m tired, and I need a rest. I’ll stick check in on things, and maybe I’ll be back some day, but, for now, you can find me here or in one of the numerous other online haunts that I frequent.

Thanks to everyone whose kind words and comments are so uplifting—you folks are amazing, and I’m very blessed to get to know you.

FriendFeed was like a comfortable pub. I could show up any time of the day or night and find people that I liked, who liked me, and who would have something interesting to discuss. Imagine visiting that pub for years, growing comfortable, watching new people come and old ones die or merely fade away. Imagine showing up one day to find that every person you knew had decided to humiliate you by attacking the things you hold most dear—your home. Imagine hearing them carry on and on about how awful a place it is, how stupid the people are there, and how they don’t really understand it, but they really hate that place.

Would you come back? Is that the sort of place where you want to find your friends? Guess what, my “friends?” I shop at Wal-mart. My family shops at Wal-mart. They mostly vote Republican. They worship Jesus Christ and don’t fully understand foreign cultures, though they’re open and friendly and loving, especially once you get to know them. They like country music and bass fishing and they don’t like pretentious assholes from other states telling them how they should spend their money. They read Reader’s Digest and Shakespeare and ancient Greek. Some of them drive Priuses and others drive big, gas-hogging SUVs because that’s what they need to pull their boat or simply to protect their loved ones in a crash.

I’m torn between two worlds, having grown up in the deepest parts of east Texas, and living now in Silicon Valley. I’ve also lived in Ascot, England, and worked in Wuppertal, Germany. Fundamentally, “my people” are not all that different than those of you who like to poke fun at them. One of the few differences is that they teach their children manners. When I visit Texas, the children there, with few exceptions, say “Yes, Sir,” and “No, Sir,” and “Hello, Mr. Campbell.” In pretentious, sophisticated, highly-educated Silicon Valley, the sixth-graders that my wife teaches call her “Stupid,” “Dumbo,” and a “Crack Whore.” When asked to remove their hoods in class, they say, “Why don’t you make me?” It’s obvious when those manners carry over into their online lives.

I’m tired of the pretense. I’m tired of the holier-than-thou attitudes, the disrespectful, hateful “conversations.” I’m tired of trying to walk a middle group, trying to get people to see each other’s points of view. I’m just tired.

I don’t want to cut all ties with my friends. I want to hear about Akiva & Rochelle’s next baby; I want to find out what’s going to happen with Scott and Mary Carmen; I want to hear the next tune from Josh Haley, and I want to see if Marissa makes better decisions than my son, who’s also a freshman in college. But you’ll forgive me, I hope, if I don’t hang out there much any more.

Maybe someday I’ll return, but right now it’s not the sort of place I want to be associated with.

(Note: your company’s process is most likely somewhat different than mine, so feel free to adapt this to your particular situation. I do think, however, that the general principles are common to most business settings.)

The first rule of thumb is: be on time! A review or self-assessment that arrives before my deadline for reporting on you is infinitely more valuable than one that arrives later. When I have to tell my manager about your performance, I’m going to have to rely on my (imperfect) memory about your work if you don’t give me your self-assessment to remind me. Six sentences scrawled on the back of an envelope (who uses envelopes any more, any way?) is far, far better than a dozen pages that arrive 24 hours too late.

Second: nouns are better than verbs. Which of these sounds better?

1. Bob was an excellent performer whose efficient work was creative and elegant. or
2. During the First Widget project, Bob’s design for the left-hand invigorator was delivered early and was used as an example for all the remaining invigorators.

The first one has glowing adjectives (“excellent,” “efficient,” “creative,” etc.) but no details. The second example gives specific examples of the work that Bob did to justify his performance. When you write a review, think of specific examples and specific value that the other employee (or yourself) has provided to the company: “Jane solved the XYZ problem and saved the company $12 gazillion per year” is much better than “Jane’s creativity was a great benefit to the project.”

Finally, be honest. The most common example of this is, “I can’t see any possible room for improvement in Jill’s performance.” Really? Jill is absolutely perfect and cannot be improved in any way? What that tells me is that you didn’t take the review seriously enough to put in a little effort to think about Jill’s performance. Not only does it give me nothing to discuss with Jill, it also reflects badly on you.

Dishonesty appears in other guises as well: “Matthew was always an eager participant at meetings.” Superlatives like “always” are very difficult to justify—maybe Matthew is an exception, and he was “always an eager participant,” but a few examples of his eagerness would be better than an overeager statement like this that’s difficult to justify.

Because links perform better with pictures, here’s another doughnut.

Go to the store and get some steak. It doesn’t have to be great steak, because you’re going to cook the heck out of it, but you should have about 2 pounds’ worth of beef once you’ve trimmed away the bones and the excess fat. No, don’t trim away all the fat, silly; that’s where God put the flavor, and you’ll want some of that later on. Get out your Wusthof™ Classic Hollow-Ground Santoku knife and trim it into bite-sized chunks, about 1/2″ to 1″ in size.

Put a big, gleaming Le Creuset™ dutch oven on the stove and get it searing hot. Toss in some olive oil and sauté the steak for about five minutes, turning it frequently to prevent burning. While it’s cooking, chop up an onion and 3-4 cloves or garlic. Toss those in along with some powdered cumin (about a tablespoon) and chili powder. Start off with about 3-4 tablespoons and add more if it ain’t spicy enough. If you add too much, just take some out. Ha ha, you can’t, so you’ll have to go get some more steak or, better yet, don’t add too much in the first place. Like it to really have a kick? Add a teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper (or more to taste).

Smell that? It’s the chili making love to the beef and creating all sorts of wonderful little nuggets of goodness.

There should be enough fat from the steak to keep it moist; if not, add a bit of water. You don’t want it watery, but a thick, velvety texture. Cover it with the heavy, cast-iron lid of your Le Creuset™ dutch oven and turn the heat down to “simmer” and leave it alone for at least 30 minutes. Check on it to make sure the liquid hasn’t evaporated; if so, add a teensy bit more. You can leave it on the stove all day if you like; just don’t let it scorch.

About 10 minutes before you serve it, mix 3 tablespoons of masa harena (masa flour) with enough water to make a thick paste, then stir that into the chili; it will create a lovely, smooth texture to the liquid part of the chili. Let it cook for 5-10 minutes before serving, or it will taste like raw flour, and that’s not a good thing.

Serve by itself, over rice, or over Fritos™ brand corn chips (this is called a Frito pie). If you’re into that sort of thing, top with grated cheddar cheese, chopped onions, or sour cream.

If you like, serve with beans on the side. Don’t fucking ruin the chili by putting the beans into it. Chili is a duet between the chilis and the beef; threesomes are uncomfortable and gaseous.

Serves two. Sometimes more if you’re weenies.

Inspired by this discussion over at FriendFeed.

I am arguably the greatest writer of our (or any) generation. So much potential confounded by so much apathy, laziness, and lack of time management skills.

I, too, suffer from the same motivational discord when it comes to blogging (though not from the apparent overconfidence). I have tried, in the past, to force myself to write daily, with often disastrous consequences. Those posts were trite, meaningless, and ultimately forgettable (though, thanks to the long-term memory of the Internet, they will hang around my neck forever like the hickeys of a long-forgotten fling).

What was I saying?

Oh, yes, of course: more blog, less tweet. The fantastic success of Twitter has led me down the merry path of instant gratification and rapid response. FriendFeed has sated my thirst for recognition and relevance. And, yet, I remain frustrated by the limits—absolutely artificial limits—imposed by those tools. 120 characters is not enough to say anything of particular importance, especially if it involves some level of analysis. Even the lengthier threads of FriendFeed still fail when it comes to many topics.

Thus, I find myself deleting, hiding, or simply ignoring many posts, simply because I recognize that any substantive contribution will be lost in the overwhelming noise of the mob. My own intelligence and charm go unnoticed, and I’ve gained a reputation as a humorist, mainly because I can say something funny in 120 characters, but not something important (usually—it’s the exception that proves the rule, of course). Even this blog post, which started out as simply a, “Yeah, I hear you, man,” to Akiva, has lengthened beyond anything reasonable.

Blog more, tweet less. I’ll try to keep that in mind.

Here is a doughnut:

“The New York Times and many other media outlets ban the acceptance of these freebies on ethical grounds, because there could be an appearance of buying favorable coverage.” To me, the free placement on the SUL and the benefits it bestows, are exactly equivalent. Elsewhere in the Times, and in many other media outlets, the number of followers is treated as a measure of relevance.

The issue that Dave explores is just the tip of the iceberg, however. The larger question is how, when large journalistic institutions are fragmenting into ever smaller organizations (often single individuals who run a blog), does a journalist maintain integrity and yet make a living? A solo journalist cannot establish a firewall between the revenue-producing and the editorial sides of the business, for they are both the same. In essence, it means that every individual who blogs alone, and who makes money from her blogging, is at the least tempted or at the worst corrupted by the influence of those who are paying the bills.

Full disclosure of a blogger’s interests would, of course, help people make decisions in determining the validity of their reporting and commentary. But, even then, the credulity of readers is often stretched to the point where they question the author’s motives. For example, if you browse through the blog posts at Yahoo! Tech, a site I helped to build, you’ll see comments to the effect that “this is just advertising; of course the blogger will say good things about product X, because product X advertises on the site.” In reality, of course, there’s a very wide gulf between the people who sell advertising and the people who write the blog posts. The bloggers are not compensated in any way that depends on their position towards a particular product, and they are, in fact, prohibited from accepting any form of compensation from an advertiser; this disclaimer appears on every page of the site:

Opinions expressed by the Advisors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Yahoo! Inc. Yahoo! receives no compensation from any manufacturer or distributor nor does it compensate any Advisor for the coverage of any product or service in any Advisor’s content.

And yet, in spite of this, and in spite of the enormous negative repercussions that would arise should a Yahoo! blogger found to be in violation of such, users often cannot accept the independent stance of the bloggers. And, if this is true at a multi-billion-dollar company, how much more so for the independent journalist who is merely struggling to pay the bills?

I don’t have a clear answer for the bigger question of how to ensure ethical behavior among independent bloggers, but it’s obvious that bloggers who write about a product or service should definitely refrain from accepting anything of value from that company, whether it is the intangible Suggested User List or a much more corporeal gift.

Practice makes perfect

Actually, a better phrase is “Practice makes permanent, so always practice perfect.” It’s astonishing to me how often someone will give a presentation when it’s obvious that they haven’t looked at it in months, if at all. Nothing reduces your credibility quite like saying, “Huh, I didn’t know that,” when the slide of last quarter’s sales figures comes up on the screen. Always make sure you run through your slides in a rehearsal before you present, or otherwise you’ll look like a loon. A rehearsal, by the way, does not mean merely skimming through and reading silently; you actually need to plan on saying what you’re going to say in the presentation (see the next tip).

When you rehearse, you should pretend that you’re actually presenting; make sure you allow time for questions, and make sure that you know how long the presentation will take. You look like a fool if you are on slide 31 of 60 when you’ve reached the end of your allotted half-hour and there’s a crowd of people standing outside waiting to use the conference room. You should know, within 10%, exactly how long your presentation takes.

Don’t read the fucking slides

Is there anything more annoying than having someone put up a slide that says, “Sales increased in the last quarter,” and then to say, “Sales increased in the last quarter,” as if the audience is composed of fucking idiots who cannot read? If you’re going to read the fucking slide, then just create a PDF version and email it to everyone at the meeting and save us all an hour.

Use presentation mode

Every commercially-available presentation software has a mode for editing or creating slides, and another one for presenting them. If you’re presenting, then put the damned thing in presentation mode. I watched a presentation the other day where the presenter kept it in edit mode the whole time, sometimes accidentally moving text blocks off the screen while he was attempting to point out things on the page.

Turn off interruptions

Yes, I know you use Gtalk and Yahoo! IM and IRC and who knows what, but turn them off when you’re presenting. You’re trying to impress people with your professionalism, not give them a laugh when your best friend messages you during the meeting with, “Damn, I just farted and the whole building smells bad.”

Turn off your cell phone. You can’t keep other people from interrupting you with their tinny version of “Don’t Stop Believing,” but you don’t have to inflict that on everyone.

Turn off your email notifications. Do you really want, “New message: Are you as hot as I am right now?” popping up during your presentation to the CFO?

Don’t turn off your screen

Seriously. Most people have their laptops set so that the screen will go dark after some minutes of inactivity. It’s quite common to get involved answering a question, and then suddenly have the screen go dark. It’s hugely distracting; people’s attention is suddenly diverted to the now-dark screen while the presenter frantically wiggles his or her mouse or trackpad, trying to get it to come back on. With some projectors, it will take a minute or two to warm back up again.

If you have a Mac, get Caffeine. This is a little utility that looks like a coffee cup that sits in your menu bar. Click it, and it will turn black, and your screen will no longer automatically turn off. Click it again, and it will turn white, and everything will work normally. I’m sure there’s a similar utility for Windows, or just right-click on the desktop and change the screen settings to not automatically dim/turn off the screen.

Be prepared

Finally, make sure you know how to connect your laptop to the projector. If they projector uses a VGA connector and your laptop has a DVI, then make sure you have an adapter. If your laptop and presentation software supports dual screens, then make sure that the presenter screen is on the laptop and the main presentation is on the overhead screen. Arrive a few minutes early, if possible. It’s stupid and expensive to have a group of highly-paid professionals sitting around while you impress them with your skills or lack thereof in attempting to get everything working.

If you follow all these tips, praise and promotions are sure to follow.