Jim Stroud's "The Digability Blog"

ANNOUNCING - Jim Stroud 2.0

Effectively immediately, "The Digability Blog" will be discontinued and after this week, no new content will be posted there. In its place is "Jim Stroud 2.0," a new blog that will continue its focus on innovative sourcing strategies. It will also broaden its scope to include Jim Stroud's rants on the recruiting industry and business development tips for Search Firms. Furthermore, Jim Stroud 2.0 will provide commentary on Web 2.0, innovations in business and market strategy. All of the blog posts cited on the original Digability blog are still freely available for review on Jim Stroud 2.0 under the "Digability-Sourcing Strategies" category.

Here is an explanation of what you will find in each category of Jim Stroud 2.0.

BizDev 101 *Offers business development tips for search firms

Bizzy *Dicusses innovations in business and market strategy

Digability *Offers innovative sourcing strategies for recruiters.

Life With Bill *Personal posts discussing Jim Stroud's experiences as a (happy)Microsoft employee

Manifestos *Calls to action

Recruiting Rants *Discussions on what is wrong (and sometimes right) about the recruiting industry

Shameless Self-promotion * Announcements citing Jim Stroud in the media

Web 2.0 *Discussing the new wave of dot-coms hitting the market

Visit Jim Stroud 2.0 now and subscribe: http://www.blogcharm.com/jimstroud

Ooohh... new internet toys from Microsoft are pending...

Effectively immediately, "The Digability Blog" will be discontinued and after this week, no new content will be posted there. In its place is "Jim Stroud 2.0," a new blog that will continue its focus on innovative sourcing strategies. It will also broaden its scope to include Jim Stroud's rants on the recruiting industry and business development tips for Search Firms. Furthermore, Jim Stroud 2.0 will provide commentary on Web 2.0, innovations in business and market strategy. All of the blog posts cited on the original Digability blog are still freely available for review on Jim Stroud 2.0 under the "Digability-Sourcing Strategies" category.

Here is an explanation of what you will find in each category of Jim Stroud 2.0.

BizDev 101 *Offers business development tips for search firms

Bizzy *Dicusses innovations in business and market strategy

Digability *Offers innovative sourcing strategies for recruiters.

Life With Bill *Personal posts discussing Jim Stroud's experiences as a (happy)Microsoft employee

Manifestos *Calls to action

Recruiting Rants *Discussions on what is wrong (and sometimes right) about the recruiting industry

Shameless Self-promotion * Announcements citing Jim Stroud in the media

Web 2.0 *Discussing the new wave of dot-coms hitting the market

Visit Jim Stroud 2.0 now and subscribe: http://www.blogcharm.com/jimstroud

What else can a sourcer do?

Effectively immediately, "The Digability Blog" will be discontinued and after this week, no new content will be posted there. In its place is "Jim Stroud 2.0," a new blog that will continue its focus on innovative sourcing strategies. It will also broaden its scope to include Jim Stroud's rants on the recruiting industry and business development tips for Search Firms. Furthermore, Jim Stroud 2.0 will provide commentary on Web 2.0, innovations in business and market strategy. All of the blog posts cited on the original Digability blog are still freely available for review on Jim Stroud 2.0 under the "Digability-Sourcing Strategies" category.

Here is an explanation of what you will find in each category of Jim Stroud 2.0.

BizDev 101 *Offers business development tips for search firms

Bizzy *Dicusses innovations in business and market strategy

Digability *Offers innovative sourcing strategies for recruiters.

Life With Bill *Personal posts discussing Jim Stroud's experiences as a (happy)Microsoft employee

Manifestos *Calls to action

Recruiting Rants *Discussions on what is wrong (and sometimes right) about the recruiting industry

Shameless Self-promotion * Announcements citing Jim Stroud in the media

Web 2.0 *Discussing the new wave of dot-coms hitting the market

Visit Jim Stroud 2.0 now and subscribe: http://www.blogcharm.com/jimstroud

Dumbfounded: A chat with Chris Seline, CEO of Dumbfind

Effectively immediately, "The Digability Blog" will be discontinued and after this week, no new content will be posted there. In its place is "Jim Stroud 2.0," a new blog that will continue its focus on innovative sourcing strategies. It will also broaden its scope to include Jim Stroud's rants on the recruiting industry and business development tips for Search Firms. Furthermore, Jim Stroud 2.0 will provide commentary on Web 2.0, innovations in business and market strategy. All of the blog posts cited on the original Digability blog are still freely available for review on Jim Stroud 2.0 under the "Digability-Sourcing Strategies" category.

Here is an explanation of what you will find in each category of Jim Stroud 2.0.

BizDev 101 *Offers business development tips for search firms

Bizzy *Dicusses innovations in business and market strategy

Digability *Offers innovative sourcing strategies for recruiters.

Life With Bill *Personal posts discussing Jim Stroud's experiences as a (happy)Microsoft employee

Manifestos *Calls to action

Recruiting Rants *Discussions on what is wrong (and sometimes right) about the recruiting industry

Shameless Self-promotion * Announcements citing Jim Stroud in the media

Web 2.0 *Discussing the new wave of dot-coms hitting the market

Visit Jim Stroud 2.0 now and subscribe: http://www.blogcharm.com/jimstroud

How to source like a patriot...

Effectively immediately, "The Digability Blog" will be discontinued and after this week, no new content will be posted there. In its place is "Jim Stroud 2.0," a new blog that will continue its focus on innovative sourcing strategies. It will also broaden its scope to include Jim Stroud's rants on the recruiting industry and business development tips for Search Firms. Furthermore, Jim Stroud 2.0 will provide commentary on Web 2.0, innovations in business and market strategy. All of the blog posts cited on the original Digability blog are still freely available for review on Jim Stroud 2.0 under the "Digability-Sourcing Strategies" category.

Here is an explanation of what you will find in each category of Jim Stroud 2.0.

BizDev 101 *Offers business development tips for search firms

Bizzy *Dicusses innovations in business and market strategy

Digability *Offers innovative sourcing strategies for recruiters.

Life With Bill *Personal posts discussing Jim Stroud's experiences as a (happy)Microsoft employee

Manifestos *Calls to action

Recruiting Rants *Discussions on what is wrong (and sometimes right) about the recruiting industry

Shameless Self-promotion * Announcements citing Jim Stroud in the media

Web 2.0 *Discussing the new wave of dot-coms hitting the market

Visit Jim Stroud 2.0 now and subscribe: http://www.blogcharm.com/jimstroud

(Web 2.0) Sourcing with 43 Things

Effectively immediately, "The Digability Blog" will be discontinued and after this week, no new content will be posted there. In its place is "Jim Stroud 2.0," a new blog that will continue its focus on innovative sourcing strategies. It will also broaden its scope to include Jim Stroud's rants on the recruiting industry and business development tips for Search Firms. Furthermore, Jim Stroud 2.0 will provide commentary on Web 2.0, innovations in business and market strategy. All of the blog posts cited on the original Digability blog are still freely available for review on Jim Stroud 2.0 under the "Digability-Sourcing Strategies" category.

Here is an explanation of what you will find in each category of Jim Stroud 2.0.

BizDev 101 *Offers business development tips for search firms

Bizzy *Dicusses innovations in business and market strategy

Digability *Offers innovative sourcing strategies for recruiters.

Life With Bill *Personal posts discussing Jim Stroud's experiences as a (happy)Microsoft employee

Manifestos *Calls to action

Recruiting Rants *Discussions on what is wrong (and sometimes right) about the recruiting industry

Shameless Self-promotion * Announcements citing Jim Stroud in the media

Web 2.0 *Discussing the new wave of dot-coms hitting the market

Visit Jim Stroud 2.0 now and subscribe: http://www.blogcharm.com/jimstroud

Hmmm.. sounds like a new version of Riya to me.

Effectively immediately, "The Digability Blog" will be discontinued and after this week, no new content will be posted there. In its place is "Jim Stroud 2.0," a new blog that will continue its focus on innovative sourcing strategies. It will also broaden its scope to include Jim Stroud's rants on the recruiting industry and business development tips for Search Firms. Furthermore, Jim Stroud 2.0 will provide commentary on Web 2.0, innovations in business and market strategy. All of the blog posts cited on the original Digability blog are still freely available for review on Jim Stroud 2.0 under the "Digability-Sourcing Strategies" category.

Here is an explanation of what you will find in each category of Jim Stroud 2.0.

BizDev 101 *Offers business development tips for search firms

Bizzy *Dicusses innovations in business and market strategy

Digability *Offers innovative sourcing strategies for recruiters.

Life With Bill *Personal posts discussing Jim Stroud's experiences as a (happy)Microsoft employee

Manifestos *Calls to action

Recruiting Rants *Discussions on what is wrong (and sometimes right) about the recruiting industry

Shameless Self-promotion * Announcements citing Jim Stroud in the media

Web 2.0 *Discussing the new wave of dot-coms hitting the market

Visit Jim Stroud 2.0 now and subscribe: http://www.blogcharm.com/jimstroud

From the dark side of sourcing...

Did you know that SOME sourcers cross the line in gathering intelligence on a company? Well, technically the technique hinted on in the article below is not illegal (not yet anyways), but it is a bit creepy. Sourcers in the dark - beware!

---snip-snip---

The influential chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee promised Thursday to introduce legislation outlawing the sale of telephone call logs, a practice that some privacy groups and lawmakers have denounced.

Representative Joe Barton, the committee chairman, is one of the first Republicans getting involved in the privacy issue. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) first filed a complaint to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission about the practice in July, and the privacy advocacy organization says it has identified 40 Web sites that sell telephone records, particularly incoming or outgoing calls from mobile phones, and other personal information without the owners' consent.

"The principle behind all this is simple and straightforward: Our private lives belong to us, not to either the telephone company or the con artists," Barton said in a statement.

Barton, from Texas, said he plans to offer a bill that would make it illegal to impersonate a customer in an effort to gain access to telephone records. The practice, called pretexting, is illegal when used to gain financial records, but not when going after phone records, Barton said in a statement.

"I mean to make it very illegal," Barton added. "It is also possible because telephone companies may not be doing enough to protect consumer privacy, and I will make it clear that companies owe their customers a duty to privacy and need to devise new ways to foil pretexters."

Several telephone carriers have supported enforcement actions against companies that sell phone records. But some carriers have opposed regulations that would require them to improve security standards, EPIC said. For example, SBC -- now called AT&T Inc. -- filed comments with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) saying it has an extensive internal security policy, but it opposed a government mandate. A mandate would become obsolete quickly, AT&T said.

"Mandated security measures ... are not the solution," AT&T said in its FCC filing. "Fraudsters are inventive and always try to stay one step ahead. As soon as the carriers implement mandated security measures, these fraudsters will immediately try to figure out a way around them."

In July, Verizon Wireless Inc. filed a lawsuit against a group of companies it accused of selling mobile phone records.

READ: Chairman promises bill prohibiting sale of phone logs

How to give a spammer the finger

Are you suffering more than you would like to over spam? Probably so... Are you getting too much from one spammer in particular and enough is enough? If so, well... it may be time to hit that spammer where it hurts. Simply track the email to the server it came from and report them to the proper authorities.

"But Jim," you say, "Sounds a bit too techie for me. Can you walk me through it?"

"Sure," I reply, "At least part of the ways anyway."

The first step required to tracing an email is finding out the headers of the email. What are headers? Email headers are lines added at the top of an email message that are used by servers as the email goes on route to get delivered. Generally email clients only show the standard To, From, and Subject headers, but there are more.

Here is how you do it in Hotmail.

Step 1: Once logged in, click on the "Options" link in the upper navigation bar.

Step 2: Now click on the "Mail Display Settings" link.

Step 3: Change the "Message Headers" option to "Full" and click ok.

Step 4: Go to your inbox and open any one of your email. You emails show now contain additional headers.

Want more? Click here for the rest of the story!

Big thank-you to Onimoto for posting this out to the blogosphere.

Dialing For Dollars Cheatsheet

Imagine that you are dialing into a company for intelligence retrieval. You have your script and your goals set and no matter how stonefaced the receptionist is, you are determined to strike information gold. So you dial, you hear the phone ring and AAAAHHHH!!!! A recording... Press 1 for this and press 2 for that, how aggravating. Fortunately, there is a way to bypass all of this.

Now, I rarely blog about how to leverage intel from the phone. Ummm... okay, I never blog about it, but after coming across this online gem, I just had to. Paul English's Cheatsheet is something I thought was only urban legend and whispered about in quiet recruiting circles. Imagine my surprise to discover that (unlike Bigfoot?) it is a true document. Yes!

Here is a peek at what it looks like.

I HIGHLY suggest that you visit Mr. English's website and download a copy as quickly as you can. If after reviewing it you see a company missing that (in your opinion) should be listed, then click here to update it.

Digability rating: Go, download now! Highest recommendation.

P.S. Here is a link to the United Kingdom version of The IVR Cheatsheet.

Elementary, my dear Watson!

Here is a new cool tool alert from the good folks over at Intellext - Watson. To quote from ther website... "(Watson) transcends the boundaries of contemporary search and information access. The product of research conducted by Intellext co-founders Dr. Jay Budzik and Dr. Kristian Hammond at Northwestern University, Watson removes the burden of search from the shoulders of computer users. By reading and understanding what people are working on, and using that knowledge to proactively find and deliver relevant information to the user, Watson is able to find information the user didn't know existed - in places they otherwise might not have looked. Which we think is pretty sweet. Our users think so, too." Well, it certainly sounds good, but what (and how) does it do what it do? In a nutshell, Watson is a proactive search technology that looks at the context of what you’re working on and then searches the Internet looking at news sites, blogs, web sites, shopping sites and your desktop.