Super tuesday and thoughts on Google.

The time is now to get out in vote. It has been decades since a primary race has been so hotly contested on both sides of the aisle. I encourage you to go out and vote your heart and your head. I heard someone on NPR this morning who said he refused to vote because the United States was financially doomed anyway. It worries me that people are giving up on a country that is still very strong economically. There will always be rough times, but in the end only a strong spirit and a willingness to become involved will bring us through.

I spent a large chunk of time writing about business culture and values this morning for my project management class. For this project we picked a company to study and I chose Google. Having known a little bit about the unique Google culture going into the project I desired to learn more. What I discovered was a culture designed to magnify creativity and keep Google’s number one asset, their employees content and productive. Google offers 3 meals a day at their cafeteria for free, “play rooms” with pianos, video games, pool tables, ping-pong tables, on-site gym, computer and small electronic device repair, street hockey twice a week, a casual dress code and a shocking lack or cubicles. These are just a few examples of how Google tries to make their offices a welcoming place for their employees. I began to wonder why more businesses don’t have a creative and comfortable work space like this, the idea of making work a more comfortable place then home is a very new a scary idea. I think most businesses are afraid of such a lax environment and have the idea that their employees may become complacent. For most companies this concept just does not work. Could you imagine showing up at your bank and working with a bank teller in flip-flops and Bermuda shorts? I think the major problem is seeing people in casual wear makes a company come off as less professional. But, perhaps it is time for our perceptions to change in this regard. Maybe business would be better conducted if we weren’t all stuffed into monkey suits?

For a excellent photo essay by Time magazine follow this link.

Top 5: Firefox Plugins

Welcome to the first ever philipstraatsma.com monthly “Top 5 List”. The top 5 list of this month will cover my favorite Firefox plugins. So sit back, crack open Firefox and enjoy!

5. ShowIP
This nifty add-on shows the IP address of the current website you are visiting. By right-clicking on the IP in the lower right hand corner you can run a dnsstuff whois, a traceroute on the IP address and a few other nifty things.

4. Server Spy
Ever wonder if your favorite site uses Apache or Microsoft IIS for its hosting platform? Probably not, but if you are curious like I am this plugin will not only tell you the platform it will also tell you the version number!

3. Adblock Plus
Annoying flash ads slowing down your page load times and just generally annoying you? Then I suggest Adblock Plus. Adblock Plus blocks annoying flash ads by subscribing to a “flash ad list”. The list is checked each time a flash image is shown and if found strips the image from the page. How does it work, and how is the list so accurate? The list is updated by people like you and I who whenever they come across flash ad click on this little transparent “block” tab and when enough people add the advertisement to the list the animation is blocked. Simple enough and works almost 100% of the time.

2. Firebug
Firebug is a must have for any web developer. This plug in displays the code for the current website you are viewing and allows you to inspect any element on the page. For example if you click on a “div” tag in the code list all of the styles applied to that element in your style sheet will be displayed on the right hand side of the browser. This is nice for tracking down why a certain element is not acting the way it should. Firebug also allows you to temporarily modify elements on your page, allowing you to adjust things like fonts, color, measurements, etc. on the fly.

1. IE Tab
Firefox is great don’t get me wrong, but no matter how many improvements they make there will always be that one pesky website designed for Internet Explorer that just doesn’t render right in Firefox. In steps IE tab, this little plugin allows you to switch rendering engines from Firefox to IE on the fly. This is also a blessing for web designers who want to see how their page renders in both engines without having to swap browsers. Another nifty feature is the ability to specify a specific URL that will always be rendered in Internet Explorer. So for example, your companies VPN portal page only works in IE just add the URL to the list of IE only pages and let IE Tab do the rest!