I have noticed a high number of tweets, blog posts and news stories about people returning their iPhone’s and jumping ship to Verizon or Sprint.  People are unhappy with the AT&T cell phone network and with the new iPhone 4.

I have been on the AT&T cell phone network forever. My association with AT&T started with Pacific Bell Wireless which became Cingular which become AT&T Wireless.   AT&T uses a cellular technology called GSM.   Since I have been using GSM based cell phones for a very long time, it didn’t occur to me that non-GSM phones have limitations and was shocked to discover that the CDMA network technology (Verizon and Sprint use CDMA) can’t handle simultaneous voice and data.

The Verizon iPhone may be capable of supporting both voice and data like its AT&T cousin, a tip today says. Verizon is reportedly planning to add Voice over Revision A (VoRA) to its network that would use its EVDO Rev A 3G network to handle voice calls as well as data. Unlike usual CDMA networks, which cuts off 3G when a call comes in, VoRA would behave more like HSPA on phone networks and allow both to run at the same time.

Are you on AT&T and thinking of moving to Verizon or Sprint?  Hold on then, step back for a moment and think about how you are currently using your smart phone on AT&T.  If you currently browse the web, check email or use any apps that require the internet while you are on a voice call you might want to rethink this.  Food for thought.

It’s been a busy week in the technology tips world.  In fact I might have to hold a few back for next weeks blog post.  So let’s get on with it, shall we?

I know that the majority of the people who read this blog travel to conferences on a pretty regular basis and many of you also carry an iPhone in your purse/pocket/briefcase/holster (but not in your left hand). Read on for Five apps for the conference -goer.

Unfortunately I think we all have some email habits that probably should be avoided.  Our pals over at Lifehacker have rounded up The Worst Email Habits and Annoyances You Should Avoid (or At Least Be Aware Of). Go on. I dare you to read it. Maybe one of your habits is on their list.

Don’t have Adobe Flash on you mobile device or can’t get Flash?  Addicted to YouTube?  Thank goodness I found this information over at the Boy Genius site: YouTube launches HTML5-enabled mobile website, native YouTube apps soon to be obsolete.

For you Apple Time Capsule lovers, I have some good news and some bad news.  That bad news is that Apple manufactured a whole batch of flawed Time Capsules in 2008. The good news is that TUAW found out that Apple will repair or replace these Time Capsules should they die on you.

By coincidence I happened to find this beauty of an Apple Support document: Time Capsule: Using AirPort Utility 5.3.1 or later to make a copy of the Time Capsule disk.  Since it looks like Time Capsules might be a ticking time bomb, I highly suggest you follow these instructions to make sure you have a copy of your Time Capsule backups.

Not really a tech tip but for the ultimate gadget lover I just had to share this totally amazing bathroom faucet with touch panel controls.  I want one…bad.

Wow, iPhones, Email, YouTube, Time Capsules and High Tech Bathroom Faucets all on one blog post.  What will I think of next?

Hey!  It’s that day of the week again.  I’m sure you all checked your email or RSS feed this morning for your Tuesday Tech Tips, saw a big blank hole of information and wondered how you would make it through the day.  Don’t worry my little pets, I am a bit distracted this week due to a training class for our new Business Intelligence tool but I did manage to find some great tips for you for the week:

Somehow I missed this one last week but my good buddy Jason had my back.  Google Voice is now available for everyone. By the way, Jason has adorable greyhounds.

I’m sure all of you iPhone owners out there have upgraded to iOS4 by now but maybe you have been hankering for all the little tiny details about iOS4.  TUAW has the details on the iPhone user guide for iOS4.

Are you using any of the Windows Live tools such as Windows Live Writer, Windows Live Photo Gallery or Windows Live Movie Maker?  Pay attention then because Microsoft has released the Wave 4 beta (everyone do the Wave now) of Windows Live Essentials and Engadget has the details.

Let’s get back to talking about iPhones.  Not everyone ordered a brand new iPhone 4 so for those of you with an iPhone 3GS that just absolutely must have new (for iPhone 4 only) iMovie, let me present: iMovie for iPhone 3GS – there’s a hack for that.

Hot, and I do mean HOT off the presses, TUAW brings us the news of Hulu Plus announced for iPhone and iPad.

See you next week.

Holy cow, it’s Tuesday again!  Last week I decided to share some general technology tips with you and with any luck I hope to do this every Tuesday. So without further adieu here are today’s tech tips:

Thinking about using Google Apps for your business email?  Those lovely people at the Googleplex have put together 10 Tips for using Gmail at work just in case you needed a kick in the pants to get yourself moved over to Gmail.

OMG! For all you iPhone owners out there, iOS4 has arrived.  Before you jump the gun and start the upgrade you might want to read this excellent article from the good folks over at TIPB called: iOS 4 checklist – what to do before, during, and after updating

Are you one of those people who are constantly slathering Purell on your hands?  Do you have an iPad?  Well then, head over to The Unofficial Apple Weblog for iSkin announces An iPad case for the germ-phobic

Calling all Google nerds! Pining for command line access to Google applications? Fear not, Gina Trapani has your back over at her Smarterware website: Interact with Google Apps at the Command Line

If you are like me and get lost all the time (but still like to multitask on your iPhone while driving) then you might want to catch this cool video: NAVIGON shows off iOS 4 multitasking for iPhone turn-by-turn navigation

See you next Tuesday!

While talking to a few people recently and comparing our Google Reader subscriptions and trends, I discovered that I read a lot more technology sites than the average reader of my blog.  So I figured I should put all that reading time to good use and share some of my technology goodies with you all.

It’s iPhone 4 pre-order day and I am sure you all are running around the house/backyard/office/parking lot/mall like crazy person trying to figure out how best to pre-order an iPhone for your spouse/significant other/son/daughter/dog/cat.  Fear not. Engadget has you covered with their post on: How to: pre-order the iPhone 4 (update: third-party retailers best avoided)

As if we didn’t have enough reasons to stop by Starbucks for our daily quad shot Latte, the Boy Genius Report says: Starbucks offering free Wi-Fi access at all U.S. locations starting July 1st

A couple of my tweeps/peeps/yahoos have been bugging me to do Skype video calling. So for all you Skype people and video bloggers pay attention as Engadget has the goods on New Logitech HD Webcams

I don’t know about you but sometime my spelling engine goes on hiatus. It can be a problem when trying to search for something on Google.  Its Google to the rescue with: Spelling corrections in Google search suggest

I know many of you use Google Reader and have been saying why, why, WHY can’t I easily rename my folders.  Stop your crying and read all about:  Renaming folders and tags in Google Reader

Last but not least for all you hardcore Gmail, Buzz and Google Maps users (you know who you are). I give you the holy grail of Google Maps previews in Gmail and Google Buzz

Did you like these tech tips?  Found them useful?  Want me to continue serving up these tips on a regular schedule?  Hated it and wish I would not waste precious blog space doing this?  Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

I bet you don’t really have a backup strategy for your personal workstations. Some of you probably do some sort of backups but peel back the top layer and it’s not really a full backup strategy. I don’t want to scare you but have looked outside recently? Earthquakes, Sinkholes, Hurricanes, Floods, Republicans, Democrats oh my. Seriously, it’s not enough to be worried about your hard drive crashing at an untimely moment or your laptop bag being snatched from you at the airport (Note to self: don’t mess with (Mark Stelzner). Your home could burn down or be swept away in a flash flood.

Fear not my good friends; let me give you few helpful tips on how to create a very simple backup strategy.

1. Backup your critical files to external storage.
2. Image your hard drive and store in a safe place. By safe place I mean a fireproof safe, a safe deposit box, your parent’s house or well you get the picture.  I don’t mean the bottom shelf in the bookcase in your living room.

There you have it. Short, simple and beautiful.  Wait, what?  You need more information?  Oh, sorry.  Here you go:

Mac:

1. Backup: Hands down the easiest file backup program for the Mac is already built-in to Mac OS X and is called Time Machine.  Just get yourself an external Firewire or USB hard drive that is at least as large as the hard drive in you Mac, turn on the power to the drive, plug it into your Mac and follow the instructions here.
2. Image: Buy yourself a second external hard drive that is the same size as the hard drive in your Mac. Purchase either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy and follow their directions to make a full image of your hard drive. Don’t forget the part about storing it in a safe place.

Windows:

1. Backup: Unlike the Mac, Windows doesn’t come with a backup program that is as easy and as powerful to use as Time Machine.  So I recommend you skip the whole backup to local external disk option and go with the cloud baby.  I recommend either Carbonite or Jungle Disk.  These two programs will backup your data over your Internet connection to storage at the vendor data center.  Each company has a different pricing model so read the pricing information carefully to determine which company’s backup pricing best meets your needs.
2. Image: Despite the fact that Windows built-in backup software is barely usable, Windows Vista and Windows 7 built-in image software works just great.  I have had to use it several times now to upgrade my laptop to a larger hard drive and then restore to a replacement hard drive when the new drive failed.  Still on Windows XP?  Why on earth are you still on Windows XP? Oh all right, if you must use XP for some reason, then I recommend Acronis True Image. I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but you did remember to store it in a safe place right?

So NOW you have a backup strategy.

I’m currently sitting on a plane heading from Portland to Denver. The person in front of me has reclined their seat leaving me no room to use my laptop.  Being a good tech guy, I pulled out the iPad I won at HRevolution and am typing this out using the iPad WordPress App. Okay, Okay, I might have finished up this blog post back on the ground but rest assured that the majority of the blog post was indeed written on the plane using my iPad.  Now would probably be a good time to thank all the good people at Monster.com (especially my new best friend Eric Winegardner) for sponsoring the opening night party and for the iPad raffle that somehow I miraculously won.

A couple of weeks ago was the HRevolution 2010 conference in Chicago. I was not able to attend HRevolution last year as it was darn near impossible to get from Portland Oregon to Louisville Kentucky in a reasonable amount of time. Unlike many people who attended this year, I did not go to specifically pickup nuggets of HR knowledge. In some of my previous posts I lamented HR department’s lack of interest in technology so I didn’t go to HRevolution with the hope of a tech breakthrough. It’s a good thing since for the most part I witnessed the status quo. But more on that in a future blog post.  I did not go to HRevolution to pick up HR technology information; I went for the opportunity to spend time with my HR thought leaders outside of the sessions.

I arrived on Friday afternoon and with casual meetups over snacks, the parties, the sessions and impromptu hallway discussions  I managed to have great conversations. I also managed to squeeze in a couple of sessions. Of course one session I didn’t miss was the HR Technology Q&A session since I was co-facilitating with Bryon Abramowitz and Bill Kutik.  Again, stay tuned for a future blog post on my observations on HR Technology conversations at the conference.

I could write about what worked and did not work for HRevolution but as it turns out many of my fellow conference attendees have already blogged about it better than I could. One of the HRevolution planners, Ben Eubanks, has already rounded up the HRevolution blog posts into the wonderful Carnival of HR-HRevolution Style. Go ahead, click that link to open up the HRevolution Carnival in a new window and read all the wonderful blog posts.  I’ll wait right here until to you return.  As incentive for returning, there is still a matter of the blog title to resolve.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to my partner in crime and an amazing blogger Paul Smith who kept me highly entertained from morning until late at night and to the HRevolution organizing committee.  Finally as I end this blog post, some of you are thinking, what’s the deal with the Dirty Martinis in the Blog Title?  Well…I ended the conference on Saturday night at the rooftop bar at theWit Hotel by sipping a Blue Cheese Olive Dirty Martini along with Shennee Rutt and many many others.  Good times were had by all.

Stay tuned for my next blog post when I beat you all silly for not having a proper backup strategy for your personal computers.

Guess what?  The rumor on the street is that HR leads the industry in using the Software As A Service (SaaS) delivery model.  Surveys say that customers still prefer best-of-breed solutions over integrated solutions so that means more HR applications instead of less.  Guess what also is true about many of these SaaS applications?  They still use flat files as the main vehicle to shuttle information into and out of the application. In this model the customer is still required to develop an interface to the SaaS vendor.  Wait, what?  As a customer you still have to do custom development even though you are using a SaaS application.

There are several other more state of the art options such as an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) or SOAP messaging.  I don’t know about you but when an employee gets hired into my core HR system, I would love to have the employee information zip over to my SaaS based Learning Management System within a couple seconds instead of sometime that evening when the flat file interface gets run.  When I push the button to fill a requisition in my recruiting application, wouldn’t it be great to have the new hire in my core HR system right away. Sorry SaaS Recruiting vendor, sending me XML files via FTP multiple times a day doesn’t count.

All is not lost fortunately.  The HR SaaS application vendors are starting to incorporate messaging or ESBs into their offering.  The most prominent example of this is Workday purchasing ESB vendor Cape Clear back in February of 2008.  Since then Workday has embedded Cape Clear into their application to allow end users to create their own real-time inbound and outbound interfaces.

For those other SaaS vendors who are still stuck in the flat file interface, you better get it together soon.  We are wising up and will be requiring state of the art real-time interfaces in our vendor selection criteria.

This guest post is authored by Ben Eubanks. Ben is an HR professional from Huntsville, AL. He lives much of his life online. Don’t believe it? Catch him on LinkedIn, Twitter, or via email. His blog, UpstartHR, is about many things, including human resources, leadership, and ninjas.

If you’re not familiar with RSS, I have a fairly simple explanation for you.

RSS is a simply an Internet technology standard that allows busy people to receive updates to web-based content of interest. You might have figured that much out by now. But basically, that’s the essence of an RSS feed – you subscribe and then receive new content automatically in your feed reader.

People use RSS every day to help them read the news and stay on top of new topics. I think RSS has some benefits for the workplace, too, but this quote from Oscar Berg tells us why RSS is not being adopted in the workplace (yet):

The same reasoning applies to RSS – there is no other way to fully understand the benefits of RSS. Although it is quite easy to explain the benefits of RSS when compared to traditonal information seeking, you will not truly understand these benefits until you let RSS change your own consumption patterns. When you have done this, it is fairly easy to translate these benefits to a business context and to envision how RSS could be used within an enterprise context.

My RSS success story

I can still remember the first time I used RSS. It was amazing. It was soon after I really started getting into reading and following blogs online. Every morning I opened up 10 tabs in Firefox and checked my favorite sites one by one to see if there were any updates. After a week or two of doing that, I realized I could sign up for email updates. That cut down on my visits to the sites, but then it cluttered up my inbox, taking time from things that needed to be replied to.

Then I discovered RSS. I had been using Gmail for a few months and clicked over to my Google Reader for the first time to see what it was. I realized that I could add the feeds for each of the sites I followed and it would collect them to view in one place. I was blown away. Where I had been spending maybe 30 minutes a day typing URLs and looking to see if any of the sites had any new content I was now able to just open my RSS reader and start browsing. I cut my time down to 10 minutes a day with that simple step. From then on I was hooked!

Taking RSS to work

Now for the hard part. How can I use RSS feeds at work to save me time and effort? To be honest, I’m still trying to figure this one out. I have some ideas, though…

• News (professional development, baby!)
• Team updates (what’s everyone working on?)
• Project updates (great way to document a project timeline)
• Set up a special shared tag in Google Reader and share all items in that with your team
• Open job updates (recruiters?)
• New employee feed (orientation?)

I just scraped these from my cranium with a little effort. There are so many great tools for using RSS feeds. Do you know of more? How could you use RSS at work?

Image by Paul Watson.

The Carnival of HR has landed right on the tail of Mardi Gras  so grab a Sazerac or Hurricane and some Jambalaya, pull up a chair and settle down for some fantastic blog posts.

As you know, Mardi Gras is a downright fun celebration but sometimes people imbibe a few too many hurricanes and need their friends to keep them from embarrassing themselves.  At work sometimes you also need a network of friends and mentors to help guide you.

Mary Jo Asmus at Aspire Collaborative Services kicks off the carnival with Leading People Can Be Messy about unpredictable people.

Continuing the theme of messy people who probably need a mentor, Melissa Prusher from The Devon Group suggests you rely on your mentors in Count on Change – and a Mentor to See You Through.

Speaking of friends and support systems, Paul Smith continues his story from his previous post about being gay at work and asks you to take stock of your support system in Support (if It’s Not love, Then It’s the Bomb).

If you don’t do mentoring then my guess is you don’t do Succession Planning. With a blog post titled Got Succession Planning Phobia? You’ve Got Problems, you can bet that the CEO of Aquire, Lois Melbourne has some specific thoughts on the subject.

Friends don’t let friends make HR mistakes so please read the HR Observations post by Michael Haberman on the Top 5 HR Mistakes That Small Businesses Make.

I’m sure the HR Bartender has a fabulous recipe for Hurricanes but more importantly, Sharlyn Lauby in Failure is Nothing Personal explains that it might be your methods that are failing.

Continuing the discussion on failures, Mark Bennett over at Talented Apps wants you to Focus on Failure! and learn from your failures when they happen.

Steve Boese thinks that Gartner may have forgotten that HR can and should play a role in Social Media initiatives and would like your thoughts on subject. Head over to What’s Missing from the 2010 Social Software Predictions to add your comments.

Now sometimes when you are enjoying the Mardi Gras celebration you need a little encouragement in form of Beads.

Speaking of needing some beads, over at Simply Lisa, Lisa Rosendahl gives us some thoughts on how to free up the mind to write in The Anti-Writing Demon.

Over at Humor That Works, Drew Tarvin talks about what you can learn from an improv class. I wonder if the 10 tips include tips for attracting bead throwers.

Beads are a powerful motivation but more importantly Three Star Leadership’s Wally Bock tells us about a different type of motivation in Putting Drive to Work: Intrinsic Motivation.

Continuing our discussion of motivation, Mr. Renegade HR himself, Chris Ferdinandi, wants your thoughts on How to Turn Average Performers into Rockstars.

Beads are also currency and The HR Store answers a write in question about negotiating a better salary for a job offer in Job offer negotiation.

Let’s not forget our international currency by reading Three Rules for Compensation Surveys in Smaller Developing Markets by Warren Heaps over at the International HR Forum.

More than just about beads, Bill Kutik writes What Does Salary.com Actually do and lets us in on the best kept secret in HR Technology and as a bonus gives us his thoughts on the SuccessFactors purchase of Inform.

Giving and collecting beads are a passion for some people and in the appropriately titled Passion – It’s Not a Dirty Word in HR, Steve Browne guest posts at the Cincy Recruiter blog to tell us how to be passionate about HR.

I don’t know how Naomi Bloom feels about beads but she has become passionate about blogging.  Read Thinking Is My Job: Blogging Those Thoughts Is Now My Passion and learn about who Naomi has beaten on over the years and why she is publishing her methodology for strategic HRM delivery systems planning.

Mark Stelzner at Inflexion Advisors wants to throw beads to everyone with his simple plea to be passionate about something in A Plea For Passion.

At some Mardi Gras celebrations people wear masks to conceal their identities.

Let Lance Haun over at Rehaul show you how to take off the mask of your current career and show the real you in his book review post Doing a Career Transition the Right Way of Alexandra Levit’s new book.

Office politics: It’s Personal is the final installment of the 5 part office politics series over at Jennifer Miller’s blog where you can explore your personal influence.

Speaking of being an influencer, Heather Stagl at Enclaria gives us Ten Essential Tools for Change Agents to help influence when you have no direct authority.

Ready to switch to a mask that is unfamiliar to you?  At the Great Leadership blog, Dan McCarthy has some advice for people ready to make a lateral move into a role that is unfamiliar to them in Career Advice Part 3: Lateral Moves.

Masks can also be used to hide things we are uncomfortable talking about but Kathleen Nicolini over at the Omaha.net blog tackles obesity with A Big Problem: Obesity and Employee Rights .

Put on your mask of shame and head over to Susan Heathfield’s post Your Worst Job – Ever? where Readers share their worst job – ever.

Sometimes the goal at Mardi Gras is just to party on and have safe and sane good time.

I’m guessing the partying is kept to a minimum at these top 11 HR Masters Programs described by Jared Lucas over at The HR Patriot.

Mardi Gras can suck you in and so did the SHRM website for April Dowling. Head over to PseudoHR to read From APA to SHRM for the juicy details.

Mardi Gras is also about meeting new people and in Networking – Online of Off, Joan Ginsberg thinks the “traditional forms of networking are pointless time-wasters”.

If you don’t have any free time you probably won’t be able to go to Mardi Gras so be sure to stop by Blogging4jobs and let Jessica Miller-Merrell teach you 6 Time Saving Business Social Media Tools.

Of course you can’t have a good time at a party if you have not honed your conversational awareness so head on over to Jason Seiden’s wrap up of how-to posts on developing organizational savvy for Tips & Tricks: Develop Your Conversational Awareness (5 of 5).

The amazing HR Maven, Deirdre Honner, tells us why she continues to party on work, write, blog & talk with her blog post Why I do it.

I don’t know about you but I always get a return on my investment when attending Mardi Gras (beads anyone?) so read on about HR ROI.

What is the #1 HR Metric to Report to Your CEO? I am not going to give it way so you will just have to read this post from Cathy Missildine-Martin at the Profitability Through Human Capital blog.

I usually get a return on investment from my beads but do you know how to evaluate the ROI for your Learning Programs?  If not, you had better go read Reviving Training’s DOA ROI by Kevin Oakes.

Payroll is a topic not always covered in our sexy HR blogs but Tusha Bhatia over at the Talent Junction blog has a great post covering ROI on automating the Payroll Function.

Thank you everyone for your fantastic contributions to this Carnival of HR and to the readers for taking time to find some new blog posts to read.  Stay tuned for a very special Undercover Boss edition of the Carnival of HR hosted by Bryon Abramowitz at The HR Technologist Blog on February 24th.