A great article to help answer this is “How to recogni[z]e a good programmer“. Although this article focuses on programmers, I believe the same points apply to IT people as well. To me, this article hits the nail on the head and I pretty much agree with everything here.

Side Bar / Rant Alert -

Personally, I have never been a fan of certifications (and I take it the author of this article shares my opinion). They do have their place and assure you the person has at least a certain level of knowledge, but this does not always translate to real world performance. I do not mean to take anything away from those with certifications, but I have dealt with so many “certified” IT people over the years that really were not up to snuff, which is where my cynicism is rooted.

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Recognizing A Good Programmer (/ IT Person)

BlogJet offers loads of features (listed on their website) and praised by many (Google search it) as one of the best editors available. There is also a demo video available on their site so you can see it in action.

BlogJet does offer a free trial, but you will need to purchase it if you find you want to continue using it. If you post quite a bit, this may be money well spent.

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Blog Editor For ‘Power Bloggers’

I’m not saying you need to be anal retentive about it, but taking a few extra seconds to proof what you are about to put your name on is time well spent. When you are sending personal correspondence, use whatever you like, but when you are ‘on the clock’ represent yourself well.

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Use Proper Case And Spell Check In Professional Communications

The DNP Express Edition is ideal for VPS and dedicated server owners, home hosting, education and evaluation use. You can manage an unlimited number of domains or websites, install it on three servers with up to five users, and it runs on Windows Server 2008 Web edition. And, best of all, it’s FREE!

DotNetPanel Express Edition offers most of what you would need to get started (check out the features on their page). Of course, the free version is limited in both features and scalability when compared to the enterprise edition, but for small/personal/start up deployments, this can be a great choice.

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Free Windows Hosting Control Panel

If you operate a business, having your domain name lapse is disastrous. Not only do you lose your website and email, but a ’squatter’ could snatch the domain name and want a ridiculous price for it. Not to mention, the new domain owner now controls both where your website goes and the flow of your email.

Think about that for a few minutes…

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Renew Your Crucial Domains For The Long Term

Scrubber works by comparing all of your Outlook Contacts, looking for possible duplicate items. As it finds these potential duplicates, it presents them to you one at a time via an intuitive interface, displaying field-by-field comparisons of the contact data, and proposing a logical way to merge this data into a single contact item. You may then merge the contacts by either accepting Scrubber’s proposed merge, or you can select which values to used on a field-by-field basis in the merged contact item. Great for eliminating duplicate Outlook Contacts created by your BlackBerry or iPhone.

Contacts Scrubber works on Outlook (not Express though) 2000 and later. The free version of this program processes up to 1,000 entries so if you have more contacts or need additional features, taking a look at the pro version might be worth the time.

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Remove Duplicate Contact Entries From Outlook

No registration is required and usage could not be easier. Just enter information for both you and the recipient, upload your file and then send. It’s that easy.

Of course, there are some limitations with using the free option, but in the event you need to remove these, there is a premium option where you just have to pay a small fee to send the fax. Overall, either method sure beats having to go find a fax machine (and most likely pay to use it) elsewhere.

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Send A Fax For Free Over The Internet

On a related note, phishers and scammers are taking advantage of job applicants as well by setting up phony companies to order to gather personal information. This is an article definitely worth looking at if you are applying for a job primarily via electronic communication.

Job seekers who posted their resumes on Monster, Career Builder and Yahoo received e-mails from either USA Voice or Instant Human Resources, telling them that based on the their resumes they qualified for a promising sounding position. Those who didn’t smell a scam right away filled out online applications, in the process disclosing personal information.

Just be careful who you give your personal information to. Whenever there is opportunity, you can bet scammers are looking to take advantage of people.

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Job Hunting? Beware Of Phishers

Shoeboxed does the grunt work for you: scanning your receipts so you have all the data you need for taxes, bookkeeping, and expense reports, and now scanning business cards for easy contact management.

So step away from your scanner; mail your receipts and business cards to Shoeboxed and we’ll do the rest.

Shoeboxed is a pay-per service, but if you need to do this the price is very competitive when compared to your time. One thing to be wary of though would be sending receipts which have sensitive (i.e. credit card number) information, but for the most part I don’t think this is printed on customer copies anymore. If so, you can just use a marker to scratch them out.

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Outsource Scanning And Organizing Receipts

One of Yahoo’s oldest web sites, Yahoo! Finance (YHOO), is a good place to check on how tech stocks are doing. You can also perform quick stock searches by searching for the symbol on Google, ex. searching for GOOG.

Side note: Speaking of the GOOG, they might be purchasing Twitter, so that will be an interesting one to follow.

To those interested in tech stocks, or any stocks for that matter, but have no idea how they would perform or how to go about investing, I always suggest playing fantasy stock market. This is fun, easy and most of the time free so it requires no investment on your part.

Here’s a few suggestions if you want to play the market fantasy-style:

• FantasyStockMarket.com – Simple site, easy to navigate and get started.
• Virtual Stock Exchange – This is run by MarketWatch, a well-known finance site.
• Wall Street Survivor – This one has an interesting twist because you can actually win real cash and prizes here, so the game itself can actually be profitable.

Why play fantasy with tech stocks instead of doing the real thing?

The answer is to gain experience before taking the plunge, so to speak. Some people say tech stocks are totally worth it while others say it’s a complete waste of time and money, and far too unstable. However with the experience gained from fantasy playing, you can answer the question for yourself whether or not they’re worth it – free.

What’s your take? Would you or do you invest in tech stocks?

Does it sound like a boom or bust? Let us know in the comments.

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Are Tech Stocks Worth The Investment?