From my work I come into contact with all kinds of people.  I've been traveling a lot and have had the opportunity to talk to people who work at other compainies. And one of the types of people that I occasionally run into could be labeled as "frustrated talented guy".  They are often frustrated because they feel they should be promoted, make more money, given more authority, etc. based strictly on their inate talent.

But talent really isn't enough, not usually and certainly not in business.  There's no substitute for effort -- working hard.  And that's what ends up being the obstacle for frustrated talented guy.  Because they'll see people they know (or at least they think) are less talented than they are.  Why were they passed up? They usually assume that they lost out because of "company politics" or "seniority" or something else.  Because, after all, any clear thinking business person should reward the most talented individuals, right?

That's not how it really works. Because the one who produces the most is the one who is going to win out. And while frustrated tlaened guy may have the potential to outproduce his or her peers, he or she chooses not to. In fact, often times frustrated talented guy is flagrantly not pulling their weight. Barely doing the bear minimum.  And yet they still walk around with a sense of entitlement becuase of how smart they think they are how much more talented they are than others.

Effort. Effort is the key because usually frustrated talented guy is putting in so little effort (relatively) and "regular guy" is working so hard that the regular guy (who is usually a lot more talented than people realize but is a lot less flamboyant about it) is out-producing frustrated talented guy by 2X or 3X. And that's why regular guy often beats talented guy.

For those of you interested in what the new office looks like here's a video I took (in .WMV format) with my digital camera.  The first part is muted (too windy) but I narrate a bit once inside.

Microsoft-Watcher Mary Jo Foley has been the scurge of Microsoft since the mid 90s.  Back when I was an OS/2 developer, there'd be people in the office half-rooting/half-fearing what MJ would write next about the empire. 

Now that Microsoft-Watch.com, her website/super-blog has taken off, her coverage of Longhorn has given many of Microsoft's advocates some heart burn.

The problem Microsoft is having and that Mary Jo is reporting is that Longhorn has been a much more..organic development than say Windows NT was.  The problems it is being designed to solve have changed during the course of development and as a result the priorities of Longhorn have had to change to adapt to new realities in the market.  Of course, when a site like Microsoft-Watch.com points out these changes, it can create some groaning to those who would prefer to sweep under the rug the fact that, yes Virginia, Longhorn's specs of 2005 bear little resemblance to what they were to be at PDC back in 2003 even.

So what's the verdict? Is Mary Jo just telling to cold hard truth, or is she the bringer of an anti-Microsoft FUD party?

DigiTimes has a great Q&A session with Chris Jones about what Longhorn is going to have in it.  It's definitely worth the read.

Big thanks to Mary Jo Foley for the link.

We had a good time at deviantART Summit. For a first-time thing it came off rather well. We got to meet a lot of people from the community.  If you missed it, below is a link to a video of what the show looked like and on my personal page (frogboy.wincustomize.com) you can go to the photo album tab to see some pictures from the show.

We're here for day 2 of deviantART Summit. Yesterday we met a lot of people from the community.  I did a class on how to create skins, icons, themes, etc.

With me is Mormegil, author of many of the most popular icon packages on the net.  He's been doing live icon creation demos here at the Stardock booth.

I've also been taking some video which I'll put up as soon as I get a way to transfer them to the computer.

We're here at the deviantART Summit this week.  It's a show where people from the art community, which includes graphics designers (and skinners which are the particular type of artist who create content for our software).

I haven't done a show like this in a long time.  But I'll be keeping a daily blog of what is going on.

Today and tomorrow at the Hollywood Palladium the first annual deviantART Summit is taking place. If you live in the LA area, come up and see it, it's looking pretty good.

I'm there, Moremgil is here, Cordellia is here, and lots of other people from the community. We have a booth here along with companies such as Adobe, Corel, Linspire, and many others.

Watch this space for photos and updates on what's happening.

Nearly every day we receive emails from users asking why we don't have a section for a given program.  The answer is usually fairly straight forward (often depressingly straight forward):  The people who make program X don't respond to emails from us.

To have a gallery on WinCustomize.com the following criteria have to be met:

(1) The program that uses the content has to be reasonably popular

(2) The people who make the program have to be willing to link to their gallery in a way that will send users here.

(3) The people who make the program whose content we'd be hosting have to agree to help "seed" the gallery to get it going.

That's pretty much it.  So if you have a favorite program whose skins you wish we had, contact the authors and ask them to contact us about getting a gallery up for them.  WinCustomize.com has 2.1 MILLION registered users and monthly traffic that exceeds 3 million unique visitors, it's a great way to get a program much greater visibility.  But in return, we need the program authors to send us traffic too.