A summary of articles related to a particular topic. These could range from software development, leadership, and business.
Articles It’s official: Video games make your brain bigger: I don't have much time for video games anymore, but this is still totally awesome news. It's in. It's official. Video games can actually make you smarter. How great is that? If you're like me and you find you don't have much time for games any more, it might be worth picking up a hobby game. It's a great way to relax provided you don't get too addicted to it and apparently it can make you smarter. Perfect combo! The myth of the brainstorming session: The best ideas don’t always come from meetings: I thought this article was pretty interesting because we do a lot of brain storming at our office. Sometimes I like to think the sessions go smoothly or that they're productive. When I contrast them with particular cases…
My Team Triumph - Canada You probably haven't heard of it, but I can assure you that will change. Today I was fortunate enough to participate in the first My Team Triumph race in Canada. My Team Triumph is a program that allows people of all ages with disabilities to participate in endurance events. With a great volunteer staff, a few angels, and all of the amazing captains, this was made possible. My Team Triumph takes their inspiration from Team Hoyt, whom you've probably heard of. Now I can't do the Hoyt story any justice, so I suggest you head over to their site to get the full details. Team Hoyt is a father-son team that has competed in over a thousand races; however, their team is slightly different than your average racer in these events. Dick Hoyt, the father,…
v6.2 Release: Mobile Forensics Upgrade I like to be able to use these weekly article dumps for little summaries of what's going on in my work life, and I think this is a perfect opportunity to acknowledge our latest product update at Magnet Forensics. We just pushed out v6.2 of Internet Evidence Finder and we're incredibly proud of the work we've done. Like any release we have, we pour our hearts into making sure it's a few big steps forward. We've done our best to listen to customers and work with them to address any bugs, but we're always trying to push the boundaries in our features. Some of the new offerings in v6.2 of Internet Evidence Finder include: Dynamic App Finder: We now offer a solution for recovering mobile chat applications that we may not have otherwise supported. This…
Movember Preparation You might think we're a bit early on this one, but at Magnet Forensics we're going to take Movember to a whole new level this year. If you're not familiar with Movember, you may want to head over here and get a rundown of the history of it. Movember started in Australia between a group of people who wanted to (somewhat jokingly) bring the moustache back into style. The next year they started getting people to grow mo's for causes. Now people participate in Movember to raise awareness for men's health, and it's bigger than ever. Our team members of MoMagnets have started discussing the various styles of mo's that they'll grow this year. It looks like there's going to be some intra-team competition to grow the best mo. The top contenders? It's looking like: Matthew Chang Cameron…
Recognition - Weekly Article Dump Not all of the articles this week touch on recognition, and to be honest, I didn't pick it as a theme for the articles either. Recognition is more a topic of discussion that's come up over the last week at Magnet Forensics, where I work. Being a team lead and part of the management team at Magnet, I'm often part of conversations about motivation. Providing recognition is an excellent way to motivate your staff and shows that you truly appreciate them. We've been trying to get better at recognizing staff for doing an awesome job--especially because we have so many awesome people working with us. It's pretty obvious with our Profit Hot 50 placement that we've got some kick-ass people. Recognition, whether it's one-on-one or in a public setting, has a huge impact. I don't…
PROFIT HOT 50 It's with great honour that I can say the company I'm part of, Magnet Forensics, has achieved the 7th place in the Profit Hot 50 rankings for 2013. Last year Magnet Forensics was also on the list ranked at number 16th, but we've shown ourselves up by moving a full 9 positions! Our ranking in the Profit Hot 50 is even more impressive considering we're the only company from Kitchener-Waterloo region in Ontario--Known for it's incredible startup community and success stories--that made the list. We're excited and tremendously proud of our accomplishments, but it's certainly going to be quite the challenge for us to move up in rank next year. It's a challenge we're all ready to take on though. You can check out the ranking over here or at the official Profit Guide posting. Articles I'll put…
Failure: Should You Fear It? Thanks for checking out this weekly article dump, and sorry it didn't make it out on Friday. I was out visiting family in Alberta and I didn't have enough time to get this post all set up. Better late than never! The theme for this past week seemed to be articles about failure. Not all of them, of course, but a lot of authors are writing about what it means to fail and why that's not always such a bad thing. Do we need to avoid all failures in order to be successful? Articles Stepping Away, So Others Can Step Up: In this article, Jonathan Bush discusses something that's often hard for leaders to do... Step away. It's difficult for many people to disconnect and have trust in their team to get things done. Trust should…
Great Leadership Reads Here's a collection of articles I've shared over the past week on social media outlets. There's a lot of great leadership reads this time around! If You Don't Treat Your Interns Right, You are Mean...and Stupid: This is a great post by Nancy Lublin that talks about something many full-time people share a common (and usually lousy) perspective on: interns. In my opinion, if you aren't going to treat your interns well, you shouldn't be hiring them. One key take away point from the article is ensuring that you treat your internship programs as something real and meaningful. Now, as a computer engineering graduate from the University of Waterloo and from being part of the leadership staff at Magnet Forensics, I've seen both sides of the story. Companies should treat their interns well, but interns should also realize companies…
A weekly summary of articles focusing on career development, leadership, startups and development. This is one BIG list!
Everyone always says singletons are bad, but I don't think they are inherently evil. What are some of the major issues with singletons?
