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March 23, 2009

Quoted in "Planet Google"

Somebody at work was listening to the audio version of the book Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan To Organize Everything We Know and they heard my name mentioned. The author, Randall Stross, was quoting the third paragraph of this blog entry about how it is silly to demand that employees use your own products; if they use your competitor's products, it's a sign you should work harder on your own. He also quoted the first commenter from that same post.

The person who lent me the audio book has his name featured in this video (you have to look carefully to see it). I assumed that he was somehow involved in working on that product, but he said he wasn't. I guess his name appears on the "approved name list". I thought I had blogged about this but I couldn't find it...Microsoft maintains a list of "approved names" which you can use if you want to, say, want to create an ad that show a screen shot of a bunch of database rows. The names are all employees who have agreed to have their names used this way; you can request to be added to the list if you want. One time I arrived at the airport with my family and was greeted by a giant Windows Mobile poster that had my name included in a contact list. I know it was me (not the other guy with the same name) because right after it was the name of somebody else I worked with on a project in 1995, when our name were presumably harvested. I actually don't recall giving permission, but I assume I did (the kids were amused seeing my name up there, so I'm perfectly happy to be included).

Posted by AdamBa at March 23, 2009 10:07 PM

Comments

Funny you mention this. I just started reading your blog because of that mention in Planet Google.

Posted by: AK at March 24, 2009 09:11 AM