I tried not to preoccupy myself with the new user interface for Amazon Fire TV. Ok, why the main navigation is down the middle of the screen is odd. I did figure out how to change the default apps with enough clicks of the remote. And the issue with the back button not working seemed to go away when I restarted the Fire TV device. Perhaps I did obsess a little on it?

Trell–oh! – I have been using the Web-based productivity tool Trello for some time now, but I always felt there was more to learn. After taking the course Trello Essential Training on LinkedIn Learning I now understand it writ large. This 2+ hour course is lively and covers many features and how to use power-ups. My biggest takeaways were on checklists and how to copy them, assignments, due dates and covers.

Clarity on Privacy – I also took a course offered by Siteimprove Academy on the European Union privacy law GDPR. This course is only available within a customer account, and was a good high-level overview of GDPR and provided me with the areas I need to dig deeper to understand and verify plans are in place to comply.

And if you ever saw it... – An interesting idea I ran across is Nosy which is a filtered covering for your nose and your nose only. Seeing is believing for me and likely for you. I didn’t dig deep enough though to see if it would fit over a nose as grand as my own.

Proclamations to Nobody – I read earlier this week that April 5 was Golden Rule Day here in the childhood home city of Harry Houdini. This of course was well after the day. Had I not read this on the All Things Appleton site I mentioned a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have seen it elsewhere. Perhaps it was posted on social media and no other place? Am I overanalyzing this like the Fire TV UI?

The Frozen One – Congrats to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (better known as UMass) for winning the NCAA Mens Hockey Championship. I remember when UMass started a hockey team and joined the Hockey East conference where my team, the Boston University Terriers, dominated for so long. As someone who often, um, socialized on the state university campus when I was matriculating elsewhere, Go Minutemen!

Can You See My Email Now? – I often get text messages from friends saying email from me goes into their spam or marketing folders in their email program. I then tell them to setup a whitelisting rule so that doesn’t happen. They then give me a strange look. I found this week a list of how to whitelist email addresses on popular email platforms from Progress Software.

Vote For New Paradigms – This week Apple CEO Tim Cook said on a podcast that he would like to be able to vote from his iPhone. Shortly thereafter Ohio’s Secretary of State expressed his disagreement.

I’m on the side of Cook on this one, and have been for a while. Digital voting is already being done in some US states and around the world. The comparison to billions of dollars of transactions every day is a valid one. Will someone try to hack a purely digital system? Of course. Computer security is a constantly moving effort – now and in the future. The benefits of digital voting go purely beyond convenience, as many who lives in lower-income areas use mobile devices as their computer as well. It also addresses issues of Accessibility, and as I have said on this little blog before, Accessibility efforts help everyone. Digital voting must be invested in for it to become a valid reality. And with that, I will step off of my soapbox.

Just Didn’t Do It – My friend Nick Gracilla wrote an inspiring piece on the word “just” being a four-letter word to him. There are many words and phrases which, you know, like that can easily be replaced or edited out of a sentence altogether, and just is one for him.

Out of Time – This week I participated in some of VirCon, the virtual conference offered by HighRoad Solutions. The conference had a Back to the Future theme, and some good topics. That being said, as it was in the middle of the workday, I registered but only caught live a few sessions. My plan was all along to watch the recordings after the fact, and being live in some was a bonus.

Time On My Side – Shortly talking with Kim at HighRoad Solutions about VirCon I pulled up along-side the above-pictured original DeLorean modified to look like the very car Doc Brown enhanced. I see this car around a lot, and the timing of it all was intriguing.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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I wonder how often domain names are taught at the university level.

This thought was in the back of my mind as I developed and gave a guest lecture in the Fall of 2020 to students of Dr. Sara Steffes Hanses at the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh on consulting. I have had the honor to present to her classes in the past to share my wisdom and lessons learned over the years as a consultant – and how I think as a consultant even when I work for a firm. Where this lecture was virtual, my plan was to deliver it with the same enthusiasm as I have in the past.

The class I gave the guest lecture to is part of a program called Interactive Web Management, or IWM. It is a unique hybrid of business, technology, marketing and journalism, and students in the IWM program get a well-rounded education and experience across all that encompasses a Web site today. Especially in today’s world of hyper-specialization I see this program as a great way to offer the big picture, and allow graduates to choose their specialty or specialties.

Timing for my class was around the first meeting students have with their “clients,” non-profit or university organizations for whom they will consult to, which is the basis of their semester work. As I have given this guest lecture before, there are many elements that are continued. That being said, I fully re-evaluate it based on my own experience and the marketplace since the last lecture.

This is also why I introduced “extras” a few years ago – topics that were not core to the lecture but related and important nonetheless. For one of my extras this time, I chose domain names. If you have read anything else I have written here at The Hot Iron, you know I work a lot with domain names and have opinions and advice on them. I decided to cover domain names as an “extra” as many may have some familiarity with them, but not all aspects.

Two slides were dedicated to domain names, as you can see from the presentation linked and embedded. Where the bullet points were brief, there was a lot of substance I spoke to. As an introduction, I reaffirmed likely to all what a domain name is and how you can use it. I also talked about the selection of a name, giving an example of how one friend and former client, Foresight Childproofing, came up with their primary domain name, ChildProofHome.com. I then concluded this with talking about the various top-level domains, or TLDs, available, and recommended people have a great experience with working with domain names at Name.com.

As the first slide focused on registering a new, available domain name, I could have stopped there and felt good about the knowledge I shared. However I decided to go deeper and explore with them the world of the domain name aftermarket – when a domain name you desire is already registered and is available for registration at a premium price from a broker. I feel if people know very little about domain names in general, they are completely clueless about the aftermarket. Here I described what it is, and shared stories of how I acquired domain names from the aftermarket for clients in the past. I also recommended they explore DomainMarket.com, a larger and reputable marketplace.

I have shared the slides to my guest lecture here for all to review and “leverage” for their own use on SlideShare, whether for work, academia or personal use.

Deconstructing Educating on Domain Names

There’s no time like the present for a teaching moment. As a guest lecturer, it is your role to contribute something unique to the class – whether it’s a unique topic or point-of-view. Bringing a heightened awareness of domain names to this class was my way of offering both. Did it resonate with the students? I can’t say for sure, as most had their cameras off.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Without further blather...

A work (State) view with brews – I just joined Stateview Commons, a co-working space located on the main street in my fair city. It’s a great, stylish and practical space and has already helped my productivity. Although there’s always the adverse happening as it has a view to not one but two great brewpubs across the street.

Studying in former style – Former mall store spaces, abandoned due to both the shift in retail shopping as well as poor business choices, are being reimagined in varying ways. One example is a recently-relocated high school in Burlington, Vermont. As many of the store fixtures are still in place, perhaps it should be called a haute school?

Maybe this is why the store closed? – Vermont doesn’t have any billionaires living within its borders and it is not the only US state without a resident with all those commas in their net worth.

Reasons to go OTG – For as much as computers have improved our lives, it seems at every turn there’s some application of them that at least I wish wasn’t there. Google has started testing its new ad “targeting” technology in its Chrome browser whether you know it or not. There’s some solace from Apple as they are rolling out a new feature in iOS that will allow you to see what apps are tracking about you. There’s no shortage of reasons to go off the grid, even if for a few minutes.

Swimming with more purpose than usual – One of my kiddos former swim teammates is taking his swim game to a higher level. This summer he will swim 10 miles across the width of Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin, and during his training he is aiming to raise $50,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. You can support his worthy effort here as my family has. Go Ian!

A less desirable swim thru Accessibility law – If you have a Web site you should have some basic familiarity on Web Accessibility. If you don’t, this presentation I did a year ago on Web Accessibility is a good start. Even if you do, the $100,000 question is what laws apply to it, if any do. This week a ruling came down that the Americans with Disability Act did not apply in one case. To add to this, a bill is floating around Washington, DC to attempt to tie the Act to Web site. In the meantime, work with whomever manages your Web site to ensure you have the basics covered.

Minority Report – This week I watched a recording of Advancing Leadership Agility offered by the Scrum Alliance. Even if you’re not interested in the topic, fast-forward to around the 25 minute mark on a survey on employee engagement. Spoiler alert: only 35% of surveyed employees said they are engaged in the workplace!

Solid state Spring cleaning – For Mac owners, here’s how you can search and identify if you can make more space on your hard drive by deleting old log files. Sadly this didn’t yield me much more room, hopefully you’ll have better results.

Gables soon gone – I have often admired the craft that went into the design of the gables on this house. I see it often as it’s across from the local facility where my kiddos swim. Sadly its days are numbered, as the house, long empty and slated to be demolished, will finally be torn down in the coming weeks. In its place will be a parking lot for said local facility. Where such moves are always in the name of progress, hopefully what comes of its demise will sprout something else great.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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The phrase Spring Break conjures up images of partying in Florida that I never did in college. So when my kiddos had Spring Break this week, where that strangely came to mind, in reality it was a road trip to Ohio and a short but nice staycation. I even took a few days off of work, and actually unplugged from the office for most of it. Seriously.

No fooling – Thursday was the first day of April, often called April Fool’s Day. A couple of clever things I found were Synology’s FreshStation and the Nielsen Norman Group’s article on how much users love constant change. I opted to not write on this day, especially as something I wrote a decade ago on Google removing the search box from their home page not only fell flat but turned into a self-fulfilling prophesy with how mobile and home speaker devices listen to you constantly these days.

Capitalist tradition – Many times I have referred to the tasty meat products produced by Jacobs Meat Market, a local legend here in Northeast Wisconsin. This article tells well the story of the three-generations business tradition Jacobs is.

I gotta update what? – If you are a non-technical Web site owner and have gotten emails about updating Google Analytics code and don’t know what to do about it, you are not alone. Perhaps you may not even know what Google Analytics is, but that’s a topic for another time. The search behemoth has made changes to this free service of measuring traffic to your Web site. For those with Squarespace Web sites this article on how to integrate the Google Analytics changes is helpful as I needed it myself for some I help support.

Physics 101 – Not all doll heads turn. If you happen to force it to turn, good luck reattaching it.

You get a train station, and you... – Amtrak this week came out with a map of “aspirations” for how to expand personal train riding across the US. These are merely proposed ideas, and have no budget or approvals from governmental bodies or the conglomerates who own the train tracks. Where it’s nice to dream, until Amtrak can operate without heavy government subsidies per ticket, these new lines on the map may remain just in someone’s head.

All Things In Depth – A relatively new Web site in my area All Things Appleton has become a go-to for me for depth in news that is sadly missing from the newspapers of record. Just about every major newspaper in Wisconsin is owned by Gannett and is under the umbrage of USA Today Wisconsin. This goes beyond branding, and has consolidated printing facilities and reporters, leaving what I consider a poor overall product. Yet I still subscribe, as it gives me the headlines that I need to look into further elsewhere, like on independent Web sites like All Things Appleton.

Banked Billions – I finished binge-watching Billions. It’s fifth season was cut short due to COVID-19, and left me wanting more. In short, I liked Axe over Chuck, and Wendy over both. I have no idea if this is truly what it is like to be a billionaire hedge fund manager, but the optics are enticing.

How Are We Meeting? – Last week I took a class at work on effective meetings taught by Anthony Mersino of Vitality Chicago. The greatest thing I learned from him was to have meeting retrospectives. Often we have regular meetings and after a while they are so routine that we’re not sure if they even effective. By hosting an occasional retrospective, we may find ways to make the meeting more effective, efficient or perhaps decide to not have it at all. I plan to take this to task with regular meetings I facilitate and participate in.

At the corner of Style and Price in Chicago – A few weeks ago Irish discount clothing retailer Primark opened a store in Chicago at the corner of State and Washington Streets in the Loop. This space sat empty for years and was previously an Old Navy and Gap store. The kiddos give it high marks, and will certainly be a stop on our next visit back to the Windy City.

Partially righting a wrong in Chicago – Overdue news came this week as the Chicago Park District announced it was replacing a slide at Maggie Daley Park that has caused many injuries to people who went on it. Those injured include my kiddos, who both got scrapes and were bleeding after their first rides on the slide, prompting us never to return.

The playground was part of the new park which replaced the former Daley Bicentennial Plaza, a lovely park that needed to be ripped up to repair the parking garage below it. I lamented and paid homage to what I called the “locals park” when it closed. I felt the replacement park was too much of a showplace and not functional. A parent did not have complete line of sight over the entire park, and with little kids that can easily get lost (and did) it was problematic. Plus the bathrooms were too far away, requiring the placement of porta-potties by the playground. Add the slide to the mix, and it was a one-and-done visit for many.

Sanitary for your protection – For our staycation we went to a local hotel under the Hilton umbrella. I can count on one hand how many hotel night stays I have had in the last year, but I digress. When we arrived at our room the above-shown “seal” was on the door. This brought back memories of the 1970’s when you would stay at a wayside motel and there would be a “sanitary for your protection” ribbon on the toilet seat, causing me to wonder how clean it real was. The Lysol branding on this sticker put the image of housekeeping staff fogging the entire room. Once we entered we found a nice room and had no concerns of its cleanliness. Despite the thoughts of the chain’s CEO, we left a tip for housekeeping.

"To hold a pen is to be at war..." – Voltaire

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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If a day goes by where you don’t learn something new, what good is it really? Sometimes that new nugget of knowledge is welcomed and cherished, and sometimes it is scary as all hell and you wished you didn’t know it. Nonetheless, learning is what we do on this journey of life, whether we like it or not.

What you just read was how I opened a post on March 27, 2020, when I brought back the concept of writing on what I learned in the previous week. This was also how I opened the original series of these posts, which I started on a Friday back in 2014. As lockdowns and shutdowns were underway and everybody was now working at home, I thought of resurrecting this idea. Call it a distraction, call it a way to breathe new life back into The Hot Iron, I figured I’d give it a try.

A year later I am still at it. Every week without fail I wrote what crossed my purview the previous week. Some weeks it hit on Friday, other weeks on Sunday, but nonetheless it did hit. Looking back on these posts, as well as the year in general, here’s what I learned on this strange trip.

I’m not tired of doing this – Going into the first edition of the series last year, I had no plans for how long I would do this. I looked back at the first run and I ended it after 8 months, and wrote a summary like this one a few months later. Trying to recall my thinking 7 years ago, I wanted to get back to writing standard, one-topic tomes rather than weekly summaries.

This time, I looked forward to compiling my weekly notes. I still do. I also tried to write one-topic posts as well, and I was relatively successful at that over the year. I continue to strive to do those as well.

This serves as a personal archive – Years ago I had a separate blog called sourcegate where I posted tech tips. Although I was glad to contribute contextualized tools to the world, its true catalyst was a personal quick reference library. My What I Learned posts ended up serving the same purpose, especially chronicling such gems as the link check tool and better meme generator I found.

People are reading it – If you know me, you know I am not exactly an introvert. My ego, though kept in check through marriage and fatherhood, is still alive and kicking. However over the years I have never assumed anything I wrote here was going to be a runaway hit. Often I wrote something for a specific purpose, striking the iron while it is hot, but much of the content here has been to share my thoughts and observations in the realms of business and technology, with the occasional diversion.

As I wrote What I Learned columns, I got feedback from people. It came in the form of comments to a post, as well as a reply to the email they received through their subscription or even a text message. And the feedback was positive! I appreciate that my thoughts in digital form resonated with people, and that has been a part of why I continue doing this.

With this I will pat myself on the back and continue looking out there. Whether it’s on the screen in front of me, the podcast playing in the background or the people I meet (and hopefully much more frequently going forward), I enjoy learning new things. Maybe you learned something new yourself?

Photo collage of images from past What I Learned posts made with Canva. Yes, this is an affiliate link.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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