General Jared Shockley General Jared Shockley

Welcome to my Launch

Welcome to my new blog, Jared on Tech. The things I will be talking about are technology, gadgets, services and how people and businesses can use them. If you know me personally, you know that these things are a big part of my life today and into my future. Postings will range from a quick thought to fully thought out, researched articles to guest postings by friends on topics I think you will enjoy. I am also setting up a specific Twitter account, http://twitter.com/jaredontech, to talk about these posts and other posts I find on the internet that would be of use to like-minded people.

I will be enabling comments on my site but they will be moderated. I hope to approve all comments but will be deleting or modifying comments that I feel are offensive to the general public (not offensive to me specifically), to be of a spam nature, or of a flame nature. I want to encourage thoughtful discussion and interactions with people coming to my blog but I also will not allow it to be a platform for "diarrhea mouth syndrome".

Please head on over to my bio page to learn a bit more about me and my background. A few things about my writing style and my biases:

  1. My writing style is pretty upfront. I will be using citations of other sites to show some of the details that I have found or include screenshots of my own findings. At other times, the writing will be my opinion and viewpoint.
  2. I worked at Microsoft and feel their solutions are some of the better ones out there. They are not the only ones and in some cases, not the best ones.
  3. Google is the ultimate evil. As I found online, "if you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." 1 Google's intent is to deliver advertising to you as they state that "We generate revenue primarily by delivering relevant, cost-effective online advertising." 2 in their 10K filing with the SEC. I do not use Google tools as much as I can and block their tools as much as possible.
  4. Apple makes wonderful devices and an okay operating system. That said, I personally do not want to pay extra for their devices nor get locked into their world (iTunes, iThis, iThat). I feel they are way behind in thinking about certain aspects including security and compatibility with other systems. If you do not do it their way, you are not allowed to do it.

One thing I will be setting up is my blog entries available through RSS fully. One thing I hate on other blogs is when they only give you the "summary" via RSS making you visit their site. I understand they are trying to make their money via site advertising but it is very annoying. I would love to have you visit my site to drive my possible income, but this is not a primary job for me. If that ever changes, I will let everyone know but that will never change. I might include ads in the feed but I will be transparent with you about it. One area for income I will be using is being an Amazon Affiliate. Thank goodness I live in Washington, so it will never go away for me. If I list items that you are interested in and want to purchase from Amazon, please use my links to get me what little from them in return.

Thanks for coming to this new site and I hope you get as much from it as I get from other very informative sites.

Jared


Notes/Citations

1 - http://lifehacker.com/5697167/if-youre-not-paying-for-it-youre-the-product - Article on LifeHacker by Jason Fitzpatrick calling out the phrase used by a MetaFilter user by the username blue_beetle.

2 - http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312512025336/d260164d10k.htm In the Business section of the 10-K filing by Google, Inc. describing it's primary revenue source.

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