Getting help anonymously

I've often wondered how to go about getting technical assistance for work related issues without revealing sensitive information to your competitors, or even worse, making yourself look like you don't know what you're talking about to your current and potential customers. The number of times I've seen ridiculously simple questions asked by people whose business it is to know is astounding, and especially so when they appear to be asked by the person literally named in the forum post or email.

Case in point: one of the projects I worked on in the past was the integration of a bespoke image library system into a global image management system. The idea behind it was that an end user with a native Windows/Mac desktop publishing application would be able to search for anything they like, and the results would be served up from a broad range of sources. They could then use the image in their work and the global company would facilitate the payment between the provider of the image and the end user.

When we were invited to pass the benchmark integration tests, one of the first things I did was to look at the authors of the specification and Google them. It was clear that at least one of the authors who was top billed on this specification had very little knowledge about what it was he was implementing, and he was using his work email address to ask these questions, dutifully stamped with the company name after the @ symbol.

I haven't yet had a need to venture into the public arena with work-related questions, although a do feel guilty that I'm a community 'sucker' - that is when I have a problem I exclusively google it and never give anything back, at least not where it's needed. For when I do make that step, it would be irresponsible of me to assume that posting with my work email address (or indeed my personal address which can easily be tied back to my employer) would do no harm. For that reason, I've prepared this list of ideas.

Pick a pseudonym
A fake name, or a handle would be appropriate. A fake name would imply a level of professionalism not given by the use of a handle. Consitent use of the name for posting questions is important for the sake of the community rather than me. It would be easy enough to make up a new name for each question.

Hide your tracks
Posting to a forum or newsgroup with a gmail email address is not enough, as your IP address is normally recorded, resulting in an easy trail to follow for someone determined enough to do so. I'm pretty sure Gmail has your original IP as a X-* header in the email. Other possibilities are to use a free/anonymous proxy server, however be aware that a lot of proxy servers add a "forwarded for" HTTP header for tracking/logging purposes. A commercial tool such as anonymizer, or a dialup account and spare modem would be suitable. Whatever solution you chose, carefully examine what happens when you post to a forum or send an email to ensure nothing to link you to the email is there.

Don't get tagged by cookies
There's no reason why a website can't track your visits, and associate the website accounts used from your computer, thus undoing your careful aliasing and track hiding. Make sure you clear your cookies, or even better, use a virtualised OS (Microsoft Virtual PC and an Ubuntu install would be perfect) to avoid this. If using the latter in order to avoid having to delete cookies, ensure you use the virtual OS exclusively for anonymous posting.

Reword your problem
Goes without saying really, but make sure your problem/question gets reworded so that it looks as little as possible like what your issue is that you're facing, but make sure you give enough meat for the community to help you out. Boiling it down to it's metasyntactic bones makes it disinteresting and an academic question - real people like solving real problems. You're likely to get more bites if your problem doesn't start "given a class called Foo and a method called Baz..."

Give and take
Make sure that you give back to the community by answering questions, writing documentation, bug fixing etc. This was one of my new years resolutions for 2008 and so far I'm doing pretty badly at it. It doesn't help that my chosen project to contribute to has gone on ice and the maintainers are incommunicado. Pfft.

Any other ideas you may have are welcome.

A New Career

In the last six weeks I've changed jobs. My previous job was with SmartMedia Solutions as the Development Manager - a role that I effectively inherited due to staff churn and a bit of restructuring. While interesting and certainly a challenge, I couldn't see myself enjoying it long term because it didn't scratch my itch to develop software. Directing development is interesting but not hands on enough for me.

So, I had been in talks with my new employer Turboweb a long time before they were even at the point where they could afford to even think about employing someone. I suspected that things were about to happen and mentioned to the guys at work that there was a chance that the planets would align and I wouldn't be with them much longer. To my surprise a formal offer from Turboweb came just a few weeks after that announcement.

I served out my notice period trying to get everything ready for a replacement to step in, including trying to get together an appropriate job description and advertising it with a local recruitment agency. Seems that I left a hole that is hard to fill as three months down the track after announcing my departure they're still advertising. I wish them luck.

So, my new job as a Web Developer (I type the programs in with PHP/MySQL/Javascript mainly) thus far has been pretty rewarding from an interest point of view. I've gone back to my roots - hands on development has been my interest since I first got into IT and since I left my Web Developer job at Bluhalo I've been missing it.

We're shaping up to launch our Simple Content Manager (SCM) application to the world. I've been getting the application into shape (reviewing performance and security), hooking up a demo signup and expiry and getting involved with the marketing side of things. It's pretty exciting. Being a small company we have to be careful that we don't swamp ourselves on launch day so we'll probably dip our toe in the water first and see how we get on.

On the home front, things are cranking along with Linus being the most cutest and astonishing boy in the world (check out the Loopy Mummy Blog for reasons) and Ada has been giving us grins and the occasional giggle for the last month or so. I'm on the verge (maybe this weekend) of mixing up my next batch of home brew, a pilsner this time. Linus is staying away for TWO nights at Granny & Pop Pop's. I'm also researching options for replacing my home server, and will blog about that as it happens.

Oh, and the Scooter is still awesome, and the jacket that was a leaving present from SMS is almost twice as awesome as that. Keeps the cold and wet out, which is a requirement in the Dunedin winter. Thanks guys! :)