Chief technology officer
Pay range: $128,017 to $212,100.

Project manager
Pay range: $77,265 to $112,615.

Help desk support
Pay range: $79,033 to $109,838.

Database manager
Pay range: $59,843 to $83,325.

Web developer
Pay range: $57,823 to $87,113.

These numbers had to be pulled out of the air or via a very bad source. There is no way that this is an average range here in Indianapolis.

Just last year I applied for a web developer job at the Indy Star and I am almost certain that their salary would have been nowhere near that salary range, even for someone who has done this sort of thing for over a decade. Most places in Indy might offer $40k if you’re lucky, and I actually had a few tell me that $30k was as high as they could go. AND these were companies that listed their jobs in Career Builder. How hard is it to check your figures when the data should be right in front of you?

Kids, don’t let these numbers fool you into selecting the IT field. Trust me, they are in no way average and outside of Indiana you need to consider the cost of living differences. There are plenty of jobs out there that make better money if that’s all you’re after.

And if you really want to go into the IT field, I suggest paying your dues for a few years to get a feel for the corporate world, and if you’re the entrepreneurial type, start a consulting business on the side that you can groom into a full-time job. I know that’s not for everyone, but I am extremely happy that I am doing what I’m doing. It is a little nerve-wracking at times, but at least you have some say over what you do and how much you make.

I’m a little late on this one, but not surprising, a lawsuit has been filed against Apple for the recent iPhone “iBrick” fiasco. [side note, there has been yet another iPhone "hack" released...also not surprising given the tenacity of hackers.]

And today in related news, Apple has announced that they’re opening up the iPhone and iPhone Touch to third party developers…in February 2008.  Interesting, but that’s still four months away…and who knows how long after that until applications start rolling out.

Anyway, this is getting interesting from a technology and business standpoint and I’m curious to see how everything unfolds.

Yesterday I ran across a new “pay wiki” site, OneBuckWiki, who’s offering pages for $1 (until 1000 pages are sold, then it goes up to $10).

I’m currently undecided about how useful/helpful something like this is (wikis in general, not just this one), but I do see the potential (as long as it is policed AND people still buy pages after it goes beyond $1). And for a one time $1 payment I guess there’s not really a whole lot to lose. If you get any site traffic from it, it’s well worth the investment, right?

So, I went ahead and purchased a few pages to help promote Watershed Studio and Surge Bucket Media. (So far I’ve only had a chance to add content for the weird news page which promotes Squirrel Dish, Utter Oddcast and Utter Oddness…with a nod to Gene & Bryan over at Hometown Tales.)

I think that the one thing that I really like about this site is that fact that they’re using a theme/template that looks more like a normal web page or blog post. A big thing that really turned me off about Wiki’s in the past was the default layout found in every one that I came across just didn’t light any fires for me (along with a handful of functionality issues).

Anyway, we’ll see how it goes. And now the wheels are turning on how Wiki’s might be useful for a few of my own sites and I think I’m going to take a look at the software again (whenever I can manage to find some “free time”).

I’m not sure what’s going on at Apple these days, but they’re certainly stacking up the negative press.  The most recent being that one of their iPod Nano’s has allegedly caught on fire.  While I don’t really understand why you’d buy a teeny-tiny video player in the first place (yes, I know that it plays audio as well), potentially catching me and/or my house/car/etc. on fire is not really a selling point.  But hey, maybe that’s just me.

For Apple’s sake I hope this is just a cheap shot that someone is taking at them, but if it’s not, expect to see some sort of massive recall in the near future.

(Oh, and by the way, where are these things actually made?  Could it be the current recall epicenter?  Conspiracy nuts are going crazy…)

Jason Burns recently started up Take My Tech where he is giving away his spare tech related items to a random commenter (once there are 100 comments on a post…see the initial announcement).  This sounds like a pretty neat concept for a blog and along the lines of an idea I have to clear out some of my excess “stuff” (launching soon hopefully).  I’m going to keep my eye on this one and am hoping that it turns out to be a success.  (And another plus in my book…the site is running WordPress.)

I’m not sure if I’ve blogged about MySpace before (if don’t have anything nice to say…) but today I am going to do so because I finally saw a change that is actually pretty useful/helpful.

They’ve been working on adding filters to view your “friends”, which was a little helpful, but today I spotted a “New Friends” option, which appears to list your most recent additions in order. Some people may not care about that, but when you’re managing multiple accounts and each has hundreds of friends it comes in very handy. Now I don’t have to wonder if someone accepted my friend request, I can simply look to see if they’re on the list and when I spot them I can pop over to their page and drop them a note. Very useful indeed.

Now if they’d add a decent region based option as well as adding RSS feeds for the bulletins I’d be a happy camper (I’m getting used to the “our page design options suck”…but it would be nice if it were improved as well).

While I don’t have a “personal” MySpace account (check out Facebook for that), here are the handful of accounts which I manage if you want to add me:

• Future Karnies of America
• Surge Bucket Media
• Trolley Dodgers Podcast
• Utter Oddcast
• Watershed Studio

Preface: If this were coming directly from me, it would be a very biased AND completely unauthoritative recommendation as I do not own an iPhone and have no plans to purchase one.

That said, I was quite surprised to see the “A-list” tech blog Gizmodo ripping the iPhone three months after its release. And numerous other popular sites jumping on board…see Yahoo!, The Guardian & Wired to name a few.

While I do find the recommendation against buying an iPhone a little surprising since all of the Mac users that I know are true fiends for all things Mac, I think that Apple, and even AT&T for that matter, didn’t take one major fact into consideration…you’re not only selling this device to “Mac Heads”. A good majority of the people that will drop that kind of money for a phone are techies who want a device to do exactly what they want it to do and will “hack” it into submission if necessary.

Which brings us to the issue at hand. Apparently Apple issued a firmware “upgrade” which disallows hacking the iPhone and has in turn rendered the iPhone useless for those who have hacked it. Unless of course they revert back to the previous version, which then won’t allow any “official” iPhone upgrades.

While I understand the monetary side of why they did it, I can’t see how this will be good for business, especially after the uproar from the recent $200 price drop. But hey, I guess that it isn’t my business, right?

Via Macworld…

Those 4GB iPhones just became collector’s items. Apple dropped the 4GB version of its mobile phone and slashed the price on the 8GB model to $399—$200 less than its introductory price.

If I were a fan of Mac at all AND if I had bought one of these things at $599 a few months ago I’d be livid and probably never buy another Mac product again. And guess what, it sounds like some people are a bit upset. This is just a bad business practice.

I love technology and new gadgets and gizmo’s, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…as a rule of thumb, DO NOT BUY TECH PRODUCTS WHEN THEY ARE FIRST RELEASED! Give them a little time to have the bugs worked out and then wait at least for the first price drop, if not the second or even third. Trust me, you’ll thank yourself in the long run.

UPDATE: September 6, 2007 @ 3:30pm (EDT)

To appease the uproar Apple is offering a $100 “store credit” to customers.  So you’re still out $100 for being a “bleeding edge” type AND you don’t actually get any of the money back. I guess you can now go claim a “free” iPod Shuffle* and download a few songs and/or a few episodes of Lost.

* My review of the iPod Shuffle will be coming some day, so be on the lookout for that.

Anyone who uses Skype is probably experiencing connectivity issues and has been for the past few days. At first I had thought this was an issue with my internal network, but that is not the case (thanks to Wired for reporting this).

This is bad news for anyone using Skype for business purposes (as I am) and makes me question my decision of using Skype for VoIP. While my call volume is fairly low since I use e-mail for most of my communication, I know that at least two clients have tried to get in touch over the past two days, and that is bad for business.

I do have a Gizmo number as well, but I wouldn’t say that is a silver bullet either as it has its own issues too. (Go figure, right?)

While my land line does cost a lot more and doesn’t offer “go anywhere” capabilities (useful when you take your “office” mobile), it is stable for the most part. But I’m not ready to switch back just yet. At least not until this is a consistent issue. I’ll ride this one out for a bit and see how everything unfolds. Skype is aware of the issue and they are working on it. Hopefully this will be resolved by Monday and we’ll be back to normal. Until then, e-mail me.

* For anyone wondering what the phrasing is all about, that’s a jab at a comment made by eBay (who owns Skype) a little over a year ago. [1] [2]

First, why would anyone shell out $599 on the first version of a video game console? Historically video game consoles have issues with their first versions and as subsequent versions come out the issues are fixed and the prices come down. So essentially, if you’re a die hard “cutting edge” person they charge you more for the honor of being a beta tester. (As is the case with many other electronics.) But of course, these are probably the same people who think nothing of plopping down $2500 for a “gaming PC”.

Anyway, for myself I can only see two reasons to have camped out for the PS3:

1. You’re planning on selling it on Amazon or eBay for a hefty profit.
2. You really want a Blu-ray Disc Player right now and don’t want to shell out $999.99 for the Sony BDP-S1 Blu-ray Disc Player…(But I can’t say how good of a DVD player the PS3 is.)

Beyond those two reasons, it just doesn’t make sense to me (and #2 is a stretch since Blu-ray goes along with what I’m talking about). But of course there’s no way I could personally justify the purchase right now anyway since I have very little time to watch movies or play video games and it makes more since to put the money towards something like my monthly mortgage. (In an average month I watch maybe two or three movies and just last weekend I dusted off my PS2 after probably close to a year of not touching it…and did I forget to mention that I don’t even own an HDTV or a TV with the fancy new TV technology that is available?) Call me old and/or boring, but hey, I just can’t do it right now. In the meantime I’ll stick with my PS2 and maybe consider a PS3 about three years from now.

When I saw the ICarta Stereo Dock for iPod with Bath Tissue Holder in a newspaper ad I thought that it had to be a joke, but sure enough someone has came up with the idea to allow people to dock their iPod close to the toilet. Brilliant! What a great way to get people to pay even more money to place their iPod only a few inches away from where it really belongs. Oh, the irony.