Do industries secretly agree not to provide the best customer service so no one gets a competitive advantage? A little overboard, but it looks that way lately. Our arch in front of our house cracked — not unusual based on the way it was built without rebars. But it scares me whenever people come to … Read more
It happens to everyone, writers and non-writers. We need to write something, but can’t produce content — at least, nothing of good quality. A couple of people I know (one is a writer and the other isn’t) ran into this problem as a result of personal challenges. One weathering a dangerous storm and the other … Read more
I recently read an article that says executives have higher vocabulary than the average person. Managers, too, but not as high as executives. This book is a great way to expand your knowledge. A devotional is a short religious service. Religious and spiritual devotional books break down religious readings into short chapters to help readers … Read more
In the US, today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In spirit of celebrating our world’s uniqueness, we look at how people read or hear a word and understand it differently than originally intended. Many words contain multiple definitions, and sentences provide the context. A simple example: My daughter was watching a fashion reality show … Read more
Taking a page from M&Ms Dark’s movie puzzle, Viking’s Stationery Movies contains 10 movies for you to guess. Only instead of a painting, it uses office supplies to depict the movies. I got 10 of 20. The ones I missed — I don’t think I could’ve gotten because I was either not familiar with the … Read more
I’m not into this tagging business. It works well for sites like Technorati, but I think for sites that aren’t social networks or bookmarking sites, tags don’t do the job. When I launched the new design of this place, it came with tags instead of categories. Research indicated that tags were the way to go. … Read more
A person or a business can do everything right and still struggle to move to the next level simply because it doesn’t stand out from the crowd. Sam Horn opens with a great example of this from American Idol. Judge Simon Cowell told an eliminated contestant, “You have a good voice and you’re a nice … Read more
The blogosphere has been abuzz with the news about bloggers who received a PC loaded with Vista from Microsoft. The company told the bloggers they could keep the PCs, donate them or return them. Here’s an entry from Joel on the topic. This topic isn’t new. Remember Marqui? Sites like PayPerPost and Blogitive pay bloggers … Read more
Most of you probably went to a restaurant where the food and service was excellent. But then you go to another location of the same restaurant and it was a disaster. Franchising is complicated as some require their chains to do everything the same while others have more leeway by owner. A pizza buffet chain … Read more
An article from the latest email newsletter from Writer’s Digest shares a bad experience a writer ran into with blogging. The writer, I believe, didn’t do anything wrong. Successful blogging requires authenticity, but the writer got burned instead. Sandra Scoppettone, the blogger mentioned in the article, regularly blogged about the writing life. Then trouble came … Read more