Stock investors always say, “Diversify!” Imagine if you had all of your stock in one company and it went bankrupt. This scenario is what happened after the dot com crash. Putting all your eggs into one basket labeled “email newsletters” can also spell disaster. The eggs might meet the same fate as Humpty Dumpty. But … Read more
I want to thank the folks especially Sally H. behind ChangeThis for accepting and publishing It’s a Big Blog World Out There: Five Quick Tips to Building a Better Blog. I’ve been nervous about its release because I feared the manifesto was too simple, not forward-thinking, and not a true manifesto — three areas that … Read more
Over the last few years, comments have popped up on how PowerPoint ruins many presentations. That’s backward. Presenters ruin presentations by using PowerPoint. PowerPoint isn’t the criminal here. The crime comes from people not using creativity in designing their presentations. Weird Is Good took an ingenious approach in a lecture on the Civil War. Here’s … Read more
Outsourcing is here to stay, regardless of how employees feel about it since businesses continue to save money as a result. It is, however, evolving into something less threatening to employees as companies discover savings–by using other companies to manage a part of the business that’s not considered one of their core processes. Smartsourcing looks … Read more
Customers drive marketing, not the other way around. No longer do customers accept products as designed. They expect and demand products to be molded to their needs. Just like you can’t turn a cat into a dog; marketers can’t turn a customer into a buyer by convincing them that they need product or service “as … Read more
3rd edition update: The third edition took a bigger leap from the second than the second took from the first. Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd ed., comes with a greater focus on Web standards and cascading style sheets (CSS). In fact, the book opens with a chapter on Web standards, whereas it was merely … Read more
This was a fascinating story to write — Judge Rules Internet Surfing at Work Is OK — as I had an opportunity to interview New York City’s Law Department chief of labor and employment law. She made it clear this was not a court case. Rather it was a case that went to the City’s … Read more
I love brainstorming ideas for a new company name. I guess you could call me a name freak. 🙂 Every case is different, but here are the basic tips I tend to follow when hunting for inspiration: * Randomly flip through the dictionary. * Take words and mixing or subbing letters. * Say names out … Read more
In “Full-time freelancing: 10 more things,” Cameron Moll provides a useful list of things he learned in his first year of freelancing full-time as a Web designer. Though it focuses on Web design, much of the advice if useful for other businesses. Here’s my commentary from a freelance writer’s perspective. Speed: I try to work … Read more
Finally. It took one month, 46 email messages, and two visits to the store to resolve a problem with my Sidekick II. The solution wasn’t complicated, but I can’t honestly say it would’ve worked had I not got a new SIM card. SMS (short message service) had not been working for months, but I didn’t … Read more