A sponsor asked me to set up recurring payments for his account on PayPal. In the past, I wanted this feature, but didn’t find it. When the sponsor told me to set it up, I searched harder and found the answer under Subscriptions and Recurring Payments. PayPal’s recurring payment feature is more of a Web … Read more
Death By PowerPoint begins with absorbing insight into the life of the drones and queen bees. The queen bee sits all day while her slaves service her and feed her royal jelly that no one else can have. Who knew the world of bees could be fascinating and resemble the corporate world? The book takes … Read more
OK, if this poll by British pollsters of YouGov is accurate — then prepare to cringe. The ten most hated words on the Internet — based on a poll of 2,091 adults — reports the following words making the list: 1. folksonomy 2. blogosphere 3. blog 4. netiquette 5. blook 6. webinar 7. vlog 8. … Read more
My tennis team discussed the state of the newspaper because one of the players works for a major newspaper’s sales and marketing division. She said that the newspaper’s subscriptions were down, but readership went up. People pick up the paper in places like Starbucks, thus driving up the readership. The newspaper employee said that the … Read more
I always subscribe to text version of a newsletters when given a choice since I don’t use the traditional e-mail client — usually Outlook. Plus, I use Web-based e-mail applications, which don’t display HTML e-mails very well. Jeffrey Zeldman rants about HTML newsletters, something I addressed in the past. Many respect him and listen to … Read more
In managing a big family weekend, I used Excel to track everything from invitations to RSVPs. I tried to create a macro to do something, but deleted it after figuring out it wouldn’t do what I wanted. Yet, every time I opened the workbook, Excel asked if I wanted to run macros as shown in … Read more
Donna Talarico wrote about her experience in moving from email interviews to in-person interviews. She said that nothing beats face-to-face meetings as it’s the most intimate way to connect with the person whom you speak. Except for me, face-to-face puts my articles at risk for incorrect information and quotes. You see, I’ve been profoundly deaf … Read more
I’ve been thinking about e-mail subject lines more lately especially with the recent flurry of legitimate e-mails coming in without one. A Lifehack entry recommends using one of the following four items in a subject line: * Question * Response * FYI * Spam Very GTDish, indeed (Getting Things Done). Although, “spam” in the subject … Read more
Monday by Noon asks if site maps are obsolete. First, let’s agree on the term site maps. These contain a site’s high level links along with the name of the page like this good example of a site map from Apple.com. Along the same lines of questioning site maps, people question the use of search … Read more
Usability goes beyond making Web sites easier to use. It’s also about making appliances, day-to-day activities and other things easy to use. When I use my blender, I can’t figure out why there are labels for puree, chop, frappe, crush, and so on. It’s a blender! The blades just spin around and around. The blender … Read more