I loved this line, from Daphne Gray-Grant‘s “Power Writing” e-newsletter: “Your brain is not a trained seal designed to perform tricks (such as excellent writing) on demand.” Her point was that “perfectly formed prose” doesn’t just happen on the first try. That’s exactly why I recently said to a client, “Don’t confuse straightforward with easy.” [...]
Monthly Archives: October 2007
Belated happy birthday, dear iPod
While catching up on a number of blogs, I discovered that I missed an important birthday last week: the iPod turned six on October 23, as I learned from The Unofficial Apple Weblog. The site includes a video of Steve Jobs introducing the brand new concept. At the end, he pulls the new iPod out [...]
Relentless verbing
Ugh. While proofreading Big Company’s newsletter the other day, I saw that the CEO talked about competitors having “offshored” parts of their processes. One of my pet peeves is turning perfectly decent nouns into verbs. “Tasking” a group with coming up with a strategy sets my teeth on edge. “Offshoring” is another one. Having written [...]
Make the most of your freelancers
Ragan just sent me a link to a number of stories, one of which I found particularly close to home: “How to make the most of your freelancers” by Sarah McAdams. (And once again thanks to my western colleague, Dave Traynor, for introducing me to TinyURL, which wrestled Ragan’s full 218 characters into just 17.) [...]
Bill’s low on friends
Aren’t you intrigued to know that Bill Gates apparently “only” has 125 pals on his personal Facebook account, while Martha Stewart has more than 1,500? Does that say he’s pickier than Martha, and if so, who would ever have expected that? I meant to write about this tidbit earlier after finding out about it from [...]
Are you an innerpreneur?
“Innerpreneur.” Isn’t that a great term? I ran across it following a trail from the latest MarketingSherpa newsletter to a book called Karma Queens, Geek Gods & Innerpreneurs, by Consumer Eyes marketing firm founder Ron Rentel. The book identifies the people who are setting the trends for society and influencing our buying habits, and suggests [...]
The right way to network
Son #2 asked me the other day about networking. He is interested in business and it seems he has been told that networking involves spraying the room with your business card (I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea!). I’m glad to say he is not only uncomfortable with this suggestion but knows instinctively that it [...]
When I have time…
I’m a perfect example of (Bob) Bly’s Theory of Blogging and Personal Productivity in action. He states: “Personal productivity is inversely proportional to the time spent blogging…the more time you spend blogging, the less work you get done.” I’ve done a better job this week of being productive, writing and meeting deadlines than posting interesting [...]
Microsoft venting
Excuse me while I vent about Microsoft, and specifically Xbox. My two boys are avid gamers and we have had just about every game system going (except the Playstation series). There are many things that drive me crazy about the gaming industry, including the fact that until Nintendo Wii, each new system that comes out [...]
Another great term
In the latest of Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox newsletters, I ran across this terrific phrase: voodoo usability. As Nielsen explains it, “Most sites employ horribly misguided methodologies that do not assess real usability. Sometimes the methods are simply worthless; other times they are directly misleading…for fun, some of my colleagues once signed up with a panel [...]
