The Red Jacket Diaries blog

Die, buzzwords, die

by Sue Horner | Feb 14, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog

This week, a Toronto newspaper ran a story with a headline containing a buzzword that is one of my most detested — “win-win” — so it’s obvious the battle against meaningless phrases must continue. On our side, we have sites that make fun...

Comforts of home, office version

by Sue Horner | Feb 9, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog

Today is Doing Business in Your Bathrobe Day, the 7th annual celebration of the freedom of home business ownership. Today’s the day to make the bathrobe your power suit, or so says Kristie Tamsevicius, whose blog offers “mom-geared work-at-home...

Glory file as a word cloud

by Sue Horner | Feb 5, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog

At one point, word clouds were everywhere: illustrating a newspaper article, highlighting a book’s content, offering a glimpse into a web site. And for good reason. They are great visual signals for what’s inside. I made the one shown here with a fun toy...

Are the ads worth it?

by Sue Horner | Feb 4, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog

The discussion over Super Bowl ads continues days after they aired. Of course, we Canadians are sheltered and can’t see the ads during the event itself, but they are a still a hot topic of conversation. (The game? What game? Oh, yeah, the football game, we did...

More fun words

by Sue Horner | Feb 2, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog

Some interesting words I’ve run across lately: Wrapsimonious: “Joe recycles nothing, so when he carefully removes the paper from his gift, he’s just being wrapsimonious so he won’t have to purchase any.” (From Verbotomy) Clickstream: The...

Customer service/disservice files

by Sue Horner | Jan 29, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog

Is the way your company operates thinking of the customer first? Or at all? I have recent examples of two companies that did a good job and two that did not. The surprising instances of customer appreciation: Bank of Montreal: My husband and I have banked with BMO for...

Starting out? Listen to Donna

by Sue Horner | Jan 26, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog

I’m having lunch later this week with an acquaintance who is considering launching her own business and wants to “pick my brain.” While I don’t claim to know it all, I’ve had my own business for about 18 years, so I must be doing some things right! I’m happy to share...

Watch out for these scams

by Sue Horner | Jan 25, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog

Akismet has stopped more than 36,000 spam comments from being posted on my site over the two years I’ve been blogging, a milestone reached yesterday. (Happy anniversary to me!) I scan through the “holding pen” every once in a while, and usually the...

Inspiring day in stunning photos

by Sue Horner | Jan 22, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog

Thanks to Donna Papacosta for pointing to these amazing photos of the inauguration of President Obama on Tuesday. Between a client meeting, travel and a deadline, I was only able to watch about 10 minutes of the live coverage and had to catch up with the news...

Big bro is watching

by Sue Horner | Jan 19, 2009 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog

Big Brother was watching me this weekend, and it kind of creeped me out. OK, so I was being nosy. A neighbour’s house was up for sale, and I was curious to see how much it was listed for. So I went to the real estate company’s site, scrolled through the...