The holy grail of having it all
An appealing recent entry from WordSpy (a web site devoted to “lexpionage,” the sleuthing of new words and phrases) is “stay-at-work mom.” The term refers to a mother who returns to work soon after giving birth. I think it equally applies to...I [heart] my local library
The library in my town has been there for me for many years. When my children were small, we joined the reading program every summer, and we were frequent borrowers of books and occasionally toys throughout the year. It’s the first place I turn when I hear of a...
Breathless excitement about aging
A flyer in today’s newspaper is trolling for subscribers to a new magazine, and I’m kind of creeped out. Founder Moses Znaimer, the new executive director of the Canadian Association for Retired Persons (CARP), replaced the old CARP magazine with a glossy...Telemarketers, please don’t call
Hooray, Canada finally has a National Do Not Call List! Have you registered yet? If you tried and got a “service not available” message, try again in a few minutes. The site seems to get bogged down, no doubt in the huge numbers of people trying to...
Blogging’s not dead yet; join the party!
As I wrote this, Mitch Joel was saying there’s never been a better time to start your own blog. Technorati said in its State of the Blogosphere/2008 report that “blogging is not dead” and “blogs are here to stay.” The report also notes...
Sometimes you just have to say no to work
I scared myself recently by turning down two jobs. Two! Before you wonder how well my brain is functioning, let me tell you why I turned away work, and why you should seriously consider doing the same when you have the option. Both jobs had unreasonable deadlines; I...Make it easy to do business
Jakob Nielsen’s September 15th Alertbox talks about store locators on web sites, where he says “it must be not only possible to accomplish the task, but also easy and pleasant to do so.” Good advice. I’ve run into sites before where it’s...Weed out weasel words
Having just edited a client’s news release, I found David Meerman Scott’s recent post on weasel words, gobbledygook, jargon and other baloney quite topical! (Check it out for some awful examples of what not to write.) The release I worked on started out in...