My Good Name

I had something happen tonight which just irritates the heck out of me. I was checking my email and found some bounced messages. A whole lot of them.

What irritates me is that I didn't send the originals. Some twit harvested my email address (probably from my company website) and used it in the "From" field for his spam-fest. I received around 20 bounced messages for replica watches and "pharmaceuticals". That means a whole lot more made it through to people -- people who now associate my email address with such desultory practices.

This could lead to my email address being placed on the "black lists" for various spam blocking services, which could lead to my messages not getting through to my clients. Nice.

And the worst thing is? There isn't a darned thing I can do about it.

Grrr.

So, have you experienced anyone tainting your good name recently? What did you do?

An Unshared Language

Kaylie was a little fussy this evening. She was crying and unsettled and I couldn't figure out exactly what was wrong.

The problem for me, of course, is that the language she uses (screams and tears) doesn't have enough meaning to me (my wife, on the other hand, claims she can tell the difference between a hungry cry and a "change my diaper" cry). Quite often I misinterpret what Kaylie is saying and address the wrong concern.

Ironically, this is a basic problem with working as a consultant, too. No, I don't mean that one or the other of us acts in an infantile way. The problem is we are dealing with a lack of shared vocabulary.

This is why I have to ask a lot of questions when I sit down with someone to discuss a project.

I recently was chatting with a potential client. They told me that they wanted me to set up an online discussion forum. This is definitely possible, and not too difficult to do. If we decided to go forward, they would end up with a nice system which would allow all of their website visitors to carry on written "conversations" with each other. Pretty cool.

But I never leave things alone. Often people ask for things which I can deliver, but they aren't what they really want.

After continued questioning, it turned out that what they actually wanted was a facility with limited authorship and the ability for readers to comment on those authored items. Wait a minute! That's not a discussion forum. That's a blog -- OK, a blog with multiple authors (definitely easy to do), but a blog nonetheless.

If I had set up a discussion forum for that prospect, he probably wouldn't have been very satisfied. In the end I would have had to spend a lot of extra time trying to get that forum to behave like a blog. No one would have been happy.

My sales coach, Joe Marr, tells us that it is our responsibility to find out exactly what problem our prospect needs us to solve. If we don't, we are giving a prescription without a diagnosis -- and that's sales malpractice.

So, have you ever run into a situation where what they were saying and what they wanted were two different things?

Clearing the Bookshelf

Back in November, I wrote about clearing out my bookshelf and putting some of my books into storage. It was about time to get things organized and make room for more of my business and technical library.

Then my blogging friend, Jacki Hollywood Brown (a professional organization expert), pointed out that books do no one any good in storage. No one reads them. They take up space. In general, unless you are planning to pull them out at a specific later date and read them (for example, when I finish building my home library) there really was no reason to keep them and every reason to give them to someone who will value and appreciate them.

So, properly chastened, I set to the task at hand. Of course, I kept my old favorites (Heinlein, Foster, Burroughs, etc), but I actually found that about half of the books, while entertaining when I read them, really didn't have the nostalgic hold on me that I originally thought. In the end, I cleared off about half of my shelves and boxed them up to go to the Ann Arbor District Library.

I found out how and where to donate the old paperbacks (and even that my collection of old science fiction was on the list of desirable books) at the Friends of the AADL site. I was expecting it to be a bit complicated, but was pleasantly surprised. Basically I just had to:

1. Drive the books down to the downtown branch during library hours. They even let you park in the staff lot to make the drop off.
2. Buzz the intercom.
3. Unload the boxes of books onto a hand truck.
4. Get a receipt.

Done!

It felt good to know that those books will be getting another read or two and it felt really good to have some space cleared on my bookshelf.

So, do you have any books that you haven't read in a while that could go to a welcoming home?

Thank You for Thinking of Me, But...

Seth Godin had a great post yesterday about the simple practice of checking before forwarding. The basic gist is that, before you blindly forward things along to your entire mailing list, you owe it to everyone on that list to verify the truth of what you are sending along.

Seriously.

I receive forwarded messages all the time from friends and family members. Some are jokes, some are just cute messages or cartoons. I'm pretty much fine by that, so long as it doesn't get excessive. What really gets me all cranky is when someone forwards along a message which promulgates a particular political, religious, or philosophical viewpoint. Often I don't actually share these viewpoints and equally as often, the messages upon which they are based turn out to be false.

Here are a couple of rules that I think would help clarify the email atmosphere:

1. As Seth suggested, before you forward a message, go to the Snopes site and verify its veracity. Even if you think you can't find it there, check anyway, especially if the story is supposed to be true.
2. Always add a personal note as to why I might find this worth reading/viewing. Even if it's only that you found it cute or funny. I appreciate that you want to share, but I want to know your feelings about the message at hand.
3. Construct the recipient list for each individual message and as you do so, at least pause for a moment as you add each recipient and ask yourself the question "Would they really appreciate seeing this?" If you don't know for sure, then I would err on the side of not sending it.
4. Understand that if you don't follow these rules, and if the falsehood is egregious enough, I will have no compunction about responding to the entire group about what the real story is. After all, I looked it up on Snopes. At the minimum, I will at least respond to you and leave it to your discretion to reveal your gullibility to your original victims.

OK, I'm going to get down from my soapbox now before I fall off. My apologies to any whom I've offended, but this one just really gets my goat.

So, have you checked out the Snopes site? What did you look up?

Talkin' Trackbacks, Part 4: One More Tool

I mentioned yesterday that I had a better tool to do outgoing trackbacks. It will only work, though, for people who are using Blogger and are using Firefox (and why would you be using any other browser??).

The tool is a script written by Stephen Weber of Singpolyma. It uses the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox. OK, I'm sure I saw some eyes glazing over out there, so if you would like to try this excellent tool, just do the following:

1. First check to make sure that you are running Firefox. If you are running Internet Explorer, you can't use this tool. See yesterday's post about Haloscan
   
2. Install Greasemonkey. Go to the Firefox add-on site, and click on the "Install Now" link. If it pops up any dialogs, just click "OK" or "Yes" or "Allow" or whatever you need to to make things continue running. At the end of this step you may need to restart Firefox. After you do, come back here for the remainder of the step. Remember this is the Jan 28, 2008 posting in the "Clearing up the Confusion" blog. I'll wait while you do this.
3. OK, still waiting.
4. Huh, he must have gone off to get a sandwich or something. Oh, well, for those of you who returned, now you just need to install the script.
5. Go to Stephen's blog. Be patient. his blog seems to be a bit slow to load.
6. Click on the "Install the new script" link. Again, click on the "OK"/"Yes"/"Allow" buttons.
7. I don't think you have to restart Firefox again, but feel free to do so if it makes you feel better.

Now whenever you go to post a new entry on your blog, you will see a new entry field right under the title of the post. When you want to do a trackback, you just paste the trackback URL into that spot. When you publish the entry, the trackback engine will do its thing without any further intervention from you.

Oh, the first time you try a trackback with this tool, it will ask you for your del.icio.us ID. If you have one, feel free to enter it. It will give you a one-click link to post your new entry on the social bookmarking site, del.icio.us. Or hit "cancel" and it should stop pestering you about it.

Well, I hope these last few posts have gotten you excited about the possibilities for using trackbacks with your blog. If you do decide to give it a try, let me know what you think and whether it was worth the trouble.

So, have you tried out any of the other add-ons for Firefox?

Talkin' Trackbacks, Part 3: The Tools

So, if you read through parts one and two of this series, you might be getting pretty excited about exploring the world of trackbacks. If you are blogging using WordPress or MovableType, then you are in luck as the trackback facility is already available to you. You might have to go into your blog settings to enable it, but otherwise, you're golden.

But what about the rest of us? Many of us are using Blogger, one of the most popular blogging systems available and it doesn't support trackbacks natively (it has a feature called "backlinks" which is similar, but as I've mentioned before, I haven't noticed too many other people using it and it is only available to other Blogger users). Still, if you look at the bottom of this post, you'll see that I do have a trackback link. How is that possible?

In a word: Haloscan

Haloscan is a service which manages comments and trackbacks for blogs which don't have those features natively. The basic service is free (though it does include advertising), but for only $12, you can get their premium service which is ad-free.

Sign-up is easy. The form doesn't even really request that much information from you. The installation process can be a little daunting if you aren't comfortable editing HTML, but if you follow the instructions for your blogging platform you shouldn't have too much trouble. If all else fails, your friendly neighborhood web developer should have no problem getting things set up for you. In fact, for those of us using Blogger, they have an automatic installation took (just be sure to back up your settings before you try anything like this).

Haloscan give you support for both incoming and outgoing trackbacks. I use it for only the former. The latter is a bit too clunky for me. In order to send the "ping", you have to locate all of the information required (the title, permalink, excerpt, etc) and then fill in a form on the Haloscan site. I much prefer that all of this information be collected for me automatically.

I have a few other minor complaints about Haloscan. First, it is a bit slow. I did a test trackback on one of my older posts and it took almost an hour before it appeared on my site. Update: This seems to be a lot faster now. Perhaps my first test was during a bad time.

Second, the trackback listings aren't incorporated directly into the site. If you click on the trackback link below, it pops up a separate window with the listings (a window over which you have no real control regarding its look and feel). Finally, Haloscan doesn't seem to have any sort of moderation for trackbacks (though it does for comments). This means that anyone can automatically create a link to their site from yours. Of course, you can just delete anything which you don't want included, but if you are someone who likes to have control from the beginning, this might be a show-stopper.

Despite these problems, if this is the only way you have to send and receive a trackback ping, it's a long sight better than nothing. And until Blogger decides to support the trackback protocols natively (chances are somewhere between slim and none), your other choice is nothing.

Tomorrow I'll do a quick piece on a better tool for some of us.

So, are their any blogs you read on a regular basis which support trackback? Which ones?

Talkin' Trackbacks, Part 2: How

OK, so after reading the first post in this series, you might be mildly interested in this whole trackback thing -- especially if you are a blogger who would like to increase his readership. I can hear you thinking, though, "How does this all work? If it's too difficult, I'm not going to do it."

Fair enough. I'll tell you, though, that if you have the wherewithal to actually post in your blog on a regular basis, then doing a trackback should be a breeze.

Warning: Technical Content

Now, some of this is going to be dependent on which blogging software you use, but, in general this is how the procedure works. By the way, if you'd like to see a good example of a "tackback-able" blog, check out Seth Godin's. His was the first one to which I sent a trackback ping (which resulted in the first day that my readership exceeded twenty readers for the day).

So, here are the steps:

1. Read a blog post on a blog where you have an interest, whether it be "new marketing" or "knitting sweaters for weasels".
2. Discover that you have something important to say on the subject. This is actually a pretty important step. Remember that the response you are crafting will be a post on your own blog (What? You don't have a blog? What are you waiting for?). Also, many authors moderate their trackbacks, so if they don't think what you are saying is worthy of a reverse link, they don't have to include you.
3. Find the "trackback URL" for the original post. Usually, when you click on a trackback link for a post, there will be a short message that looks something like: Trackback URL for this entry: http://haloscan.com/tb/kaymbre/375279646963837696 -- remember where this is.
4. Write your post -- Of course, using your normal amazing powers of prose.
5. Paste in the trackback URL. This is the one area where you might have to do a little research, but there should be an entry field for this information. You are in especially good shape if you use one of the blogging packages which supports trackbacks natively, such as MovableType or WordPress (What? You use Blogger, like I do? Tune in tomorrow for how we can take part in the fun!).
6. Publish your post. Yep, click on the "submit" or "Publish" or "Make it so" button -- whichever gets things going for your blog.
7. Let the trackback facility do its thing. What happens next is your blogging software sends out a "ping" to the blogging software for the original post -- sort of a computerized "hello". It sends along some other information, like who you are, the title of your post, the URL for your post, and a short excerpt of your literary masterpiece. The system on the other end takes that information and either puts it on the trackback page or queues it up for approval by the original blogger.

And that's pretty much how it works. Essentially, it's just a couple of extra steps for you (copy trackback URL, paste trackback URL) and you've got a great new way to carry on a conversation and make more people aware of your blog.

What's that I hear? You're all excited about using trackbacks, but your blogging software doesn't support them? Tune in tomorrow (and the next day, probably) to find out what else you can do.

So, what do you think, would you be willing to try trackbacks?

Talkin' Trackbacks, Part 1: What and Why

One of the exciting aspects of blogging is the ability to interact with your readers. There's something about the rich interplay of ideas and opinions which really fuels the creative process -- even when they tell you that you're being stupid. Also, let's face it, someone commenting on your post means that they probably read it, and we all like to know that we're communicating with somebody.

Most readers interact with the blogger through the comment feature. They click on the "comment" link, enter their well-thought-out response and go on their merry way. This is great as far as it goes, but, if you look to the bottom of this post, right next to the "comments" link, there's a link to a better way.

It's called a trackback.

What?

I've written about this before, but the trackback facility is a wonderful way, as my hero Scott Ginsberg would say, for bloggers to share "link love". The basic idea is similar to making comments, but instead of the reader leaving her message with me, she would write her commentary as a post in her own blog. Then the trackback facility would create a link between the two posts. Instant "link love!"

OK, Why?

Why would I, as a blogger, allow someone to link to my blog posts like this? Isn't the trackbacker basically trying to steal my readers?

Well, no, not really.

In fact, in order to make the "conversation" make sense, the trackbacker almost has to create a link back to my post. So, while she might increase her readership through gaining exposure to my readership, the reverse is also true, so I might get a slight bump in mine.

Amazing. We both win!

You can even make the argument that people are going to be more thoughtful and thought-provoking in their own blogs than they would in the regular comments section on a post. In fact, some bloggers, like Seth Godin, don't even allow comments on their blogs. They only have trackbacks.

Depending on the level of experience you've had with blogging in general, and the facility of trackbacking in particular, you might be intrigued, confused, or simply bored. I'm not sure I can do much with the latter, but we'll be taking a closer look at the details of trackbacks over the next couple of days in hopes of satisfying the former.

Tomorrow we'll take a look at how this whole trackback thing works.

So, what's your experience been with the trackback facility?

So, Where Do I Start?

One aspect of my work is the area of "graphical treatment conversion".

Huh? What's that?

Well, basically, my clients sometimes call me in to work with a graphical designer. These are folks who have a great eye for color and layout, but aren't skilled in creating actual web pages. The designer creates pictures of what the website should look like and how it should behave. Then they hand those pictures (the "graphical treatment") to me.

Then I convert those pictures into an actual web page/web site. I do this with a combination of HTML and CSS.

Don't be scared by the acronyms. As I mentioned in one of my TLA tutorials, HTML is just a way of indicating the structure of a web document. With it, I can tell the browser that this chunk of text is a body paragraph and this other one is a section heading. CSS just tells the computer what each of these structures is supposed to look like. For example, it might say that the section heading is in 18 point bold, bright red Arial font and is centered on the page.

The conversion process goes a lot faster and easier if the end client does two things. First, they really should hire a professional web designer or at least a professional graphical designer with lots of Web experience. There are some design elements which are easier than others when it comes to converting them for the Web. If the designer knows this, then the resulting website will not only be up and running faster, but will also probably work better as well.

The other thing?

If you should ever hire a professional web designer, listen to their advice. They probably won't completely refuse if you want to have pink text on a light purple background, but they will have some strong reasons why it won't work. Find out what they are.

Can you tell when someone has hired a professional designer?

The Gift Horse's Mouth

This post is one of the reasons I love reading Seth Godin's stuff. As he once said in a lecture I attended, he doesn't so much come up with brand new stuff, but he's pretty amazing at putting the pieces together and coming up with some interesting conclusions.

The piece to which I'm referring is his riff on gift cards and how they are pretty much a scam. As he puts it, why have we bought into the story that it's crude and crass to just give someone a $100 bill as a gift, but somehow it's OK to give them a $100 gift card. The money is useful anywhere, while the card limits the receiver to one store where they will either have to spend some of their own cash or leave money on the card (since it would be pretty tricky to purchase anything which works out to exactly the value on the card).

Let's not even consider the issue of fees on the card which make it worth gradually less and less if you take too long to use it.

Now, I've given such cards myself. Why didn't I just give cash (or check)? I think it basically comes down to the reasons behind the gift. A gift is supposed to be for someone for whom you care, either family or friend. By giving them some specific thing that they want, you are saying you are so close to them that you understand their deepest desire.

Of course, the challenge is that it's difficult to be that close to everyone, especially as families become more dispersed. I love my brother, and I know he loves tools. By this time in his life, though, after decades of building his workshop and it's collection of saws, hammers, drills, etc., I have no clue exactly what he has, needs, or wants. So, my gift card to Home Depot is a statement that I recognize those things which are important or enjoyable to him, I'm just a little fuzzy on the details.

So, I guess at the bottom of things, I can see Seth's point that the gift card industry creates a lot of waste, at the same time, however, we might actually be buying something more than just "store money".

Maybe we're just saying "I wish I knew you better."

So, what are your opinions of gift cards?

A New Beginning

I got started on the Bruce Donovan Construction project this evening. One of the first steps to this or any project is to set up three copies of the site.

The first copy is the one that is on my desktop computer in my office. This is the copy upon which I will be doing all of my work. Having everything directly on my local computer makes editing files or adding graphics a lot easier. Also, since I try to make my local machine look like the production server as much as possible (i.e. it has the same files and directories), when I finally move the files to the production site, I have a fairly high chance of the system working right from the start.

The second copy is on a test site which my client should be able to see. This is so that after I have made some changes on copy one (the one on my computer), I can then upload the files to the test site, where the client can take a look and give me his or her approval. Quite often I'm able to make what is called a subdomain on the production server and use it as a test site. For example, if you can open the production site by pointing your browser at http://brucedonovan.com/, then the test site might be at http://testsite.brucedonovan.com/.

The final copy is the production site itself. Of the three, this copy changes least frequently -- only when testing on the other two copies clears up most of the potential bugs.

By doing this, I reduce the number of problems which might otherwise crop up on the production website, without giving myself too much overhead.

So, what are the first things you might do when you get a new client?

The Subtle Dangers of Jargon

Today in sales training we were talking about jargon and how it is a Bad Thing to use it. The primary problem, of course, is that you aren't guaranteed that the person with whom you are speaking will know what you are talking about. This makes them feel not OK. When you make someone feel not OK they tend to want to get away from you as soon as possible -- which makes it very difficult to determine if they are interested and qualified to buy from you.

Working with my partner in class, we were bringing up various terms in our businesses which might cause consternation in a listener. We realized that there was another danger. Not only could we hit upon a term which the listener didn't know, worse would be a term that the listener thought he knew. One example of this was the phrase "Web 2.0". Even amongst different people in the tech business, you can find different meanings for this term.

In group discussion later, I brought up the term and talked about our findings. Then one of the other students pointed out a completely different issue. For the most part, people in the world of the Web recognize Web 2.0 as the next generation of the Web, with emphasis on the social aspects of making connections using the Web.

This person commented that he always thought that Web 2.0 meant that a site was really old and not yet perfected. Curious, I asked him why he would think that. He told me that "2.0" is a pretty low number. Internet Explorer is on Version 7 after all, so that must make Web 2.0 pretty old.

Huh, I guess I never thought of it that way.

How have people either in or out of your field misinterpreted common jargon phrases that you commonly use?

On the Web: Defining Some More Terms

After reading my post from yesterday, my good blog friend, Jacki Hollywood Brown of Well Organized thought that I should address some of the terms regarding website statistics. Yes, I know that many people don't care about statistics. Really, the only reason you should care is if you actually care whether someone is actually reading your content.

OK, so most of us might actually care about that. So, here goes.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This has nothing to do with making search engines work better. This actually means optimizing your site to make it more likely that you will end up on the front page of search results when people search for a particular phrase. For example, one of my former clients, Suzanne Smith of cellochan, is on the first page of results when someone searches on Google for "Ann Arbor cello lessons". SEO is almost as much an art as a science and requires a long-term commitment for any reasonable chance of success, according to my friend Andrew Miller of Your Search Advisor, LLC. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
   
2. Hits: This is the number of times a file is retrieved from your website. This is probably one of the least useful statistics. Each time a visitor looks at a single web page on your site, his browser has to retrieve many files. The text of a page is in one file and each graphic on the page is also in a different file. One page visited could easily generate ten or more "hits".
3. Page Views: This is slightly more useful as it is the number of times anyone visits a particular page. This can tell you which pages on your site are receiving the most traffic.
4. Visitors: When someone comes to your website, they may click around a bit, each generating a number of page views. It's good to know how many people visit your site. Think of this as the equivalent of how many people walk in the front door of a store on any given day.
5. Unique Visitors: While "visitors" counts the number of people through the door, unique visitors measures the size of your actual audience. In our real-world example, if I had fifty people walk in and out of my store in a day, I might be pretty happy -- until I discovered that it was actually the same guy all the time. My traffic was fifty people, my audience was one.

There are several other meaningful concepts with regards to web statistics, but they start getting into some esoteric areas which, for now might be best left alone. Maybe we'll cover those in another post.

So, what are some of the phrases in your business that a lay person might not fully understand?

On the Web: Defining Some Terms

I've spoken with a few networking contacts and prospects lately and I've discovered that there is some confusion as to the entities which govern how we interact with the Web. So, without further ado, here are a few of the terms a website owner should know:

1. The Internet: The Internet is a worldwide network of computers upon which a variety of services (like email, the Web, etc) can be run.
2. The World Wide Web or the Web: One of many services which run on the Internet. This particular service provides text and graphics in a particular format which can be displayed by programs called browsers (see below). One way to think of the difference between the Internet and the Web is by thinking of the Internet as an elementary school building. The Web would correspond to the group of teachers and students who make up the fourth grade.
   
3. Internet Service Provider (ISP): This actually has nothing to do with your website. This is how you connect the computer on your desk to the Internet. You might have "broadband" or "high-speed" service from your cable company, like Comcast, or "DSL" service from your phone company. You need an ISP in order to surf the Web or retrieve email.
4. Hosting Service or Web Hosting Service: This is where your website lives. This is a company which has a whole bunch of computers called "servers" (imagine your desktop computer, but way more powerful and without a computer monitor). Your website is stored as a bunch of computer files on one of these servers. When someone goes to your website, the computer on their desk makes a connection to the server at the hosting service and requests the page that they want to view.
5. Browser: A browser is a computer program which runs on your computer. It might be called Internet Explorer or Firefox or Safari, but essentially when you want to look at a particular web page, this program makes the connection I mentioned above, retrieves the files for the page and then turns those files into the pictures and text which you see on your computer screen.
6. Domain Name: Think of this as the address for your website, your email, etc. So, in my case, "cyberdatasolns.com" is the domain name for my company website.
   
7. Registrar: OK, this one is a little more complicated. Essentially, the registrar is the company with whom you register your domain name. By registering your domain name you are telling the world which hosting service is storing your website. This gets a little confusing because the same company which provides your hosting service can be quite often your registrar also, but they are not necessarily linked. If you ever decide to move your website to a new hosting service, you have to contact your registrar to do so. Usually this can be done fairly easily through an online form.
   

Those are some of the more commonly confused terms that I've heard. Perhaps you've encountered some yourself. Let me know if there are any other confusing terms or phrases which you think should be included in this list.

So, in your line of work, what terms are often confusing to your prospects or clients?

Being a Superhero

Because of the proximity of Lisa's due date and the Thanksgiving holiday, we weren't inclined to go too far from home this year, despite the fact that I do enjoy the craziness of the family get-togethers. So, to deal with this situation, we figured that we would invite my mom, Debby Peters, and her husband, Steve, up to our place for Thanksgiving dinner.

I wasn't quite sure how I would take care of everything, but as long as I could get away with instant potatoes and instant stuffing, I figured we would be OK. Oh, and I'm not much of a meat cooker, being a vegetarian and all, so I was probably going to have to figure out what to do in lieu of an actual bird (Tofurky anyone?). Then my mom said those words which lightened my heart like the dawn breaking over a new day.

"Why don't I just prepare everything and bring it up?"

Suddenly I could breathe again. I didn't have to worry about it. My mom is a great cook and I knew that everything was going to be delicious and I could focus on taking care of Lisa.

I was thinking about my reaction this afternoon and I realized something. If we are good in our business, this is probably exactly how our clients feel when they call us in to take care of a particular task. They don't know how to fix things. All they know is confusion and pain and we, with a few simple words can make it all better.

"I can take care of that for you."

For many of us, it's probably as close to being a superhero as we need to become.

So, when was the last time you felt like a superhero?

Re-Use and Re-Imagine

I worked some more on the Community Housing Network site upgrade today. I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. This is a good thing as two other projects are starting to heat up a little. Never a dull moment.

At any rate, my work today allowed me to re-use some code from another system. For programmers, this is somewhat of a Holy Grail. Using or re-tooling old code can often save quite a bit of time and effort in a project.

In this case, I had designed a chunk of PHP code a while back, which automatically switched testimonials on a page. Each time you reloaded a page it would grab a random testimonial from a directory on the server. You can see the results of this on both the CNP of Ohio site and on my own Cyber Data Solutions site.

Now, the folks at CHN wanted a series of different images on their front page. I could have used Flash to create an animated slideshow, but I personally think that such things actually detract from the page. So instead, I used my "random testimonial" code and tweaked it a little so that it would display different pictures instead. You can see it on the CHN test site, if you are interested.

So, what do you think about having animated slide shows on a web page? Do you find them fun or distracting?

Email Purge

This afternoon I spent a portion of time clearing out my email inbox.

I've mentioned before that I'm trying to minimize the number of times I check email throughout the day. I'm getting pretty good at that, but the skill I seem to lack is actually doing something with those emails when I receive them. My mental monologue sounds something like "Oh, a message from Bob. I should write back to him. I'll leave it in my inbox so I remember. And there's the data I was waiting for. I'll just leave it there until I get to it. That looks like an interesting seminar. I'd better save that message in my inbox so that I remember to register."

And so on.

Within a week my inbox grows to between 50 and 100 "important" messages. Bob never gets a message from me. The data becomes hard to find. By the time I actually uncover the information about the seminar, it's long past.

So, yesterday I made a clean sweep. I acted upon, responded to, or filed away every single message in the queue. Some ended up as "to do" items. Others just got deleted.

Now I just need to keep on top of it every day.

So what's your biggest email sin?

Building a Deck (of Business Cards)

One of the challenges I've faced, given all of the networking events that I attend, is what to do with all of the business cards I receive. Without some sort of system, I would quickly have been overwhelmed by a landslide of little pieces of cardboard. So far I've got a few rules/techniques I follow to try to keep things under control.

1. Take only what I need. In general, I try not to ask for a card unless I think that either the other person or I (or preferably both of us) will benefit from a closer relationship.
2. Take notes. At the event, after speaking with someone, I try to note down anything I remember which might be of importance to me at a later date. "Needs website", "Interested in online database", or "Introduce to Bob Smith", might be some of the short phrases I would use. Usually I try to tack on the event and the date, too.
3. Review and reduce. When I get home, I try to review the cards as soon as possible. There are always folks who will give you their card whether you ask for it or not. These will often go right into the garbage. It may sound a bit ruthless, but, if I can't remember them (and I didn't make any notes on their card), then I am unlikely to want to talk with them in the future. There's no need to clutter my desk with unwanted cards. Most of the ones for which I've made notes, I will keep.
4. Take action. With the cards left over, I schedule calls to be made over the next couple of days, possibly with action items in order to provide that person with something which I may have promised them. I'll usually put these cards in a "holding pile" for the short term.
   
5. File. If a person gets back to me and it looks like we may be on the way to establishing even a loose relationship, I will file their card under their last name in my business card three-ring binder. I also make a notation under their business name so I can look up a person either way.
6. Purging. Periodically, I will go through a few pages in the binder. Those with whom I've not spoken in a while might get re-entered in step four above.

That's about it. I've been using this method for only a month, so I'm not sure how it will work for the long term. For now, though, it seems to be working pretty well and preventing me from being buried alive in business cards.

So, how do you cope with business card glut?

Remembering to be a Child

Not long ago I watched a "youth" movie called "A Bridge to Terabithia". Tonight I watched another: "The Last Mimzy". While they were vastly different in tone and plot, they were alike in that they reawakened some aspect of childlike wonder in me.

I love it when that happens.

After watching movies like this (or reading books, etc), I can remember the way I felt as a kid. I remember being fearless and being willing to dream things without concern for failure (or even whether it fit into reality as we know it).

I wonder if some aspect of that emotion is necessary to thrive as an entrepreneur. According to a post on Tom Peters' blog (author of "In Search of Excellence"), the most successful innovators "do more experiments faster". Do you know anyone who is more likely to do that than a child?

So, what happened the last time you let yourself be childlike?

Doing It All

I met with two different people today for coffee and, from those meetings got a better understanding about the nature of doing business in Ann Arbor -- especially as a small business owner.

Each was the owner of his or her own business. My good friend Ross Johnson owns 3.7 Designs and my new friend Christine Slocumb is the principal of Clarity Quest. If you listened to the two of them describe what they do (SEO, web design, print marketing, etc), you would swear they are competitors -- and they are.

Kinda, sorta, in a way.

In a way, though, they are colleagues as well. They often call upon one another to fill in when things get too busy. Right now Ross is sub-contracting for another designer, who is working with Christine.

Now, Ross and I met today to see if we had the potential for a similar strategic relationship. He has the design skills which I lack, whereas he sometimes has need of my programming expertise.

We each can lead and we each can follow. Together we can make our individual companies even stronger. No longer will I have to turn away clients who want a new website, despite the fact that I don't really do that sort of thing anymore. Ross, on the other hand won't have to worry when one of his clients suddenly needs an online database of press releases.

Believe it or not, being a DIY'er, this is actually a bit difficult for me to wrap my brain around. Still, I know for my business to grow, I need to let go of trying to do everything myself.

Maybe next I'll look into letting someone else pay my bills! ;-)

So, have you worked with someone else in a "virtual corporation"? How did it work out for you?