Archive for April 2007

All numbers should appear as figures with the exception of:

* Phrases and sayings.

* Proper names.

* First word in a sentence — better to rewrite so it isn’t the first word. Headlines like “5 Steps to…” are exempt.

* Mentioned in a sentence where the number isn’t an important fact (I know this one is a gray area).

Jakob Nielsen’s column regarding writing numbers online prompted this entry. Actually, the title of the article is “Show Numbers as Numerals When Writing for Online Readers.” AP Style defines numerals, “A figure, letter, word or group of words expressing a number.”

In other words, he says to spell out the numbers when he means the opposite as it’s clearly stated in the abstract, “It’s better to use ’23′ than ‘twenty-three’ to catch users’ eyes when they scan Web pages for facts, according to eyetracking data.” In the article, he writes that Chicago Manual of Style states to spell out numbers 1 – 99, AP Style and many style guides say to do the following:

* “Spell out a numeral at the beginning of a sentence.” It recommends rewording the sentence so the number doesn’t appear at the start. Calendar years are exempt from this rule.

* “Spell out in casual expressions.” A 1000 times no and thanks a 1,000,000 just don’t work.

* Leave proper names as they’re supposed to appear. Examples: 3M and 20th Century Fox.

* Spell out whole numbers below 10 and use “figures” (that’s the right word, not “numerals”) for numbers 10 and above.

Based on these rules, all numbers should appear as figures not spelled out words except 1 – 9. For online writing, the numbers between one and nine should appear as figures when they represent a fact such as “9% of the …” and “5 Ways…” These help scannability.

Spelling out the number works better in a sentence like, “She has four computers.” Using “She has 4 computers” needlessly distracts the reader with this no so important fact. Don’t worry about numbers over 10. Use your best judgment for numbers under 10.

My daughter played in a national volleyball tournament this past weekend (don’t ask how her team did). Since it was a large event, spectators had to download and print tickets to attend. It was free — just had to have the ticket to keep away those who don’t belong, provide data to hosting city to encourage hosting again, direct people to the right courts (over 60 courts) and help plan for emergency services.

The last reason came true. On Friday night, the Dallas/Fort Worth area experienced severe thunderstorms and saw three tornadoes (last I hard). The building staff evacuated everyone in the building to the parking garage.

The Web site where you printed tickets could stand usability improvements. But that’s not the point of this post. It also contained a feature where you could pick four teams to track through SMS and e-mail. The service sent team schedules and results of their matches.

It wasn’t a perfect service since we didn’t receive some notices. The speed of notifications were unpredictable… sometimes fast and sometimes slow. Also, if you wanted to change up the four teams, you couldn’t. Every team played in two different pools in this tournament. Paul tracked all the teams in my daughter’s pool on day one. Then learned he couldn’t change them for day two.

Despite the imperfections, it was exciting to discover the feature. When volleyball was in session in the schools, we also had a resource for checking standings and win/loss records for all the schools. Only problem was the lack of updates. If I remember right, my daughter’s coach said it depended on the coach to keep it updated.

Report card day was always an exciting or nerve-wracking experience since we didn’t always know exactly what our grades were. That’s not the case today. It’s just another report our kids’ bring home for our signatures (yes, we still have to sign) since they’re grades are accessible online throughout the school year.

Love this kind of progress!

We’ve covered the good and bad of self-employment. Breaking away from the corporate world contains more advantages, but ones we wouldn’t want to admit.

* No big brother. E-mail, use instant messenger and surf freely without worries of corporate eyes. Avoid potentially embarrassing discoveries. Not that we would do such things.

* Wear birthday suit, PJs, sweats, bathing suit, clothes from the [pick a decade] decade to work. This doesn’t apply if you have an office outside the home. You wouldn’t want your office neighbors spreading bad things about you.

* No pressure to beat the boss in to work or wait till the boss leaves. If you have kids and work in a home office, you spend this time getting them out the door as quickly as possible and hoping they take the long way home.

* No more bad hair day stress.

* No more clothing competition. You wear the clothes for the job you want and not the job you have. It gets old and expensive especially when you throw in dry cleaning. Also no more figuring out what to wear on casual Fridays. We strongly recommend avoiding shorts, flip flops and t-shirts when you have casual days.

* Decorate your office any way you like. Like stick-on Garfields? Put ‘em on! Like a funky calendar? Hang it up. Want a wall full of kid photos? Go for it. Love toys, sci-fi figurines and knickknacks? No one cares about your obsessions — have fun! You can put the meaningless certificates away in a file. No need to show off your awards.

* Sing, scream, use speaker phones at all times. No pesky neighbors to bug you or vice versa. Tone deaf? Sing your heart out — just make sure your speaker phone is off. Now you can really have fun when you make phone calls to your significant other who won’t be able to talk back the same way.

* Eat as loudly as you want. Still, be careful about food and drink around the computer and keyboard. It’s not a good thing to spill no matter where you work.

* Exercise anytime and go right back to work without showering or putting good clothes back on (a big problem during summer months). Just wear your exercise clothes to work. If you run errands, you look like a fitness buff — a good thing! Hey, you can wear your bathing suit now … so swim several times a day, if you want.

* Do laundry, dishes and household chores during breaks. It’s important to take breaks from the computer, might as well get something done and save the evening time for family.

* Run to school at the drop of a hat when a child is in trouble. No awkward conversations with the boss explaining you have to leave. Go to doctor’s appointments including the psychiatrist anytime without telling half the office where you’re going.

* Lunch anytime and however long you want. No rushing to a restaurant before the crowd and swallowing food without chewing to ensure you get back to the office within an hour.

* Take an animal or baby to work with you anytime. Of course, a child could get in the way of getting things done.

Busy with getting my 50 pages done by tomorrow… only one-third of the way there. So taking the easy way out and pointing to People In The Know, a site that shares experience, knowledge and life tips. Bobby Ellis, the person behind the site, conducts interviews with experts in various jobs and industries to share what they know.

She interviewed me and asked questions about getting published and making the most out of the Internet. Maybe you can glean something useful from the interview.

Wikis, social networks, blogs, podcasts, vodcasts, forums … we have more than enough tools to help grow our business, manage our projects, partner with clients, and build relationships. My business is a testament how these tools pay off. Most of my clients are located outside of Texas and I find them without making cold phone calls. This Lifehack article explores social media and which work well for what situation.

If you take one thing from this post, it’s this: It’s OK not to use every tool out there. Even the more popular ones.

Though I joined the Internet before it became a revolution and blogging before it went mainstream, the available tools overwhelm me as I’m sure it does for you. Eventually, I learned that I don’t have to do or have every new thing out there. We’ve reached the point where it’s time to pick and choose the best tools based on our needs.

For example, Twitter is the latest thing. I’ve seen it and decided not to get into it. I didn’t see much use for tracking conversations and what people are doing. Some people — like teams — have found innovative ways to use Twitter. The same applies to Second Life. But they typically require a lot of time investment.

The Lifehack.org post mentions Flickr. Some of you may hate me for this or strongly disagree, but it’s my opinion. I think Flickr is overblown. I believe the average surfer can’t figure out how to use it and it consists mainly of designers, bloggers and people in that “crowd.”

You could point me to an average Joe using Flickr, but I don’t think Flickr is easy for the average person to use (at least, not when I first discovered it — I can’t judge now because I’m too familiar with it). However, the site continues to evolve and adds features. This could make it more usable or more confusing.

To make the problem worse, the Internet is full of free photo and media sharing communities. Others that provide more storage than Flickr for free. We have too many choices. I use a few of them for various purposes. It’s about needs and what tools meet those needs. What do you think?

If you installed the Google Optimizer plug-in for WordPress — even if you didn’t follow the steps to take full advantage — you may want to deactivate it. It messed up this web site big time.

In Burger Rush, Chef Heidi believes in high quality cuisine and wants to take burgers to another level beyond fast food. Since none of the fast food restaurants want her fancy burgers, she starts her own restaurant.

Unlike the other restaurant or run a business games, this one also includes match three for something different. Heidi doesn’t simply take orders, upgrade her menu, give treats to customers to make them happier and pick up cash. She matches ingredients until she has enough for a recipe — for every customer’s order.

The ingredients board also serves up surprises like tokens for buying upgrades, milkshakes for treating a customer and microwaves to quickly add ingredients for a recipe.

For variety, the game progresses through five restaurants. As Heidi’s business grows, so do the goal and expert amounts for the level. She also has a diversity of clientele from the grandmother and the professional to the astronaut and the annoying street mime.

Some may be disappointed because Burger Rush only has one kind of play: story. It doesn’t have an arcade version as many of these style games do. The one thing that irritated me was the slow selection of items. I couldn’t click ahead as the game remembered none of the steps. Sometimes I had to click several times before the game recognized my action.

Those quiet mimes aren’t so quiet — it doesn’t take long before they start showing signs of anger by beating themselves on the head. That’s how I felt at times during the game when a customer’s “happiness” was low or I didn’t have enough ingredients on the board to make a match for a needed item. The game offers the right amount of challenge.

In upgrades, you can buy more sweet treats to raise the customer happiness levels, add flavor and speed to the French fry fryer and soda machine, gain more lives, and add more recipes. I liked the fact that the game sold out of sweet treats so I couldn’t buy a ton of them. It would make the game too easy.

The game could use more variety of ingredients. Most sandwiches were either hamburger or chicken with the standard toppings of lettuce, tomatoes, ketchup, and cheese. Every recipe used specific toppings. When the chicken appeared on the game, I hadn’t bought the recipe for a chicken sandwich. So the challenge was working around the chicken and trying to earn enough tokens to buy the chicken recipe.

I only bought 7 of the 12 recipes. The more recipes you have, the more expensive your sandwiches and the higher your sales to help you move to the next level. But I think adding fish, salad, and other items would improve the game’s play.

The Burger Rush interface is crisp as lettuce and the game will give players a rush. Those who enjoy match three and action games will like the unusual combination of the two styles.

Download the game from your favorite site

• Amazon
• Big Fish Games

I’m working on a project that requires my installing Vista and Office 2007 (on a computer with no important data and programs, of course). Installing Vista went fine. Installing anti-virus was a nightmare. We tried to install the trial versions just to get going… and Microsoft offered four choices. Not one worked. After fiddling with the computer and Vista’s settings, Norton got farther than the rest.

BUT. It won’t update. We followed the instructions to address the problem and Norton won’t update. When we make the changes and try again, it says there are no updates to download (even though it was NEVER updated). Back to square one.

So, I cleaned out all traces of Norton and the other anti-virus programs. Yet, Norton continued to appear as the active firewall. How? Its clock has been cleaned and we deleted all remnants that don’t delete with Norton’s own uninstall app. We reinstalled Vista and started over.

First anti-virus app I installed… it worked. Lesson learned: Install the AV first thing before installing or customizing apps. Get it working, then install everything else.

Better yet, don’t upgrade to Vista unless you have a new computer.

Must blog fast. Finally got go ahead on a project with about 150 written pages due before May 1. Best thing to do is just type it all out. Don’t worry about being perfect. Once the content is on paper… it’s easier to modify and beautify. This material has sidebars/boxes. Those I’ll fill in after doing an initial draft.

Just started reading A Writer’s Coach last night. Writers struggle with coming up with that dreamy opening sentence in a book. The author recommends coming up with a tagline that sums up the book. Once you write the chapter, story or whatever… delete the tagline. You should have something solid by now.

What do you do when you have a short writing deadline?

Do you want to hire an attorney who can’t spell the location of where he serves? Note the ad identifies the attorney’s specialty as “DWI.” I wonder if the lawyer was TWI (typing while intoxicated). I was born and bred in Fort Worth, and I’m a proud Cowtown native. I’ve seen my share of “Forth Worth” including once from my -horror- daughter.

An army major set up fort there and named it in honor of General William Jenkins Worth, who never set foot in the area. So there you have it. It’s Fort and no where near Fort Wayne, Indiana.