Archive for June 2007

The E-View discusses how to conduct a good interview by e-mail, something I rely on most of the time. The article also shows a Q&A sample interview. The article focuses on the entire process from finding experts to contacting them.

I explained my point of view on why I conduct e-mail interviews. When I write e-mail interview questions, I keep the following things in mind:

* Ask no more than five questions. Too many and you’ll overwhelm the interviewee. Of course, there are exceptions. For instance, I used to have an interview column with AbsoluteWrite and Digital Web. In these cases, I asked more than 10 questions and the interviewee knew this ahead of time.

* Ask open-ended questions. A yes/no or limited response question like “What’s your favorite color?” won’t elicit much of an answer.

* Ask if you can do follow up questions when you send the questions. Sometimes the interviewee will make an interesting point that you’d like to see expanded.

* Let interviewees know what’s in it for them. This improves your chances of getting a response, quicker and thorough. For example, I told the editors I interviewed that it will help them receive better queries since the writers would know exactly what they like and don’t like. Others, I let them know I’ll include a bio with links to their sites, which helps promote their business and improve their site’s findability with search engines.

In the seven or so years of writing and interviewing, I can only recall two interviews where the interviewee provide terse and useless responses that we didn’t run the interview.

I played in my first official tennis match ever, a USTA tournament against six teams. We played every hour beginning with a bye in the first hour — lucky us! Each team consisted of six players, three doubles partners. We played one set against another team’s six players at the same time across three courts.

When it was all over, we sweated through six sets — two complete matches. My partner and I struggled for four games only to lose by an embarrassing margin. But that didn’t prevent us from reaching deuce when we were behind, we fought hard for the point. By the fourth or fifth sets, we began to feel fatigued, overheated and pain. The blisters didn’t come until the fifth set and the backache started in the third or fourth set.

The fourth and fifth sets lasted the longest. In the fifth set, we finally lost without embarrassment with a final score of 4 to 6. It took the whole hour to play that set — usually we finish with 20 or 30 minutes to spare and rest before the next game. Not in the fourth and fifth sets. My partner and I were ready to go home and crash by the last set, but we kept pushing.

We won our first game in the last set. 6 to 2. We cursed ourselves, got frustrated and angry, but we never stopped playing our best. Many people would give up after four of five losses. I’m proud my partner stuck with the game all the way through. It was a great feeling to finish the long day on a happy note.

I think being deaf drove me to persevere through life. I was determined to lead a normal life and have others see me just as good as them. No matter how frustrated I was in school thinking I wasn’t doing well enough, that thinking didn’t interfere with trying my best on the test.

I believe there’s a difference with thinking you can’t do something and actually doing your best. Some people may say that kind of thinking brings you down, but it didn’t for me and others I know. It was about being realistic while aiming high. Sometimes, I wonder what character traits I would have had I not been born deaf. Competitive? Determined? Perfectionist?

106 Tips to Become a Master Connector provides many great ideas for networking as I am sure — like me — you have a few things you’re not comfortable doing. With 100+ suggestions, there’s bound to be a couple that would come naturally to you.

This blog is a networking tool for me. I’ve met lots of great folks through the blog and blogosphere. I believe in building relationships and blogs make it possible. When readers leave comments, we’re having a conversation and getting to know each other without the pressure of the sale.

Blogging also provides me with another option to substitute cold calling. The sales experts all say that cold calling should almost always be a part of your marketing toolbox. For me, it has the opposite effect as the relay service freaks out a few people.

I don’t like saying, “If you need a writer, please contact me. Who can you recommend that needs writing services?” It feels like a WIIFM (what’s in it for me) situation and that the other person will think that’s all I care about… landing business. Last week, someone who claims to be a writer wrote me and outright asked for writing work. The e-mail hurt more than helped the person because of poor grammar usage. It came across as if I should land all the clients and hand them over. It took seven years to get where I am today.

What are your favorite networking tools?

P.S. Secret note: Happy 18th to Paul. 180!!oo

Many of the casual games come with disappointing or anticlimatic endings. A player that goes that far in a game will have already bought the game, so developers don’t worry as much about the ending as they do about the play as Mark and I discussed this. But, a person who finishes the game can tell others (before buying) that the game has a lousy ending and they won’t bother buying.

Wouldn’t the ending the easiest part of programming and design? After all, they don’t have to require player input. Show images along with content to tie up the story and provide a satisfactory ending. I would think pulling the story together and having a good ending would lead to more sales as word-of-mouth / word-of-mouse marketing could help or hurt a game.

Reviewers don’t always have the luxury of completing a game before doing the write up. For instance, Virtual Villagers 2 (VV2) takes time to play as the game relies on real-time. A player could spend all day on the game and not finish it. However, VV2 has intriguing story happening as you try to learn about the past, but the game never ties up the story.

I’ve been tinkering with the CS3 applications — mostly Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Acrobat. Beautiful interface — very Web 2.0 (again, I use the term under protest) style. The thing that annoys most, but doesn’t surprise me … application bloat. So far, all the applications take longer to open than CS2. Every new release of Adobe Professional gets slower than its previous release.

One thing that hasn’t improved much with Photoshop is the ability to use it on a multi-monitor set up. I work with two monitors (and would love to go to three) and it does make a huge difference to my productivity.

However, CS3 has a small improvement for multi-monitor support. When I moved Photoshop CS2′s Window to screen #2, some parts of it didn’t move. With CS3, the whole application moved, but the image file always opened on screen #1 instead of #2. I moved CS3 back to screen #1 (the whole thing moved including the image) and opened another image. The image always opened in screen #2! No matter what, I could never get the images to open on the same screen as Photoshop’s application. How funky is that?

When I work in Word, new files always open where I expect them to — in the same screen where I click “Open” in Word. If I double-click a Word file from outside the application (i.e. File Explorer), it opens in the same screen where I last touched Word. I believe this should be standard GUI practice. No surprises. Since we’re seeing more and more web-based applications as well as dual-monitor owners… this is something developers and usability experts need to understand.

I’ve been thinking about e-mail subject lines more lately especially with the recent flurry of legitimate e-mails coming in without one. A Lifehack entry recommends using one of the following four items in a subject line:

* Question
* Response
* FYI
* Spam

Very GTDish, indeed (Getting Things Done). Although, “spam” in the subject line is a laugh. Real spammers aren’t going to use it. Perhaps, the author’s spam suggestion was for those e-mails (jokes, warnings, urban legends) forwarded many times. Maybe use “Humor” or “Forwardthon.” OK, so the latter isn’t realistic. But using “Forward” along won’t work since most e-mail applications use that to represent a forwarded message or “FWD.”

*Blank Subject Lines – Bad*

Whatever you do, don’t leave it blank. When someone I know sends an e-mail with a blank subject line, I respond gently letting the person know that blank subject lines tend to go into the junk folder. So far, it’s worked and no one has responded (yet) that I insulted them with my “use the subject line” advice.

*Sending Personal E-mails to a Work Address*

Some people prefer receiving all e-mails at their work address, even personal e-mails. So when I send an e-mail to a work address that’s not work-related, I try to respect their work time by entering a subject of “Low priority,” “Personal,” or something related to the contents of the e-mail.

*Change the Subject Line*

Has the e-mail conversation taken a turn from the original conversation that the subject no longer fits? Change it. Sometimes I forget to do this. In discussion groups, the standard is, for example, “Re: Baseball Was: Soccer team in finals.” The new subject line appears after “Re” with the former subject line going after “Was.” I don’t bother with this when exchanging e-mails with one person, I simply change the subject line.

*Date-related Subject Lines*

Subject lines like “Meeting Tomorrow” and “Lunch Thursday?” don’t work well. If the person sent the meeting e-mail on Tuesday and I open it on Wednesday, I might think the meeting is on Thursday not Wednesday. While I could check time and date stamp on the e-mail, they’re not always accurate. Though “Lunch Thursday” identifies a specific day of the week, if I open it on Wednesday or even Thursday… it’ll confuse. Use the date to avoid confusion.

*Vague Subject Lines*

The best example I can think of is “Interview.” OK, so is the person asking if I will interview someone? Or does she want to interview me? The difference between the two is big. Someone is more likely to jump at the opportunity to be the interviewee as opposed to do the interviewing.

Any other good tips?

Inbox Overwhelmed? proposes filing for e-mail bankruptcy by simply deleting a bulk of e-mail messages. That sounds drastic, but it worked for some people. The opposite worked for me.

I started using a GMail account as a backup e-mail address, the one for forms and registration. At first, I managed the GMail account like I did with my main e-mail account that I use on my computer as opposed to web-based e-mail. It didn’t take long before I couldn’t keep up with deleting outdated sent messages, clearing the trash, and keeping the number of new messages in specific folders low.

I don’t bother with Gmail’s Sent, Spam and Trash folders anymore. The e-mails piled up and reached over 700 messages in each folder. I route e-mail newsletters and alerts to specific folders and purge them. It wasn’t easy to delete a bunch of unread e-mail newsletters and alerts, but I had to be realistic.

As for instant messaging, I won’t give that up. IM to me is what phones are to most of the world. So, I must have one IM service on at all times so my immediate family can contact me. I also carry a Sidekick with me so I can stay connected to my family while away from the computer. It’s impossible to spend too much time chatting through the Sidekick’s IM because the data network is down more than it’s up. Frustrating.

I had to learn to cut things short in a nice way. When friends and family pop in, I judge based on my current work whether to talk to them or let them know our conversation needs to be brief. I know who tends to just chat about nothing important as opposed to chat when there’s something to discuss. So I use that knowledge for managing the conversation.

My advice to those struggling with IM overload is to set rules. Turn it off if you can’t be disturbed. In my case, I simply don’t respond and try to remember to turn on the away message. Considering I use most of my IDs for business conversations, I take care not to write an unprofessional away message. Humor is A-OK as long as it’s G-Rated and respectful.

How do you handle info overload?

Monday by Noon asks if site maps are obsolete. First, let’s agree on the term site maps. These contain a site’s high level links along with the name of the page like this good example of a site map from Apple.com.

Along the same lines of questioning site maps, people question the use of search on a site. In both cases, some wonder if that relying on site maps and search indicate that something is wrong with the site. I believe both tools have a place on a site. Sometimes using search would bring too many results or won’t find the general information you’re looking for. For example, I’m looking for the Contact information since I can’t find a contact link on a web site. I’d rather use a site map than search in this case. The site map might list specific contacts (investors, PR, product, etc.).

OK, contact was a bad example as this should be part of the navigation. My point is that you might be searching for something generic and not specific — something the site map would do better than
a search tool. Search, on the other hand, helps users find something specific. For instance, I search a blog or web site for a topic or word such as “monitors.” Monitors would not have a good spot in most site maps (an ecommerce site that sells monitors would probably list it under Products, Computers… this depends on the site’s set up).

Successful site maps organize the information with two or three levels. I think two levels is ideal: Top level such as Products for an computer store, and second levels such as Monitors, Computers, Software, Printers, Accessories. Go too deep and you’ll confuse or overwhelm the user. Where do you look for a site map on a site? I typically look in the footer navigation as they appear there most often. Site maps, I believe, aren’t important enough to join the main navigation. Where do you look for site maps? Search box? The search tool placement on a site doesn’t have a standard spot like site maps.

What do you think of site maps?

The configuration instructions here get cut off at the end. Maybe the writer or programmer fell asleep? Too many steps in these instructions for the user to remember. The dialog box may not remain while the user completes the last steps.

Then the next image comes from a Japanese site that has a complete site in well-written English, but I suppose it’s relying on its mothership site for 404 errors messages.