Archive for June 2008

The following games will be discounted next week on Game du Jour, the ‘one-deal-a-day’ website dedicated to indie and casual games:

Mon. June 30th: 65% off on Brickster

Tue. July 1st: 60% off on Bee Oh Bee

Wed. July 2nd: 60% off on Tiki Trouble

Thu. July 3rd: 60% off on June 22 – Enemy at the Gates

Fri. July 4th: 40% off on Peggle Deluxe

Sat. July 5th: 60% off on Crime City

Sun. July 6th: 60% off on Galactic Justice

We have a lot of prizes to award again. But we also have lots of prizes remaining — some you can win by commenting and others by linking, signing up, or one of these.

When Good Clients Have Bad Ideas entry prizes: $450 basic WordPress customization package from Kim Beasley.  one copy of Andy King’s upcoming Website Optimization.

Winners: Karen Putz wins the WordPress package and John Hewitt wins Website Optimization!

The Power of Story in the Digital Age prizes: Lifetime subscription for RadioTime.com RedButton software — TiVO for radio where you can pause and record live radio. Business Daffynitions: Humor from the Workplace from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru.

Winners: Elisa Miller wins Business Daffynitions: Humor from the Workplace and and John Hewitt wins RadioTime.com RedButton software.

Thank you, Random.org for drawing the winners.

Congratulations, everyone! More birthday presents coming your way! Add a comment to this entry by 11:59pm today for a chance to win.

More copies of Website Optimization are up for the taking at CSS Collection.

I write this a few hours before heading to Whitewright, Texas, to Skydive Dallas for my first tandem jump appointment. Ever since I posted I would jump out of a plane if we collected $5000 worth of prizes by this blog’s 8th birthday, I’ve fretted and regretted my offer. Sometimes publicity forced a person to do stupid things and this was mine.

I blame Peter Shankman. I watched a video of his skydives and listened to him gush about his love of the daredevilish activity. But it was my own stupidity for letting that talk and desire to share prizes with the world to influence my decision. In truth, Peter put up with my rants and supported me throughout this chicken phase. He’s a busy guy with over 11,000 people following him plus he travels often — yet he makes time to push me and responds to my yadda yaddas.

I made the initial appointment on June 20. But bad weather postponed it another week. Two days before the jump, I joined my girl friends for a game of mah jongg. Big mistake.

“Jumping is a big deal!” one said.

“My sister is a daredevil and has tried everything. When she went skydiving, they had to pry her fingers off the plane’s edge and she almost peed in her pants!” said another.

“Why don’t you just go to Planet Pizza (kids’ party place with rides) and jump out of the airplane there? That way you kept your word!” said the first one. This sounds more like deception than comical and I won’t do that when it comes to something tied with my business.

To make it worse, my mother kept reminding me I have three children and should be responsible.

By the end of mah jongg night even after I won the last hand, I decided I couldn’t do this as a pit in my stomach formed and visualizing being in the plane frightened me. But how do I get out of this after telling people I would? I found a way out of this whole mess. One prize sponsor who pushed the prizes over $5000 by June 1 never responded. But it didn’t feel right, either.

Ironically, the biggest supporters come from my own family. My oldest and my husband. Both said they would do it if they could. Oldest isn’t old enough yet and husband (at 6’4″ tall) passes the weight limit. I know hubby would do it as he mentioned it years ago before I ever considered this.

Back ‘n forth. Dilly dallying. Wishy washing.

So how this skydiving mess like writing? It’s exactly how many of us feel when we started freelancing as a writer. Your mind comes up with many similar thoughts…

Can I do this?

Everyone thinks he or she is a writer. What makes me a real one?

Aw, this is crazy. Forget about it. How the heck am I going to stay busy and keep clients coming?

It’s too risky!

What if the client hates my work? Then, I’m done for.

But you have to deal with all the other stuff like marketing, bookkeeping, preparing for the dive…

What if I enjoy it?

Sometimes you just have to do it! The last time I remember freezing out of fear was on top of a mountain at a camp in Colorado when I was about 11. I was strapped and on the edge. I guess it was about 30 feet to the ground. I stood there stiff and gripping the rope not trusting it to hold me. My foot dragged a few inches backward without coming off the mountain’s edge. The other followed. By the time I reached the middle, I pushed gently and eventually glided down like an inexperienced pilot flying a plane.

I did it! I did it! I did it!

It was a breeze the first time I went indoor rock climbing thanks to this experience. Freelance writing — like all things we try for the first time — gets easier with experience. Quoting rates, doing certain types of writing (white paper, web content, case studies, etc.), bookkeeping, providing expertise.

The folks at Skydive Dallas (especially Ernie, my instructor and my glue) were wonderful. They know how to put a gal’s mind at ease. It didn’t help that we had to wait because the winds were too strong. More time to chicken out and fidget. I mostly paced and tried texting in an area where my phone service barely breathed.

It was time. I did what Ernie told me to do and paced more until it was time to head out to the plane. Unexpectedly, my heart beat at normal speed. My stomach growled (lunch time) rather than knotted. I just sat in the small plane and watch the ground grow smaller. Didn’t think about much except wonder when the heck we would reach 2.5 miles high in the sky.

Tired. More about the tale another time. This entry wasn’t meant to tell the whole story.

Prizes: Five ebooks on writing from Anne Wayman and one full copy of Astraware Classic Collection, which includes Astraware Sudoku, Astraware Solitaire, and Astraware Board games. Astraware is one of Meryl’s favorite — if not the best — developer of handheld software. Leave a 30-word valuable comment in this post by June 30 for a chance to win.

Judy Schramm and I have known each other for over five years. She’s one of my earliest clients and my longest client referred her to me. We touched base from time to time over the years and now I do regular work for her. This shows you the power of staying in touch after a gig ends. I’ve seen her business explode as she added services and Proresource. I’m honored to have her as a client and friend. If I wanted to be more than a one-person business, she would be my role model.

Are You Ready to Hire a Virtual Assistant?

Everywhere you turn, people are talking about outsourcing.

It’s not just for IT work anymore. You can outsource a wide variety of tasks, including managing your overflowing email inbox, updating your web site or blog, doing bookkeeping, marketing your business, even finding outsourcers!

It sounds good, of course. Who wouldn’t want to offload mundane work and focus on the fun and strategic parts of our businesses.

But is it right for you?

Here are a few questions to ask yourself to see if you ready to hire your first virtual assistant…

1. Do you know what kind of work you want your assistant to do?

Can you list up to 10 specific projects with which you would like help? Optimally, you want projects that are ongoing, such as managing your email or updating your web site, that will require five hours or more each week.

Can you come up with a few easy projects to start with? You’ll want your assistant to begin work on projects that don’t require in-depth knowledge of your market or your company.

2. Can you define what experience, skills and personality characteristics the ideal team member would have?

Ideally, you’ll want to look for someone with combinations of experience, skills and personality that are easy to find.

For example, you might look for someone who is creative, loves graphic design and has Photoshop experience.

Or you might want someone who is detail-oriented, loves working with numbers, and has QuickBook experience.

You don’t want to look for someone who is creative and loves to work with numbers, who can do both your marketing and bookkeeping.

While I’m not going to claim there aren’t people out there with that combination of skills, they are few and far between. You want to make it easy to find the right person.

Think in terms of starting with one assistant and then adding more to do different types of work.

3. Can you provide the information your assistant needs to do these projects?

One of the main reasons projects aren’t done right is that the assistant didn’t have enough information about the project.

You need to explain:

• What you want done,
• Provide the background information, contacts, and data files needed to do the work, and
• Give a timeline and budget.

If you are so busy you can’t take time to provide all of this information, you won’t get the results you are hoping for.

4. Can you invest a little extra time to save your explanations?

Archiving your explanations about your industry, your company, and how you want things done saves you considerable time the next time you have a similar project or when you add the next person to your team.

5. Can you correct your assistant’s work?

If the work isn’t done perfectly the first time (and it probably won’t be), will you be comfortable explaining what was done wrong so your assistant can learn for next time?

6. Do you understand that you won’t gain free time immediately?

You need to allow time to train your assistant. In the beginning, in fact, it will take more time to explain what needs to be done than to do it yourself.

But if you can stick with it through the training process, you’ll get an assistant who knows what you want and does the work the way you want it.

7. Do you have a productive way to use the time you will gain?

If your goal is simply getting free time, you’re in great shape.

But if you need to get a return on the money you are spending to hire an assistant – increasing your revenue enough to cover the expense of the assistant – this is essential.

Plan projects you can do with the freed time to increase your revenue.

Or look for work you can give your assistant that will generate more income for you.

About the author: Judy Schramm is CEO of ProResource, a company she started to help other small business owners take advantage of virtual teams to grow their business. Before founding ProResource, Judy spent 14 years running a marketing and PR firm based entirely on virtual teams, with partners and clients around the world. If you’re ready for a virtual team, or just want to learn more about how you might use a virtual team to grow your business, visit www.proresource.com.

Prizes: Lifetime subscription for RadioTime.com RedButton software — TiVO for radio where you can pause and record live radio. Business Daffynitions: Humor from the Workplace from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru. Just leave a 30-word comment on this post by June 29 to get an entry for a drawing.

It’s Poewar’s John Hewitt‘s fault again (I promise I am not brown nosing him or nuthin’). He introduced me to Yvonne Russell through his March Madness thing, which you should what it is by now as I’ve mentioned it too many times during this birthday celebration. Now you can see why I credit John with renewing my interest in blogging. A gal gets tired after eight years, y’know?

Enough about him! This should be about Yvonne. Her blog entries always spark wonderful discussions. Writers can’t complain about loneliness when they have blogs like hers for their water cooler visits. I know I do.

The Power of Story in the Digital Age

What is your story? Your personal story? Your business story?

Now that we have push button publishing, our personal and business stories are no longer confined to oral storytelling, wonderful though that medium is – or to faded photos in a box. We have the means to gather and share those stories – the stories of our families, our hopes, our businesses and our everyday lives. They can be captured like time capsules… a web of ever changing snapshots preserved forever.

They spin around the ethernet, ready to be plucked off the virtual shelf by an interested passerby or a friend. It’s a pretty empowering thought that our stories and the stories of others in this digital age are ready and waiting like a virtual treasure chest of event markers, memories and perspectives for our children or grandchildren and beyond.

We can add color, nuances and an extra dimension of connectivity through words – spoken and written. We can add photos, video, audio and lifestreams. In an inspiring video, Jonathan Harris talks of looking up at the night sky and remembering the ancient Greek stories of the constellations. He ponders what the constellations would look like if we could remake our own modern day versions today. And what would their stories be?

Harris is working on two exciting projects. We Feel Fine maps the world’s emotions. Every day computers scan up to 20 000 sentences using the word “feel”. Never mind six degrees of separation. This is a sense of one to one connectivity. Universe maps world events and people – again a very powerful demonstration of the interactivity and essence of story. Everyone has a story and everyone’s story impacts on the world’s storyweb.

I’m excited to see what the future holds in providing new ways to share our personal and business stories. Recently, while travelling in outback Australia, I met a bookseller who had clients all around the world thanks to the wonders of the internet. She not only had clients, but these clients had become friends. She remarked “Aren’t we lucky to be living at a time like this?” I readily agreed.

About the Author: Yvonne Russell is a freelance writer, editor and professional blogger. She blogs at Home Biz Notes, YouCanSubmit, and Small Biz Mentor. Her personal blog is Grow Your Writing Business.

Snippets taken from long press release.

According to a new survey conducted by Information Solutions Group on behalf of PopCap Games, more than one in five (20.5%) players of casual video games have a physical, mental or developmental disability.

Those with disabilities report that they experience more significant benefits from playing and view their game-playing activity as a more important factor in their lives than do non-disabled consumers.

The most common types of disabilities and medical conditions cited by respondents, by category, were:

• Physical: Rheumatoid Arthritis/Osteoarthritis (14%); Fibromyalgia (11%); Multiple Sclerosis (7%).
• Mental: Moderate/Severe Depression (41%); Bipolar Disorder (16%); Anxiety Disorder (15%).
• Developmental/Learning: ADD/ADHD (46%); Autism (15%); Dyslexia (11%).

The majority (61%) of those survey respondents with a physical disability are age 50 or older, while slightly more than half (52%) of those with a developmental/learning disability are under 18 years of age.

Perceived Benefits of Play

Fully 94% of disabled players of casual games said they believe playing casual games “provides physical or mental benefits” — compared to 80% of casual game players overall. The most common benefits cited by disabled gamers (when asked to choose as many as applied) were stress relief (81%), mood lifting (69%), distraction from issues related to disability (66%), improved concentration (59%) and mental workouts (58%).

Interestingly, the top benefits varied significantly based on the type of disability; the top three benefits by disability type were:

• Physical: Stress relief (84%) and distraction from issues related to disability (73%)
• Mental: Stress relief (87%) and mood-lifting (78%)
• Developmental/Learning: Improved concentration (79%) and improved coordination/manual dexterity (73%)

Those with developmental/learning disabilities cited learning (pattern recognition, spelling, typing skills) far more often (61%) than those with disabilities that were mental (26%) or physical (23%).

Furthermore, 77% of disabled players said playing casual games provides them with “additional benefits over and above what a typical non-disabled player might experience.”

Of the “additional benefits,” responses were numerous and varied, often citing deeper sensations of achievement and “belonging,” or distraction from loneliness and/or chronic pain. As one respondent put it, “Our son with Attention Deficit Disorder does not really remember he has a disability when he is playing.”

Dr. Carl Arinoldo, a Stony Brook, New York-based psychologist of 25 years’ experience who has treated patients with a range of physical and mental disabilities, agrees: “With some forms of depression, a person may be very focused on something that clearly amounts to a misperception of reality. So the chance to distance themselves from the perceived negative situation and relax may allow them to think more clearly and consider the situation later in a more realistic manner.”

You get the idea… casual games rule!!!

If you want all of the gory details, GamesIndustry has posted the entire press release.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

Prizes for this entry: $450 basic WordPress customization package from Kim Beasley.  one copy of Andy King’s upcoming Website Optimization. Here’s its companion site. Just leave a 30-word comment on this post by June 29 (yes, I made it longer — through the weekend) to get an entry for a drawing.

For a long time, I knew of John Hewitt and he didn’t know me. Way back when I used to search for jobs for AbsoluteWrite.com‘s markets newsletter, I relied on John’s listings. I linked to John’s site over time because he offers a wonderful resource for writers.

We got to know each other better after to my surprise and delight, he listed my blog as one of the recommended blogs for writers. It surprised me because this blog doesn’t make such lists often since it doesn’t focus on a niche (just writing, in this case — I know that’s bad… but hey, it started out as more about web design). So he made my day, week, month, year.

Then he included my blog in March Writing Blog Madness and I was hooked. Thanks to his contest, I immersed myself back into the blogosphere with fervor (I kind of neglected it because of business commitments). I’ve met some awesome folks because of John. Thank you, John.

Don’t Call 911, Call Us!

That was the gist of the ad I wrote. It ran for one day in the local newspapers. By the end of the next day, my client had been lambasted on the radio, on television, and even by the newspapers that ran the ad. There were also a few local politicians who personally called to ask just how insane my client was. Some people say that there is no such thing as bad publicity, but I’m pretty sure this was the definition of bad.

But We’re the Good Guys!

To be fair, my client did have a legitimate complaint with 911. My client owned an ambulance service. He had operated that service for over thirty years, and he was being squeezed out of the market by the city. The city had decided to get into the paramedic business, and had been changing the rules of the game at will, just to suit their goals.

The kicker came when the city actually started diverting calls away from my client, even when they had ambulances that were closer and more ready to respond. The city was, in my client’s opinion, putting people at risk in order to put his company out of business. That was when he came up with the idea for the ad.

The client came to me with a rough version of the ad that he had put together himself. All he wanted from me was to clean up the text and tweak the graphics so that it looked more professional. I ended up rewriting the ad twice to make it as clear as possible that my client was only suggesting calling them in non-critical situations such as broken bones and medical transport.

The text of the ad was quite clear about that, but the headline was what caught people’s attention. Don’t Call 911, Call Us! Nothing I said in the rest of the ad was going to make that headline any less damaging.

His Problem, My Mistake

I wish I could say I tried to talk the client out of it. If I were in the same position today, I certainly would give it my best shot. At the time though, I was as caught up in their situation as they were. I knew they were being forced out of business. I knew the city was being underhanded. Plus, I kind of wanted to see what would happen.

As I said in the beginning, the results were not good. I’m not sure if there was a way that my client could have prevailed, but that ad cemented his defeat. The company didn’t quite go out of business, but that was the end of its involvement in emergency services for the city. It was also the last job I did for that client. I don’t know if he blamed me for the debacle, but clearly my work had not yielded the results he needed. I don’t blame him for moving on.

What I learned

There’s a difference between what your client wants and what your client needs

My client wanted to take on the city and reach his customers by diverting them from the 911 system that had shut him out of the game. His strategy antagonized a powerful opponent and angered both the media and potential customers. What he needed was a whole new plan (and a different goal). There was no way I could have made the ad work. I should have discussed other strategies. I only focused on what my client wanted, not what he needed.

If it feels like a bad idea, speak up

Since then, I have been much more vocal when faced with projects or clients that I think are misguided. I try not to be insulting, but I do try to give them my best advice and steer them away from self-destructive practices. I do this for them, but I also do it for me. I don’t want to be associated with failures if I can help it.

Make a choice

Over the years I have turned down several projects and partnerships. I turned them down because I either thought their plan was bad, or I didn’t trust them to follow through. I have also taken a few risky projects. Sometimes I took them for the money. Sometimes I took them for the challenge. I’ve been burned more than once, but not every risky project was a failure. Sometimes you succeed even when the plan is bad. Life is funny that way.

Move on

Whether a project is a success or a failure, once it is done you have to put it behind you. Find the next job. Look for the next challenge. Find new ways to succeed.

About the author
John Hewitt has been a professional writer for 20 years. In that time he has learned 12 Ways to Write Terrible Documentation, 10 Ways to Annoy the Hell out of Your Writers’ Group and How to Write Your Way Out of a Wet Paper Sack. You can read more at poewar.com.

We have a lot of prizes to award today, so I’ll hold off our guest entry for tomorrow so the prizes don’t steal his spotlight!

From the Google Me! entry, we have Airport Mania: 2 copies (1 Mac and 1 PC) and one copy of Andy King’s upcoming Website Optimization.

Winners: Joanna Young wins a copy of Airport Mania and Yvonne Russell wins a copy of Website Optimization. We had no Mac comments in that entry, so the Mac copy remains unawarded.

Telling the Hard Truths of the Writing Life entry prizes include a book by Tara Calishain and AWAI’s Accelerated Six Figure Copywriting program.

Winners: Karen Putz (yes, you read that right!) wins a book by Tara Calishain and John Hewitt wins AWAI’s Accelerated Six Figure Copywriting program!

Prizes for The Fear that Holds Creative Writers Back entry are one custom banner for a blog or web site created to the winner’s specs and preferences, valued at $200. Men with Pens ask for a 7 to 10 day turnaround from the point that the winner transmits her/his specs, and two copies of Ricochet Infinity.

Winners: John Hoff and Ceci win Ricochet Infinity. Karen Putz (Again!!! This is your lucky day, girl!) wins the the custom banner!

Congratulations, everyone! Keep playing.

Please remember you can get more entries telling others about the prizes by linking back here — it won’t lessen your chances of winning — it’ll increase them. More copies of Website Optimization are up for the taking at CSS Collection.

The following games will be discounted next week on Game du Jour, the ‘one-deal-a-day’ web site dedicated to indie and casual games:

Mon. June 23rd: 60% off on Sixty Five Million And One BC

Tue. June 24th: 50% off on Expedition Delta

Wed. June 25th: 40% off on Build in Time

Thu. June 26th: 50% off on Sudoku SG

Fri. June 27th: 50% off on SAGA

Sat. June 28th: 70% off on Arvoch Conflict

• In memory of Tim Russert. Joan Stewart points to this Slate article that shows how interviewers can prepare for interviews.
• 13 Emotion-based Headlines That Work
• Digg for Tech Communicators
• 100 Web Sites You Should Know and Use from TED. I accidentally found TED on cable and it was captioned! Recorded it and got a glimpse of some of of the amazing presentations from 2006. Shame they don’t have it for the other years with all of the presentations.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Test your vocabulary knowledge. For every answer you get right, you donate rice.
• TechCult: Twisted technology.
• China renames oddly named menu items for the Olympics.
• 22 “you got swerved” movies.

Skydiving was going to be today, but postponed due to weather.

Remember you can win prizes. Just read this week’s posts (click “Previous” after this message).