Archive for November 2008

• Hocus Focus: Expert advice on dealing with coworkers and managers with short attention spans.
• The Beginner’s Guide to Finding a Job with Twitter [Link: Ritu] Figure in today’s economy — job seekers need all the help they can get.
• The Top 5 Mistakes Internet Marketers Make on Twitter [Link: Ann] Applies to ALL businesses not just internet marketers.
• Six Challenges for Journalists.
• DailyLit: Read books by email or RSS.
• Tech Writing Careers — The Raw, Unvarnished Truth.
• How to Start Your Freelance Writing Business: The Costs.
• The Thief Who Stole November: I do love this month. Less stressful than December and Thanksgiving is an awesome holiday.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• BuyBackMadness: Exactly as it sounds.
• StubHub: Buy and sell tickets without paying crazy fees like the other company charges. Darn it. No A Chorus Line tickets available for Dallas.
• Greenzer: Greened products for sale. Find what you need and ensure it’s green.
• Feministing: Women discuss issues related to their lives.
• Cyberhomes: Excellent resource for finding houses for sale. I’m not in the market for a new house, and yet it had me wasting time looking around.

This quirky problem has happened often enough that it warrants a post of its own. The problem doesn’t happen on my desktop running Microsoft Windows XP with Office 2003. It occurs only on the laptop running Microsoft Vista with Office 2007.

I can’t tell you if it’s a Vista problem, an Office problem, or both. If your mouse works everywhere except Microsoft Word and possibly other Microsoft products, here’s an easy fix worth saving. After it happened twice, I figured I needed to save the fix information so I don’t chase it down every time.

It just happened again. I can’t use the mouse to highlight anything or move the cursor. Yet, I can still close Word and click menu items. When the problem happens, I closed Word and receive a pop up asking if I want to search for a solution or restart. Neither, but I restart it.

Tim Anderson’s ITWriting has the solution:

1. Close Word and Outlook (ignore the pop up message by clicking X)
2. Start / Run and type regedit
3. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data
4. Rename this key (I call it “baddata”).
5. Restart Word.

All is right with the Word again. For how long? Who knows.

Ever receive a link to a business web site where you can’t figure out what the company does? The home page sounds like something from the company’s fancy and non-sensical mission statement. Unfortunately, many companies rely on content from their business plan and other internal documents.

I had a brief client who did this. The filler content came from the business plan. So what the company did wasn’t instantly obvious to the target audience. So I massaged the content, webified it, and shared a draft with the client.

She preferred the business plan. I couldn’t believe it. But then, she knew her business well and it would make sense to her.

I explained the approach I took and the reasons for them. It didn’t convince the company, so we agreed to part. Reflecting on the project, it was good that it didn’t work out. We weren’t compatible and it would’ve been a miserable project. Easier to get out earlier rather than later.

Different Businesses, Different Needs

A business web site should quickly communicate what it does. It largely depends on the company’s business. If it sells products, can you tell what kind of products? Is it a secure site? Reputable? I’ve seen too many commerce sites with no names or company details on their about page. This screams the site isn’t credible or trust-worthy.

Professional service businesses need to communicate what services they provide and include names and bios as people matter in this case. These sites should list companies and industries they’ve served. Testimonials are also powerful.

Designers do well in including a portfolio of their work on their web site.

At the end of every project, try to obtain testimonials and permission to publish information about the project (such as posting the design for a portfolio and publishing case studies). Better to do it as soon as the project ends while it’s fresh in everyone’s mind.

An Example…

IBM is huge and does many things. Its home page doesn’t begin to tell the company’s story. About the only valuable information is “Migrate to a mainframe.”

“What does a smarter planet look like?” implies the company supports more efficient technology — but it’s still a broad question and it doesn’t give me an idea of what IBM’s involvement is with a smarter planet. Click it and it provides jibber jabber about what people want to do.

The first couple of paragraphs are the only problem. The rest does a good job of showing a bulleted list of problems, the solution, and what IBM can do.

“IT managers, are you building or blocking transformation?” Click it and the page tells a different story that doesn’t quite connect to the headline.

Should you insult the manager? Or is it touching a nerve that managers will want to click the question? People will argue for and against this. Besides, the picture takes up too much of the page pushing down important content.

At the bottom of IBM’s home page is “What IBM can do for …” and lists different industries and careers to help the person go in the right direction. Smart move — maybe it should be more dominant on the home page? IBM does have a wide audience and this solution works in helping them along.

I like the home page image and the moving cars. It still takes up a lot of above the fold (area before scrolling) space — a problem with many sites today. It takes effort to find the heart of the content.

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. November 10th: 65% off on Mini Chess

Tue. November 11th: 50% off on Caveman Craig: Special Edition

Wed. November 12th: 60% off on The Ferryman

Thu. November 13th: 60% off on Morning’s Wrath

Fri. November 14th: 50% off on Overload

Sat. November 15th: 50% off on Word Twist

Sun. November 16th: 50% off on Sudoku Epic

• The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form
• Thank goodness, the election ended with no run-offs (at least not for my area). But a good lesson to be learned with political signs looking like bad PowerPoint slides. Just like writing for the web differs from other resources, signs have their own requirements.
• Life Is Not an Emergency … Or is it? I love this entry. We need to enjoy our lives and not stick to a movie (life) script all the time. Life should be like a roller coaster instead of a too safe Merry-Go-Round (great dialogue in Parenthood about this).
• What To Do about Looky-Lous. Who cares if we have more “No thanks, I’m just looking” people today or not. Always treat every person as a potential customer.
• Canadian English as Explained by Joe Clark.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• How unique is your user name?
• I want my MTV! MTV opened the world of modern music for me since I could finally see the name of the song and know what I liked. If I liked something I heard on radio, I was out of luck as nothing could tell me the name of the song. Enjoy the MTV music videos of the days old. By the time they captioned many music videos, I was too busy taking care of my children. Too bad, they’re not captioned here.
• Pretty keyboard! And this Karaoke Soap on a Rope is just asking for a lot of bad jokes.
• It’s hard for me to discover new songs because I can’t identify songs on the radio. Karen came up with an ingenious way of discovering new love songs. I have quirky playlists and am not into love songs. But love good song with a strong beat and words that you can hear over the music instead of the music drowning it out. Let me know!
• Gorgeous original photos of Scotland. [Link: Joanna]

I believe I’m a resourceful person. I try to find answers on my own through support pages, FAQ, research, search engines, and other resources.

But we can’t find everything we need. We may need to contact people who have the information or the knowledge stored in their brain cells or on the computer’s hard drive.

A Story… a Story…

I visited several large sites in need of reaching someone. They had no contact information whatsoever. At best, they’d have “info@”, “sales@”, or “support@.” I found an email address like this that worked for one of my contact needs.

It bounced.

… And it bounced the next day (just in case the server was hiccupping).

… … And it bounced again more times than Tigger.

So I went to the mother ship site and looked for a contact there. Hey, I was determined to serve my client well! Found a generic email address (info@) and within 30 minutes, I received a reply from the head executive along with two others!

The executive cc’d others and provided the contact’s name and email address. That person had the info I need. Another person asked where I had found the original email (the Tigger one) address as it wasn’t supposed to be a valid one. It was in a few press releases from this year as well as on a web page somewhere.

Why Didn’t You Figure out the Email Address?

It only took about a week to land the right contact. Oh sure, I know how to figure out email addresses and have done it many times. In this case, the only name I had was a big shot and I didn’t want to bug him.

I remember once emailing someone and received the response of “How did you get my email address? It wasn’t public knowledge and only insiders know it. You must work here.” Yikes.

Make It Easy to Reach You

Amazon is massive. Yet, I never had trouble contacting the company when needed. The company does a good job with its customer service emails. Other companies like T-Mobile have an awful script that sounds condescending, over-sugary, and provides more wasteful content than helpful.

No one should have to work hard to find out how to contact you. What if it’s a PR opportunity? Potential customer? You just never know.

Ensure people can find you with these in mind:

• Include Contact in your main or global navigation.
• List contact information on every page. What kind of information depends on your business and your customers. Local businesses probably should list the street address along with a link to an interactive map so people can figure out how to get there with minimal work. Bonus points for listing hours of operation. Smart retailers include a toll free number on the top of every web page and any place where it’s logical to have contact information.
• Consider your visitors’ contact preference. Some call. Some email. Some even fax. You may not use the method much, but unless you want to cut yourself off from potential business — be open to what the person contacting you wants.
• List an email address. You might have a form (like I do) to avoid spammers. Some forms, however, have too many fields and turn off the visitor.

No company is “too big” or “too much of a hot shot” for people to contact them. We’re not asking for the email addresses for the likes of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

One more bit of advice: Even if it takes time for you to find the answer to someone’s question or you can’t respond in full within a day or two, respond to the person and let them know you’re on the case. We should all apply this habit in every aspect of our lives.

A friend wanted to know the status of her order as many of us had received ours. She received no response in over four days. Yet, I received a reply within a day (my order was missing one thing).

Yes, technology compels us to expect responses within two days. We just have to make do and it only takes a moment to say, “Got your message. I’ll get back to you within a week or so.”

Mushroom Age sounds like a quirky name for a game, doesn’t it? What images does it conjure for you? None of the thoughts I had about the game based on its title and logo accurately represent the hidden object game’s story. About the only thing you might figure out from the title it’s an eccentric story. Don’t judge the game by its name — in this case.

The first thing we see is Albert Einstein, but not quite. His name is Einbock and he hates it when folks confuse him with the genius behind the theory of relativity. Vera — us players — wants to find her fiancé Tom as she hasn’t heard from him.

Thanks to Einbock’s not cooperating, she snoops around to finds Tom’s cell phone and starts messing with it. Minutes later, she lands 1000 years into the future. Her travels won’t stop there as eventually she reaches Jurassic Period and Stone Age as well as meets Socrates and Nostradamus.

The cell phone has a feature that can’t be had on any of today’s cell phone: time travel. Vera’s lands in a graveyard in 3008 where she meets a funky robot with a laugh that cracks me up. The poor guy — though 1000 years into the future — malfunctions and Vera must reboot him on occasion by playing a “Wheel of Fortune” / Hangman game to figure out the password.

Vera has to do more than try to find Tom after discovering a dangerous plan. Dialogue shows up as both text and audio saying what the text shows. Though my hearing is far from perfect, I find the voices annoying. The voices sound like a parent talking to a young child. Clarity is important, but audio can sound clear without talking down as it does in Mushroom Age.

What amazes about Mushroom Age is that it lasts a long time (23 chapters) for a game of its kind, which blends hidden objects and doing things to make something happen. It resembles games like Azada and Dream Chronicles. The game not only expects you to find needed items (and all items have a purpose), but to use them together such as starting a fire or unlocking a gate.

Although you return to some scenes, it doesn’t mean doing the same thing as before or finding the same objects. Besides, every visit to a scene has a reason not just to save development time. The only thing that repeats are several mini-games, but they become more difficult with each play.

The end of a chapter shows how much of the game you’ve completed to that point. However, a couple of chapters make the number go down instead of up — obviously a bug.

The hint system lets you ask for a hint anytime as long as the hint meter is full. If you’ve found all the objects in one room and request a hint, it becomes a wasted hint because it tells you to go in another room and nothing else. This becomes a problem when playing some confusing mini-games.

Despite the sharp-looking graphics, the character movements aren’t as sharp. They resemble characters glued to Popsicle sicks — they’re frozen and their whole being moves as a stiff entity.

Seasoned hidden object and puzzle gamers will recognize many of the genre’s features in Mushroom Age. Yet, the game comes together as an original. The game’s title reflects a piece of the story that comes later, but it could’ve had a better name. Nonetheless, casual game players — no matter the experience or whether they have green thumbs — will likely to find Mushroom Age fascinating and funny.

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. November 3rd: 75% off on Akkadia

Tue. November 4th: 50% off on Crazy Minesweeper

Wed. November 5th: 50% off on Puzzle Hero

Thu. November 6th: 75% off on The Great International Word Search!

Fri. November 7th: 60% off on Inflater Ball

Sat. November 8th: 50% off on Dragon Jumper

Sun. November 9th: 50% off on Exotic Minesweeper

I enjoyed reading Great Writing from a Small Child. When I read the post, my 5-year-old had written a poem. The requirements were the poem had to be about you and the end of every line must rhyme with dog. Can you believe not many words qualify? His poem:

I have a dog.
I like to sing about a frog.
In P.E., I sometimes jog.
I never go out in the fog.

The second line is too true. He sings the “Life Cycle of a Frog” many times in a week since learning that in pre-school. I had fun helping him with this. I wish homework with all the kids would be this enjoyable.

We started by coming up with words that rhymed with dog. He went through the whole alphabet. We added frog.

Next, he came up with the first line easily. I told him to pick one of the words and try to make a sentence out of it about him. If the “og” word didn’t come at the end, I talked it out with him to rearrange the sentence until it did.

I loved writing poetry when I was a kid. The only time I do it as an adult is for someone’s birthday or a special occasion. I did one for my husband’s 30th and 40th birthdays.

How I wish I had those poems I wrote. I save my kids’ poems. They don’t do one often. Last year in third grade, my son’s class did poems where the first word or two had to begin with specific works:

I am…

I wonder…

I hear…

I see…

I want…

I am…

I thought that was a wonderful idea. He wrote an amazing poem. This from a kid who hated reading and writing — so it surprised me. It was that good.

Maybe we adults should try the above and see what we get.