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Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa and Happy Holidays!

Brain food …

• 5 Sure-Fire Signs Your LinkedIn Company Page Sucks. Great tips. LinkedIn finally created useful company pages. It’s better than using Groups.
• Free Market-Research Tools — A Sampler. Good resources for small businesses to gain insights about customers, competitors and trends.
• The Precarious Portentous Perils of Self-Publishing. Yes, this is a freaking long article, but an important one from Chuck Wendig.
• 48 Ways to Measure Social Media Success. Organized by social network: blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, etc.

For fun …

• YouTube: Rewind. 2011. The year in review. The top ten videos on YouTube and throughout the year.
• Angry Birds Christmas Lights. Music and sound effects spot on, too.
• 10 Funniest Internet Memes of 2011. Where have I been all year? I wasn’t familiar with some of these … and I was there when “All your base are belong to us” hit the meme scene.

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Brain food …

• The 5 Types of Content That Grab Attention. This gives you ideas that aren’t your usual ideas.
• 7 Pieces of Blogging Advice that New Bloggers Should Ditch Right Now. I believe the advice applies to experienced bloggers.
• Don’t Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore. Five terrible strains of this epidemic. Maybe I got sick from reading this. Maybe you should skip this one to be safe?
• 50 Simple Ways to Build Your Platform. Great resource from Christina Katz who groups the activities into categories.

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The AP is Changing the Way Their Reporters Use Twitter reports that the Associated Press (AP) is forbidding writers from sharing opinions in Twitter, including opinions of others through retweets. I understand AP wants to ensure its reputation for unbiased reporting remains intact.

My initial reaction was tripping over my jaw that had somehow landed on the floor. But the more I thought about it, the more I understood the concern. Let’s say you read an unbiased AP article about hydraulic fracturing. If the AP writer who wrote the story has a Twitter account and tweeted that the problems surrounding hydraulic fracturing are overblown, how would that affect the article? Future articles?

What if the writer makes no mention of writing for AP in his Twitter bio? When I tweet a link to a story, I often look up the writer for a Twitter ID to credit the person with writing the story. If I do that with the hydraulic fracturing writer and see opinionated tweets on the subject — could that reflect on AP and the writer?

As I think about this, I’m at a loss on the right way to handle this. With so much low quality, biased reporting today — maybe it’s necessary for AP to do it for the sake of integrity.

What do you think of AP’s actions? Are they exempt or should it apply to other publications? What about companies? Can employees be allowed to share opinions about competitors and their industry?

And now for your weekly links.

Brain food …

• Salvage Your Holidays with 15 DIY Christmas Ideas. Of course, good for any holiday. I do the bakin’ thing. Got a favorite recipe you’re willing to share? My top recipe is the chocolate mint cookies … everyone has this recipe, but I make ‘em anyway. I used to make fudge. I’m not sure why I stopped. I think I got wrapped up with raising three kids and didn’t bake for a few holiday seasons. Then, I decided to go the cookie and granola route.
• To Automate or not to Automate Your Personal Productivity System. Another great one from Lifehack that helps you figure out what you can automate and what you shouldn’t. I have templates for some of my clients’ invoices where the activity is the same, I just add in numbers or hours. I also have automated entries for expenses that repeat every month. I do not have automatic credit card bill payment set up, as I want to reconcile the bill before I scheduling payment.
• How to Curb Three Major Stressors in Life. This time of the year is both wonderful and stressful. Three things in my arsenal: Exercise, “no” and skipping something if it’s too much.
• 10 Business Cliches to stay far away from and why. “Content is king / queen” overused, too.
• These 18 Napkin Sketches Will Teach You Everything You Need To Know About Saving Money. Love these business / finance / personal sketches. Tells story in few words.
• Steve Jobs’ Influence on Our World. Nicely done interactive GQ chart …

For fun …

• Future Generations and Screen Names. True! I tried to get a Gmail ID for my son and nothing decent worked except using his unusual middle name, which he prefers not to do.
• Eyebombing. Not as weird or as gross as it sounds: “Humanizing the world, one goggly eye at a time.” Yep.
• 10 Craziest Christmas Tattoos. Ever wonder what Santa looks like when he’s Darwin? Wonder no more.
• Dear blank, please blank. Hilarious letters where users write letters using this format: “Dear … Please … Sincerely …” And now they’ve been turned into prints.

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After arriving at my mom’s house on Thanksgiving, my seventeen-year-old daughter hands me an envelope. Perplexed, I opened it to find a  incredible and moving handwritten note of thanks from her. Let’s just say it was enough to bring tears. She wrote one for my mom, my siblings, close friends and — the most amazing of all — her two little brothers.

She said she is about to graduate and leave home. She felt she needed to do it.

I write notes to my clients every year … by hand. Yes, it cramps, but it’s worth it. (I even keep a journal, but I guess that’s not enough to keep the handwriting muscles warm.) You can get more ideas from 33 Ways to Reward Your Customers. These have a lot of retailer-related suggestions. However, every business can pick up something from this list.

It isn’t necessary to wait until the holidays to thank your clients. I do that, but I try to send the notes and gifts earlier. (Sent last week.) I’ve sent them pecan pralines (Texas food), books and Boy Scout Popcorn (delicious treat that also helps the organization).

You could also buy stamped postcards and write a thank you anytime you find the opportunity. They’re small and light, so you can carry them with you ready to write on.

How do you thank people?

Weekly Links

Brain food …

• The 90 Top Secrets of Bestselling Authors. Wonderful roundup of quotes.
• Jedi Mind Tricks: 17 Lesser Known Ways to Persuade People. Not just for sales people. I love reading about influence. Need to finish reading Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Affiliate)
• Writer’s Block: The 12-Step Cure. This is a good list of tips — not all the usual stuff. Comparing yourself to other writers is a big problem. Remember, writers are all on different paths of writing careers in terms of expertise, experience, length, medium.
• You’re Not As Busy As You Think. I’m fortunate I learned this lesson early in my career. People get sucked in phone conversations. They also “looked busy” so they could stay at work later and look good for the bosses.

Fun …

• The 56 best/worst similes. I love this one: “Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.”
• Interactive Color Wheel. Awesome despite not including Snoopy in the whites and Woodstock in the yellows. At least, Franklin is there to represent Peanuts.
• The Infinite Loop of Procrastination. Off to check emails and tweet.
• 12 Unique Stewardess Uniforms. Think uniforms are bland today? Try these.

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No matter where you’re from, I’m thankful for your time in stopping by here, commenting, contacting me, sharing posts with others. Those in the U.S., I hope you take the time to take in the day and relish it. Those outside of the U.S., I’d love to hear about your traditions or a day that just lets you be with folks you love without stresses of fulfilling duties.

Brain food …

• 10 Insanely Awesome Inspirational Manifestos. Great round up. I hadn’t seen these before.
• 5 Gobbles for Twitter this Thanksgiving. #4 is the biggest reason why I love social media.
• 100 Questions to Help You Write, Publish, and Sell Your Ebook. Title explains it.
• How to Craft Editorial Guidelines for a Guest Blogger. Here are the guest post guidelines  for this blog.

And for fun because we’re allowed …

• 9Gag. Found a lot of great comics here.
• Book Art That Will Melt Your Brain. Incredible details. That’s art I’d display on my shelf.
• 10 Amazing Facebook Facts You Probably Don’t Know (or Don’t Care). Facebook causes 1 in 5 divorces. Seriously?
• Dear Photograph. “Take a picture of a picture from the past in the present.”

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Even my daughter is into the personality test and came close with her guess that I was an ISFJ. She probably thought we were opposites since she’s an ENTP (Extroversion, iNtuition, Thinking, Perceiving). Introversion and extroversion don’t mean you’re shy or outgoing. Instead, they represent where you draw more energy from. Check out the 16 type descriptions. If you don’t know yours, this might give you a clue.

“The Secret to Helping Your Child Excel in School and in Life” at Lifehack introduces another test where you can learn more about yourself and multiple intelligences. This shows what areas we tend to easily understand and what areas are harder. The website explains, “For some of us it is relatively easy to understand how a flower grows but it is immensely difficult for us to understand and use a musical instrument. For others music might be easy but playing football is difficult.”

I test strong on intrapersonal and logical. Zilch on musical (no surprise). The only surprise is the linguistic score. These results reveal your stronger and weaker learning styles. For a good explanation of the intelligences, visit Family Education.

All of these assessments help us understand ourselves better and how you can better work with others once you figure out what they are. “The Secret to Helping Your Child Excel in School and in Life” gives an example of a teacher discussing the topic of  “the law of supply and demand” and how the teacher can best reach a child from each of the different intelligences.

Fascinating stuff. Here’s another to check out: True Colors.

Have you ever taken a personality or style assessment? What was it? What did you learn?

And now for your weekly links …

Brain food …

• Grammar Lesson – The Mistake That Bugs Me the Most. Good explanation of objects and subjects.
• How to Create a Social Media Marketing Schedule. Excellent tips that most people can implement to manage social media time.
• 5 email newsletters worth reading. And of course, I recommend Professional Services Journal from InternetViZ. (Disclaimer: OK, so the guy behind the company is one of my first clients and I’m a contributor. Seriously, it aims to deliver valuable info professional services providers can use. Want an email newsletter? Contact Hank.)

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I installed Vegas and never used it. Eventually, I uninstalled it because it took up unneeded resources and space. I decided to do a little winter cleaning by identifying the largest files on the computer. Three HD videos made the list, so that prompted me reinstall the editing software.

It can’t open the .m2ts files. This 2008 software has “HD” on the box, but it couldn’t open these files. I went to the website to see if the company had a patch or upgrade so it could open these files. It turned out they no longer support that version of the software. How hard would it be to create a plug-in to import these HD files? A search of user forums yielded nothing. I guess not too many people are using version 8 or they have cameras that don’t produce .m2st files.

Having learned my lesson that I don’t make time for editing videos, I looked around for freeware and cheap converter to convert these HD files into one Vegas 8 could handle. Unfortunately, no freeware app can handle these big files. Actually, there was one and it failed. Besides, I wasn’t comfortable using it because there had been concerns about the app having malware. (While working on this, I came across 10 Free Apps for Working with Video, but none could solve this problem.)

The trial version of Sony Vegas 11 converted the three big videos into one. Windows Media Player (Scroll way down to MPEG-4 section for why) couldn’t play it. Two other players could. Whew. I’m out of the video editing business. Back to using the old digital camera for videos.

I understand software companies have to draw the line in how long they support older versions of software. Is it fair to stop supporting a three-year-old app? Maybe Sony would’ve had a fan in me if they had a solution other than upgrade to 11.

What’s your take on software and support?

And now for your weekly links …

Brain food …

• How to Read Virtual Body Language in Email. Some people still don’t know how to write emails and rub people the wrong way. Here are 10 virtual body language cues.
• 20 Ways to Live a More Simple Life. Always try to keep kids’ activities to a minimum and possessions few. For more ideas … 100 Ways to Live a Better Life.
• 5 Unusual questions that freelancers MUST ask their clients. A keeper. When I meet potential new clients, I always ask how they found me. These questions are for after you’ve landed the client.
• 10 Best Ways To Show Gratitude For Others. Gratitude … it’s not just for Thanksgiving.
• 30 Top Facebook Apps for Business. Save yourself time … try this list first.

For fun …

• Daily Infographic. Infographics are cool and provide neat insight. But really … most of them are not true infographics because they have a lot of content. Effective infographics let the pictures do the talking.
• 12 Cutest Finger Drawings. They do look like they have personalities.
• 10 websites that changed the world. Surprised I’m not familiar with most of them.
• 12 hilarious closed signs. Warning: PG-ish sign or two.

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I’m no literary great, but I’d say the oddest job I held was working as a cashier and stocker at Toys R Us. Or maybe wrapping gifts in my mom’s little kiosk that she had for one holiday season. I also worked at Tandy’s offices (Radio Shack folks) as a file clerk. That’s about four jobs (not counting babysitting) by the time I graduated from high school. My high school senior daughter has had one job for three years: working at a brunch/lunch restaurant. She started as a hostess and she’s now the senior waitress.

The coolest pre-high school graduation job I had was data entry for an antique toy car catalog. Entering names and addresses sounds boring, but it paid well for a teen and I loved looking at those old cars. Barbie wasn’t my thing — AFX slot cars were. I loved taking apart the broken ones and trying to fix them.

Despite my preference of cars to dolls, I’m not responsible for my older son’s love of cars. (I can’t begin to give you an estimate on how many Hot Wheels we have between him and his younger brother.) One of my favorite clients just happens to be in the car business. I write content about the many cars his company sells.

For a long time, I regretted accepting the 20-minutes away Toys R Us job on the spot when I had another interview lined up with the public library two blocks from my house. Obviously, I love books plus I knew the staff at the library. I was 16. I didn’t know better. Besides, working at Toys R Us taught me a bit about business and retail. Learning the Dewey Decimal System would only help me find books faster.

What odd jobs have you had?

And now for your weekly linkage …

Brain food …

• The 7 Iconic, Transparent, Empowering Business Buzzwords That Need To Die. Never liked “transparency” in reference to social media. How about “honesty”?
• Twitterstories. Share your story by mentioning @twitterstories or by using the hashtag #twitterstories. Include a photo or video that helps illustrate your story.
• 18 Clever Organizing Tricks and Storage Ideas. My dad did the glass jars thing (#2). Maybe that’s where I got my organizational (obsession) skills from. My mom came up with #14 for our cookie / baking sheets.
• Free press release sites a detailed review. Reviews 60 free sites to identify those providing the best resource for searches, building links, etc.

And for fun because we’re allowed …

• What You Text vs. What I See. Hilarious and creepy at the same time.
• The Insane Choices You Face at the Drugstore. Dizzying. OK, what’s the cure for that? Infographic focuses on one symptom: headache.
• 12 Most Influential Perks for People with Low Klout Scores. You’re welcome.
• 24 Awesomely Awkward Vacation Photos. Got this one from my daughter.

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Then I found Daisy on sale. (Unfortunately, no picture of me as Daisy Duck.) It clicked. My dad was popular with the kids because he could talk like Donald Duck. It didn’t take long before my mom and siblings showered him with Donald Duck toys, art and knickknacks that his home office looked like a Donald Duck shrine with a few Betty Boops thrown in. (Mom’s thing that we all started bopping her with Boop gifts.)

One thing about collections — it made it easier to shop for people who had everything they needed. My thing was Broadway and dreidels (spinning tops). Broadway didn’t happen by accident, but dreidels did. I had a couple of them and somehow Paul (aka Big Bad Wolf) decided to add a new one — sometimes two — to my collection every year.

Then Dad died in 2007. This left — among other things, of course — Mom stuck with a massive Donald Duck collection. She kept the more meaningful ones like the Donald Duck latch hook I did. She also gave one Donald Duck item to each of us kids that we had given him. I have the 65th anniversary clock.

Between Dad’s death and tightening belts, I decided to stop collecting dreidels because we didn’t need so much stuff. (I had stopped collecting Broadway stuff ages ago.) Stuff piles up creating more upkeep work. Besides, they just sit on a shelf only to be admired whenever company comes over.

Except for gadgets, I cut buying needless things and spent more time on every buying decision. I still make mistakes and experience buyer’s remorse (Viewsonic gTablet).

I cleared a lot of clutter giving up books I didn’t need and items I hadn’t touched in over a year. Yes, I thought “But what if I need it later? I don’t want to spend money on another one.” Well, later has yet to come and it feels great to be rid of the item.

Do you have stuff you’d like to clear out? What makes it hard to get rid of them?

And now for this week’s links.

Brain food …

• Best Tweeps for Writers. Great list that I already followed over half and added the rest without question. Yes, I’m on the list — but it’s hard to question it when it has a lot of folks I enjoying conversing with in social media. Not a popularity contest. I never win those.
• 16 Useful Twitter Plugins for WordPress. Enhance your website / blog with these plugins. I don’t recommend automating posts unless you can make it look like a good tweet instead of a cut-off one. Those are the worst.
• 280 Must Read Books for Entrepreneurs. Of course, you shouldn’t read them all. It’s more important to glean what you read than how many you read. Great list.

For fun because we’re allowed …

• Letter, letter, letter (project forever ongoing). Creative alphabet.
• How to Get Free Stuff Throughout the Year. My library doesn’t have ebook borrowing … yet. Well, it does, but not books most people read. I don’t request every free offer I come across. Only the ones I know I could use.
• The Burning House. What would you take with you if your house was burning? I was in a burning house at age six — my grandparents’. Didn’t even grab my shoes. I’d want my irreplaceable photos and information. I’d have to grab my desktop’s CPU as it has both, but not all the photos especially the older ones.
• The largest hot-air balloon gathering in the world. 182 balloons photo-stitched together. Just incredible.
• 12 Coolest Pictures of Post-It War. Good kind of war!
• Few Brushstrokes Give Hilarious Illustrations. Exactly that — simple illustration, hilarity ensues.

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Growing up in Fort Worth, we didn’t get a day off for the fair. Instead, we got a day off at the end of January for the Stock Show and Rodeo. I went a couple of times, but don’t remember much. Just a snapshot of walking in the barn and watching cowboys in the rodeo.

Not going to the State Fair this year. We went last year and that satisfied us for a while. It takes a long time to get there on the DART rail and food and rides cost a bit. Yes, that’s a picture of my boys looking up at the giant Texas Star ferris wheel.

Does your school district have days off for a special community event? Even if a person doesn’t have kids in school, it helps to keep up with the calendar so you don’t attend the community event on the day the students most likely will.

Brain food…

• Social Media Metrics ABCs. Metrics reading can be boring. Definitely not this clever one! [Link: Brad Shorr]
• How To Keep Up With Over 100,000 Twitter Followers. I actually fear having too many followers because I never want anyone to feel hurt if I miss a tweet. Ann Tran shares advice from folks with that many followers.
• 120 Days to a Successful Book Launch. Nice 10-step outline. More applicable to non-fiction.
• Have You Backed Up Your Gmail? Must read if you use Gmail.

For fun because we’re allowed…

• 12 Hilarious Examples of False Advertising. Teachers should use these as a teaching tool.
• Museum of Obsolete Objects. Sad, yet cool. Incredible use of YouTube.
• Poorly Dressed: Halloween. Seriously questionable costumes …
• The Ultimate Nerd Guide to New York City. From The Daily Planet and Mario’s Plumbing to TMNJ HQ and Doc Ock’s lab.
• Celebrity Pumpkin Stencils. Betty White, Ozzy, Steve Jobs, Chuck Norris and lots more.

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