Most of you probably went to a restaurant where the food and service was excellent. But then you go to another location of the same restaurant and it was a disaster. Franchising is complicated as some require their chains to do everything the same while others have more leeway by owner. A pizza buffet chain opened [...]
One of the more enjoyable ways to market is by holding contests. They’re fun, they encourage folks to spread the word, and they make a few people happy. Imagine my surprise when I saw a package from DeveloperOne on my doorstep yesterday. I didn’t remember ordering anything. I opened it and found a lovely and [...]
Last Thanksgiving, my mother-in-law was asking about how to get a web site to get better search engine rankings. Apparently, someone she knows started a web site and talked about it with her. No way she would’ve brought it up otherwise as she and my father-in-law are semi-Luddites. They have a computer for the basics [...]
Here are the best books I’ve read in 2006 in no particular order. Beware that not all of these books published this year, but rather they’re books I read. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things: I haven’t written this review yet as I just finished it. Reading Norman’s follow up to Design of [...]
Reading about business schools take aim at bad writing didn’t surprise me. When I was a MBA graduate student for one semester, we had to pass a writing and presentation section. The university conducted seminars followed by students giving presentations and writing a paper. Students who didn’t pass received tutoring and presented again. Those who did [...]
InformIT’s When Is a Blog Too Personal, discusses how much personal information to reveal. Even before blogs became a word in the dictionary, I tried to remember to ask, “Do I want a future client or employer to know this?” Nowadays, some businesses search the web when considering a candidate for a job. I’m thankful I [...]
How do you pronounce “Casio’s G’zOne?” That’s what Strategic Name Development asks. Just the other day when I volunteered at my kid’s school book fair, a few of us were talking about Mo Willem’s Knuffle Bunny because we all love the Pigeon books. I thought it was pronounced “nuffle bunny” like “know.” The librarian thought [...]
Management using jargon like blue sky thinking, brain dump, thinking outside the box, get our ducks in a row confuse staff more than encourage them. We may have heard “thinking outside of the box” for years (I met that term in my first job out of college), but BBC News reports these terms don’t go [...]
When I posted the entry about designing a logo, I didn’t expect to get the kind of emails I did about designing on specs. I didn’t think about the issue with such “contests” where a business posts its requirements and offers a set price. People would respond with their creations and then the business picks [...]
These links don’t have a common thread, so Link Friday it is. Well, maybe a couple of common themes. But rather drown in the shameless self-promotion with comics instead of create its own entry — but seriously, I hope the resources are informative. Comics Discovered a new comic strip, Being Five, a kid who blogs using voice [...]

