Category: Uncategorized

David Armano, on how to connect: “Know something about me—find some common ground and strike up a conversation. Just like in life, chances are I’ll be receptive and we’ll end up talking.”

Hugh McLeod hits two out of the park. Read ’em both.

On Blogging (excerpt): “If your goal is to have a large, influential online readership, I’d say give yourself five years. That’s how long it took Om Malik. Some do it in less, of course, but they seem to be quite exceptional.”

On Being An Entrepreneur (excerpt): “Write the following on a piece of paper, have it framed, and stick it on your office wall: ‘Have you hugged your customer today?'”

Great stuff.

Patrick Gregston: “Put VRM on your watch list.”

The nice folks at TypePad had some very nice things to say, and featured this blog as their “Blog of the Day.” Thanks, y’all!

“Featured Typepad Blog:
The Social Customer Manifesto

Christopher Carfi is the CEO of Cerado and he’s looking out for customers, and not just his own. He’s interested in the technology and trends that are turning customers into marketers and putting them on the front line between businesses and potential new customers. His site, the Social Customer Manifesto, offers a simple list of customer desires — from "I want to do business with companies that act in a transparent and ethical manner" to (my personal favorite) "I don’t want to do business with idiots." Indeed, if Carfi’s manifesto were to become the expected baseline for business in the 21st century, the consumer world would certainly be a much, much better place. And Carfi knows that it won’t be easy. He spends a lot of time posting about the victories and setbacks for like-minded customers and the smart businesses that are courting them. So if you’re a business blogger looking for smart talk or a fed-up consumer looking for a sympathetic ear, take a minute to read the manifesto. It just might change your outlook.”

Thanks, SixApart. You’re too kind.

David Wallace, the Lifekludger, asks:

“Is the ‘multi-touch’ screen dependent on using an actual human finger to ‘touch’ it? Will my mouthstick work the ‘multi-touch’ or a pen, or a plastic stick…? Is it a ‘multi’ touch display in terms of ‘multiple ways’ of touching or merely ‘multiple finger’ touch?

Did anyone at Apple actually think of people who don’t have full use of their fingers? I truly hope so.

Anyone at Apple listening? Want someone whose fingers don’t work to test it for you?”

O black-turtleneck-sweatered one, are you listening?

Take three things:

• An image file
• A short sound clip
• A line of text

Put them all together. Shaken, not stirred.

What you have is You’re The Man Now, Dog!, a great example of co-creation. (The name of the site comes from the Sean Connery line here.) From the site:

YTMND, an acronym for “You’re The Man Now, Dog!”, is a website community that centers around the creation of YTMNDs, which are pages featuring a juxtaposition of a single image, optionally animated or tiled, along with large zooming text and a looping sound file. YTMND is also the general term used to describe any such site.

That’s what it is. Here’s why it is:

“YTMND is a site created for the purpose of furthering the creativity of its users. It stems from an idea that, using sound, and image, and some text, the users can convey a point, funny, political, or otherwise, to the general media.”

Simple. And spot-on.

Bonus link: Axl Rose meets Finding Nemo (yes, you read that correctly)

Was just sent a pointer to a solid article from the Wall Street Journal, “Social Networking Comes To Healthcare.” The key ‘graph:

“The social-networking revolution is coming to health care, at the same time that new Internet technologies and software programs are making it easier than ever for consumers to find timely, personalized health information online. Patients who once connected mainly through email discussion groups and chat rooms are building more sophisticated virtual communities that enable them to share information about treatment and coping and build a personal network of friends.”

Interestingly, most of the social networking connections cited were of the patient-to-patient variety, with minimal mention of the patient-provider relationship. That is a definite opportunity area.

(Hat Tip: Charles Donovan)

ZunePhone link.

Very nice visualization from the folks at visual-literacy.org. Click on the graphic to go to the full-screen version, which contains roll-over examples of 100 different ways to get your point across and communicate more clearly. (hat tip: seth)

Bonus links: Visual Thinking School and Communication Nation

Have been doing some development work for a business blogging customer of ours, and again need to send out mad props (that’s what the kids these days say, right?) to John T. Unger and his Typepad Hacks site. A treasure trove!

One very useful bit…putting in active menus into the header. Here’s how to do it:

How to add a horizontal menu to a TypePad blog

And other thing…want to get rid of that annoying border around your TypePad blog’s header? One way to do it is to make the “background” of the header graphic a complementary color to the header graphic, like this. However, John pointed out a little trick that can just make the border simply go away. In the Design tab of your blog, you will see a link that says “Edit Custom CSS” (n.b. it looks like you need to be a Pro member to do this). In the Custom CSS frame, simply put this little chunk of code (“edit the height attribute and the background-image: url, of course,” John adds):

/* banner image */

#banner
{
height: 110px;
background-image:
url(“http://johntunger.typepad.com/typepadhacks/Typepadhackslogo.gif”);
background-position: 0px 0px;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
text-align: left;
}

Poof! Border-be-gone.

Gracias, hermano!