Establishing Credibility on the Web

How do you know which sources to trust online?

How confident do you feel about purchasing from a web site?

When people tell me that they get a lot of visitors to their web sites, but not many purchasers of their goods or services, there are often at least four potential sets of issues that I raise:

• Are the people finding your site the audience that you intended to target?


• Are the products being presented in a way that entices people to purchase?


• How comfortable are people in conducting business with your site?


• How easy or difficult is it for people to complete a transaction? Are there roadblocks to sales based upon the way the purchasing transaction is presented?

I want to discuss the third item on that list a little in this post.

One place I often point people towards, when this is a problem are the pages from Stanford University on The Web Credibility Project. They have a pretty good set of guidelines linked to from that page on how to make a site appear more credible.

It includes such items as verifiable testimonials, contact information on every page, listed membership in industry and consumer organizations, and many others.

There's also a number of great reports on the site that describe how the visual design of a site can help establish credibility. How credible a site can appear does depend upon correct spelling, well-written text, professional looking graphics, the presence of links to privacy policies, copyright notices, and many more things that we often take for granted when they are done right, but notice immediately when done wrong.

Lately, I've been getting a number of emails from scam artists on what have become known as phishing expeditions.

Here's an example of one I received recently:

Dear Customer,


This email was sent by the Citibank server to verify your E-mail
address. You must complete this process by clicking on the link
below and entering in the small window your Citibank Debit
Card number and PIN that you use on ATM.


This is done for your protection - because some of our members
no longer have access to their email addresses and we must
verify it.


To verify your E-mail address and access your bank account,
click on the link below:

[url removed]


---------------------------------------

Thank you for being our customer

---------------------------------------

The URL that appeared in the email seemed to go to a citibank address online, but really didn't. I have a citibank account, but I've never given them an email address, and haven't set up online access with them. If I had, this might seem somewhat reasonable. But, even citibank wouldn't ask for my PIN number.

I've received similar emails that appeared to come from Suntrust Bank and from Paypal. They didn't. But they seemed realistic.

Scams like these make credibility and trust things that are even more difficult for a web site owner to earn from potential customers.

While I've been suggesting that people look over the Stanford Reports, I decided that it wasn't a bad idea to look at see what some others are doing to earn confidence and credibility online.

Well, one is the use of real names. As Simon Willison noted a couple of months back in a post titled Improving online credibility, the use of a real name by a member in a forum or online message board can boost the credibility of that person. He notes that Amazon.com is encouraging people to use their real names in product reviews, and posting badges next to the names of people who do, so that they might be perceived as more credible by people who read those reviews.

One of the best ways to build confidence as a web site owner providing goods or services is to encourage people to contact you. I like putting contact information on every page of a business site. A good place for it is at the bottom of pages.

That's not only an email address, but also a phone number and a mailing address. On the front page of a site, it oftn makes sense to put that contact information above the fold - in a place where people will see it as they scan the page for the first time. Some other good suggestions are in this Site Point article - The Lost Art of Conversation - Encouraging Contact Online

I mentioned in the last paragraph that a quick scan of a homepage is an important time for someone to see information like an address. Well, it helps for people to see even more there:

• A link to a privacy policy is essential. It tells people what you will do with their contact information if they do contact you.



• Information about the business needs to be front and center. It doesn't need to be as detailed as an "About us" page would be, but it needs to be enough so that people might be interested in reading that "About us" page.



• People need to know other information about your goods or services, such as shipping policies, or return policies. If you don't include information about those, it's probably much more reasonable for people to shop for the same products or services offline. At least that way they can get in the face of people who sold them something that didn't work as advertised.



• I like to know that there's a human being behind a web site. A statement that appears to be written by that person, and a photograph can increase my confidence in a site. An email address for that person, presented in a way that makes me feel comfortable in contacting them boosts my confidence even more.



• If the business is a member of a consumer organization, like the Better Business Bureau, or a member of an industry association, and I can check with those organizations, it's another means of improving my trust in the honesty of their site's promises to me.



• Promises? Yes, a company online makes promises to its customers. And it keeps those promises. When Dell tells me that they will ship a computer I've ordered within ten days, it better arrive within ten days. The last few we ordered from them arrived in three or four days. They made a reasonable promise, and they overdelivered. It's a practice that had us going back for more.



• More promises? When you make a statement involving the price, quality, uniqueness, or other aspect of your goods or services, I'll probably check around to see if there have been any complaints. Usenet, through Google Groups, is a great place to find information about a business - especially if there are complaints. The point though, is not to avoid making promises. The point is to keep the promises that you do make.

There are other ways to display your credibility online. I'll explore some of those later this week. If anyone has any other suggestions about credibility, I'd love to hear them.

There's Always Room for Good News (Blog)

I'm adding the Good News Blog to the links at the right.

Not because I know the author, though I do.

Not because he's bright, articulate, and cheerful; even though he is all of those things.

But rather because we come across so much news everyday filled with sadness, strife, and loss. It's good to know that there's at least one place to get good news.

When Do You Teach Your Childen About Money?

I remember the look on my father's face the first time I pulled out a credit card.

I guess it was a rite of passage for him. He asked me if he had "signed for it." I was probably about twenty or so, and he shouldn't have been that surprised. In many ways, he had prepared me for the world of credit, taxes, financing agreements, loans, and so on.

But I could tell that it surprised him.

My brother and sister and I had savings accounts as long as I can remember. I think my parents put some seed money in our accounts to make us feel good about collecting, but we were expected to deposit some of our allowance into our bank accounts on a regular basis. It was a way of investing in ourselves and giving us something to plan ahead for.

There's a memory of my father sitting down with me, and having me carefully read the instructions for my first income tax payment. He showed me where to enter what, and how to look up how much I owed, or how much I would get back. After that first time, I was on my own. I've done my taxes for myself ever since.

I believe that in there somewhere we even worked out a budget. I don't recall how old I was, but it made a lot of sense when we did it, and the exercise has helped me ever since.

But I don't remember really talking about finances in school, except maybe when it came to counting out lunch money.

A Wharton article, Teaching Kids about Money: Why It's Not Just Fun and Games takes a look at making financial literacy something taught in classes. It opens with this quote:

"Improving basic financial education at the elementary and secondary school level is essential to providing a foundation for financial literacy that can prevent younger people from making poor financial decisions that can take years to overcome." Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, 2001

But that type of practical application seems to be something schools often leave to parents. A couple of pages I found on teaching children about money are these two:

Teaching children about money

A snippet:

Tips for teaching children about money. Younger children may believe that parents have an unlimited supply of money, unaware that checks and credit cards are not the same as cash and that bills must be paid.

Another one that does a nice job of explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the dole system and the allowance system: Teaching Your Children About Money

A good time to consider giving your child money is when he or she is between the ages of five and eight. Most parents use the Dole System or the Allowance System, and both have advantages and disadvantages. Research shows that in some instances an allowance may cost less than simply giving or doling money out for specific needs and wants.

A Good Reason for Headlines

A study from the Poynter Institute had some interesting observations when they studied what people look on web pages while wearing eyetracking equipment.

The project, Eyetrack III, may or may not have implications for your web site.

One quote I thought was very interesting:

Smaller type encourages focused viewing behavior (that is, reading the words), while larger type promotes lighter scanning. In general, our testing found that people spent more time focused on small type than large type. Larger type resulted in more scanning of the page -- fewer words overall were fixated on -- as people looked around for words or phrases that captured their attention

My favorite page in the study was one that compared the styles of five different web sites.

So you Want to Volunteer With a NonProfit

There are a lot of reasons to get involved with a nonprofit organization.

One reason may be because you have some free time, and want to find a way to spend it in a productive manner. There are many organizations that could use a hand, and many opportunities looking for people to fill them. A group like Volunteer Match can help you find an internship, or post as an educator, mentor, or other position.

The range of choices may surprise you. A search in my area revealed a need for a person to help with Special Olympics, a music/choral group leader, a court appointed special advocate, a database application developer for a museum, a museum guide, a humane cat trapper, a dog walker, a literacy volunteer teaching adults, a park ranger intern, a member of a historic sewing group, and many more.

Another reason may be because you have nothing else to do. I remember when a friend had left his job, and was wandering directionless. I saw a sign for a group that was rescuing and rehabilitating wild birds nearby, and convinced him that it might be something fun to do, and that I would join with him. He got involved with them, and spent some serious time helping to do construction jobs around their facilities, care for sick and injured birds, and travel to places near and far to help rescue birds from oil spills. He met his future wife while volunteering there. It seemed in some ways that the opportunity helped rescue him.

A different reason might be that you have no choice. Well, you do have a choice, but helping others may just be the thing that helps you. An ex-neighbor knocked on my door a couple of months back. He asked me for some advice with the legal system. He had been caught driving without a license -- for the third time. His court date was in about a month. It's a charge that often carries with it some prison time. He asked me what he should do. I told him that the best thing he could do was to go to some place like the Boys club, or somewhere else, and volunteer. Find something that a judge could look at and say to him or herself that "here is someone who is trying to do something for someone else. Someone who just might have seen the errors of his ways." I didn't want to get all preachy, and I could tell by the incredulous look on his face that it wasn't the advice that he expected.

I don't know if he took my advice. I hope that he did.

If you do consider volunteering, there are some things that you should keep in mind. I came across an excellent online resource that's worth a good look if you're inclined to get involved. The Volunteer Legal Handbook - 7th Edition looks at some of the possible problems and risks you might take as a volunteer. Here are a couple of examples that they describe :

• The auto accident. You volunteer to drive a group of little league baseball players to a baseball game. You are involved in an auto accident and some of your little league passengers are hurt. Are you liable for their injuries? If so, will your insurance cover the claim?



• The fired volunteer. You are an unpaid supervisor of a group of volunteers. One of the volunteers has failed to perform adequately, and you have terminated his volunteer status with the organization. Now the former volunteer has sued you and the organization for slander, libel and wrongful dismissal. Are you liable?

I'm going to take another look at that Volunteer Match site. There are a couple of really nice museums nearby that looked like they needed guides. It could be fun.

short bits

Some links that I read on the web recently which I found interesting:

• It's Not Just Usability
• Why I don't recommend Firefox
• Microsoft Patents Tabbing through a web page
• Windows for Warships
• Creativity Techniques
• The Age of the Essay
• HTML Overlays
• Can social tagging overcome barriers to content classification?
• Making Stone Soup
• Information Architecture Research

blogging businesses

Why should your business have a blog?

I was hard pressed to come up with any better reasons than the ones listed in Lip-Sticking: 5 Reasons Jane Thinks Every Small Business Should Blog. If you have a business, and you don't have a blog, I'd recommend that you pay her site a visit.

As Yvonne Divita states, it's about improving communication with your customers. A blog can be very easy to set up, and if you like writing, can be a great way to get online quickly and easily.

I'll add to her other points that it can be fairly inexpensive to set up a blog.

Learn While You Surf

I'm often amazed at how much I learn while I'm online.

An article in today's local paper noted that the City of Philadelphia is considering taking on the costs of setting up the whole City for wireless connections to the web, at low or no cost for residents and visitors to the city.

One of the justifications for the move is that it would be much cheaper to do that than it would be to build a small library, and many more people would benefit from the access.

I think it's a great idea.

But how beneficial is web access? How much of a difference will it make to peoples' lives if they can just surf the web where ever they will? When ever they want?

A post over at DonnaM's blog looks at going online and 'Wasting' time looking for information. I've come to the same conclusion as Donna.

When I go online looking for the answer to a specific question, I don't always find the answer. But most of the time, I do learn something useful.

Apologies to Google and Blogger

I owe Google and Blogger an apology.

Last week, I applied to participate in Google's AdSense, after reading an article on the Blogger webpage titled There's an AdSense in my Blog.

To my surprise, I was turned down. I didn't expect that after reading Biz Stone's AdSense article. I sent Biz Stone an email, and I sent another to the AdSense team expressing my confusion and my dissatisfaction. I even made a blog post here: Google Hate Me

A DNS propagation problem kept me from getting emails at the beginning of this week, and I went through 72 hours or so without any emails. (Serious withdrawal there!) As I was sorting through my accumulated mails yesterday afternoon, there were a couple from the AdSense team.

One of them was a note informing me that I had submitted the wrong URL (".net" instead of ".com") and that they visited my blog, and figured out what had happened. The other was an email accepting me into the AdSense program.

It's my fault. I wish they had included the URL I submitted when they sent me the rejection. But regardless, I should have given them the right address.

It does appear that someone other that Google and Blogger own blogspot.net, and it's for sale. It does have a redirect going on to another site. I can understand why they would have sent a rejection notice.

Thanks AdSense team, for following up.

Inline Ads at Forbes

Since I've been paying a fair amount of attention lately to advertisements on web sites, a Whitespace article discussing Forbes' use of Ad Links In Content sort of stood out for me.

A good question, too. Should this type of ad be linked to differently than other ads in an online article.

I hope that this practice is abandoned. And quickly.

Two-Year Anniversary of Cre8asite Forums

It gives me a lot of pleasure to announce that we are celebrating the second anniversary of Cre8asite Forums. See: Cre8asiteForums Breaks Out the Champagne for its Two-Year Anniversary

Seeing Cliches

Fun site, well worth a visit, A Primer of Visual Cliche shows images that we see in many places, and how they are used over and over. And they are accompanied by some pretty insightful language:

Advertisers seemed to think we gape with astonishment, collapse with hysterical laughter when faced with twins - be it shampoo or spark plugs.

Harvesting Solar Hydrogen

Good news on the scientific front from the land down under.

Research at The University of New South Wales is underway to bring us a breakthrough in energy that is amazing. Will we see Solar hydrogen being the way people start supplying their energy needs within the next seven years?

Using special titanium oxide ceramics that harvest sunlight and split water to produce hydrogen fuel, the researchers say it will then be a simple engineering exercise to make an energy-harvesting device with no moving parts and emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants.

This is a technology to keep an eye upon. What does it mean to the giant energy producing companies, to the Middle East with their reserves of fuel? What political and economic forces will be ignited if this energy system starts being implemented?

Sell Side Advertising, Part II

Seems like this is an idea that's going quickly around the web. Joi Ito wants to b e in the middle of the creation of a Sell side advertising system.

The thought of a pool of ads, that bloggers could choose and use, is the next step beyond an ad sense system.

What would it take to set a system like this up? I suspect that some affiliate tracking software could be tweaked to do quite nicely.

Trackback in Your Blogger Blog?

There was a great suggestion by a member of the Cre8asite Forums that I'd like to share.

One of the things I've wished for in my Blogger-based blog was a track-back like the folks at Movable Type blogs have.

I never noticed the wish/suggestions part of the feedback form that Blogger titles Blogger: Talk To Us.

If you use blogger, and you're wishing you had trackback, it's more likely to happen if you ask for it from the people who can give it to you - Blogger.

Pick Your Own Ads

Imagine that you decided to try to make some money on your web site by running some ads.

So, you go to a page where ads are available to be chosen, and used, and you pick out three or four that are appropriate to your site.

You check to make sure that your site is appropriate for the uses envisioned by the advertiser, and if it is, you cut and paste the code for those ads into a text editing program, and then into the template for your blog, or the html for your static web site.

The ad runs until the owner's cash reserve is emptied - then the ad disappears.

This is more work than something offered by some text-ad programs, but owners of sites get to choose the ads that run on their sites. There's a lot of value to that.

Will we ever see this model of advertising? I hope so. It's described in more detail on John Battelle's Searchblog: Sell Side Advertising: A New Model?

There's a lot of value to being able to choose your business partners. It's always possible to find them on your own, but not really easy. Unfortunately, most systems for showing ads are accompanied by adhesion contracts where the large company supplying the ads have all the power, and all of the say, and the people displaying the ads have no ability to negotiate.

I've had troubles with automated, contextual ads from one of the large online booksellers showing products from competitors. (Fortunately, you could choose which books to display from them rather than just use the contextual system.) I'd once signed up with a large reseller of hosting and domain services to act as an affiliate, only to get so disgusted by their practices that I yanked all links to them, and never contacted them ever again.

It would be great if someone set up an advertising clearinghouse where people could select the ads they wanted to show quickly and easily.

Google Hate Me

[There's an update to this post titled: Apologies to Google and Blogger It was an error on my part that caused this misunderstanding between the Google AdSense team and me.]

Excited is what I was, by the Biz Stone article There's AdSense in My Blog.

Actually, there was Adsense in my blog since the day Google bought Blogger, and put it in the header at the top of my blog. I have been AdSense free ever since last week, when those ads were replaced with a Blogger Nav Bar.

And then there was this Biz Stone article.

I've sent an email to Biz asking him to remove his article on ad sense from the Blogger Knowledge base. Biz does work for the company that claimed in its IPO filing with the SEC that they follow the credo "Do No Evil." Still I don't know if they would be happy if he removed the article. I wouldn't want him to take the food off the table of his children for doing the right thing. But I suspect that I'm not the only one being treated badly by Google.

I guess that Google hates this site. Or they do now. I don't blame them. It's typical of a lot of blogs. I suspect it doesn't get as many visits as Biz Stone, Genius which displays AdSense ads, even though he says at the bottom of the blog, "The thoughts and ideas expressed here are mine and mine alone. Not those of my employer."

And frankly, Biz has a lot more "my cat's breath smells like catfood" posts than I do.

Mark Pilgrim's wonderful blog, Dive into Mark explains the difference between a corporate blog and a personal blog, telling us:

So, I have a corporate blog now, in addition to "dive into mark," which will remain a personal blog. A corporate blog is like a personal blog, except you don't get to use the word "motherfucker."

I never use those types of words here. It's not because this is a personal blog, or a corporate blog, but rather because I think that type of language is a tired cliche.

As excited as I was to read Biz Stone's article, I was even more excited when I received the response from Google fairly quickly after I followed the link in Mr. Stone's article to Google's sign-on for adsense. After reading what I now take for fiction in the Biz Stone article, I figured that my adsense ads would return, but this time I would get paid for click-throughs on them.

I imagine that I haven't made much money for Google over the last year or so. But, I had these visions of writing long, beautiful essays here to attract large audiences, and massive amounts of clickthroughs - you know, like the daydreams you have when you pretend you've won the $100 million jackpot in the lottery.

While that seems like a silly pipe dream, I suspect that between blog posts and forum posts, I've probably written around 500,000 words on the web over the past couple of years.

But my site is a personal site. And I use blogger software to publish it - blogger. Oddly, that seems to be one of the reasons why my site was denied. I'm not sure. I don't quite understand this reason:

Client-side software use: A site or third party cannot display our ads as a result of the actions of any software application such as a toolbar. We may not accept sites that are associated with some types of client-side software or offer these types of client-side software.

The other reason was insulting, and infuriating:

Page type: Your website is a type of website that we do not currently accept into our program. Such websites include, but are not limited to, chat sites, personal pages, search engines, sites that contain predominately copyrighted material, and sites that drive traffic through cybersquatting.

I'm not sure if I'm being accused of having a personal site, but it's less personal that that of Biz Stone, Genius. It's not a chat site, or a search engine.

I'm not a cybersquatter. At least not intentionally. For one thing, the domain is "blogspot" which belongs to Google, so if anyone is cybersquatting here, under the ICANN definition, it would be the holder of the domain name.

But, I'll look at the subdomain, too. There were some trademarks with the word "nasty" in them at the US Patent and Trademark Office, such as these:

• NASTY BEAST
• TERRIBLE NASTY SCARIES
• MCNASTY TIKI PARTY
• NASTY GIRL
• NASTY SANTA
• TOO CUTE TO BE NASTY
• THE BIG NASTY
• THE NASTY POETS
• NASTY BOYS & THE WILD THANGS

Actually, there were 131 trademarks listed which included the word "nasty." I can only imagine what services or goods some of them protected. Not a single one of those is "nastybit" or "a Nasty bit of business". Now I know that I would likely have to look at state trademark databases and common law trademarks and first use in commerce, if anyone is even using those phrases in commerce. But, to the best of my knowledge, I have a good faith belief that there is no one I am depriving of their livelihood nor harming anyone's good will by using this domain name.

So, it's either that I have a "personal" site, or the site contains "predominately copyrighted material." I confess. This site contains predominately copyrighted material.

As soon as I write it, and publish it, it is copyrighted. All of it.

If I use a quote here, I try to limit my use of other's materials to fair use. I suspect that Google means someone else's copyrighted material. So, I'm either being accused of being a thief or writing a personal site.

I'm ready to use the types of words Mark Pilgrim mentioned above after being told that.

Funny that there was no problem last week displaying Ad Sense ads on these pages.

I asked for an apology after being told this. It's never a good customer service approach to accuse your customers of theft or cybersquatting or writing personal web pages.

I was told that I would be violating the terms of use of the Google Ad Sense program if I repeated any of the correspondence between Google and myself in public.

What I remember of my first year of law school contracts class is that there needs to be offer and acceptance to have a valid contract. There is no acceptance, so there is no contract.

I also picked through the boilerplate on the adsense contract page they pointed to, and tried to find out where it said that I couldn't talk about a conversation that I was a party to. I did not agree to that contract.

I never agreed to the Adsense ads on the blog when Google took over.

Granted, Google has a right to choose whichever sites they want to when they want to advertise. Honestly, I would have been happy with a "your site doesn't do enough traffic" or something similar. But, to call me a content thief, or a cybersquatter, and to make legal threats in my direction doesn't fit the method of operation of a company that swears to "do no evil."

If this site disappears, I may have to find some new blogging software, and a new place to blog.

I liked google, and I liked blogger.

What does it take to be a team?

An article on Darwin magazine brushes the surface of how to build a team, and how to help a team that has experienced problems. Help for Team Efforts is a good first look at teamwork, and telltale signs of when things are going right, and when they are going wrong.

One thing I've noticed about building a team is that it's something you have to work upon regularly. If you give your team tasks to perform on a regular basis, they start to develop a sense of how to work together. And a good team can accomplish a lot more than the combination of the efforts of individuals.

New Navbar

Courtesy of Douglas Bowman, it seems that us Blogspot hosted bloggers have a new navigation bar instead of ads at the top of our pages.

I like the last few changes made by Google's bloggger - the navbar, the profile, the newest templates, the newer writing interface.

I've been thinking about consolidating some of my blogging efforts because I've spread myself pretty thin. I don't know if I will.

But the tools that blogger has been adding make it harder to let this one go. Maybe I'll try to breathe some life into it again, and see if I can get it going.

Sliding in on an IceRocket

I don't know if there's really anything that new to the Mark Cuban backed search engine IceRocket, but it's kind of interesting hearing his take on it and reading through the many comments that it generated.

It's good to see people trying to wrest Google's crown from its brow, regardless of how much I like Google.

I Don't Recall the Words...

A great argument for learning by rote: In Defense of Memorization

I'll confess that it's been a while since I tried to learn all the lyrics to a song, or to memorize a poem, or the lines of a play, or much of anything.

I'm going to try to memorize a couple of poems, and see if there's anything of worth to it other than the ability to spout the lines out whenever I want. I suspect that there is.

Brand (new) Experiences

Inspired by Dirk Knemeyer's article at Digital Web Magazine - Brand Experience and the Web, I started a thread on the topic of how one could use interactivity online to help build a brand.

I titled the thread How Much Would You Pay for a Cup of Coffee. I got some great answers, including one dealing with the difference between building a branding, and postioning oneself within a niche. There were also some nice links to online applications that help to provide interesting and useful ways to experience different products online in a way that is helpful to a potential customer.

I've been thinking about some responses to the thread. I'm torn between discussing the topic here, and posting responses there. If I write some words over at the forum, I stand a better chance of getting some great responses. If I post over here, I add some volume and mass and content to this often neglected blog.

It's a tough choice, and the blog often loses out to the forum. I really need to dedicate a little more effort in building a brand over here.

In case this post does spawn some discussion, I'll throw out the following question: What are some of the ways that you've seen people attempt to build brand through online activities?

Did You See Seashells at the Seashore?

My friend and usabilty consultant extraordinaire, Kim Krause, spent a week at the beach disconnected from the world (wide web, that is).

She writes about it in There Were No Search Engines At The Seashore. I think I have to give that a shot, and see how it goes.

Managing Brands

I've been running across interesting pages lately, and great reading. Some nice articles on AllAboutBranding.com

Do What You Love

It's funny sometimes when people ask you what they should do with their lives, and they act surprised when the answer to that question is "what do you love to do"?

You can't always create a vocation out of your favorite pursuit, but it really doesn't hurt to look at the possibility seriously.

Yes, there are people who make a living play-testing video games. And folks who earn a paycheck while training dolphins and killer whales. Drawing or painting, or designing a web page can be a for-profit project. Making movies, writing books, racing cars, playing sports all are someone's job.

If you could do what you love and get paid for it, what would you be doing? And if you aren't doing it, why not?

Small Business Ideas Forum

I've been enjoying making some posts over at the fairly new Small Business Ideas Forum.

Stop on by and share some of your thoughts. The folks who started the forum are friendly, smart, helpful and could use a few more faces to help make the forum a nice place for people with questions about business.

What's Up, Chief?

Sometimes people do things that they don't even realize.

I remember a time not too far after high school when I was working in a factory. It was a fairly small shop, and we were building industrial plastics machinery. Fun times.

Some days I would come in and drill and thread holes for most of the day. Others would see me laying out pipe, threading it, and piecing together cooling systems. Arc welding was a lot of fun, even on very hot days wearing protective leather gear and heavy helmet and goggles. Sweat and sparks flying - life couldn't get much better. Some of the most fun was working the pneumatic painting equipment, making large machines a uniform shade of blue, with some orange accessories (the shop trademark colors).

We worked ten to twelve hour days on a regular basis. Listened to the same radio station every day. I could guess the next song with a remarkable accuracy rate, having heard their repeated call letters often enough to understand their format, and know which songs where normally plugged into each of the 19 spots they were using. It was something I picked up on, without really giving much thought to it.

I also found it important to know where most people were on the shop floor. With a small staff like we had, many people performed multiple functions on the factory floor rather than one specialized job such as lathe operator, or welder II, or fork lift operator. They didn't work at specific stations, but moved around our large industrial area (we had ten people and probably could have fit another twenty-five people in there comfortably). I'd make an effort as I was working, of noticing who was where every ten minutes or so. After a while, I was doing this without really thinking about it. There was an almost zen-like quality to my awareness of our shop activities.

Those were some habits I was aware of. I'm sure that there were others I wasn't. And I wasn't the only one.

Our shop foreman had a habit of calling everyone "Chief". "What's up, Chief," he would say, or "Can I give you a hand, Chief"? One day, we decided that we would all call him Chief. About two-thirds of the way through that day, he asked one of us, "what's all this "Chief" business"? We stopped, but he didn't.

It's funny the habits that you can pick up as you acclimate to an environment. It's been a few years since I was a card-carrying union member, and I haven't welded anything in probably too long a period. I forget what it's like to build something from metal and sparks and sweat. I wonder about the habits I've picked up in my present working environment that I'm possibly not even aware of.

Powerpointing

Powerpoint is a tool, not the presentation.

I gave a presentation to a group of 14 this morning, and I wish I had take the advice of DonnaM in her post on A neat powerpoint trick.

Handouts are useful, and handouts that provide extra value are even more useful. Great idea.

Never Too Young to Get into Business

In case you have any young ones of your own considering this stage of growing where they learn to care for others, or want to explore the world of business, there are some pages online trying to help out.

For instance, the University of Illinois has a great guide to The Business of Babysitting.

It's pretty well done.

Babysitting isn't for every teen, and there's another site that recently launched that might interest teens in other pursuits. The Small Business Administration started up the The Young Entrepreneur Online Guide to Business.

It includes thoughts on finding a mentor, and links to help. It also discusses money and saving and investing, legal issues, and how to develop a business plan.

Torn Between Standards

I'm not interested in getting in the middle of a battle between standards.

Especially when it comes to syndication feeds like RSS or Atom, which would enable people to read titles, and portions of posts from here in feed aggregators, or to show them on their sites.

When Google updated blogger, it appears that they chose one of those standards over the other. I'm not sure that they thought too much about the choice. It sounds like their thinking more on the subject.

I'm tempted to feed this page through a third party site which would provide a third party feed for me, in addition to the one generated in the Atom format.

Watching the Office

I've heard good things about the BBC series The Office, which is a comedy disquised as a documentary.

It's set in an industrial area somewhat outside of London.

The characters are believable, and the "reality television" approach to the show gives it a unique appeal. A number of the laughs from the show come when a character stares into the camera, at a loss for words to explain to the audience what just happened. Some video clips here.

The series consists of two seasons of six episodes each. They were good enough that I had some difficulty not watching all of these in a row.

I haven't worked in an office quite like the one depicted, but I recognize some of the situations. I suspect I'll be watching these over a few times.

One of my favorite scenerios is when a trainer comes in, and tries to hold a class, while the office manager atttempts to share the wisdom of his experiences at the same time. Their ideas of teamwork clash.

Best television show I've seen in years.

Drivers, Drivers, My Kingdom for Some Drivers

I've been plagued by computer woes the last couple of days.

With some intermittent use of my computer, I've been updating critical patches, defragging my hard drive, doing a full virus scan of the hard drive.

It's been no fun.

I finally hit upon the likely culprit this morning. The video drivers for my video card. I'm downloading new drivers right now. We'll see if they work.

I've seen the complaint before that having the hardware manufacturers make drivers for their hardware is often a hit or miss proposition. Well, the drivers for my video card came with the operating system. Chances are they should work well.

The homepage of the card manufacturer linked to a download page which listed driver software that is only a couple of months old. Hopefully whatever went wrong is fixed in this incarnation of the software.

Thinking of this makes me consider how much some businesses rely upon others. Windows benefits greatly by having so many third party hardware manufacturers build parts that will work with the operating system. They mostly have no choice since there is such a large market filled with users of the software.

What annoys me is that the drivers I was using were loaded from the Windows XP CD. I noticed an updated driver on the windows update page at the beginning of the year, and updated to that. You would figure that they would have the bugs out of it by now.

I was happy to see that the manufacture had a newer date on the version I'll be trying out this morning. Fingers crossed, hopefully I can write about something a little more interesting. At least now, since I dumped the video drivers and am working with a generic driver, I can at least start up the computer and work with it. Previously, I was getting the video signal cutting out on me.

Well, I needed those critical updates anyway.

Ringing in Changes

I was getting a kick looking at a page from the Smithsonian Institute on how information technology has changed over the past 150 years.

To be honest, when I think of information technology, I really don't think of the telegraph or the telephone.

But maybe I should. The means of communicating over long distances, aided by electricity and wires, are the roots of information technology.

When you look at the pictures, it's easy to forget that these devices cause profound changes in society as they were introduced. But some of it didn't happen overnight.

I found a much more detailed view of telecommunications, which goes from the 1820s to today's mobile phones.

It's become pretty common to see people walking down the main street of my town with a mobile phone pressed to their ears. It wasn't as common in 1879, when David Hughes received the first radio/telephone call.

Yes. The mobile phone is now 125 years old. Not what you'd call an overnight success. Wonder what David Hughes would think of ringtones.

MarketingSherpa's Reader's Choices

Congratulations to the winners of the Marketing Sherpa's Readers' Choice Best Blog Awards 2004

Improving News Sites

When I was in high school, we used to get two different newspapers.

They carried all of the same stories. I'm not sure that my parents knew what they were doing when they insisted on getting more than one newspaper delivered to the house every morning. But I suspect that they might have known.

I took advantage of it, and usually read both papers every morning. What I found interesting was how stories were often presented differently from one paper to another.

It turned me into a bit of a skeptic when it comes to the media. It also had me wishing that newspapers would take active steps to improve.

I usually look at a dozen or so papers everyday now. With so many papers are on the web, I recongize that most of them that aren't taking as much of an advantage of online opportunities as they could.

CyberJournalist.net has a great list titled: 101 ways to improve your news site. These are excellent suggestions. If a news site adopted even half of these, they would find themselves amongst the best sites on the web.

Funny, but the best benefits may come from getting more involved with the community that surrounds them.

What Would Google Buy?

Google's Initial Public Offering seems fueled by the necessity to have made an SEC filing anyway, and the desire to sell some shares to reward employees - all of who own some stock in the company.

There's one topic that I haven't seen much focus upon. And that is, what will Google do with all of the money raised from the IPO?

But it's one of the topics that has me concerned. The Motley Fools joins me in speculating just exactly what is on Google's Billion-Dollar Shopping List?

Just to add a little more to the mix then those companies the Fool discusses, I like to add a company that I brought up a few posts below - Craigslist. Pure speculation on my part, without the faintest amount of inside knowledge, or anything beyond a feeling. It has the same feel to it that made Blogger's Pyra Labs such an attractive acquisition to Google.

What companies would you buy if you had a million to spend?

Sites that Use Spyware Are Some of It's Biggest Targets

Some inconsistencies are difficult to wrap your head around.

I remember sitting down a few years ago after cooking breakfast for the staff of the restaurant I worked at, and listening to the bartending groaning. The place opened at 11:00 am, and the staff all joined together for a pre-work meal. It didn't sound like our drink-mixer had his head on straight that morning.

It was a normally a nice time, where morale was boosted, and comraderie was fostered. But not every morning.

I was working my way through college, and this was a pretty good job, especially considering their "all you can eat" policy for kitchen crew. On good days, when everyone was happy, the work went really quickly.

But, it was easy to see that our man behind the mixed drinks wasn't happy. Considering that he was one of the first persons that people would see as they walked through the door, that wasn't a great way to start the day.

I asked what was wrong. He looked at me, and confessed that he had been up most of the night talking to one of the people he sponsored from AA. The person had relapsed, and needed someone to talk with. He was the one.

While I was filled with sympathy, the oddity of the statement filled me with some surprise. I tried, but couldn't stop myself. I asked, "doesn't it strike you as unusual that you're a member of AA, you're complaining about someone who is having trouble because they couldn't resist alcohol, and you're a bartender?"

To further fuel the fire, these words followed from my mouth, "Doesn't that seem a little ironic to you?"

Funny, but he quit the restaurant a few weeks later. I'm not sure why, but I hope that he found something other to do than feed drinks to people.

A post by Ben Edelman uncovers what appears to be a bit of a business enigma along the same lines - Dell's Spyware Puzzle not only looks at Dell's unusual relationship with a spyware company, but also Yahoo's.

Just What are Nerd Values, and How Did They Help Craig?

Ask me yesterday what I thought of Craig's List, and I would have told you that, "it's phenomenal," and that, "Craig deserves any success that he gets."

I don't know Craig.

I don't even read along on his personal blog. But, I know that his site started out small. That it contains many ads that are free, that allow people to help each other.

I pointed my father at the site a couple of months back, and told him about how great the classifieds from Craigslist were doing, and that it's an interesting model to base a web business upon.

It appears that I'm not the only one talking about it like that. A few newspapers have capitulated to Craig. They've been claiming that they can't compete with Craigslist's Classifieds.

I can see that.

Ask me today, and I'll probably tell you the same thing. But the timing is kind of funny. I got my first piece of spam this afternoon from a request for more information that I made a few months back. A local magazine was asking for writers to produce articles. In true Craigslist style, the advertisement didn't disclose very much about the people posting the job.

In the newspaper world of classified ads, I've always hesitated when seeing an ad that promised fame and fortune, and riches greater than what most entry level positions paid, but wouldn't get around to revealing much about the work to earn those. Selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door? Designer rip-off frangrances on city street corners? There are some lousy ways to make a buck. Not as bad as fishing for shrimp on the Gulf of Mexico on a boat too rickety to leave site of land. But bad.

Somehow, with Craigslist it was OK. The people placing ads were as much a nerd as I was.

Then I got an offer to join an online dating service, and offered money to sign up, and the person making the offer used my inquiry letter for the writing gig a few months back as an excuse for contacting me. It was a "pre-exisiting relationship" that must have made it OK to send out emails to me, and others like me.

I guess that as less nerds use Craigslist, and more marketers with ridiculous justifications start, it may lose some of its glitter. I hope I'm mistaken.

The Only Constant is Change

I've seen the impacts of changes both large and small, from the introduction of a new computer system to a migration to a new office building.

When you bring in new means of conducting business, new methods of interacting, and new approaches to old problems, you run into some resistence. I can't count all the times I've been told by someone that "that isn't the way we've done it in the past" or "that isn't part of my job."

Change can be good. Change can bring catastrophe. It doesn't hurt to be forewarned, and to read through something like this article on 10 Principles of Change Management

Change does happen all the time. The better you're prepared to deal with it, the less it will harm you.

How Did You Get This Number?

A nice look at the implementation of the Do Not Call Registry from the FTC in CIO magazine, called How the FTC Rescued the Dinner Hour.

Letting the Numbers Go

The rant over at Seth Godin's Blog on The Curse of Great Expectations is a lot of fun.

There are times when you have to put the yardstick aside, stop counting, refuse to measure, and just let go. I did some of that this weekend, and I anticipate doing even more of it this summer.

It's great to be able to measure success by numbers, and to capture positive and negative trends, but it's also easy to get obsessive over those figures.

I have a couple of friends who have been in business together for twenty five years. Their business makes enough for them to survive week after week with a little extra to put away for a rainy day. They have no expectations of wild growth, and no desire for it.

I see so many who look at return on investment (ROI) as the first measure of whether or not they should even get involved in a company. A recent article I came across actually even advocated that the first calculation be figuring the potential value of a company at its Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Most businesses never make it to an IPO, and often have no desire to get there. The owners recognize that once a business gets to a certain point, they are no longer doing the part of the business that attracted them to it in the first place, but are managing others who perform those tasks.

Full Contact Golf

I know golf doesn't need saving. I know that it's successful, and that as a sport it ranks amongst the most watched and is an entertaining diversion for many participants.

But I'll confess that it makes me sleepy. Watching it, or playing it, or even reading about it has the same effect that an extra large turkey dinner on a lazy Thanksgiving afternoon does on me. And just why are those announcers whispering? So they don't wake me up?

I've contemplated changes to the sport that would make it more fun to watch. A full contact version, with the winner of each green as first to get to each hole with the ball could be fun. Strokes don't matter - speed does. Armored padding optional. I could foresee motorized and unmotorized versions. I wonder if I could sell Fox on the idea. We could show it to the same folks who are currently enjoying slamball.

One idea I didn't consider was Urban Golf. I'd travel to London to play that.

Hack Your Car

Ever have the "check engine light" illuminate your dashboard? Not much you can do about it, huh?

Lifts engine cover. Yep, it's an engine. Check!

I remember having that light come up on me. Car seemed fine. I hadn't heard anything unusual. Gas mileage was great. I suspected something pretty serious, having never had that light come on after miles and miles and miles of trouble free driving.

Maintainance. No problems. Check the fluids. Replace parts when necessary. Standard maintainance.

I anticipated a big fee at the garage. Brought it to the mechanic. Found out that the light went on automatically when I reached a certain mileage point. Left angry at the car, its manufacturer, the mechanic, and myself.

Wired looks at the ever increasingly computerized automobile in an article titled Drivers Want Code to Their Cars. Some of the horror stories that are uncovered in the article show a considerable lack of usability and customer service.

As cars get more complex and computerized, are non-dealer mechanics at risk of losing the ability to work on those cars?

Who said the Folks at the Patent Office Didn't Understand Parody?

There's a point you recognize when something is broken, and is impossible to fix.

Like when Altavista started spewing out junk sometime in 1998, and dropped from its position as the top search engine. Or when your favorite actor left that comedy Sitcom and they tried to go on without him or her.

The United State's Patent Office has issued some real garbage. But a Method and system for identifying people who are likely to have a successful relationship?

I wonder what George Washington, the first patent officer of the United States, would have thought of that one.

When a Corporate Giant Sees Profit in Litigation, Bring Popcorn

Corporate Counsel Magazine takes a look at a Dupont company Strategy that has the chemical giant at the plaintiff table:

Gauthier and Mariani told the 160 lawyers, outside counsel, and vendor representatives gathered in Wilmington that DuPont lawyers have let far too many litigation opportunities slip by. When suppliers overcharge, customers underpay, or rivals infringe on DuPont's patents, the company often looks the other way instead of seeking damages, either in court or out.

It will be fun seeing what happens when a Dupont feels that they've overpaid for all their copies of Windows. I want a ringside seat.

This is Not a Beta

An excellent point made a Signal vs. Noise on a mass proliferation of online Beta applications, titled For beta or for worse? appears to have resulted in it's very own Wired article - Mo' Beta Testing Blues.

I'll admit that I like it when journalism takes a lead from a blog. Especially when they add value to it like Wired does in interviewing a top interaction designer from Cooper.

This blog, however, is not a beta. It's never quite finished, and that's the nature of a blog. Expect change. Anticipate that I'll try to add more here, and every so often, even try out a new look.

The Strange Logic Behind Band Names

You may have heard the name Vandelay Industries before. There's an emo band of that name cranking out some music. But they aren't the first Vandelay Industries. That distinction belongs to a fictional company from a Seinfeld skit.

So, why did the band choose the name, and what difference does it make?

I don't think the band is the first one to come up with a name based upon a fictional company. I believe the band Steely Dan mined that territory years ago.

The only problem I can see? As noted in the article, the first 100 or so results in Google are Seinfeld references. Maybe some day the band will hit it big, and overcome their fictional competition for the top of the search results. I wonder what Vandelay manufactured.

A Stained Favorite Tie, and a Brand New Look

I looked down this morning, along the length of my tie, and noticed a stain upon it. It's one of my favorites, or should I say it was. Sometimes I do have a semblance of taste and a sense of style. A dark suit, a gray shirt, and this pink tie. It makes a heck of an ensemble.

And the tie had a big mark upon it. I don't know if I'll get it to come out. I had already been at work a couple of hours when I noticed, with most of the day in front of me.

I tried to go through my paces ignoring the noose around my neck, err.. tie. But, I know if I noticed, it's likely that other people did too. Sometimes you just have days like that. I guess worse things can happen. As clothing malfunctions go, that wasn't all that terrible.

While thinking about my ruined accessory, I contemplated a change to the design of this site. I wasn't really all that enthralled with the basic blogger template I was using here. I have another standard template now, but I think that it's a vast improvement. I like the look. With the recent Google updates to blogger, the default template styles are wonderful.

The slight modifications I performed to add some customizations also taught me a little more about following good practices while using cascading style sheets (CSS). It's always a pleasure to look at the html from a good designer.

I don't think I'll miss the old look here. I will miss my tie. I'm going to have to go out and do some shopping. Now that I've updated the online style sense, I have to make sure that I keep the offline one looking good, too. If clothes were only as easy as blogger templates...

Blog Readers Survey on Blog Ads

Blogads has published the results of an eye-opening Blogads: reader survey for blog advertising.

Bloggers are older and more affluent that I expected.

All New Blogger

We've got a new look, new feel software as Google Overhauls Blogger. Good days.

Ponzi Scheming on Wall Street

Is the Stock Marketa big Ponzi Scheme? An intelligently articulated post on How to Save the World says that it is. Is the shape of Wall Street a Pyramid?

Get Paid to Click Ads

This Times of India article on India's secret army of online ad 'clickers' bothers me.

Securities Exchange Commission Filing Form S-1 Registration Statement

So far, it's turning out to the the most interesting registration with the SEC in quite a while.

If you've never read an SEC filing before, this might a good one to start with if you've ever googled around the web.

Selling off the web (portals)

The history of Lycos recounted is a history of the rise and fall of web stocks in the late 1990s. It's kind of intriguing, kind of sad, and something to keep in mind if you're considering buying stock in companies based on the web.

News that the American parts of the Lycos Network are for sale are interesting.

Talking Macs

It's great to hear that Apple computers will soon start shipping with speech technology integrated into their operating systems. See: Macs get their voices back

Disposible Cars

The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that new cars are getting too expensive to fix. As I look at prices and features, I'm wondering how well a retro car would do on the market.

You know, one that has windows you roll down, and steering that requires hand-over-hand turning, where the air conditioner is rolling down both windows and driving fast (known as twin-fifties in some neighborhoods).

I guess that there are quite a few retro cars on used car lots, and in junk yards across this nation. But I mean a new car, where simplicity of design is as important as value, where the cost of maintenance is considered by the engineers who design it.

Maybe we need that type of attitude to extend to more than just cars.

Sometimes you just have to let kids play

As I suspected, wasting away hours in front of a computer playing games wasn't the unproductive time I thought it was. That time may have done more to provide life skills to me than I ever imagined.

I also suspect that we can make school a whole lot more fun, too. If only we tried.

A prescription for subscription sites

I know there are some successful subscription sites out there. The Wall Street Journal seems to be doing OK. I have some friends who play online games on a subscription basis.

I recently tried out GuruNet. and their free trial subscription. Nice service. Would I subscribe? I'm not sure.

Marketing Sherpa takes a look a the business practices of subscription sites on the web. They have some suggestions that might help that type of site succeed.

International blogging

Some great ideas on International blogging from Hossein Derakhshan.

When did R&B first transform in R&R

Clearly before my time. I suspect that sometime in the late 1940 is when it happened for the first time. The Guardian investigates: Will the creator of modern music please stand up?

Instead of Ike Turner, writer of Rocket 88 in 1951, they should look at Big Joe Turner and Shake, Rattle and Roll.

Though, like any movement, music or otherwise, it's often impossible to pinpoint the exact date that a trend started or first began.

Utah takes on Spyware

Spyware is a crime in Uah that can earn someone a fine of $10,000 per incident. I'm in favor of outlawing spyware, but that sounds like a lot of money, and I hope that the law isn't so vague that innocent people get prosecuted under the law.

The other concern I have is that, like laws criminalizing spam, enforcement might not be well thought out, or spelled out, and the law may make absolutely no difference, except on paper.

Wal-mart and Linux, Perfect Together

I'm kind of fond of the idea of Wal-Mart selling computers which use a Linux operating system. The news that Wal-Mart will sell Linux PCs was announced today.

Inexpensive, affordable, computers with a high volume company distributing them could quickly change the desktop landscape. I'm glad the pres release for this wasn't sent out on April Fools' day.

Of google mail and evil

A new email service, being launched by Google, had me convinced that it was an april fools day joke, even though a patent application has been filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Why should I get one of Google's "free" email addresses? Why should I let them scan, record, and index my private correspondence?

Here's a quote from the Press Release

The inspiration for Gmail came from a Google user complaining about the poor quality of existing email services, recalled Larry Page, Google co-founder and president, Products. "She kvetched about spending all her time filing messages or trying to find them," Page said. "And when she's not doing that, she has to delete email like crazy to stay under the obligatory four megabyte limit. So she asked, 'Can't you people fix this?'"

I'm sorry, but that doesn't sound like a statement that the President of a large company should make. Kvetched?

Google. I don't care about whether or not I'm able to keep most of my email. I don't want most of my email. Figure out a way to reduce the amount of spam I get in correspondence, not a way to increase it by including ads in legitimate mail.

cleaning up Washington, DC

Good news for a Friday morning, the effort by a large group of Volunteers to clean up Potomac.

The Donald gets preempted

Will Donald Trump trademark the phrase "You're filed?" Should he be able too? I don't think he should.

But, regardless, it seems that a chicago potter is claiming first dibbs on the commercial use of the phrase. Sincerely, both of them should get attorneys who know what they are talking about, and have those attorneys explain what a trademark actually is. The trademark identifies the goods. The trademark is not the goods. This attempt to try to use trademark as a way to copyright a short phrase is silly at best.

From the US Patent and Trademark Office:

A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others.

Steps for Computer Security

A report today on the BBC noted that many small businesses don't take adequate precautions to make certain that their computers were safe and secure: Small firms fail security checks

What steps do you take?

Do you use passwords? Make certain that you have the most up-to-date virus definitions for your anti-virus software? Do you even have antivirus software? Do you scan your system regularly? Do you scan attachments in emails before you open them?

Do you make backups of your data on a regular basis? Remember, software can always be reinstalled, but once your data disappears, it may be impossible to retrieve it.

If you're connected via broadband, you may not want to keep your computers on when they aren't in use. That connection to the web is a bit of a security risk.

Software patches aren't uncommon, especially from operating systems manuafacturers. Check regularly for security warnings, and updates and patches from those manufacturers.

I'm fond of Zone Laboratories Zone Alarm. It's a software firewall program, which can help you avoid intruders on your computer. If you connect to the web, seriously think about a firewall program like that.

Emails? Set your reader to read them as text rather than html. Shut off preview panes in email readers. Don't open attachments on emails from people you don't know. Don't open attachments from people you do know unless you've been expecting the attachment. If you do receive one, check with the person first to make certain that they sent it.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology have plenty of other ideas and suggestions listed in their Computer Secutiry Division pages, such as encryption for communication, and security for local area networks.

Lawsuit Limits

What makes a corporation a responsible social entity? My opinion is that it starts with how the treat their employees - all of their employees, and not just the top level of management. The next is how they treat their customers. Are they people they provide goods to real flesh-and-blood folks, or are they numbers in a cost-benefit analysis?

Can we get an idea of a corporate philosophy of a company by how much they talk about civil lawsuits and how they would like to see tort reform efforts take place? Maybe.

I'm not a big fan of limiting lawsuits and trying to keep consumers from trying to have a day in court. A civil justice system is supposed to set the standards for our society, and if the average ordinary citizen doesn't like the results of the cost-benefits analysis that many large corporations follow when assessing risk, then they should bring a suit.

This article looks at why the corporate complaints are getting listened to a little more than in past years: Robin Hood is alive in court, say those seeking lawsuit limits

There are businesses who care about their employees and happy customers.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal noted that Costco shareholders might be getting harmed because the company treats employees and customers so well. I think that is a myopic view, especially considering the much lower turnover rate of employees at Costco. And happier customers.

I was visiting with my parents last weekend, and they actually mentioned Costco a couple of times, and how much their like their food, and the way they prepared some of their items at the store. When ordinary consumers start conversations talking about how much they like a store, the store must be doing something right.

Can MSN compete when there's no competition?

Microsoft seems poinsed to take on the world of search, making blogs, news, and web sites its target. Ready to launch this summer, can MSN carve a niche that needs to be filled. I'm not sure that bloggers really need MSN.

Things they never taught me

Why is it that lessons learned the hard way are often the ones that stay with us the longest? It's so much easier learning from the mistakes of another. Things such as "never start your business two weeks after the Yellow pages ads need to be submitted when your business relies upon that advertsing as a primary way of gaining new customers."

This list is priceless: Michael McDonough's Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School. It's scope goes way beyond designing.

Techno Lawyers need Apply

I've been wondering lately if lawyers are going to soon outnumber software engineers at Microsoft.

With 600 attorneys working in the legal department, and at least 3 dozen current law suits pending, they're a mighty litigating group.

Meanwhile, I purchased a monitor at a corporate surplus sale on Tuesday for $10.00. It was the last piece I needed for a linux server system that I'll be setting up (for my own personal use) at home, to help me figure out if I like Linux. I don't know if I'll need much of a legal background to run it correctly.

The largest new force for education in China

Sometimes it's difficult to remember how powerful cartoons can be. Here's an example to put them in perspective.

There are more than 95 million children under the age of 5 in China. A Bejing publisher has been awarded the rights to bring "Noddy" to them. The cartoon character will be used to inftroduce children to language skills. See: Noddy motors into Chinese market

Things not to do to your web site, part 3

Third in the series, this one is as important as any of the others. OK, I know, that sounds like a variation of the first rule or warning I gave, that when you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing. A slight variation of that is when you prioritize everything, nothing comes first.

Avoid being everyone else.

This one isn't the first step that you would take in putting together a business plan or marketing plan,. but it is a vital one. What is different about your company? What is unique? Can you state it in a single statement?

Interestingly, you can apply a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) to a nonprofit, information-only site, too. It's not a mission statement or a motto. What is your site's USP?

more keywords

On Saturday, I discussed keywords a bit in the first of the things not to do to your website. I came across a good article this evening which has more good points on the subject: Seven tips for writing better keywords

Things not to do to your website, part 2

Don't hide in plain sight when you want something back from your customers.

If you want someone to share their name, address, telephone number, and credit card number, you should make that information easily available to them. Let your customers know who you are, and build a level of trust.

Credibilty is a very important part of succeeding when you want to engage in commercial activities on the web. I heartily recommend a visit to the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility There are some great suggestions there. Keep in mind that you have a couple of purposes behind disclosing information about yourself to your potential customers. One is that you want to prove that you are trustworthy. The second is that you want to have people believe in your expertise.

This page from Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox is also worth looking over: "About Us" -- Presenting Information About an Organization on Its Website

Things not to do to your web site, part 1

Learning by your own mistakes is a mistake that you should avoid, if you could.

It's much easier to learn by the fumbles and foibles of others. I've decided that the few hundred errors I've learned since the mid 90s might make good fodder for this blog. It's salvation to realize that what you are doing is wrong. Much better than continuing to do it incorrectly. Learning that you are making mistakes, or how to avoid those of others, is good.

One of the most important rules to keep in mind when it comes to the birth and care and feeding of your web site will be repeated here more than a couple of times. It goes like this:

When you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing.

Today, I'm going to write about that in terms of something I've seen referred to as keyword flooding. There was a time when keywords were an important part of every web site. You would use a meta tag in the head section of each page, and include a list of words in there, separated by commas. Those words would be words that you expected people to use to find your site, or that you hoped they would follow and find your site.

How would having these "keywords" help people locate your pages? Well, a search engine such as Altavista would come along and index those keywords and associate them with your online endeavor. Altavista liked keywords, and indicated that people should use up to 1024 characters in their keyword list. That would fit a lot of words.

But, there are problems with keywords. One of the more interesting articles I've found about the weaknesses of the meta tag and keyword approach is Cory Doctorow's Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia.

The search industy seemed to catch on the the problems described by Boing boing blogger Doctorow (the article was written back in the pre blog days.) A clear indication of the decline and fall of meta tags was the recognition of their demise by Search Engine Watch commentator Danny Sullivan, in Death Of A Meta Tag.

Most people who developed the habit of writing a list of meta tags for their web sites continued to do so. I do, too. But, I no longer try to make the big, big, lists of the past. Keep it to a handful of words, normally the words around which the page was built. When you build your site for a particular market, one of the most important things you can do is know your market, and your targeted audiences, and build the site around the ways that they will use to find the site, and include on the site words that they expect to find.

Those keywords will likely be in the body text of the site, in the description, in headlines, alt-text, the site title, and others.

What does this have to do with the rule I cited above, "when you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing?"

Well, I've seen people put what looks like half the dictionary in their meta keywords tag. Every word that they might believe someone would use to find your site. It does not work like that! Under the old rules of the keywords, every word was important, bt less important if there were more words. By including so many words, you diffuse the value of each word.

So? How important is this tidbit of seemingly useless information if keywords are no longer used?

Maybe they are, and maybe they aren't. People have been claiming for quite some time that Google no longer uses them. But, only the scientists working at Google know for sure.

And Google isn't the only search engine on the web. People do use different search engines. Yahoo used to serve Google results. That has recently changed.

On the Yahoo page How do I improve the ranking of my web site in the search results?, we see this: "Use a 'keyword' meta-tag to list key words for the document. Use a distinct list of keywords that relate to the specific page on your site instead of using one broad set of keywords for every page. "

It appears that the reports of the death of meta keywords are not true. At least for now.

But use them carefully, and don't consider them an opportunity to show off how many words you know about a specific industry.

fear of flying

My father travels quite a bit more by plane than I do. He told me that he has taken to driving instead of flying when the trip is 300 miles or less. He said that the hassle at the airports really isn't worth taking a plane.

There's a brute force, everyone is a criminal, mentality settling in that is fairly well described in articles like this one: Fines Against Passengers Draw Fire.

treading down the sword

I enjoy reading books about other cultures, though I wonder if it's wise to read books about one thing, such as martial arts, and try to adapt their philosophies to another, such as business.

I've been skimming through a translation of Miyamoto Musashi's A Book of Five Rings. It's difficult to read the whole thing in one sitting. There are a lot of small sections, and it reads like a bunch of blog entries.

One of my favorites was called in the translation I'm reading "stomping the Sword." I found an online version (linked above), which gives it a slightly different name, but a similar translation. Are there folks who practice business in the same manner, and with the same passion that a samurai from the 1600s did?

I suspect that it does happen.

Here's that section:

'To tread down the sword' is a principle often used in strategy. First, in large-scale strategy, when the enemy first discharges bows and guns and then attacks, it is difficult for us to attack if we are busy loading powder into our guns or notching our arrows. The spirit is to attack quickly while the enemy is still shooting with bows or guns. The spirit is to win by 'treading down' as we receive the enemy's attack.

In single combat, we cannot get a decisive victory by cutting, with a 'tee-dum tee-dum' feeling, in the wake of the enemy's attacking long sword. We must defeat him at the start of his attack, in the spirit of treading him down with the feet, so that he cannot rise again to the attack.

'Treading' does not simply mean treading with the feet. Tread with the body, tread with the spirit, and, of course, tread and cut with the long sword. You must achieve the spirit of not allowing the enemy to attack a second time. This is the spirit of forestalling in every sense. Once at the enemy, you should not aspire just to strike him, but to cling after the attack. You must study this deeply.

The evolution of digital thought

I didn't start out as a nerd, intrigued by circuit boards and technology. But I did have a thirst for knowledge when I was young, and read everything I could get my hands on.

I've got a couple of degrees, though none of them have anything to do with computers or technology. Then I found myself entranced by databases filled with information, and it was a quick slide towards geekdom.

A friend helped me build my first computer. Now my world is littered with used computer parts that friends somehow believe belong in my hands. Must be the smile on my face when they give that spare graphics card, or network card or dvd player.

Every so often, I get to take a collection of those bits and pieces and make a machine out of it. And I can't help but think of Tracy Kidder's Pulitzer prize winning book, The Soul of a New Machine. The Wired article I point to is a look at the twenty years since the book was written. Anyone interested in project management or starting a small business, or working in the technology field could find a lot worse ways to spend their time than read the original. After you've done that, I'd recommend revisiting the link from Wired.

I also felt a bit of the same excitement, following a link from blogdex, in reading A History of Apple's Operating Systems. Makes me want to break out the old system seven machine I used for a while.

Rewarding Fridays

To every week ad beginning and an end. I'm excited about getting started on Mondays, and thrilled to make it to Fridays.

I've been thinking that a reward incentive plan for Fridays is a good idea. Not happy hour at the end of the day, but something, anything that acts as a pat on the back for a job well done, and a week of fine, fun-filled effort.

One of the nice things about Friday is the ability to spend sometime over the weekend thinking about it. If I come up with some good ideas on how to implement this plan, I'll post them here over the next couple of days.

Defining and Revising Measures

There's an old saw about supervision and running a business that goes, "You can't manage, what you can't measure."

But what is it that you should be measuring? How do you come up with a grasp of the difference between success and failure?

One start is to carefully define your business objectives. What did you write in your business plan? Your marketing plan? Do you have one of either? If not, consider putting one of both together. If you haven't reviewed your plans in a while, consider taking them out, dusting them off, and seeing how you might need to update them.

I was thinking earlier today that it's easy to get stuck in a rut, to buy supplies from one vendor without checking to see the prices offered by others because you've grown comfortable with the relationship between you and your salesperson.

Likewise, it's simple to go forward with business as usual, without checking the cost of doing business.

One of the most difficult things there is to do is to take a step or two, or three back. The day-to-day concerns sometimes obscure the bigger picture.

How much of a profit should your business be making? What types of benefits should it be able to afford you? How do you know that your customers are happy? Consider ways to define the measures you use.

NASCAR and the Fortune 500

An old time favorite, it's hard to believe that it's been a little more than a year since Slate ran Fortune 500, Meet Daytona 500 - What NASCAR can teach us about business. Interesting stuff, it examines the role of cooperation in competition. Highly recommended.

The problem with problems

The greatest and most important problems in life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown.

-- Carl Jung

Note to self: Painful but true, and something to carefully reflect upon.

Work is hard, learning to work should be easy

I remember training someone once, and telling them that, "work is hard." I'm not sure what impression it made initially, but I wanted to impress upon them that sometimes it takes an effort, and commitment, and an ability to rise to challenges.

I've trained quite a few people, actually. I'm getting better at it as I go. I try a number of approaches in showing someone how to accomplish a task, and have learned better to figure out whether or not I've gotten through to them and achieved some type of understanding.

Recognizing that different people learn in different ways is a good start. Some folks need discussion, and others want printed manuals. There are those who have to experience something first hand, and get those hands dirty in the process. Demonstrations, combined with discussions, and hands-on learning tend to work well for a number of tasks.

For instance, if I want to teach someone how to use a computer program for the first time, I'll set some goal, or a series of goals, and break the training down into a number of tasks. The repetition, and frequent usage can help the person gain experience and confidence.

I'll start by telling them what we are going to do, and explain the steps in the learning process. First, we'll start by me showing them how to perform that task by myself, with them looking over my shoulder. Then they will try it out with me telling them what to do step-by-step. We can discuss the process, and the reasons for it some more during that stage. Then, they try again, with me just watching, and present to answer questions if they have any.

Then, we repeat as necessary. The next day, we go over it again, just to make sure that they feel comfortable.

Work can be hard, and training someone to work can be hard, but helping someone to learn how to work can be easier if you have a good method to follow. The one I described works for me.

Tiger and the Oscars

One of the best things happening on Oscar night were the commercials. And one of the best of those was Tiger Woods playing a groundskeeper, trying to get rid of a bothersome groundhog. The story line was based upon the movie Caddyshack, a homage perhaps, to Bill Murray's nomination as best actor.

The scruffy looking Tiger ends up getting a little help capturing the rodent with the help of an exterminator who plays the song "I'm Alright" to lure the critter out of hiding. He tells Tiger that, "It works everytime."

As for the winners of the night - Congratulations New Zealand.

It's not all fun and games, evidently

An article on the challenges of Game Development goes into depth, and provides a perspective that you might not have expected. Game development is work.

just who are these people writing oline?

The Pew Internet & American Life Project takes a good look at online users, writers of blogs, webcam operators, and the demographics of content creators.

Pinging services for your blog

A nice list of Pinging services. Should you be pinging these sites?

Giving out your business card

You're at a convention, or a trade show, or a business mixer at the local Chamber of Commerce, and you've started talking with someone. You think they might be an excellent client for your services. It's tempting to offer your business card, but you don't want to appear too pushy. What to do?

Well..

Ask for their card. People will often ask for yours in return.

Hostility and Takeovers

If you can't beat them, join buy them. That's the underlying philosophy behind a hostile takeover. Often, the strategy works, too. This allows folks to step into their competitor's contracts, and to sell off unused assets.

There are often personnel that can be let go, where duplication of job functions comes into play. How many Presidents do you need anyway?

Sometimes though, just as you think that you have your competitor where you want it, the Justice Department attempts to intervene. As in this Oracle Corp. attempt at rival Peoplesoft.

Adhesion Contracts

More nasty business. Take it or leave it. Those are the words that would accompany the phrase "Adhesion Contract" if the world had its own set of subtitles to describe legal terms. (Maybe it should.)

I like Wikipedia, and am tempted to expand their definition of Adhesion contracts. Seems like a good idea. It's the closest we may have to that set of subtitles.

What is the harm in an adhesion contract? Well, one party has all of the power and decision-making authority, and the other has nothing. There's no give-and-take exchange of responsibilities or obligations.

No negotiation, or alternatives. Terms that only benefit the company in a position of power. Often leading to a large profit. This type of contract is most frequently seen in a deal between a corporation and a consumer, and rarely does anything to make businesses look good.

Small businesses often use customer service as their unique selling proposition to attract customers. It's something that large businesses can do also. But, many of them seem to grow too large, and reduce the value of customer service in their business models. It's an oversight that has cost many companies their customers. It's also within that context that we see adhesion contracts arise.

Another phrase that you might see when the words "adhesion contract" come up is the term "dealing at arm's length." That means that both parties have a say. It's often much better to be able to deal at arm's length. If a company doesn't offer you the opportunity to deal at arm's length, but would rather feed you an adhesion contract to sign, consider working with someone else, if it is an option.

Tortious interference with Business Relations

A quick series this week on dirty tricks in the business world. (OK, that's an ongoing theme of these pages, but sometimes less so than others.)

Sometimes businesses use their relationships with vendors as a weapon against other businesses. For instance, the machine shop that might make parts for your equipment may possibly work with your competitor too.

But, what if your competitor threatens to take their business elsewhere if that machine shop continues to provide you with services? Is this something that could happen? Is there a remedy short of physical violence?

Some jurisdictions have recognized a civil wrong of this nature and given it a name. It's often called something along the lines of "tortious interference with business relations."


Just what does that encompass? A Dallas law firm has a nice description on their page about Business Relationships. Unfortuantely, you'll note afterreading their description, that there is a gray area where the court won't take action. You'll find similar ambiguity in most places. It's not always easy to tell when a business has crossed a line.

Best way to respond if you think that this has happened to you? Talk to an attorney.

Corporations and Integrity

I'm a firm believer in business organizations as social entities, with responsibilities to their customers, and to their neighbors. It makes sense on so many levels to deal fairly with others. Yet, there are so many businesses that aren't. Most of them want to treat us badly and yet still want us to give them our money.

Frank Perdue tells us:

If you believe in unlimited quality and act in all your business dealings with total integrity, the rest will take care of itself.

Heroes and Villains

Verisign won a UK award as the Internet Villain of the Year for their sitefinder "search engine" tied to "page not found" results. Congratulations, guys.

Spam no more

Be careful that your web site doesn't look too much like someone elses. That is what happened when a site took on the appearance of the national no-call registry.

Customer Service Shenanigans

Is the Recording Industry (RIAA) filled with gangstas? That's what some law suits are claiming. I'm firmly convinced that calling 70 million people thieves has never been a wise business practice.

Maybe they should be exploring alternative distribution methods for their music.