April 28, 2007
So I was browsing my latest issue of Inc. Magazine (The Handbook of the American Entrepreneur) when I came across an 8-page spread in the back with the tag “Special Advertising Section” at the top. While this advertising section looked like most others you’d find in the back of a magazine… this advertising section amazed me (In a bad way). The ads looked liked they had been thrown together from the kind of crappy banner images you might find advertising on cheap sites. Some of the ads were so stretched and pixelated that the domain names were nearly illegible.
See the AD below for the Yale MBA… How well is their domain shown??
Notice that the text in the ad above is clear.
Keep reading…
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April 27, 2007
This is either what happens when you spend too much time analyzing the competition, or if your April Fool’s prank is a few weeks behind schedule.
Digg could take what Calacanis did with Netscape as a compliment, but this is just asking for a lawsuit.
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April 22, 2007
Today is a great day to share some tips on using some green strategies to save the little green pieces of paper in your wallet (multicolored pieces for our international readers). It isn’t 1988 anymore and Kermit the Frog would be happy to know that it is no longer hard being green. Our society is opening a lot of doors to green and sustainable solutions for our personal and business lives. Here is a short list of tips for how you can use earth friendly solutions to save money as you create your start-ups.
Upgrade to LCD: Obviously these wouldn’t be money saving techniques if the first thing I’m asking you to do is spend money, but if you find yourself in the market to upgrade your CRT monitors… go LCD. Prices are getting pretty low these days and an LCD uses about half of the power a CRT does. Lower power usage means a lower power bill.
Reuse Your Printed Mistakes: I recently printed 40 two-page press releases only to realize I had a spelling error in the title of my release. Since the press release was only printed on one side of the paper, I folded all the sheet in half and tore them into two. I then stapled about 10 sheets together giving me great little scratch paper bundles for scribbling numbers on at my desk or for throwing in my bag to scratch ideas on when out and about. If you use all your printed mistakes and the junk mail you get in this method you’ll never have to by scratch notepads ever again.
Keep reading…
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April 22, 2007
For the internet astronauts and fellow online business owners… Here is a list I found of classic geek terms from the 90’s that I’m sure you’ll appreciate.
Adminisphere:
The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.
Alpha Geek:
The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group. “Ask Larry, he’s the alpha geek around here.”
Assmosis:
The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.
Blamestorming:
Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
Blowing Your Buffer:
Losing one’s train of thought. Occurs when the person you are speaking with won’t let you get a word in edgewise or has just said something so astonishing that your train gets derailed. “Damn, I just blew my buffer!”
Bozone:
The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking
down in the near future.
Cashtration:
The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
CGI Joe:
A hard-core CGI script programmer with all the social skills and charisma of a plastic action figure.
Crapplet:
A badly written or profoundly useless Java applet. “I just wasted 30 minutes downloading this stinkin’ crapplet!”
Cube Farm:
An office filled with cubicles.
Keep reading…
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April 20, 2007
If you don’t, today would be a good day to start. Sarah Needleman asked to interview us for the SJ a couple weeks ago and the article went live today. You can read “What Small-Biz Owners Can Learn From Blogs” here.
The other blogs featured were:
WorkHappy - “His two-year-old blog provides advice, ideas, inspiration and resources he’s accumulated through his own experience as a consultant to entrepreneurs and owner of four Web-based ventures.”
Franchise Pundit - “The blog, which is updated daily, also reports on emerging franchises, relevant legal news and various industry happenings.”
Escape from Cubicle Nation - “…she focuses her blog posts on the emotional aspect of leaving the corporate world to start a business.”
BizzBangBuzz - “He blogs about legal issues pertaining to entrepreneurs and says he often cites lessons he’s learned through his work.”
Venture Capital Cafe - “Mr. Vidra profiles early-stage ventures in his blog by describing their business models and products.”
Marketing Blog - “Mr. Cook blogs about the marketing strategies he advises his clients on and any topic that ’strikes a nerve,’ he says.”
Small Business Trends - “…focuses on major developments that affect small-business owners”
The Invent Blog - “Registered-patent attorney Stephen M. Nipper has made a hobby out of scouring the Internet for articles on the subject and related topics and summarizing what he finds on the blog.”
Guy Kawasaki’s How to Change the World - “One of the most well-known blogs in the small-business space, How to Change the World aims to do just as its namesake suggests via the art of ‘entrepreneurialism.’”
A great list if I may say so myself. A huge thanks to Sarah for including YGG.
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April 13, 2007
Well…sort of. This is a real young go getter:
How’s that for inspiration?
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April 7, 2007
This isn’t a paid review, but being the creator of COLOURlovers.com you could say my opinion is slightly biased.
COLOURlovers recently got a face-lift and some new tricks and tools. We moved the site over to a beefy managed server by RackSpace.com and we added some new features.
Rolling with Wordpress (Check Out the Blog)
It was a pain to update and not as interactive to blog on the old platform, so we fully integrated wordpress into COLOURlovers. And with Chris at the helm of this new blog section, you can expect to see daily updates on color trends & interesting new color and design related tips.
Keep reading…
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April 6, 2007
James Archer over at Forty, wrote a great compilation post showing “Where Company Names Come From.”
I thought it was very interesting and a good follow-up to my Branding Made Easy, and Cheap post.
A few of my personal favorites from James’ list:
Audi: Latin translation of the German name ‘Horch’. The founder August Horch left the company after five years, but still wanted to manufacture cars. Since the original ‘Horch’ company was still there, he called his new company Audi, the Latin form of his last name. In English it is: “hark!”.
Keep reading…
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April 4, 2007
It only took 6 months for YouTube to integrate simple suggestive spelling into their search results. This should add a few more productive seconds to our lives. Yes, that was back-to-back sarcasm.
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April 2, 2007
I’m leaning towards nay. They’re adding almost 1/3rd more to the price to enable us to do what we should rightfully be able to do to begin with. I find it comical that they’re finally offering higher quality 256kbps for that additional $.30 too which should have been an option from the get go.
Jobs says that they’re trying to give us what we’d get if we’d just bought the CD and ripped it directly. In defense of that, full album purchase prices remain unchanged, encoded at 256kbps, and are DRM free. But isn’t the beauty of buying music online getting to choose which songs you want? You can read more about the announcement here.
I can’t imagine what would happen to my father’s paintball business if he sold $99 gun for use on his fields only, but if you wanted to take it to another field, he’d tack on another $30. But hey, they give you a free barrel plug if you do that (which should come with the $99 gun anyways). I have a feeling everyone would buy their equipment on the internet for much less and play wherever they want.
Maybe it’s a step in the right direction, but it’s certainly not a giant leap for mankind. What do you think?
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PPC Management
Hell Yeah Dude!
Reverse Funnel System for Beach Bums
