inluminent

I don’t know how I missed this, but B2BMarketingBiz (a sherpa newsletter) published some interesting statistics from a recent B2B campaign that ran on Forbes.com last week.
The article details the planning and creative process for RedSherrif, a global web analytics firm, as well as the results of their recent test campaign on Forbes.com. There [...]

youngpup.net: How-to do popups right

I loaded this website up today in IE 6 on my Win2K box at work (for the first time), and guess what? It doesn’t display over half of the site… I have no idea why this happens, but its pretty annoying to know that this might have been happening since the day I launched. [...]

At work I use a PC, with Outlook, to manage my email. I hate it, but only becuase I can’t make myself like it, not for any quantifyable reason.
So, with that in mind, I realize that the FuzzyGroup has just released Inbox Buddy 0.9, a ‘plugin’ for Outlook. I’m downloading it right now, [...]

Just read an excellent rant about what it means to be a professional by Jill Whalen.
There also happen to be a couple of hidden SEO tips in the rant, so read between the lines.

I pretty much disagree with almost every point in Brand-Aid for Everyday Email, by Barry Stamos, especially for B2B communications.
I deal with about 100 clients on a weekly basis, and get probably 1,000 emails on average each week. Only one of them sends me email in a branded HTML form. You know which [...]

Steve Hall wrote this weekend about a letter he received from the Boston Globe that was sent to him to explain a new customer service policy. Steve’s letter basically changes the policy of getting a refund for underlivered products to receiving a credit for those products that will be honored in the future (which [...]

Do you publish a newsletter? Are you thinking about it?
If so, read this article from UseIt: Email Newsletters Pick Up Where Websites Leave Off
You’ll find some great information, and gain a better understanding of what’s important in a newsletter by today’s standards.
[via Netmarketing]
When you’re done with that one, go read this one about writing [...]

User-Centered URL Design by Jesse James Garrett is a great article on the merits of ‘human-readable’ and ‘human-guessable’ URLs in today’s CMS laden techno-world.
My new company has been dealing with this issue, but not because of a real desire for human readability, but because of a thought that Google uses URLs in its PageRank calculations. [...]

A British firm, Nectar, launched a new loyalty scheme online last week, with seemingly no load testing. Their marketing included about £50m in online advertising. Their website crashed horribly many times during their first week of the ad campaign.
They’ve had to pull the ads, and are trying to regroup.
What’s interesting to [...]

Here’s a great resource for small publishers that might someday receive a cease and desist order from any large corporation with more lawyers than that publisher has staff (and extended family members, probably).

I finally signed up for .Mac today (the deadline is October 14th for the 1/2 price deal, so I figured why not). Something tells me Apple released iSync Beta this weekend, just to try and convert those last remaining iTools members that hadn’t upgraded to .Mac yet.
After I gave my required credit card information, [...]

Today’s most effective brand campaign (in my opinion) has got to be Starbucks. I mean, ten years ago, depending on where you lived, when you thought ‘coffee’ you thought ‘columbian beans’ — or the store on the corner — if you thought anything at all.
Today, people don’t say “I’m running out to get coffee, [...]

I just read about adding a self installed, vegetable oil + diesel, dual fuel conversion kit to your diesel engine, and one one hand I was amazed at how easy the conversion looks, and on the other hand I was reminded of last week’s season opener for The West Wing. (In the episode, Toby, [...]

Ok, so, just a little more information on what my new business is doing… We’re launching a new website, and we need a content management system. Instead of using one of the many open-source or commercial solutions available, we turned to a friend to have it custom built.
The benefits of using a friend were [...]

I may not have the time to do read all the time, but these books just got added to my ‘buy soon’ list:
Small Pieces Loosely Joined
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

Apple has just released iSync Beta.
There, I reported it first

Apache 2.0, Perl 5.8.0 PHP 4.23. and MySQL 3.23.53 ?
All running on my little iMac (bought in 1998) with Mac OS X 10.2 ‘Jaguar’. Thanks to Apple for moving to a Unix-based OS, ServerLogistics for making the packages available and to More Like This for telling me about them.

Make sure your developers know what they are doing by Natrak is a great post about how development taken outside can be hampered by a lack of specific knowledge in a field (though it’s written with the insurance market in Scandinavia in mind). This lesson can be applied to virtually any field, be it [...]

Rick Bruner is back from his mid-week conference (glad he found it) and shares quite a bit with us in his MediaPost Forecast 2003 Write Up / Self-Important Rantings post.
Basically, the conference sucked, and he tells us a little of why that is with this story of one of the more idiotic points during the [...]

Winstar is now repping Sony’s SoapCity. If there is any one Rep Firm that I can say I’d be proud to be associated with, as the employee of a publisher, it’d have to be Winstar. They’ve always impressed me from day one, by taking the time to think about what it is they [...]

I’ve wanted a TiVo for way too long, but upon reading this story on news.com, I’m thinking that I don’t want a TiVo, I just want to upgrade my PS2. Less boxes in the entertainment cabinet is good, and a great marketing angle for Sony. Too bad that the first US release of [...]

The female voice with a great British accent can be a great pick me up at noon.
Telemarketers should all sound like sexy little british vixens. I bet they’re sell more stuff.

Ken Bereskin, Mac OS X Product Manager at Apple, is finally back from Europe and posting new tips for Jaguar users (and if you’re thinking about switching, it’s a great way to learn more about the finer details off the new Mac OS X.)

Derrick Story has posted a terrific interview with Dan Wood of Karelia Software, and chief architect of Watson:
I think Apple has a long way to go in terms of developer relations. Apple has helped some companies build themselves up, but others they have harmed greatly. From stories I’ve heard from other developers, the Sherlock/Watson issue [...]

I love this tune:
Snowing On Raton by Pat Green on the album George’s Bar.
It’s a kick ass song by Pat, and Mindy Maines (from the Dixie Chicks) sings with him on it.
Great tune.

Yes, Jim, you’re right. This Apple iPhone report is laughable on so many levels, the best of which is that MacNN picked it up as if it were news… (copying the MacNN report, in case they change it … which they’re prone to doing)
Apple cell phone in the works?
Thursday, September 26, 2002 @ [...]

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has published a great report that summarizes some of the successes, and the reasons for those successes, that Absolut, Nike and NASCAR have had in building their brands.
It all seems to come down to “Continuity and Passion.”
Doesn’t it always?

Duh. Show me one marketer that’s figured out the internet.
Just one.
Can’t do it can you?’
The internet is such a trackable market, and yet, Forester Research is telling us all something we already know, but they’re doing it in a round about way:
Not one marketer really truly ‘gets the internet‘ yet. (yes, that includes [...]

HOW TO: Quickly Lock Your Desktop by Clicking a Shortcut on the Taskbar in Windows XP
Summary
You can create a shortcut on your taskbar that immediately locks your computer. When you click this shortcut, it is the same as pressing CTRL+ALT+DELETE, and then clicking Lock Computer.
Create a Shortcut on the Taskbar
1. Right-click the [...]

Just read some great quick tips on TMF:
Got Debt? Get Busy - quick read about facing your debt daemons er, demons.
Owners and IPOs — Q. When a company issues shares of itself in an initial public offering (IPO), how do the people who owned the company retain ownership? Do they quickly buy up a lot [...]

Ben Silverman, editor of DotCom Scoop, published a quick Q&A with Josh Quittner, editor of Business 2.0 (one of my personal favorite magazines ). [subscribe via Amazon]
It’s a fantastic interview, and a very easy read. And, I agree with Ben and Josh that this has got to be the best quote I’ve ever read [...]

Heavy Stuff:
Just read CHILD ABUSE: Invisible Scars.
Thanks Dawn.

Earlier today, I was doing some research on potential clients, and I decided to learn a little more about Jamison McKay Advertising and Marketing. I hopped on over to their website at jamisonmckay.com and found a wonderfully done flash website… however, there was no option at all for an HTML version, in case I [...]

I have now harnessed the power of news.google into my RSS Aggregator of choice: NetNewsWire Lite.
Thanks to Bruce for setting up the RSS Feeds for news.google.

Google rocks, and Adam Kalsey’s example is a great one. I’ve found myself in this same sort of situation before, and Google came to my rescue too. I think I was looking for drivers for a Brother Printer (and Brother’s website is quite impossible to navigate most of the time).

Monopoly is my favorite game, but I haven’t played it in years ’cause my wife hates it.
Jeremy’s played it much more recently than I have, and he lost. Man, that really sucks.
I hear where he’s coming from. My cable’s been out for a week, and the funny thing is, I haven’t called to [...]

I know, it’s barely Wednesday, but I’m so super impressed with Robert Loch’s NetMarketing weblog, I’m calling it my favorite blog of the week (heck, Scott did it last week, so I figure I can get away with it too).
I have never, repeat NEVER, found a good source for online marketing information until I started [...]

news.google.com
I love it, personally. For one reason. It seems unbiased (unlike most American news sources — see this previous post), and at the same time, it gets me past the NYTimes.com registration pages.
Read here for some excellent commentary on news.google.

According to Steve Fajen, media buyers budget much like you and I do in our homes.
When most of us try to determine how much to invest in the future we go through the same drill. Based on how much we make, we deduct our monthly and special expenses, put a little emergency money aside [...]

While my new business is still totally in its infancy, I found this article from the AP today quite an interesting read.
While the article doesn’t answer the critical question of pay scales and appropriateness, it does lend some great tips to business owners, small and large, but particularly to the small guy. Small business [...]

I just posted this as a question on Matt’s weblog post about his mtcurly script, but I also want to as it here as I’d like to make sure the question gets seen:
Why don’t we use these HTML entities for the apostrophese and quotes?
‘ for ‘
’ for ’
“ for “
” for ”
and these for [...]

Ok, curly quotes are now part of this weblog. Woohoo!
And I’m not writing any instructions, because these instructions by Matt are so easy to follow, it’d be a shame to try and steal them from him.
Get yourself some “curly quotes” today.

A while back I tried to use Daring Fireball’s curly quotes scripts and templates, but it wouldn’t work for me at the time (for reasons I still don’t understand.
Today, I read this post by Todd Dominey, and am in the process of trying to get them to work. (If I get it to work, [...]

Real Bad is an article detailing the experience of David Lidsky, a writer for Fortune, trying to listen to his favorite ball team play baseball over the web.
When I look at David’s experience from a marketing sense, I can only imagine the slimy bastards at Real thinking ‘heh… this guy actually downloaded the [...]

Good ol’ Derrick:
O’Reilly Network: You Can’t Buy Community
Derrick’s remarks are always on target. I agree, you can’t buy community.

I’ve got a buddy that wants to buy an old Bondi or maybe Flower Power iMac. If you’ve got one you wouldn’t mind selling, please leave me a comment and I’ll get in touch with you about price/shipping/conditioning, etc…
He wants to buy one so that his daughter (13) has something in her bedroom that [...]

Great commentary from the NYTimes on how magazines are trying to adapt to today’s economy.

(Doesn’t that title sound pornographic? It might be construed as such in some circles.)
ZDNet’s commentary on the latest offering from Microsoft is pretty good.
“It comes as no surprise that Microsoft jumped on the 802.11b bandwagon. With the company’s Xbox push into online gaming, the addition of home entertainment functionality into Windows XP, and upcoming [...]

On Sunday, I wrote about Dave’s experience with CheapTickets. Today Doc reports his most recent experience with Hotwire. Sad, indeed.
Here’s a guy that’s pretty much embedded in the inner workings of the uber-geek, and Hotwire manages to piss him off. That’s just plain stupid.
So, now I can’t use CheapTickets.com, cause I can’t [...]