inluminent

In this latest article from the Kalsey Group we find this simple opener:
The Web is not print. It is not TV or radio either. The medium is unique, and if you build Web sites, you need to understand the medium.
To take a note from Cluetrain:
87. We’d like it if you got what’s going on here. [...]

Its no secret that I sell advertising for a website. The website I sell ads for is in lets say the ‘top 1000′ of the websites on the internet (maybe?). (ok, maybe top 10,000 - there are a lot of sites out there and we haven’t paid for a subscription to Netratings, so I [...]

“I fight where I’m told, and I win where I fight.”
– General George S. Patton, Jr.
That just about sums it up.

Let me get set one thing straight for the record:
My hosting company isn’t all that bad. I’m the idiot that didn’t read the manual that accompanies Movable Type. My hosting company upgraded the Berkley Databases (or so it seems) and I didn’t read the manual’s “troubleshooting” section on that.
I’m an idiot. IntuitiveISP, [...]

This week’s B2BMarketingBiz newsletter from Sherpa tells the story of how a small local vacuum manufacturer took to the web during the most recent economic downturn and survived swimingly. It’s a great story for online and search engine optimization and marketing as well as a great endorsement for Business OnLine, who helped the manufacturer [...]

“Dumb, Dumb, Dumb…”
(that’s got to be what Steve Balmer’s got playing through his head over and over)
(second thought, Balmer’s not generally that smart… he’s probably thinking “it should have worked”)
If you have no idea what I’m referring to, Scott’s got a great run down of the Microsoft Switch Campaign debacle, and the idiocy [...]

Quick note: My hosting provider, Intuitive ISP will be upgrading the server that this site is hosted on tonight between 9pm Eastern and 2am Eastern, so the site will most likely be down during that time. If you need a host for a website, I’d recommend Intuitive ISP, as they’ve always been able to [...]

This same concept will be coming soon to a new site near you.
Keep your eyes peeled.

Reflection is something that everyone should take part in on a regular basis: Take time out to reflect on the past periodically…
You see, as a sales professional, without any support staff or real direction and training from my superiors, I could easily get into a rut, if I allowed myself to, but in addition to [...]

The accompanying chart is too funny:
I’m going to go out on a limb here and post for all to see my recently developed theory of commercial software quality and value vs. software price. Three disclaimers are necessary. First: I am a heads-down, propeller-head, bits-and-bytes, grunt-coder, who reads Slashdot for news - so what do I [...]

Interesting statistic from a Jupiter report on customization:
The Wall Street Journal Online spent $28 million on a site redesign in 2002. Much of the expense was associated with offering users customization features, including a dynamically generated front page. Yet, earlier, Schwab discontinued its customizable offering, MySchwab.
Although people who customize sites are active and loyal users [...]

I’d agree with this argument that text advertising does a good job of ’selling stuff’ online, but would argue that ’selling stuff’ isn’t everything that marketing is about.
I buy crap all the time, but that doesn’t mean I’ll buy the same crap again… that’s what marketing is all about. Getting people to [...]

Pearl of wisdom spotted over at Franks:
“Somebody once pointed out to me that one of the many problems with the airlines’ business model is that they charge their best customers the most for their service. If you’re a senior making your one trip a year to see your kids, you book 6 weeks in advance [...]

Flying Fish sells yachting classes in Europe. They charge a lot of money for kids just out of school, but they have a few tricks up their sleeves to ensure conversion:
How did the marketing evolve?
“We started ten years ago with magazine ads, an answering machine and a determination to call everyone back to give [...]

“You are really not that important.“

Interesting developments in the PowerPC world:
(TRANSMISSION EMBARGO UNTIL 12:01 am EDT/0401 GMT)
ARMONK, N.Y. (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. Monday announced a microchip for personal computers that will crunch data in chunks twice as big as the current standard and is expected by industry watchers to be used by Apple Computer Inc.
Apple was not available [...]

Interesting mention of IE 6 for Mac in this post:
“There is a bug in the Mac version of Internet Explorer 5, which led me to pop up an additional browser window for the transcluded content in that particular environment.”
“The bug is fixed in Internet Explorer for MacOS version 6, but we’ll all have to wait [...]

Robert Loch’s latest Net Marketing Newsletter features an article entitled “Branding from the fringes” in which Robert pontificates about the possibilities that brands could be marketed quite heavily, using low-budget, high frequency online entertainment channels… think cheap films shot by agencies or even just fans of the brand).
I agree with Robert that this is a [...]

Lovelinks points to 4WebHelp’s PHP Basics page, which I’ll agree is a great place to point PHP newbies to.

Scott Kramer covers some of the basics of choosing and setting up a new business, focusing on the ‘business entity’ decision in the lastest edition of A List Apart.
The article does a great job of explaining the 6 main business entities available to new companies, and providing quick reference to the 50 state departments, which [...]

We’ve been thinking of moving from our 2,500 sq. ft. two story home with large backyard and trees, to a downtown condo type living area, since we don’t have kids, and won’t for another 5 years or so… sort of our way of being able to easily keep our youth, and enjoy it. We’d [...]

Newsletters are the primary traffic drivers to my employer’s website. I’ve been checking our statistics every day for the past year. I’m convinced that our newsletter is the primary driver of traffic to the website… no question in my mind.
Yet, we deliver a very shitty newsletter, in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, [...]

For a while, I’ve wondered about Bluetooth, and what it was.
I no longer have any questions.
Great marketing dribble by Ken (and I still suspect Apple is proofreading and/or approving his posts).

Kasia wrote about her recent awareness of someone spamming her referrer logs. I’ve seen the same thing here on inluminent, and didn’t know what was causing it, but thanks to Kasia, I’ve learned that at least its not just me. Kuroshin’s article on it was pretty helpful as it also backs up the fact [...]

The past few weeks have been tough. Long days, and lots of brain work, and emotional toil. I took the day off today and pretty much totally relaxed… feels good to finally take a day off from pretty much everything… I should do it more often. Also, it feels good to watch [...]

I upgraded to Moveable Type 2.5 today. I finally realized that the plugin that was causing me problems was my implementation of Brad Choate’s Regex plugin (note there may not actually be anything wrong with Brad’s plugin, but rather with my use of it… not sure yet). The result of this discovery is [...]

“If we desire to insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.” –George Washington

Zachary Rogers tackles an increasing problem for publishers and agencies alike in his latest article on Turbo Ads: Are Rich Media Standards a Mistake?
“But at a time when the Web’s biggest publishing players — AOL, Yahoo! and MSN — are finally beginning to embrace the full array of rich media technologies available, is it time [...]

Last night, the monthly Dallas/Fort Worth Interactive Marketing Association (DFWIMA) meeting was held at the La Cima Club, on the 26th floor of the Los Colinas Towers, smack dab in the middle of Dallas and Fort Worth (ok, not really in the middle, but close enough to all the ad agencies in town to be [...]

Once again, I’ll say that I’m not a software developer at all, but this second part in a series on how to develop shareware, and actually make money doing it is a great template for anyone starting a business, or product line for their business. Great read, and lots of fun to think about [...]

I tried to upgrade to Moveable Type 2.5 early this morning. It didn’t work, but I really think that’s because I have to figure out what changes I made in MT 2.2 with all the plugins/modules I’ve installed… a quick untar/upload just won’t cut it on my installation… but I’ll get it done by [...]

Scott’s comments today about broadcast television adverting and its effect on advertisers and broadcast companies are interesting. Scott basically thinks TV Advertising is worthless, but I think he’s a little ahead of the curve on this one…
I’d counter that while TiVo is definitely showing that people don’t watch most advertising anymore, if they [...]

(the following is not a paid advertisement)
The reason I want to use any handheld has always been seamless integration with my habits, and applications.
Apple’s latest iApps and productivity apps are truly wonderful. Their Address Book is finally quite useful, and very intuitive. Their iCal software could use a little work, but [...]

Business 2.0: The Management Secrets of the Brain
1. Never try to micromanage a large, complex organization.
2. Don’t let bottom-up self-organization go wild.
3. The best way to control your subordinates is to just point them in the right direction.
4. Be careful listening to the voice of experience — that voice could be your own.
5. The organization [...]

From Real Business: What big companies can teach small ones
Corporate lessons: 11 things that small companies should do:
1. There’s no relying on reputation. You have to convince customers that you’re worth doing business with.
2. You won’t have cash. But you won’t have politics, either.
3. Be prepared to do everything. You, too, answer the phone. Embrace [...]

I’m actually quite amazed that ClickZ has published an article solely about Tinderbox from Eastgate systems. Congratulations to Eastgate on the more mainstream coverage. I’d really like to see Pogue or Mossberg write about Tinderbox in one of their upcoming articles though. It would be quite the PR coup.
I haven’t downloaded Tinderbox, but the [...]

I don’t know about you, but where I work, its just lip service. My current employer provides terrible customer service, 99% of the time, and its for many of the reasons pointed out in this article. Heh:
Wrong mission statement? How about no mission statement.
No written principles. How about no [...]

“…life is not the bricks…
   it’s the mortar…”

… as Scott says, just get a Mac.

If you use a mouse, you’d be amazed at how much effort it takes to actually move the mouse around (if you ever got the chance to see what real mousing can be like with less friction).
Everglide makes what they call ‘mouse skates‘ which are basically little self-adhesive strips of teflon tape, that attach to [...]

Like I need any more…
Brent points out this page for AmphetaDesk users, which works for anyone using virtually any RSS reader.
Thanks Brent.

Texas Icons
[via xicons.com]

Great sucess story for online advergaming, cross media promotion and partnerships that target the right markets.
John Dennie, Director of Online Marketing for Radio Shack, jumped at the chance to build brand awareness with children by partnering with Nickelodeon for a holiday promotion surrounding the movie, “Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius.”
The remote-controlled car was a top-selling holiday [...]

Ok, I ranted about no one blogging the Mac OS X Conference hosted by O’Reilly, and I was a bit premature in my judgement. There are quite a few people blogging it:
Glenn talks about Wireless, DRM linkers, Old Machines being reused, or not, Jordan Hubbard, and DRM.
Boing Boing talks Rendezvous and Linux which Steve [...]

According to a recent report from comScore, male baby boomers act the same online as they do offline.
They’re into finding out more about their cars, their money, their tech, and their sex drive is still insatiable.
So, are you telling me that you actually thought the internet was going to change people’s habits? Heh, now [...]

The other day, Ken blogged a quick tutorial on a new feature of Jaguar that I didn’t know about…
How to lock the screen using the Keychain Access menu bar extra.
Totally cool.

I just read about a new Pocket PC coming out from Intermec on Gizmodo.
Ever get so frustrated with your gadgets that you wish you could just throw them against the wall? Maybe you need the Intermec 700 Color Pocket PC. It’s designed for use in the field, can “withstand multiple 5-ft. drops to concrete,” and [...]

I may need to read this again (soon), so I’m effectively bookmarketing it:
Newspapers Miss Out On $300 Mil. In Online Advertising
And now I’ll comment:
Newspapers are missing out on nearly $300 million annually by failing to use the Internet to serve new advertisers and enter new fields, says a new study from Harvard Business School’s Clark [...]

I talked to my techs today about our ad server platform, and believe it or not, they actually have plans to move it over to a Linux based solution (same software, new OS) sometime in the next 6 months or so…
Which translates to “We hope to have it moved over in 6 months, but realistically, [...]

Too funny Mac OS desktop picture:
Have you seen the light? [1024x768]