inluminent

Just a quick wish to all for a Happy Thanksgiving… (non-American’s enjoy the rest of the week).
I’m about to jump on a plane bound for Las Vegas for a not so traditional holiday with some of the better parts of my family.
Enjoy the rest of the week… posts will likely be light if at all.
(Though [...]

Robert Loch, another fellow MFer, points us to this page on google.com where Google tells us all how to pick an SEO firm. Robert’s right when he says “Google - a company that really knows how to talk to its audience.” Google is all about class in my book.
They give these nine quick [...]

Tidbit’s latest issue includes this, well, tidibt: A Mac User’s Guide to the Unix Command Line, Part 1 by Kirk McElhearn.
It’s pretty basic, but you gotta start somewhere right? I’m looking forward to more in this series. Hopefully it’ll gradually step me up past the basic stuff and onto the more fun stuff. [...]

Mozilla 1.2 has been released. Changes posted in the Release Notes.
“Java compatability with Mac OS 10.2 (Jaguar)” sounds like the big improvement for Mac OS X users, cool, it’s true, it’s been fixed. More stable for me upon initial use. Download recommended.

From NewsFactor: Blueprint for Apple XServe Rollout.
…the company’s service and support may be the deciding factor in a company’s decision to switch.
Each Xserve comes with a three-year unlimited license agreement, and for less than US$1,000, Xserve purchasers can add a three-year “AppleCare Premium Service and Support” contract. This low-end service package includes 24/7 phone and [...]

I took my Jetta to the car wash today. It’s pretty dirty after 5 trips to Austin and back (3 hours drive each way) over the past 2 weeks and it’s cold as hell outside, so I’d rather pay someone to clean it than do it myself. I also figured I could get [...]

After reading my post on two advertising industry parodies, Steve Hall, fellow MFer, sent me an email about his post on the Reel Truth parodies that he posted on Sunday. His post pretty much sums up the greatness that these two segments are. Check it out.

I just sat down and finally picked up the November 2002 issue of Business 2.0. I’ve made it to page 28, where I found this amazing article:
How Your Boss Is Hexing You an interview with Jean-Francois Manzoni, coauthor of The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome.
The questions are dead on, but the answers are even more telling. [...]

I don’t think I ever said this when I was 12:
When I Grow Up I Want to Work in Advertising
ROFLMAO. In fact, I’m sure I never said it.
[via What Do I Know]
Also see:
The Reel Truth
[via Sam in the comments]

Anders Jacobsenís Optimizing Movable Type series is a phenomenal read for all Movable Type users looking to get the most out of their MT installation.
You’ll find great tips, and the reasons to implement them too. Things like Category XML feeds, Meta tags (a quick hack), get more readers (tips on how to do just [...]

I’ve got little time right now, but I really need to come back and read these interviews:
Brewster Kahle, creator of the Wayback Machine
Maryam Mohit, V.P. of Site Development at Amazon.com
Good Stuff.
[via angiemckaig.com]

In Scott’s post “Vignettes of a High Tech Move” I can see so many things that the wife and I are going through right now with our own move… for instance I just found my first HP calculator in an old box. Too funny the way our worlds collide and we’ve never really even [...]

Lots of good, fast, free utilities here:
http://www.dnsstuff.com/
…for those times when you don’t have your own machine with all your own tools installed on them.

It’s 2:52 pm on Friday, November 22nd.
I’ve been sitting in my office and in my boss’s office on an off all day. When I was in my own office, I was surfing the web, or otherwise screwing off. I’ve handed everything off to my boss at this point. When I [...]

NoSuch does a wonderful job of explaining why its tough to be a Mac Gamer, and how he overcame his need for immediate gratification by paying for a lot of stuff to have it ‘right now’ … heh… I’ve been there before, but one of the benefits of living in Texas is that Dallas is [...]

Interesting developments at Google: Google’s got a secret all want to know
There’s a new corporate secret out there that’s as closely guarded as Kentucky Fried Chicken’s original recipe and Coca-Cola’s soft-drink formula. It’s the method Google Inc. uses for ranking Internet search results.
A top ranking on Google counts, because being high on the list when [...]

Ok, I think I’ve given my old boss as much ammo as I can so that he can at least try to carry on with a one man advertising sales department on his own for a few weeks. I feel sorry for him. He’s a fantastic guy working his ass of for an [...]

At one point in my life I lived in (or at least near) Seattle, Washington. I interviewed with a few local companies up there as I was leaving the miltary and had a few good offers, but wasn’t sold on living in the state (due to many reasons both good and bad). It’s [...]

Everyone knows that Apple has adopted BlueTooth as the wireless answer to USB. They’ve embraced it and have put a lot of marketing dollars behind it. I’m happy about this, but still have yet to think about how it might affect me, although having my printer on bluetooth and my scanner on it [...]

Thanks Mark:
http://diveintomark.org/newdoor/recommend.cgi?url=http://inluminent.com/weblog/
I dig it.
[via fozbaca]

My best friend from highschool just sent me this in an email… it’s hilarious. Andy, can you lend any insight into half of what he’s referring to?
Here’s my 15 minute guide I just constructed for you…
First, take the wife to Romeo’s (1500 Barton Springs) for a romantic, relatively inexpensive meal once y’all get into [...]

So, I get this email from hotjobs.com yesterday saying that I need to sign up for a yahooID to access my hotjobs.com account. I thought about it for maybe 5 minutes, then decided “fuck them… I don’t need no stinkin’ hotjobs” and deleted the email.
Today, I get home, and I had received an email [...]

Only O’Reilly can publish an article like Connecting Mac OS X to Windows PCs and do it well.
Perfect… just what I need to figure out how to get my email.pst file off my office PC and onto my office Macintosh, so that I can transfer it to my iPod, which’ll then let me [...]

I’ve never really believed in press releases, but I’m starting to think they work on the small scale, depending on the goal you set out with when releasing one…
We, at MarketingFix, the new marketing resource we launched recently, sent out a press release on our ‘official’ launch day. It was posted here:
Business Wire: MarketingFix [...]

So, it’s public knowledge that I’m leaving my current employer. My last day is this Friday.
I’d like to document a little about the experience, to preserve it and to help others that might be in the same situation someday.
Let me be very clear. I’m happy I’m leaving. I have been so pissed [...]

Steven Frank, of Panic fame, posted a note on his weblog discussing .dmg files, .sit files and .tar.gz files as alternates to the developer question “How should I distribute my software?” After spending about an hour helping Scott troubleshoot his iBook’s php/mySQL installation last week, I’d like to tell developers my thoughts on this [...]

Sorry I didn’t post today…
…it was a long day… suffice to say the house is probably cleaner than it’s ever been… I know my home office is certainly cleaner, or at least more organized, than it’s ever been…
…the house goes on the market tomorrow… here’s hoping it sells quickly.

I spent the better part of the day trying to learn more about ezmlm which is the qmail companion software for mailing list management. I’ve got it installed and am running one list, but I have no real knowledge about how it works.
We want to offer more lists and tie into it using php/mysql [...]

I don’t know where I’ve been… I know this is old, but I figured I’d blog it because Scott will love it especially after our hour long tech support IM chat on Friday.
vi/Switch [quicktime required]
[via Because I Can]

As company’s become more productive through the use of technology (and the laying off of their employees: less people doing the same amount of work = more productivity) executives have groomed their boards to pay them more… at the expense of their employees and the country, in general.
John Robb points to this article in the [...]

Prevent various Office v.X errors.

A while back I mentioned Textism’s excellent Refer package, but I didn’t install it because I didn’t have access to a mySQL database on my old host, so, this past week I move hosting companies (now I own the box that this site resides on). With that, I gained mySQL support (thank you very [...]

This article on SitePoint is pretty good at explaining how to get a decent Google rank for search terms. The most overlooked places to put keywords on a web page are listed on page 2 of the article under the heading “Develop content” but they’re at the bottom of that section.
Some important tips that [...]

I meant to blog this a long time ago, but forgot to:
SmallDog on Gateway vs. iMacs, and yes, Smalldog is the best online e-tailer for the Mac base out there. They know their stuff and their focus is their customer. If you’re buying a Mac (or any peripherals) in the near future, buy [...]

This article at the Register give me just one more reason to stay away from Windows.
Win-XP Help Center request wipes your HD
A malicious Win-XP Help Center request can easily and silently delete the contents of any directory on your Windows machine, we’ve learned. Worse, MS has rolled the fix silently into SP1 without making a [...]

I’ve been pretty quiet on the whole Tablet PC thing, mainly because I’m biased and will admit that, but I’ve been following it loosely. I’d like to point everyone to Dan Bricklin on Tablet PC: First Impressions as I (and many others I’m sure) consider Dan an authority and his thoughts are golden:
Back in [...]

It’s no secret that I’m starting a new job in less than 2 weeks. And because of that big change in my life, I’m very very happy and excited. I’m also looking for as many tips and pieces of advice that I can find. That’s why I’m so happy to find this [...]

Douglas Bowman is now Stopdesign. While we’ve never met, I’d like to congratulate him publicly and wish him good luck.
Douglas has been a pioneer in the web world and I hope he’ll continue to be one on his own. I’ve enjoyed reading his weblog for a while now and think you will to. [...]

Rick Bruner, one of my MarketingFix colleagues, asked for a recommendation on a good CSS book, this morning . I have to admit that I’m still pretty unsure of my own knowledge of CSS, and that I’d love to learn more myself, so if you can recommend a good book with good introductory and [...]

LBYM is sort of a mantra of the Motley Fool. I’ve been striving to LBMM for a long time, and it’s nice to read some of the stories that come out of TMF on a regular basis. Thus, I’d like to point you to this one.
Living Below Your Means: Why I [...]

A passage from this interview with Temerlin McClain’s James Hering makes me realize why I think James understands the internet more than most advertising executives out there:
When you think about day-parting, Reach & Frequency, targeting, and clutter, all of these are marketing communications’ tactics/issues. And the more we try to be different with online, the [...]

As of tomorrow, I’ve got one more week at my current job. It’s tough, but I’m actually getting a lot done. My boss and I were chatting yesterday and he mentioned that he honestly thinks it’ll take a month or two to find a replacement for me.
(A month or two?)
Yep, that’s what he [...]

If you write then take a few moments to read Gareth’s Tips on Sucks-Less Writing. Great, useful tips for columnists, weblogers and even letter writers.

So, our little marketingfix.com is getting a bit of traffic now, and the guys all (okay, really just Rick) are asking for more traffic data. I’ve looked around for good free open source solutions and have found things like Analog and Webalizer, which are great, but are a pain in the ass to set [...]

BBEdit 7.0 has been released. I love BBEdit. I write everything in BBEdit before I do anything with it. Everything.
New version much mean better working environment. I’d highly recommend BBEdit to anyone doing any writing.
[oddly barebones.com is down so I can't really link to it can I?]
Anyways, they sent out PR’s [...]

The latest from Sitepoint: 5 Steps to Relationship Marketing Success!
Follow these 5 steps:
1. Change your Perspective from “Here’s what I do” to “What do you need?”
2. Recognize your Vulnerability
3. Keep in touch
4. Position Yourself as an Expert
5. Grow to Meet Client Needs
To get to the payoff:
The benefits of a relationship marketing approach go both ways. [...]

I just hit the ‘delete’ key 2200+ times to delete a bunch of old email I had sitting around that I thought I might use someday. Nevermore…
I also unsubscribed from the bulk of the newsletters I was subscribed to this morning.. took a while to do that.
8 more days…

Anyone that sells by phone has heard of Art Sobczak, and if they haven’t they need to learn about him.
Art runs a company called Business By Phone. He’s probably one of the best tele-sales trainers and speakers in the world, and is a fantastic resource. Art published a weekly email newsletter [...]

Andy posted a great Dilbert cartoon today. Thanks Andy. I almost feel like that… almost…

This one is totally shameless self-promotion:
Four other commentators and I (Rick Bruner, Steve Hall, Robert Loch and Olivier Travers) have launched a new site focused on Internet marketing, aggregating news and analysis from dozens of sources around the web:
marketingfix.com
It’s still a work in progress, expect formatting tweaks for several weeks, but we’re pretty excited about [...]