inluminent

Life’s been busy for the past couple of days, and will stay so until next week.
Quick Update:
We sold our house in Fort Worth, and are moving out of it this weekend. Our lease ends in Austin on March 31, so we’re looking for a rent house (or a great deal on a [...]

Buying a home can be the most stressful thing you could ever do. I say this because in my experience, buying a home is the hardest thing I’ve ever done (twice).
The entire process is not generally user friendly.
Buying a home, unless you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, really makes you [...]

Here’s a quick collection of things I read while listening to the State of the Union. All found through my favorite RSS reader.
Vertical Hold: I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead
K5: Google Dance
AlwaysOn
r a n d o m e n t a l i t y
NYTimes.com: Worm Hits Microsoft, Which Ignored Own Advice
Word of the Day: [...]

On Monday, I downloaded the latest version of Opera for Mac so that I could test some of the problems that people have reported with the new “images: on/off” option that I’m offering on inluminent/weblog. Then I read this article on C|Net.
It basically says that Opera might be dead on the Macintosh due to [...]

So, you need to hire someone with some technical savvy to run your website?
Don’t do what the company that Angie is talking about here did:
People who might actually have these skills will never respond to this ad. There are a few people out there who may have 95% of the skills you’re looking for, with [...]

So, a worm hit the internet this weekend… and then…
Michael Radwin (who I found through Jeremy) posts a great little diatribe on why server admins don’t upgrade. Read it. Great fun.

It’s never to late to learn about the Q Tag from diveintomark.
So, now the question is… should I go back and fix all of my old code?

From the latest XPLANE|EXTRA!:
How to choose an upselling strategy
Customers don’t always know what’s best for themselves. Sell them the right solution in a way that suits their needs and helps them reach their goals. Always begin by establishing their goals and sizing up their personalities before selecting your upselling strategy.
Go there for the actual [...]

I read this on Steven’s weblog:
macnn.com reports on a sighting of an Apple retail job opening in Portland, Oregon. An Apple Store in my home town? This is me dancing. I can’t find the job listing in their database, so maybe they pulled it. But, when you do a search of their job database, it [...]

“It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.”
   – Pablo Picasso

I’ve been accused of attacking the Macintosh Web for not offering full RSS feeds with my last 4 or 5 posts on RSS.
That wasn’t my intention. My intention is to get the conversation about full RSS feeds out in the open instead of behind closed doors. Some of the people that have been [...]

I’m just as worried as everyone else about the impending war, but this article seems pretty valid and interesting:
Kuro5hin.org: Why the UKUSA won’t tell anybody where the nukes are

Over on Hypergene, I read a post about Kuro5hin’s text ads, and Rusty’s text ad + comment feature, and was quite intrigued by the conclusion of the article:
Markets are conversations
– I agree.

I really enjoyed reading Guterman back when he was writing for the Industry Standard. So, I typed in www.guterman.com and lo and behold, I found that Jimmy’s got a weblog.
Too cool Jimmy.
After you click thru to his weblog, go on to read his latest article for Business2.0:
Don’t Scare ‘Em, But Tell the Truth
It’s good [...]

A long, long time ago… Kasia asked me to get rid of the images on inluminent/weblog.
I immediately wanted to do what she asked, as I didn’t mean to offend Kasia, or any other female readers. But, I didn’t know how to do it quickly, and I was in the middle of getting ready to [...]

As seen on /., I received this email from my host this morning:
At approximately 11:28 pm on 1/24/2003, NOC engineers observed significant inbound and outbound traffic across all backbone carriers and internal router/switching infrastructure. Our emergency network response team was immediately deployed and began troubleshooting the problem. Upon the first notification to our carriers, [...]

On January 16th, I attended the Austin AMA High-Tech Breakfast where a panel was discussing the topic “Economical Online Marketing - Utilizing and Maximizing Your Investment”. I promised a write up.
The meeting was held in the Wedgewood Room of the Arboretum Rennaissance Hotel in North Austin (great place to stay if you’re ever in town [...]

Jon Gales joins the RSS discussion here.
Welcome to the discussion Jon. In response to Jon’s reference to an email from one of the MacMinute staff members, that thanked Jon for standing up for MacMinute, I’d like to point out that I’m not against MacMinute… I just chose them as my target [...]

Excuse the harsh language in the title of this post, but this is just too good not to mention. I heard about this earlier in the week from a co-worker that’s a Mac-zealot, and thought that it was funny…
From C|Net: Houston: We have a problem with Office
Amazingly (to me at least) “Houston has begun [...]

Here’s a quick snippet of what I’m seeing on the two sites I run with RSS feeds:
About 38% of all ‘visits’ to MarketingFix are produced by people using RSS Aggregator software.
About 52% of all ‘visits’ to inluminent/weblog come from people using RSS Aggregators.
Traffic from RSS Aggregators seems to stay fairly consistent thoughout the day, whereas [...]

Yesterday’s post on half-assed RSS feeds has drawn more comments than I expected.
<sidebar> I have an untested theory on why there are more comments than I expected. That theory is that I’m now including the comments to posts in my main RSS feed. I wonder if that correlates to more comments? Please [...]

So, I’m seeing this page in my referrers:
http://ilist.yahoo.com/
The visitor’s IP from that page resolves to yahoo.com so I’m wondering what ilist.yahoo.com is.
Anyone have an idea?
[update: Jeremy tells me that it's an internal mailing list manager and that someone was probably reading their archives and clicked through to inluminent]

Ugh… I feel for Kasia… I’ve experienced the same sort of thing once.
I sat in an airplane in July in Cancun, Mexico, while the air conditioning was broken for 4 hours waiting on them to fix the AC so we could fly back to the States. Please understand that this was 4 hours [...]

Wow.
Text Pattern
Brought to you by Dean Allen.
Looks totally cool, very useful, and fun.
I’ll definitely be looking into it for a client in the near future.
Dean, if you’re reading, I’ll need to know what the pricing will be buddy.
Oh yeah, one more time:
WOW!

Jeremy posted a little information from a discussion he’s been having at work lately.
In the discussion he argues that weblogs will replace message boards for really interesting (and sticky) discussions… (maybe even this year).
I’d say that I’m not sure this is going to happen that quickly, unless someone like Yahoo! really gets behind it. [...]

So, I spent about an hour watching Bachellorette and writing a response to Slava’s post about the addition of some content to the MacMinute RSS feed… But then something on my iBook hung (I suspect an old beta of NetNewsWire Pro which has since been updated), and I lost it all. Argh…
The basics of [...]

The last time I visited a public library, I remarked on the fact that they didn’t offer an Wi-Fi access at all. The only internet access they offered was vanilla ‘http’ access on very old Windows based computers. It was frustrating. They didn’t offer any other access either… no eithernet jacks, or [...]

Man, I could really use the information that the Motley Fool will be sharing in their FICO 850: Achieving Perfect Credit seminar. The seminar will cost $55, but looks well worth it.
The following ‘truths’ are explained in the first lesson of the seminar:
Truth #1: Credit reporting is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Truth [...]

I just watched E!’s best/worst coverage on the TV and had to comment about Lara Flynn Boyle’s dress:

Can you believe she wore that? I mean, she looks great, but the dress?
[Note, I don't normally comment on photos I put up here, but I couldn't resist this time]
Can’t wait till next Monday night — The [...]

So… you think small businesses don’t need an online strategy? I guess they don’t if they don’t want to grow.
Take this example of the All American Hot Dog Company written up in the Miami Herald.
Last year All American Hot Dog’s revenue nearly doubled from $800,000 in 2001 to $1.5 million, and Di [...]

Three day weekends are great (but the body can’t handle them like it used to):
On Saturday night I attended the Texas A&M vs. t.u. Men’s Basketball game here in Austin. The Aggies got skunked pretty badly, but it was a fun game. I sat 5 seats from Rick Perry, and had the opportunity [...]

I’ve had a few RSS feeds for this site for a while, but today, I decided it was time to clean them up a bit.
I searched Unsanity.org’s Archives for a post that had a link to their RDF+comments template and found this entry (after manually searching — upgrade your MT installation Unsanity).
So, I’ve now created [...]

These are five great tips to keeping innovation out of the business:
1. Explain to your employees that times are tough so innovation must go on the back burner.
2. Further explain that there’s no reason to despair–a high-level executive will be spending a lot of his time working on an innovation plan for the company (whatever [...]

Take this advice if you’re ever going out in Austin:
Do NOT park anywhere in downtown unless you can afford to be towed.
Last night the wife and I went out with some friends, first we all met for happy hour at Trudy’s in north Austin (183 and Burnett) and then we headed downtown around 10. [...]

After reading these comments by Todd Dominey on the iCommune plugin that was released for iTunes in beta format recently, but was pulled from the net due to Apple asking the developer to cease distribution of the application, I realized that it just might solve my need/want to listen to my MP3’s on my iMac [...]

This history of ClarisWorks is an interesting read to me, and should be so for anyone interested in Apple’s history.

Scott posted a quick note on the first ever “Spam Conference” held at MIT recently. Hopefully he’ll be posting a lot more soon. Check the FuzzyBlog! for more later.

In Local lures hook buyers around the globe you can read about Jamie Flette, maker of hand-made fly fishing lures uses the internet to reach a global market. Here’s a fantastic example of how a small business can reach a global audience through the internet alone.
The caviat to this story of course [...]

Here’s a list of links for you to peruse on Friday:
Hoover’s & D&B: Perfect Together? from the Perkins Group [PDF] [via TEOF]
Fantastic List of MovableType Template Tags [via lovelinks]
PR Opinions - a cool PR focused weblog [via my referers]
Apple Airport Weblog — brand new, and looking good.
abstemious - Word of the Day from 1/16. [...]

I’m a big fan of Screen Catcher from St. Clair Software. Back when I was part of the team at a little know Macintosh website, I used St. Clair’s software to create media kits and marketing materials for our advertising sales efforts. The full page screen shots of websites (which are most often [...]

Just a quick note to say that it’s been a hell of a couple of days. Work has been taking a lot of my time, as has reading and talking to people.
I attended an AMA High Tech Breakfast this morning in North Austin, and learn a lot. The topic was Email Marketing. I [...]

Nick presents us with his ideas on investing in 2003. I think #4 is close to the mark… I have no idea about the others really… just like #4. YMMV.

Here and Link within Google
“How many people have searched for the terms “here” or “link” on Google? Probably not many. Usually these are kill words in search engines but Google did not remove them.”
Interesting look at how people link to sites, and how that skews web ranking results possibly…

Publicity. PR. Public Relations. Call it what you will, but don’t discount that it can and should be a powerful part of any marketing campaign or drive.
Publicity 101 is a good primer for those looking for some tips, guidelines and examples of how to do public relations work. Fantastic Do’s and [...]

Just wanted to note that with sites like myapplemenu providing a full RSS feed (meaning that it’s more than just a headline) I’ve stopped reading MacMinute’s RSS feed and MacCentral’s RSS feed. They just aren’t useful to me. Next on the list to axe: MacOS X Hints probably. Get with the program folks.

From the Business Development Network: Sales & Marketing Tribe of Ryze:
Sales Technique of the Week
I run a web/graphic design and marketing company.
I went to Office Max and bought a pack of inkjet iron-ons. When I go to meet with a big potential client, I make sure to leave their office with something containing their company [...]

MacMinute: Apple objects to proposed Microsoft settlement
Stupid, stupid, stupid… I really hope the courts penalize Microsoft with something like $1.1 Billion in cash fines and that’s it…

To follow up on yesterday’s post about Apple ’seemingly’ supporting weblogs, I’d like to point you to this post on MarketingFix.
It seems that Jupiter Research has endorsed, sponsored, and maybe even forced its research analysts to post their thoughts on current news items to their own weblogs.
The design and layout sucks, in my opinion, as [...]

Steven notices and comments on the mysterious way that Apple has been distributing software recently. This seems to fix a lot of the problems that he was mentioning (that I commented on) a while back. I honestly hadn’t noticed, but its true… Apple seems to have solved some of the questions that new [...]

Gotta love Apple’s sense of humor. Thanks Ask for pointing this out.