Category: Life

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Blacklisted

cs4-webstandardSo, you see, we had this bit of Adobe software installed on Heather’s Toshiba laptop. It was getting old and s-l-o-w, so we decided to get a newer computer for her. Being a Mac person, I leaned that direction but never dreamed that she would be willing to go that way. She did! But that meant her Adobe Web Standard CS4 Suite is no longer of any use to us.

Problem? It’s an academic license. We bought it when she was in grad school, so rather than the regular price of $1000, it was much cheaper. But Amazon, Ebay and Craigslist all will not let us sell it!

Are you an academic or know someone who is who might be able to use it? Contact me and I’ll give you ar really good deal.

p.s. The suite has Flash, Fireworks and Dreamweaver.

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Hardly unique

dfw-connectedDFW airport (Dallas, Texas) bills itself as “The World Connected”. And that is true of how many airports around the world?

Takeaway: How can you brand your business in a way that is truly unique? That may not be important, if you’re the owner of a Taco Bell restaurant franchise location. But if you offer something that is one of many, you need to provide a handle for potential clients to see how you are different than the rest. If you’re not different, be different.

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WordPress doesn’t work perfectly

wp-upgrading4

I have always been frustrated that the “Upgrade Automatically” option doesn’t work as advertised. I have to muck around with a few files, go to my FTP client, etc. This is the second time I have upgraded, so it was much easier. (I was surprised I remembered what to do. The tutorial helped the first time – and I had it open for reference the second.)

Also – plugins – the automatic upgrade works for some and not others. (For example, I was surprised when WP’s own Stats plugin would not upgrade automatically.)

Now I can’t complain too loudly – WordPress is free software, and I like it oh so much more than blogger.

Funny enough, when I asked Matt Mullenweg (Mr. WordPress himself) at WordCamp Denver in February 2009 about this, he kind of looked at me like I was partly insane. Apparently I am the only person in the universe who has ever experienced these problems.

Neophyte note: If you let WordPress host your blog (like yourblog.wordpress.com), then WordPress automatically updates the software for you. My comments here only apply to self-hosted sites.

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No steps forward

yelo-pgs-logos-2

Remember the slogan, “Let your fingers do the walking”? That was for an ancient concept called the yellow pages.

As many have noted, phone books are redundant, if you have access to the internet. (Or in Nairobi, Kenya, they are just simply bad. About 90% of the time, the phone book didn’t have the number I was looking for.) So I am basically offended at the waste of trees and ink and delivery gasoline that it takes to bring me a new phone book about once a month or so.

Anyhow, this latest phone book came in a plastic bag that had these two logos on it (without my editorial comment in the middle!). The swoopy one is the newer one. They lost most of the connection with the original concept. Seen on its own, I’m not sure anyone could figure out what it means. (Two feathers floating down from space? A futuristic alien runner?)

They did not run it by enough people before they clicked “go”.

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What do you NOT need to say?

noneed2sayThis Frontier Airlines mini-billboard had no words. It didn’t need any. Larry the Lynx is familiar enough to frequent flyers that he speaks for himself. Without words, in this case.

What message is Frontier giving us? I dunno. Even though I rarely watch regular TV, I have seen their funny commercials with talking animals. They must be betting that Larry will give us enough subtle warm feelings that we’ll book our next flight with Frontier.

Takeaway: What do you NOT need to say in your next communication? Consider giving your customers, clients and friends more credit for what they probably already know.

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Planted

mystickerinbostonNo trip to an exotic location would be complete without leaving my mark. So I put my sticker on a subway map in one of the trains I journeyed in.

So far Chris, Arturo and Johanna (post coming) are the only friends who have taken me up my my request to do the same in your exciting part of the world (and take pix to prove it). Just leave me a comment and I’ll fire you a set of stickers. Thanks.

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Build it to last

no-longevitySo, I’m in this conference center. Well, at least the second floor was a conference center. Anyhow, one wall along the entrance consisted of several backlit photographs of famous site around the city of Boston.

Problem: all were faded. That tarnished my impression of an otherwise nice facility. Solution: simply painting the plexiglass panels a neutral color and putting small framed prints in the center of each panel would look much better at a fraction of the cost of getting new photographic panels.

The interior designer may not have known how quickly the panels would fade. Or the panels might have been there for ten years. In either case, putting them there without knowing the colors’ shelf life – or planning for their replacement – was a mistake.

Takeaway: How are you building that project to last? Or how are you planning for its replacement?

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