 Christopher Butler Strategy and Resourcing Hi, I'm Chris. I've been working at Newfangled since September, 2004. | Chris Butler's Blog |
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The Week in Review
May 16, 2008 at 8:30 am by Chris| This post is a collection of things that caught my attention this week, most of which came to me via RSS feeds and blogs that I read myself. Now I'm passing them on to you (in the order in which I bookmarked them). Enjoy! Google Maps Adds More Google Maps has been cranking out the updates fast and furious lately. In the last week the site has incorporated photos and Wikipedia entries, added the ability to pan upward in street views and this morning it announced a new Flash mapping API. Link List Color on Intranets Lists of links are an intermediate case between content-embedded links and menu items. Showing listed links in blue or in the site's main link color is the recommended design — and the one most intranets follow. Audiocast: The Future of the Internet Web guru Jonathan Zittrain worries that hyper-convenient but closed products like the iPhone are shutting down the party Google Shows Blurred Faces in Street View to Protect Privacy GM keeps building cars on XP In an interview with BusinessWeek, GM technology chief Fred Killeen said that, for now, he's sticking with Windows XP. Syrian blogger sentenced to three years in jail A human rights group says a 24-year-old Syrian blogger has been convicted and sentenced to three years in prison on charges of undermining the prestige of the state and weakening national morale. No off switch: "Hyperconnectivity" on the rise According to a new study from Interactive Data Corp. (IDC) and sponsored by Nortel, however, an emerging demographic of "hyperconnected" individuals in the workforce doesn't have an off switch. US envoy says toll from Myanmar cyclone might reach 100,000 Google Plastic Bag View Google Sightseeing blog reports about an interesting incident in Google Street View: a plastic bag blocked Google's camera on a street from Alaska. How Little Do Users Read? On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely. Ad-support content will soon dominate digital media The ad-based model is apparently more popular among media execs than subscription or even pay-per-view models. A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media Woopra Lets You Stalk Your Users The rule-breaking part comes when you download and install the cross-platform Woopra desktop application, and install a special plugin on your WordPress- or vBulletin-driven site (presumably more plugins are in the works). Scented text messages patented in Germany Two German companies have patented technology for sending scented text messages on mobile phones. Open Screen Project Adobe will open the FLV and SWF formats. |
Tags: technology strategy hardware week-in-review user-interface-design video web-development design audio social-media art privacy marketing software
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The Week in Review
May 2, 2008 at 8:30 am by Chris
This post is a collection of things that caught my attention this week, most of which came to me via RSS feeds and blogs that I read myself. Now I'm passing them on to you (in the order in which I bookmarked them). Enjoy!- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Read how with print revenue down and online revenue growing, newspaper executives are anticipating the day when big city dailies and national papers will abandon their print versions. Google researchers say they have a software technology intended to do for digital images on the Web what the company’s original PageRank software did for searches of Web pages. Read how within the last five years, the size of the average web page has more than tripled, and the number of external objects has nearly doubled. While broadband users have experienced somewhat faster response times, narrowband users have been left behind. Read Jakob Neilsen's latest AlertBox, in which he writes, "Users scan lists by moving their eyes rapidly down the left edge. Menu items that are right-aligned make scanning more difficult." Read how a Dubai based firm is in the process of developing software that will make it easy to restrict access “to groups on Facebook deemed to go against the social, moral, cultural and religious values of the United Arab Emirates.” Read how Microsoft has come up with a “wearable pointing device” that looks somewhat like a hybrid between the gloves in Minority Report and the Nintendo Wiimote. Their patent filed in October 2006 was just recently published. Read this email lesson to Bcc. Read about the war against the web. Read how you can strip Twitter down to its raw, emotional core with Twistori. The simple website scrapes Twitter posts for exactly six keywords using the search engine summize. Read how old-school encyclopedia Britannica is giving bloggers free subscriptions to Britannica Online, the internet version of its multivolume masterpiece. Read how we’ve outsourced our own content, leaving little point to a fullblown personal website. Read how the number of messages sent via SMS falls dramatically among MIM users from 38 to only 23 messages per 100. Read about Henry Blodget unveiling the new SAI 25 which values the top 25 startups. At the top of the list was Facebook, bringing in a valuation of $9 billion. Read about Iceberg, which provides a drag and drop form builder and a workflow and process generation tool, and uses a visual flowchart like interface to create decision trees and other action and event triggers automatically. Stop using Ajax! Read how the future web will put "all the data in the world" at the fingertips of every user. Read how Adobe will open the FLV and SWF formats. Read about two German companies that have patented technology for sending scented text messages on mobile phones. Read about stalking your users with Woopra. |
Tags: technology strategy hardware week-in-review user-interface-design video web-development design audio social-media art privacy marketing software
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5 Simple Ways to Send Better Emails
May 1, 2008 at 12:00 pm by Chris| When I first picked up Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home, by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe, I thought it would be a pretty light book telling me lots of obvious stuff I already knew. After all, I send emails all day every day, and have been for a long time. However, I was easily proven wrong. While SEND is a quick and relatively light read, it contains lots of helpful information which I have already put in to practice. Here are five of the main ideas that I'll be sure to keep in mind for my emails from now on: 1. Seniority and "to:" Order This may not be an issue for you or the people you work with. In fact, before reading this in SEND, I never even considered it. However, my feeling is that when it comes to email etiquette, you're better off being safe than sorry. Essentially, Shipley and Schwalbe's point is that when assembling your "To" list of multiple recipients, put the names in order of seniority, if that applies. This is one of those tiny details that you may overlook, but someone else may not. 2. Good Subject Lines This is a pretty simple point to get, especially if you do much with email on hand-held devices (like your Blackberry). Keep your subject simple and on point. If the content of your email has nothing to do with the original subject line of the email string you're still in, go ahead and change it. However, if you use Gmail, keep in mind that the subject line is what Google uses to string emails together in a "conversation," so you may have other reasons to maintain a particular subject. Because we send so many emails, both internally and to our clients, I like to use an "internal" tag when sending emails to Newfangled people that are not related to particular projects. This way, a busy Project Manager can quickly identify my email and prioritize it among the many others from our clients. One of these subject lines might look like this, "Internal: Project Manager Meeting Rescheduled." Likewise, I might tag an email related to a particular project like this, "client.com: Go Live Schedule." 3. To Cc or Not to Cc The Cc field can be a shield, or it can be a sword, so use it with care. Because Cc stands for "carbon copy," the intent was to use this field to include a recipient who may not need to follow up directly on the email's questions or requests, but needs to be kept informed of the information. Using the Cc field can send strong messages, too. If an email conversation with a client gets tense, but you know that you are following the proper protocol, you might Cc your superior on your response. This "shield" approach will communicate to your recipient that you're done playing games and are confident that your superior will back you up if needed. If you do this, be sure you're in the right. On the other hand, if your email is accusatory or corrective toward your recipient and you Cc someone else, you clearly have your "sword" drawn. Be sure you're ready for battle. Lastly, I think it's polite to inform your recipient that you are Cc'ing someone else, and why. If the Cc'ed address is foreign to your recipient, they could immediately be on the defensive even if the don't need to be. In my example below, notice that if I didn't let "Ralph" know why I was Cc'ing Mark, he might get defensive and assume it was a passive aggressive way of complaining about the schedule being off. To: Ralph 4. "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." Donald Rumsfeld was given a hard time for this quote, but he's actually right. In fact, one of Eric's favorite quotes ("The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." ) points out that we often assume we know things that we don't, or that others know things that they don't. It's good to know that there are things you don't know- thanks, Rummy! This problem runs rampant in email, so never assume that the recipient of your message will know what you're talking about. Unfortunately, writing a huge email with lots of back-story won't necessarily do the trick either. Because people tend to get so much email now, thorough reading of long emails is not a guarantee. This means that your job is even tougher. You'll need to make sure that your email as comprehensive as needed but also as succinct as possible. Simple tricks like making sure that major points, instructions, or questions have their own line will make it easier for your recipients to pay attention and follow up. Also, if you are sending the email to multiple recipients, try highlighting particular information for them. Below is an example. Notice how I didn't just launch in to my questions without providing some context (the new employees). To: Eric, Mark, Mitch, Katie, Jason 5. Oh no you didn't! Not in My Inbox! Do you ever get emails forwarded to you that include days, weeks or even months of communication that the sender expects you to sort out in order to respond appropriately? Shipley and Schwalbe correctly point out that when this happens, the sender is essentially taking work from their desk and putting it on yours. Don't let senders make you do a ton of work they should have done before emailing you! An appropriate response to an email like this might be as follows in the example below. Notice how I politely bounced that work right back. To: Eddie |
Tags: project-management email business books
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Poke! ...Want to be friends?
May 1, 2008 at 10:00 am by Chris| This video is a pretty witty "real life" interpretation of Facebook socialization: |
Tags: social-media video
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