E-Newsletter Formatting Problems
A couple weeks ago, one of our clients was having some serious newsletter formatting issues. The newsletter looked different on different computers, different email clients, different browsers... Images, links, and entire blocks of text would disappear, depending on which software was used to view it.
So, I asked some of our developers for “best practice” advice on how to avoid these newsletter quirks...
Get a Little Uncomfortable
I've been listening to business books on tape during my commute since January. It has been wonderful. I've listened to more business books so far this year than I had read in the previous two years combined. One of the books I've had the pleasure of hearing is "The Knack" by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham. I loved Burlingham's book, "Small Giants," so I thought I'd give this a try. "The Knack" is more Brodsky than Burlingham, I suspect, but I loved it just the same. The theme was basically Business 101 from the entrepreneur's perspective, and the book was chock full of great bits of wisdom. There was one point, though, that really hit me. I don't recall the exact wording, but Brodsky's point was basically that you aren't doing everything you should be as a leader unless you are constantly putting yourself in situations that make you a little uncomfortable. Brilliant!
Is tracking visitors to your website ethical?
I just asked this question on LinkedIn and have already gotten some interesting responses. If you have an opinion on this, I'd love to hear it...
Let’s outsource!
I just received a great email from some apparently very smart people about why I should outsource Newfangled's programming work to India via the U.K. The subject line read...
Twitter: Changing How We Read & Write Online
It's already hard enough to get visitors to your website and then actually pay attention to your text, but will Twitter make it even more difficult?
Creative Block? Go To Prison!
I've heard a lot of suggestions for overcoming creative block: change your venue, sketch, take a nap, etc. But I think I've discovered one of the more effective methods— long periods of forced solitude and an orange jumpsuit.
Photographer Marc Steinmetz has posted some very creative escape tools used by prison inmates. Of course, only some of these hand-crafted masterpieces were successful in springing their owners or else they wouldn't have them on hand to be photographed, right?
How to Deal with (and prevent) Project Fatigue
In a recent project management meeting, each staff member cited a
weakness they'd like to improve. Several answers related to challenges
with those few projects that tend to go far over schedule and how to
get it back on track, within budget, and keep morale (for both us and
the client) high long after the project kickoff.
With a few of these kinds of projects under my belt now, I've learned a
couple ways to both prevent and work through these phases.
RSS is Not Dead Yet
Steve Gillmor, of Techcrunch, has made some waves with a recent blog post titled Rest in Peace, RSS, in which he argues that nobody uses RSS anymore because Twitter is much more effective. While it wasn't the central point of his post, I think he's on to something when he says that many of these social networking tools, when bundled together, can make a pretty effective communication platform. But I don't think RSS is dead yet...
We Have Unrealistic Expectations of Privacy
Even though these services offer the convenience of not being tied to one machine, I ultimately think the problems that come from it should rightfully cause us to reconsider our priorities. In previous posts on privacy, two particular concepts have come up again and again. They are ownership and intentionality of critical policy making...
Advanced Segmentation for Google Analytics – the why without the how
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This is purely an informational post about why you, the site administrator, should begin looking into advanced segmentation, a free and powerful tool that is offered to us lucky Google Analytics tinkerers. And how large fortune 100 retail companies who sell things on a day-to-day basis WISH they had the luxury we do with being able to segment our day-to-day customer traffic.
Retail stores have entire departments allocated to watching and evaluating metrics that come streaming in from their multitude of stores. The one chain in particular is Best Buy. |