Article Cultural Laziness by Christopher Butler on May 27, 2009 Last week's episode of the Spark podcast featured author Cyrus Farivar, who spoke about the concept of "cultural laziness," which manifested itself to him while he was living in France, but because of the wonders of modern technology, was able to be culturally living in America. As he described this concept, I realized that I had experienced the very same thing while living in Malaysia. Let me explain... Read Now About
Article We Are Big Brother by Christopher Butler on May 26, 2009 Last week, futurist Jamais Cascio wrote a blog post in which he talked a bit about how consumer technology has enabled an erosion of privacy. He withholds judgement on whether this is a good or bad thing, pointing out that while it may be unsettling to some that such a large amount of personal information could be gathered about you online, this shift has also empowered the public to document crime and hold authorities accountable in ways we were not able to before... Read Now About
Article Why are our web site costs what they are? by Mark O’Brien on May 26, 2009 I understand that pricing is positioning. I also understand that marketing is what you do in order to ensure that you have the ability to choose only the best prospects to work for. That being said, it still pains me when I come across a client who has a real need for our services and respects our expertise but just can't afford us. Read Now About
Article Are Blogs Really Today’s Magazines? by Christopher Butler on May 22, 2009 Joel Johnson, in response to a New York Times article about Wired magazine, posted earlier this week about his experience in helping Wired.com set up its blogs and why he is also concerned for Wired's future. He has some valuable insight into the class of print and online cultures within this one company, so read the entire piece. But this quote troubles me a bit... Read Now About
Article Content Strategy E-Newsletter Formatting Problems published on May 19, 2009 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... Read Now About
Article Get a Little Uncomfortable by Mark O’Brien on May 15, 2009 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! Read Now About
Article Let’s outsource! by Mark O’Brien on May 12, 2009 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... Read Now About
Article Is tracking visitors to your website ethical? by Christopher Butler on May 12, 2009 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... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Creative Block? Go To Prison! by Justin Kerr on May 8, 2009 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? Read Now About
Article Twitter: Changing How We Read & Write Online published on May 8, 2009 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? Read Now About
