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Marketing 101. Consulting 101. PHP Consulting. Random geeky stuff. I Blog Therefore I Am.

Thursday, May 30, 2002

Updated Documents: Marketing 101, Consulting 101, Business 101 It's been a busy 2 weeks since I last did an official update.  Between the O'Reilly book, paying work, blog hacking, php coding, etc, I didn't get a mailing out last week.  Here is the updated table of contents for all the 101 content. If you want to be alerted via email when I issue these (normally) weekly summaries, sign up at http://www.fuzzygroup.com/marketing101/.  No, I don't spam you but you probably know that already. Bias Disclaimer: There is a small pitch for my own services near the end of "Selling Services as Products".  Feel free to ignore or not. Marketing 101 Selling Services as Products A Text Book Example of How to Handle a Difficult Sales Call Where Silly Product Names Come From or Your Worst Nightmares Confirmed How Do I Get People to Change Platforms - Part 2? How Do I Get People to Change Platforms? How Do I Get Started Doing Market Research? When Your Market Gets Commoditized Why People Don't Register Software Who Do I Contact for a Strategic Parternship Leveraging Your Email and Common Email Mistakes It's All About Trust Marketing Yourself as a Consultant Part 1 Marketing Software as a Small Company Searching in E-Commerce Sites Consulting 101 Selling Services as Products So You Want to Hire a Consultant, Do You? Do My Clients Really Need a T1? Researching a New Client or Do I Really Want to Do Business with these Hosers? Successful Consulting: It's All About Professionalism Consulting 101: Replacing Your Previous Income or How Many Proposals Do I need to Write? Consulting 101: Building a Pipeline Business 101 A New Business Model for Add On Software Dealing with "BlogFlame" Analysis: Making More Money How Microsoft Could Make More Money from the Browser A Letter to LimeWire A Letter to Trillian Example Business Plans EmployeeSharing.com ArchiveWare Old But Still Relevant (these are dated): Top 10 Mistakes in Internet Commerce Vol 1 Top 10 Mistakes in Internet Commerce Vol 2 10:09:34 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Small But Important: New Ben & Jerry Flavors Fueling this fit of late night blogging is "Sweet Whirled".  Recommended.  http://www.benjerry.com/indexg.tmpl (yes it's only 10:05 now but my day started at 4:17 am -- it's late for me and it's all relative). 10:06:47 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Now Why Didn't I Think of That? When I commented earlier about Ted Nelson's web site, I didn't go to the next logical step -- which was to pitch in and help out.  That's the right thing to do and I just blipped on it.  Thankfully Dave didn't.  If you want to see Ted's message then go here.  It's a good message. Great job Dave.  Wish I had thought of it (picture me saying to my self "Dumb, dumb, dumb"). 8:59:18 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Marketing 101: How to Handle a Difficult Sales Call -- Perfectly! Like a lot people out there today, I download and install a lot of software.  I think that sometimes a week doesn't go by when I don't download something new.  And, yes, the vendors do ask for phone numbers sometime.  Perhaps surprisingly to you, I don't always lie about.  Any kind of person to person interaction gives a chance to learn something new.  Also, when you work from, with cats, you don't always get the "socialization" that you might want.  Anyway...  Today I got a sales call from someone and they handled it perfectly.  Honest to god -- perfectly.  ==> Read Story <== 6:56:18 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Ted, Ted, Ted: An Open Letter to Ted Nelson Preamble: For those who aren't fully aware of their computing history, hypertext existed long before the World Wide Web.  I got into it in 1987 shipping on of the first PC based hypertext products -- and I was early on PCs but late overall.  Actual dates differ but the first real concepts stemmed from Vannevar Bush's article on the Memex, "As We May Think".  The next real steps came from Doug Englebart's ground breaking work at SRI (among other things Doug invented the mouse, movable windows, outline processing and more) and from that of Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu.  Ted is the brilliant person who gave us all the term "hypertext".  We all have heroes and Doug and Ted, both of whom I was lucky enough to meet once upon a time, are two of mine. Still I've got to call a spade a spade.... Dear Ted, We've met in the past the ACM Hypertext conferences and to this day, one of my favorite photos is a shot of you and I together that someone took at a tradeshow.  I just saw http://ted.hyperland.com/ and I have to say that I'm genuinely disappointed.  Here's why: I understand that you don't like the web, that it differs from your rich, original vision.  So What?  The web still lacks features that my own product, HyperWriter, last updated in 1996 (and still in use!) had.  But I'm here.  So are all the other original hypertext vendors.  Eastgate, another early vendor, is even making a wicked cool blogging tool for Macintoshes.  Here's my beef: The website that you put up -- A MONTH AGO -- is basically illegible.  The text doesn't even wrap.  How do you expect people to take you seriously if we can't read it?  Your ideas are still brilliant but if people can't read them, will they matter?  You inspired us all and now you leave me scratching my head.  If you don't want to make HTML, fine.  There's 50 hackers on every corner that would make you a site that would kick the snot out of what's currently at http://ted.hyperland.com/. Think about it.  Still a fan, after all these years.... Scott References Doug Englebart -- www.bootstrap.org -- google Ted Nelson -- google Andyed from www.surfmind.com just IM'd me a couple of very, very cool things: His take on hypertext history And the same stuff but implemented using Cruise Control, an IE specific browser automation which walks you through the content (go to the link above and click on the Cruise Control link) Pictures October 12?, 1987 - The very first tradeshow where our hypertext product (Black Magic which begat HyperWriter) was shown. Historical Note: I am still partners with Brian Giedt (lead engineer and he's still brilliant) 5:45:23 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Surviving Being Slashdotted: The Performance of Open Source Portal Software 2 days ago www.kerneltrap.org was slashdotted i.e. featured on www.slashdot.com when they ran a brilliant interview with the CEO of BitKeeper.  This is a pretty in-depth analysis of what this traffic looks like and how the site survived this without a single crash.  It's also a good commentary on how one open source project handled high priority support. NOTE: Includes detailed metrics.  Did you know that being slashdotted means a 6X effect on your traffic? ==> Read Story <== 4:38:46 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Consulting 101: So You Want to Hire a Consultant, Do You? This document is the inverse of the normal Consulting 101 document.  This document looks at hiring a consultant from the perspective of what the client should ask (or do) before bringing the consultant on.  And, yes, by posting this, please feel free to ask me these questions if you should hire me. After All: It's only fair I used to ask them when I hired consultants. ==> Read Story <== 4:19:03 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Anyone Got Experience in Autonomy or Verity and in the U.S.? I may have a line on some interesting work with a Verity to Autonomy conversion project and I'm not certain if I can break time out of my current projects.  Send resume to sjohnson@fuzzygroup.com and if it looks right and I can't do this then I'll forward the headhunter to you.  Big project. This is an extended onsite engagement (3 months, large data set). 4:09:02 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Funniest Comment of the Day! I found you on Google.  Do you know it? Hm... I actually can explain the relevancy ranking at a pretty detailed level, understand the server architecture and know the indexing latency.  Oh and I can use it...  Yes I know it. ":-)" 11:20:24 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

That Radio and WiFi Thing?  Ignore All of a sudden the 127.0.0.1:5335 urls work.  Bizarre. Oh and my cats really, really like Wifi.  They can sit on my lap as I work.   Slows the typing a bit but c'est la vie. 7:47:08 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Wifi: How to Read More Blogs Yet again LinkSys has made me a happy customer.  I keep hearing about Wifi from people and I'm jealous of Natrak who can blog from his deck so I took the plunge. I've even been told: "I know all about it , even my gf has WiFi" by a reader.  Clearly my "geek street cred" was being threatened.  A quick trip to my favorite mail order place, www.pcconnection.com, a wireless PCMCIA card and a WiFi hub and I'm now blogging from the kitchen table instead of my desk chair.  Sec... Now I'm blogging from the front porch.  I'm not in this picture but I am right near the window at the center of the front porch. Now, here's the beauty of it all -- I can read content in the aggregator -- without being at my desk.  Now that's how to read more blogs.  Wicked cool. About the Hardware Worked like a champ.  Literally plug and play.  Install a driver and away I went.  It took longer to restart Windows than it did to get connectivitity.  I just love LinkSys.  I've never had a bad LinkSys experience.  How many companies can you say that about?  And, no, I don't own stock (not even sure if they are public or not). Radio and WiFi One tip though: http://127.0.0.1:5335/ no longer works in Internet Explorer on Windows.  Instead I have to use http://localhost:5335/.  No idea why -- the 127.0.0.1:5335 works in Mozilla but not in I.E.  Strange.  6:11:12 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This