b.cognosco
A quest to examine, inquire, and learn.
Recently
Coming Soon!
Tuesday, July 23, 2002
Business Use for Instant Messaging
Business Use for Instant Messaging? - Yep, apparently Lands End uses it to answer customer questions as they browse the catalogue company's website. The cheery representatives will even use IM to redirect the customer to a particular page on the website if necessary.I see IM working its way into law firms too. The other day was illustrative. I was on the phone with an important client in one of those situations where I couldn't get off the phone no matter what happened. A call came in on my other line, and I ignored it. Thirty seconds later I was paged by the receptionist. I had to E-mail her to let her know I was on the phone, and we traded E-mails so that I could (1) find out who was looking for me (2) tell her to tell the person to call back in 10 minutes. All of this took more time than it should have. Instant Messaging would have been much faster. Of course, now I suspect most law firms will view IM as some sort of frilly toy. [Ernie the Attorney]
Self-publishing Firm Provides More Marketing Support
Following the M.J. Rose column today, which covered big-name publishers picking up self-published work and taking advantage of authors' self-promotional initiative, iUniverse has annouced a marketing kit to help their authors get more attention. Every little bit helps.
iUniverse Introduces Marketing Toolkit07/23/2002
Answering a need voiced by thousands of authors worldwide, iUniverse, Inc., announced today the launch of its Author Marketing Toolkit, a complete, customized marketing guide that helps authors publicize their work, create demand and sell books. [iUniverse]
Broadcast Brouhaha
Thanks to Ernie the Attorney for this one. This business with the Fritz bill, and the FCC broadcast flag brouhaha is asinine. Some argument may be made (I don’t necessarily buy it) that government intervention is called for to protect certain industries and American jobs from foreign competition. But since when does the government of the US of A intervene to protect specific industries from their own customers?! How idiotic is that?From the New York Times:
Hollywood studios have maintained that they will not send digital copies of movies and other programming over the airwaves unless safeguards are in place to prevent perfect copies from being redistributed online. That, in turn, is seen as holding back the market for digital televisions and the on-demand services that might come with them.I can assure you this is not the case, and if it is the market will respond with a solution far better for consumers than what the television networks purport to do. There is no way that legislation written by a bunch of sold-out, technology-ignorant legislators for the sole purpose of protecting an entrenched media aristocracy can do anything but harm for consumers and the market in general.
Legislators should be debating the extent of copyright protection, the applicable penalties for violation, and what -- if any -- changes should be made in the balance between spurring innovation and rewarding creators. Nothing more. As Ernie said in Ignorance is Bliss
Sometimes too many people working together on one thing do not create a bold new thing. Instead, they create a patchwork of compromise, where the whole is vastly less than the sum of the parts.First, every legislator should be forced to read The Broadband Difference: How online Americans' behavior changes with high-speed Internet connections at home from the Pew Internet Project. If they can’t read it themselves then they should be tied in a room and have it forcibly read to them. Then they should be required to go to the blackboard and write 100 times each, “The Internet is not cable TV. The Internet is not cable TV. The Internet is not cable TV…”This happens in lawmaking too, but mostly because of the influence of lobbyists representing special interest groups. It's not just a problem of too many people, but rather it's a problem of people having too much information.
This whole episode shows how woefully ignorant most of our legislators are regarding basic economics, market theory, and basic technology. And my, how thinly they disguise their motives.
Currently Reading:
Flawless Consulting by Peter Block is one of the better how-to books on consulting I've read.
Following my theme of not looking for a job, maybe what I'm really doing is looking for many jobs. I spent a couple of years in the late 1990s working for a small consulting company, so I know how hard it is to do the job right and get paid. There are all sorts of trade-offs between:
- telling the client what they want to hear so they'll pay you and telling them what they need to hear so you can do your job
- getting the client to take responsibility for the project and losing control
- providing a plan that looks good and one that actually works for the long term.
Block provides a well-structured book, taking you through the culture and mindset of consulting. He uses a scenario approach to make his points, and provides a variety of check-off lists and tools. He spends a good number of pages on contracting (very important) and on the 50/50 split in client/consultant responsibility that is required for success. Along the way are lots of good tips for how to handle project meetings, work corporate politics, etc.
It's a bit expensive, at $42, but I recommend it for anyone thinking seriously about doing independent consultant work.
Permalnk Revisions Needed
Radio Wishlist - Permalinks in Categories.Permalinks in categories point to those posts on the home page and home page archives, not to their instances on the category home page or in the category archive. Permalinks just don't understand their page's category. I explain further and with examples on the Radio UserLand discussion list.
[aka Blue Sky Radio]
[a klog apart]
Interesting BookBiz TidBits from M.J. Rose
There are some good ideas in today's Wired News column by M.J. Rose, and some validation for authors like Hugh Madison at American Invisible.Before 1998, it was rare for established publishing companies to bid on self-published fiction. But in the last 18 months, thanks in great part to authors' ability to use the Internet to market themselves, more than three dozen self-published novels have been picked up by major houses. [...]
Also, a very entrepreneurial idea from Florida-based Chapter-a-Day: sending out excerpts from popular business books via daily e-mail:The business of book clubs: From Good Morning America to the White House, book clubs are flourishing. And now businesses want them too.
Wells Fargo already has one. So do sales and marketing executives in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Chapter-a-Day, a Sarasota, Florida, company that builds and maintains online book clubs -- sending out daily book excerpts for libraries and book stores -- is getting as many as a dozen inquiries a week from corporations. [...]
I love this idea. It's a variant of the book summary/abstracting services offered by several companies. I think the bite-sized nature of this makes it very appealing. One of my favorite services comes from Audio-Tech Executive Summaries and is called Business Briefings.
It's on CD rather than e-mail, but every month they review some 300+ publications and send out a very interesting bite-sized summary of ideas, concepts, research, and publications that are or will affect business. It's one of the most interesting services I get, and I think it's because of the bite-sized nature of things.
Self-Publish Stigma Is Perishing. Major houses gobble up rights after authors create a buzz for their work. Also: Book clubs that work for business ... and more in M.J. Rose's notebook. [Wired News]
More on Klog Implementation Challenges.
www.davidwatson.org wrote a piece back in June about the difficulties a klog implementation could face. Training and organizational culture again. This is worth checking out as another addition to a balanced view on klogging.
[High Context]
Weblogs die too..
Weblogs die too..FuckedWeblog catalogs distressed, absent or departed weblogs. See recent ones or submit an blog site's suicide note or obituary.
This might be useful in an intranet. Part of pruning the tree, finding successors, acknowledging the need for archival.
[a klog apart]
| July 2002 | ||||||
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
| 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |||
| Jun Aug | ||||||
Contact
1041 Honey Creek Road
Suite 281
Conyers, GA 30013
770-918-1937 office
404-822-6014 mobile
This Page was last updated: 2/9/2003; 11:17:19 AM
