It was time to buy a new computer. My old no-name white box wasn’t able to keep up with all the demands of web development. I like to keep a number of programs open three browsers, a virtual box loaded with XP, email, ftp, and eclipse are the minimum. Also, there are Apache, ssh and mySQL servers running in the background. Not a particularly heavy load but it was starting to bog down my old system.
Archive for the ‘commentary’ Category
Kubuntu – Lucid Lynx (10.04.1)
Posted: September 13th, 2010
Author: Michael Regan
Posted in commentary, linux, technical, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Pinbud – An Interesting New Service
I got a comment from Lucien at Pinbud.com. He pointed out a spelling error in one of my posts. Spelling mistakes happen, even when you are using a spell checker. In this case the mistake was in the title, which I hadn’t run through the spell checker.
I hadn’t heard of PinBud before – so I checked out the site. It is a search engine for finding trades people within your geographic area. And, it is REALLY good.
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When You Have To Do A Presentation
Let me state this right up front.
I hate Power Point presentations. I hate doing them – I hate viewing them.
Unfortunately, every now and then I have to do one. More often I have to view them – which is why God gave us iPods and laptops with WiFi access.
While I can’t always stick to it – I like Guy Kawasaki’s 10 – 20 – 30 rule – 10 Slides; 20 minutes; 30 point font. The rule was designed for presentations to venture capitalist. These poor souls must sit through hundreds — maybe even thousands of presentations that, for the main, say the same thing, “Our product will change the world and all you have to do is give us truck loads full of money.”
You may not be asking for “truck loads of money”, but some times you have to give a presentation. Besides keeping in mind Guy’s rule, here are five things to do before you make the presentation:
- Choose a quite, well ventilated room that will comfortably hold more than the number of people you expect. To often good presentations are destroyed by noise or an over crowded room. A room full of people generate a lot of heat. Nothing is worse than having to ‘open a door’ just to get enough air to keep everyone from falling asleep.
- Respect your audience. Assume that they all can read as well as you. The slides are there to give the audience something to remember – not to be read verbatim. Make every slide concise. This is Power Point presentation NOT Power Paragraph presentation.
- Get there early. How many presentations have you been to where everyone was waiting for the projector or screen to be setup?Things go wrong. By getting there early you can at least try to get them fixed before your audience arrives.
- Face the audience. In his blog post Really Bad Powerpoint, Seth Godin’s first point to a good Power Point presentation is:
«. . . make yourself cue cards. Don’t put them on the screen. Put them in your hand. Now, you can use the cue cards you made to make sure you’re saying what you came to say.»
- Practise – Practise – Practise.If you aren’t interested enough in your topic to prepared – no one else will be interested either.
A Yahoo Hompage – Really?
Posted: May 9th, 2010
Author: Michael Regan
Posted in branding, business, commentary, marketing | No Comments »
Is it just me – or is the concept of a ‘Home Page’ becoming passé?
Back in the old days, the last century for those of us using Linux, browsers only had one window. And, when you started your browser it opened up your ‘Home Page’. Fast forward to 2010 and even Internet Explorer has tabs and can restore a session.
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Selling To Americans
Posted: November 19th, 2009
Author: Michael Regan
Posted in business, commentary, marketing | 1 Comment »
American’s are patriotic. All things being equal they will ‘Buy American’. One of the challenges to international business selling in the United States is to over come the ‘Buy American’ instinct.
There are three distinct strategies a company can employ. The first is deliver a product that is either a unique, superior or cheaper, second be seen to be American, and third pretend to be American.
This is Broken – Again
Posted: September 30th, 2009
Author: Michael Regan
Posted in business, commentary, web design | No Comments »
Restroom sign in Braille
While coming back from a trip this spring my wife and I stopped at the Tim Horton’s in Merrit BC. For those of you south of the 49th parallel, Tim Horton’s is the Dunkin Donuts of the north. They are in most, if not all, cities accross Canada. While IMHO, they will never win any awards for great coffee – they are clean, friendly, and you always know what you are getting.
A Summer Recap
Posted: September 19th, 2009
Author: Michael Regan
Posted in business, commentary, marketing, sales | No Comments »
So, this is officially the last weekend of the summer and I have no reason not to be adding to my blog. Well actually, I can always make up a reasonable excuse to be doing something else – but enjoying the summer is now no longer one of them.
To get this season of blogging started I thought I would post some of the more interesting items to that have come across my screen.
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Microsoft vs Yahoo vs Google
Posted: August 1st, 2009
Author: Michael Regan
Posted in business, commentary, search, SEM, SEO | No Comments »
Those of us ‘of a certain age’ will remember MAD magazines ‘Spy VS Spy’ cartoon feature. (MAD may still be running the cartoon – it has been a LONG time since I bought a copy.) The cartoon features the black and white coloured spies. Inevitably, one or the other would come to some terrible end. During the early 60′s a third character, ‘Lady Grey’, was introduced, ‘Spy VS Spy VS Spy’. Both the black and white spy were in love with her. And, she always got the best of both of them.
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Client or Customer?
I have just started reading Jay Abraham’s book “Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got”. Near the beginning of the book he makes the distinction between ‘client’ and ‘customer’. In the first chapter he quotes Webster’s Dictionary:
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