Great Find: Notebook UP

Filed Under Business Life, Successful Blog, Survival Kit, Tools | 7 Comments

Find Yourself Scrunching?

I don’t usually talk about retail products, but this is one a tall girl could love.

Great Find: Notebook Up Product Info
Type of Article: Product specs and advertisement
Permalink: http://www.yankodesign.com/product_info.php?products_id=1077Target Audience: Notebook and laptop users
Content: If your only computer is a laptop and you find yourself scrunging down to read it, you should take a look at something like this. I haven’t tried it. I don’t know the company. I just think it looks like a solution that makes sense. Click the pix to find out more.

It seems to me the person who came up with this was tired of having neck problems.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Blog Link Leak Blog-to Show
Don’t forget the First Ever Successful Blog Link Leak Blog-to Show is open this weekend. Visit the Blog-to Show to kick some tires and see some new blogs to read by clicking the pix at the right.

Critical Skill 4: Part 4-Process Design Tool

Filed Under Checklists, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, Tools | Leave a Comment

Designing a Process Step-by-Step

Use this worksheet to gather information when you’re designing a complex process as described in Critical Skill 4: Part 2-Designing a Complex Process and Critical Skill 4: Part 3-A Virtual Process.

The Process Design Worksheet

Fill in as much information as you can before you begin the process design. Then use the worksheet throughout the process to guide you. You can use this form even when you delegate process design to a team that reports to you.

1. The Leader of the Process Design Team will be ____________________________

2. Assign the Visionaries and Explorers. Who are the big picture, global thinkers who will help decide on the work flow? Which stages of the process will each of these team members represent?

Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________

Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________

Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________

Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________

Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________

3. What steps will the work follow? Note: This discussion should include the big picture thinkers listed above only at this point. The detail people should not be present. (Take notes on the big picture process discussion using separate pages. Summarize or draw a flow chart to summarize the process the above team designs in the space below.)

The Proposed Process

4. Assign the King’s Guards and Risk Managers. Who are the detail thinkers who will challenge the proposed process design? Which stages of the process will each of these team members represent?

Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________

Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________

Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________

Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________

Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________

5. When the process is defined, the big picture people share the summary/flow chart with the detail folks before a meeting occurs with all team members. Any member of the team can list questions and concerns here.

____________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

6. The Explorers and Visionaries present the process design in detail to the King’s Guards and Risk Managers under the moderation of the leader. Now is the time to find the holes in the thinking — to validate the process and the plan.

When that discussion is complete, the process will stand as a working plan. The entire group should agree that this is the process, until the process doesn’t work, at which time, any member of the group can ask the team leader to call a meeting to adjust the plan.

Process isn’t hard if you take charge of it, instead of letting it drag you along.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles:
Critical Skill 4: Part 1-Process Models
Critical Skill 4: Part 2-Designing a Complex Process
Critical Skill 4: Part 3-A Virtual Process
10 Skills Most Critical Skills Series on the SUCCESSFUL SERIES Page

Great Find: Color and Font Codes

Filed Under Basics, Design, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats, Tools | 4 Comments

HTML Color and Font Codes

When I first started blogging, I was anxious to do what I could do in print–add emphasis using color or maybe once on a rare occasion change the font for flavor. But I was new to HTML and the rules had me baffled. I recently found this simple tutorial that not only shows how, but also shows which fonts are those that usually work.

Great Find: Color in Your Text from Writing up.com
Type of article: HTML tutorial
Permalink: http://www.writingup.com/htmltutor/color_in_your_text_from_htmltutor
Target Audience: Folks who want to know more about HTML
Content: This tutorial starts out with the basic code for changing the font and the color of your text.

Then the tutorial offers two clicks further. The first click takes you to choosing type fonts. While you are there, you can see how each font looks and check whether it is available on your computer. The second click shows you a basic color chart and color words to allow a chance for experimentation.

This tutorial is great for new bloggers or for seasoned bloggers in a hurry looking for a color change in their typography.

Click this screenshot title to go there.

I’m adding this to the NEW BLOGGER PAGE in the side bar.

–ME “Liz Strauss

Great Find: Campfire Group Chat

Filed Under Business Life, Successful Blog, Tools | 9 Comments

Well, it looks like a Great Find . . . I haven’t tried it. I don’t have that many friends who want to talk to me for extended periods of time. It sports and testimonial from Dick Costolo, however. I betcha he has more friends than I do.

â€œOne chat with Campfire and you won’t remember how you got by without it.â€?
-Dick Costolo, President, FeedBurner

Great Find: Campfire Group Chat
Type of Tool: Simple Web-based group chat system
Permalink: http://www.campfirenow.com/
Target Audience: Small businesses and groups who want to meet online with password protected privacy and little hassle
Content: Campfire is a pasword-protected, multiroom chat system offers folks a place to meet online. It requires only an online connection and a browser–no download, no installation, no IT person to set up anything. Campfire allows folks to get together in real time to have online conversations, complete with transcripts, and to share files and preview images. It includes an outer room — the Lobby — the chat room, which holds up to 60 people, and a private room, which can be locked for an off-the-record chat — no transcripts are taken. To see more about Campfire, click the screenshot below.

Sounds like an functional program that small businesses could find real use for. Can’t possibly be Web 2.0.

Who’s going to be the first to try it and write a review for Successful Blog?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Great Find: Adding Show-Hide and Categories

Filed Under Design, Marketing, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats, Tools | 2 Comments

Improbulus Offers Us 2 in 1

There’s a reason I wrote poetry to Improbulus the blogger at A Consuming Experience. She is one great researcher, analyst, problem solver, who does everyone a service in every post she writes. Her analysis and deep research are featured in Technorati’s family of support pages.

This post is a two-in-one special for you. What I give you today is WAY COOL.

Great Find: How to include categories for your blog (manual, expand-collapse) by Improbulus
Type of Article: How-to article on adding show/hide feature and categories to blogging platforms that don’t offer those features.
Permalink: http://consumingexperience.blogspot.com/2006/01/how-to-include-categories-for-
Target Audience: Anyone who needs to add a way to do categories or show/hide features to their blog platform

Content: If there’s an interesting problem to be figured out, Improbulus has been on it and found a way to deal with–if not, she’s found out who’s already done that. This particular entry in her archives demonstrates how to break a post and continue it on the next page in the lower function blog platforms. It also shows how to manually add posts to categories in a platform, such as Blogger–the platform that Improbulus uses. The great news is she offers the exact code and how to use it. Click the Consuming Experience to access the article.

Adding categories is great promotion for page views. It pulls readers deeper into your blog. I’m going to have to write her another poem, but first I need to add categories to my blogspot blog.

If you use this post, how about leaving Improbulus a comment or better yet, linking to it. It’s always a great idea to support folks who do us these kinds of big favors.

Brand you and me. Improbulus understands that BIG TIME.

–Me “Liz” Strauss

Exploring for Ideas at Technorati

Filed Under Content, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, Tools, Writing | 18 Comments

Going Exploring

I can’t help it. David Sifry hooked me. He did it when he let them name that feature at Technorati Explore. Had he only said, “Okay call it Browse.” Browsing is a nice thing. I’ve even been known to do it. I’ve browsed through books and browsed while waiting. Yes, I know how to Browse.

My life would be so much easier, if only David Sifry had chosen Browse instead of choosing Explore.

But no. My friend, Dave probably was a kid a bit like me. He probably knows the exact appeal of exploring. Maybe he even remembers hearing someone saying, “Where you going?” and answering back “We’re going exploring. Wanna come along?”

Slam dunk marketing that name. Explore. Even better, it lives up to its promise. Read more

Thinking Inside-Outside the SEO Sandbox

Filed Under Outside the Box, SEO, Strategy, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats, Tools | 3 Comments

Learning by Getting It Wrong

Remember your first web site or blog? You had to learn so much about coding and Search Engine Optimization. Bet you learned most of what you know now by doing–OJT, On the Job Training, otherwise known as getting it wrong and fixing it. Those were valuable experiences.

The thing about learning by getting it wrong is that you remember what you did. Tweaking a template and having your sidebar fall off is WAY more powerful than anyone telling you how not to code something.

As much as I wish that WordPress had an undo button, I know I’ve learned more because it doesn’t.

Think like a Search Engine

SEO folks think like Search Engines. They buy and read Aaron Wall’s SEO Book and its updates. They follow and discuss Matt Cutt’s blog, and the Google Blog–probably not this one, the Google Blog, but this one Google Research Blog–or maybe all of them. They check in at Yahoo’s Search Blog, MSN Search, and with other SEO hangouts, such as Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Round Table, and Threadwatch. So I do some of that–the first half at least.

But reading doesn’t help me half as much as doing does.

Thinking Inside-Outside the SEO Box

I’ve been searching out experiences to help me think like a search engine. I use my stats to watch how search engines route traffic to my blogs. Sometimes they hit right on the page that has the content being searched for. That’s not interesting. I expect that. They’ve invested powerful resources into research in doing that right.

Sometimes they hit right next to where they should. THAT I find puzzling and intriguing, especially when the page in question is tagged with the exact search term that was entered.

It happened again this morning. Someone searched for “nextsplogs.” The searcher was sent to the home page of Successful Blog rather than to the page called SOB Business Cafe 04-07-2006, where Nextsplogs actually appears twice–in the text and as a tag. Is it because the term is singular in one and capitalized in the other? Hmmmm. I wonder.

I don’t like things I don’t understand, and I want to understand this.

I’ve learned a lot from watching my stats, but this kind of thing my stats can’t help me crack.

Build Your Own Search Engine

Just when I was about to give up on my chance of knowing, along came this post from the MSN search weblog, Build Your Own Search Engine. I thought, here’s a way to learn by doing. It’s not an actual full-blown search engine–it’s search engine macros–and it’s an early BETA version. That suits me just fine, though. It gets my brain and hands in the process and I can even watch how the parameters have to be tweaked to work right. Just reading the comments about it, I can feel myself getting smarter.

Go on over. Take a look. It’s an inside-outside the box way to learn SEO.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
MSN and Microsoft Joint Research Venture
SEO The Secret Life of Search Engines
Check Google Backlinks Through Yahoo
SEOâ€“The Value of Outlinks to MY Blog

Great Find: 10 Reasons to Love Google Desktop

Filed Under Great Finds, SEO, Successful Blog, Tools | 4 Comments

Keith Dsouza and I shared some email this week about using Google Desktop. He’s an all-out customer evangelist, and he can give you 10 reasons why you should love it too.

Great Find: Top 10 reasons why you should love google desktop
Type of Article: Product Review
Permalink: http://www.keithdsouza.com/google-news/google/top-10-reasons-why-you-should-love-google-desktop.html
Target Audience: All internet users

Content: In this article, Keith Dsouza outlines 10 of his favorite reasons for using Google Desktop. I say favorite, because his writing is filled with such enthusiasm, I have no doubt that he could give you another ten, if you asked him. He also lets us in on a secret that–he’s developing a new plugin for it. Keith uses several plugins already–for Sidebar, Scratchpad, and Del.icio.us. He also uses a filter to keep his RSS feeds right there. If you’re thinking of using Google Desktop, Keith is the fellow you want to know. Click the screenshot to read about what he’s been doing with it. I’m sure that he’d help you, if you want to do some of the same things.

Thanks, Keith.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Great Find: How to Create an RSS Feed

Filed Under Great Finds, Successful Blog, Survival Kit, Tech/Stats, Tools | 3 Comments

I didn’t find this Mark Wade at the R Web Designs blog did, and he has a fine write up on it. Click Mark’s logo to read his analysis and to see his fabulous blog.

Great Find: The Robin Good’s How to Create a RSS Feed from Any Web Page
Type of article: Blogging basics how-to article
Permalink:http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/03/09/how_to_create_a_rss.htm

Target Audience:All web users who want to know more about RSS feeds
Content: Robin Good points out that at some moment in the future you might want to follow the updating of a web page that doesn’t have an RSS feed.He answers the question, Can you create one? with a resounding YES!. Click Robin’s logo to access the article.

Thank you, Mark for finding this page. Thank you, Robin for writing it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Great Find: Absolutely Del.icio.us Tool Collection

Filed Under Branding, Community, Productivity, Successful Blog, Tools | 8 Comments

Folksonomy and tag categories got your eyes crossed?
Has social bookmarking started controlling you rather than the other way around?

The Addiction

Hi. My name is Liz and I’m a social bookmarker.
At first I just did it on the weekends to keep track of a few sites and articles I liked. Then I started social bookmarking to get new ideas. Soon it became a daily habit–once, then twice, then many times a day. I got to recognize submitters names and tastes. I started submitting myself–things I saw that I liked.

Social bookmarking utilities were both a great boon and a great downfall to my productivity. I could go there to find a passel of spectacular ideas. But more and more I found myself lost in an enchanted forest, thinking I’d leave after the next look, or the next, or maybe the next. The disorganization of the folksonomy became an addiction–I kept thinking the next title I saw might be the fabulous prize I was looking for. It was intellectual gambling.

That’s when I knew I needed help, and I found it at Quick Online Tips.

The Prescription

Finally, someone has collected tools and tips from all over the Internet to help Social Bookmarking addicts.

Great Find: Absolutely Del.icio.us – Complete Tool Collection from Quick Online Tips
Type of article: List of posts on tools for using Del.icio.us
Permalink: http://pchere.blogspot.com/2005/02/absolutely-delicious-complete-tool.html
Audience: Anyone wants to make the most of social bookmarking
Content: This list offers well over 100 posts that discuss how to use del.icio.us to get the most out of it. You’ll find the Beelerspace Beginners Guide as well as the popular Slacker Manager post, the Several Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us users. Most of the hints and helps here will work with any social bookmarking utility you use.

Click the screenshot to begin a new life of tackling that taxonomy.

Absolutely Del.icio.us Tool Collection Screenshot

If you try this at home, don’t read the entire list at one sitting. Choose one or two to explore each morning. Then come back to tag my best work to share with your friends.

Benefits for the “Magic Middle Man”

Social bookmarking is a powerful tool for research, idea generation, and promoting your business. It’s a great way for those of us in the Magic Middle to exert our control as an audience. Learning how to use it efficiently and effectively can

boost personal productivity,
offer ideas to promote your brand and your business,
provide a venue to showcase your best work to a wide audience,
and has an immediate, if short-lived impact, that may gain a few new readers.

Of course, I exaggerated the downside of social bookmarking at the start of this article, but the temptation to spend too much time exploring is also very real. How do you keep social bookmarking from eating up your time? How do you use it to its best advantage?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

keep looking »

Successful Blog

You're Only a Stranger Once

Find Yourself Scrunching?

Designing a Process Step-by-Step

The Process Design Worksheet

HTML Color and Font Codes

Improbulus Offers Us 2 in 1

Going Exploring

Learning by Getting It Wrong

Think like a Search Engine

Thinking Inside-Outside the SEO Box

Build Your Own Search Engine

The Addiction

The Prescription

Benefits for the “Magic Middle Man”

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