Blog
+ Free advice and other musings
Report: U.K. leads world in Internet advertising
When I read the headline I did a double take - Britain leads the way in online advertising: 40% annual growth dwarfs the rate in U.S. market, where television reigns. Really? The conventional wisdom is that the U.K. lags the U.S. by about 18 to 12 months in adopting...
How luck and timing influence success
James Surowiecki has a great article in the New Yorker entitled The Fatal Flaw Myth that pierces the received wisdom of the airline manufacturing industry. I like the article because it acts also as a cautionary tale. Sometimes the patterns we think we see are only...
My Basecamp feature request: view by person
To manage all the different Work Industries projects I use a web-based project management tool called Basecamp from design firm 37 Signals. 37 Signals are widely known as proponents of simple, clean software. In fact, they say as much on their front page: We believe...
Y oh Y do you bury the lead?
(Cross posted from the AdHack website.) The Age, a solid Melbourne newspaper I used to enjoy reading when I lived there for a few months, has a great article about the shift of power from marketeers to consumers entitled Y oh Y won’t you buy that brand?...
Volume Consultants vs. Quality Consultants
I came across a great post today that relates nicely to the way clients base their decisions on who to hire for a piece of work. As context, often Work Industries competes with larger web consultants. Those larger consultants often have large portfolios of work and...
Web Strategy for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses
Shane Schick writes in the Globe and Mail today that Small businesses need online savvy for success. I read the article and liked it. Profiled is a product I’ve been keeping an eye of for a few months now, Shopify, a simple way for anyone to set up an e-commerce...
The Economist Discovers Peer-Produced Media
A friend and I have an ongoing discussion about technology and change. It goes like this: change opportunities in the organization she works for only really exist once The Economist writes about them. Before that, as far as her boss is concerned, nothing noteworthy...
Creating Passionate Users, Notes from Audio
Update: Here is a link to the original post on Kathy Sierra’s blog about her talk, Creating Passionate Users. Via a roundup post of audio and video stuff to hear / watch on the pretty-much-always-excellent 37 Signals blog, Signal vs. Noise, I came across an...
Oxo Reinvents Kitchen Devices
My tongs, the tongs that I use almost every day, are Oxo tongs. They are wonderful tongs. I use them on the stove, when roasting in the over, on the barbecue grill. I also use them to serve guests. I use them for salad. When cooking and serving, my tongs act as an...