January, 2008

Postful - email to snail-mail

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Of course, they avoid saying "snail mail" - but these folks offer to turn your email into an actual (physical, like you can hold in your hand) letter.

It wasn't that long ago that "mail" meant the physical kind by default, instead of the other way 'round...

Anyhow, cloud-computing (i.e. having your data and services reside somewhere "out there" rather than on your desk) gives birth to its antidote here - a service that pulls stuff (correspondence in this case) out of the cloud and delivers it into the hands of non-cloud-connected recipients.

The truly mind-bending part is that firing up a lot of technology at both ends and the middle is perceived as easier than getting out a pen, paper, stamp and envelope (where'd I put those stamps...?)
Link



Finding power outlets at the airport

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Thanks to Boing Boing for this one:
AirPower Wiki has up-to-date info on where to plug in your laptop at various airports.
If you don't have access to a lounge (I use AA's Ambassador) or there just isn't one (like at Bradley, which I use regularly), it's great to know where you can get power.
Begs the question - why is WiFi so much easier to deal with than simple electricity?

Link



More on presentations: Guy K talks with Garr Reynolds

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Guy Kawasaki has a Q&A with Presentation Zen's Garr Reynolds here.
Definintely a good intro to the PZ approach, if a little light for regular followers of the PZ site.

Here's a sample:

Question: How did we get to this place where most presentations suck?




Answer: There are many reasons. First of all, presenting exceptionally well isn’t easy. In fact it’s hard. That’s why we find great presenters—and great communicators in general—so remarkable. They are all too rare. Many professionals simply have never had much practice and just follow conventional wisdom and do it “like everyone else” instead of doing it effectively.

PowerPoint and Keynote are both pretty simple tools, but there has been too much focus on the tools themselves. If people want to learn how to make better slides they should study good books on graphic design and visual communication to improve their visual literacy.

When it comes to designing appropriate visuals, there is a hole in our education. Concerning quantitative displays, for example, very few people have had proper training in how to design graphs and charts, etc. The great master Edward Tufte has written many useful books in this regard.
Link

The new Presentation Zen book

6 Presentation tips from a Steve Jobs keynote

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The ever-interesting site Presentation Zen has some presentation tips culled from Steve's latest;
Briefly:

  1. Develop rapport with the audience.
  2. Give them an idea of where you're going.
  3. Show your enthusiasm.
  4. It's not about numbers, it's about what the numbers mean.
  5. Make it visual.
  6. Save the best for last.


Worth heading over to read the full article, for sure.
Link

McTrendy?

Looking to other continents has always been an effective way to predict what may be on the horizon within the U.S. retail sector. This becomes even more true when dealing with aesthetics and design. The export of the McDonald's brand to European markets has been a long and tedious exercise for the burger giant. Not satisfied with just catering offerings to the significantly different palate of our friends across the pond, McDonald's has been making a concerted effort to not only alter their menu but now their environments. A Parisian design studio was tasked with creating 9 different looks that walk the tight rope of retaining brand identity while overhauling aging environments. Could this signal a new trend in U.S. retail exporting their brands for "freshening" overseas?

McCafe in Germany

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McDonald's in Germany

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McDonald's Milan, Italy

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AdReady — banner ads, automated

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These people claim to have created an ad banner creation and submission engine.

This looks quite similar to what SpotRunner has done with cheap cable advertising.

AdReady has made creating a sophisticated online advertising campaign incredibly easy.
Select a performance ad template and customize it for your business in minutes.
Target your audience, set your budget, and access the web's largest publishers with only a few clicks.
Watch your website traffic and your sales grow while leveraging AdReady's optimization technology.

Create your custom ads at no cost — all you need is a standard AdReady account (which is free).

Minimum campaign is $100, and there are no set-up fees, no minimum term and no contracts.

You pay only for the media campaigns you run — a major credit card is all you need to get started.

You can also upgrade to a premium account, giving you the power of dedicated account management from the AdReady experts.


It's official - banners are commodities.
Link

8 Ideas for Better Slides - Juice Analytics

Juice Analytics has a nice (quick-reading) little set of tips on how to avoid inflicting death-by-PowerPoint on your audience. Here's an obvious, but all-too-needed example:

Bad:

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Better:

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Full article at Juice Analytics



For more on how to use your Power(point)s for good instead of evil, see Presentation Zen.

C is for cash?

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New research into the effects of stimuli on consumer focus reveal a direct link between scents and purchases.

From Canadian Broadcasting Corp:

The mere whiff of a chocolate chip cookie can cause a shopper to stray off-course, abandoning their budget for unplanned, impulse purchases, according to a study on consumer behaviour.

The study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, suggests stimuli that trigger the appetite can cause consumers to opt for immediate pleasures.

"We found that an appetitive stimulus not only affects behaviour in a specific behaviour domain but induces a shared state that propels a consumer to choose smaller-sooner options in unrelated domains," said researcher Xiuping Li, of the National University of Singapore, in the study.

"The findings demonstrated that an appetitive stimulus could induce a general motivational state, called the hot state, which focuses one's attention on the immediate environment."

Two tests involving students at the University of Toronto were conducted. In the first study, participants were asked to select photographs of either food or nature for use in a magazine. Researchers later asked participants if they would prefer playing a lottery that pays out a lower amount sooner or one that pays a higher amount at a later date.

The study found that those who were shown the photos of food were nearly 20 percentage points more likely to select the lottery with the smaller jackpot.

In a second test, researchers found that 67 per cent of women assigned to a room with a hidden cookie-scented candle were more likely to make an impulse sweater purchase, even when told they were on a strict budget. By comparison, only 17 per cent of women in a room without the scented candle decided to make the impulse buy.

The stimulus prompted participants to lose sight of future goals, focusing instead on the present, the study said.

"The scent of the appetitive stimulus led to reduced happiness with remote gains, which implied that participants in a present-oriented state were less sensitive to future values," the study said.

Li noted that retailers might use the findings to create an atmosphere that would entice shoppers to stay longer.

"If retailers want to push their customers to shop more rather than stay longer, they should not only maintain a pleasant environment but also an environment full of temptations and excitement," Li said in a release.

DrupalCon Boston - March 3-6

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I'm excited about this - it's happening at the same time as the AIIM-OnDemand show, so I'll get to go to both:

Drupalcon is being held at the same time/place as AIIM International Exposition & Conference, the largest content management technology conference in North America. Though technically independent of each other, the Boston team is working to arrange some cross-event access. The goal: introduce Drupal to thousands of potential new Drupalers.

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Drupal is a powerful open-source system for building community-based web sites.

We're using it to power this blog, and I've also begun using it to build some in-house utilities for N-GEN.

Here are some projects I've done in Drupal:

Drupal is built in PHP with a MySQL database. I'm running it on Linux but it'll work on Windows and Mac OSX hosts as well. The community is extremely stroing and quite responsive. The system is highly modular, and has inspired me to consider building a website toolkit for our own projects, modeled on the Drupal approach. This is as yet a pipe dream, but stay tuned.

Drupal has been featured in Packt Publishing's CMS awards for several years running, and this year won the Overall Open Source CMS award.

More info here and here.