Making Communications Buzz

New Online Home for Mark McLaren and Making Communications Buzz

2007-05-03T23:14:00.000-04:00

This blog, Making Communications Buzz, has moved to the new McBuzz Communications website located at www.mcbuzz.com.

There will actually be two blogs at mcbuzz.com: the main blog on the mcbuzz.com home page, and a new blog by Mark McLaren, the Web Marketing Pro Blog, for technical and advanced topics.

Come check it out!

Search Optimized Press Release Template: Web Marketing Meets "PR 2.0"

2007-03-28T14:35:00.000-04:00

When it comes time to do a press release about your new or existing business, here's a resource that may come in handy. A PR firm called SHIFT communications has created a template for a Web 2.0-optimized press release they call a Social Media News Release template.

This is brilliant self-promotion on the part of SHIFT. It's also a very useful resource for businesses and Web marketers alike. The traditional press release pales in comparison.

We need to think in terms of optimizing all our marketing and PR materials from the outset, not after the fact. And with a blog-enabled website, you can put every piece of marketing and PR you create up on your site the same day.

SHIFT communications
Social Media News Release template
(see callout at bottom right under "Accelerators")

Web Marketing: Does "Monetizing" a Website Hurt Its Credibility?

2007-03-21T15:50:00.000-04:00

Somehow, when I am taken to a page like the one below and bombarded with ads, I become skeptical about the website's motivations and its reliability as a source of useful information.

Mark McLaren and National Workplace Napping Day: Why Google Search Marketing Is Not Yet a Science

2007-03-14T15:31:00.000-04:00

When Making Communications Buzz got off the ground in April of last year, my second post was about National Workplace Napping Day. It was intended to be humorous, but now I guess the laugh is on me.

Here is one example of why search engine marketing is not a science.

Part of search engine marketing is search engine optimization, which means doing things that make web pages show up at or near the top of search engine results, like adding descriptive, keyword-rich text to the page, getting the right web sites to link to that page, making sure the site is listed in directories like the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org) and so forth.

When you hire an "SEO" or search engine optimization company like McBuzz Communications, you expect that they know all the right things to do to get your web pages to show up high in search engine results.

But there are always a few more variables to account for than even the best SEOs know about. Sometimes this leads to unexpected and, depending on your perspective, humorous results.

Take Mark McLaren (me) and National Workplace Napping Day, for example.

Do a search on Google right now for "National Workplace Napping Day". You will find this blog, Making Communications Buzz, on page one. Cool, eh?

No, not really.

This suggests that, out of about 459,000 web pages indexed by Google, Mark McLaren and the one-day-old McBuzz Communications blog had something important and authoritative to say about National Workpace Napping Day — on April 4, 2006 — and I was able to do so in a pithy 138 words.

Read the post and judge for yourself.

Now search Google for "Mark McLaren". You will find this blog on page 7, or maybe 8. Who's counting? Until a few weeks ago, Making Communications Buzz was basking in the glory on page one. What happened? I have no clue. As someone who makes a living telling people how to optimize a web page — among other things — you would hope that I could explain this.

My response is that, like Saturday Night Live's Middle-Aged Man says about his beer gut, I'M WORKING ON IT!

But can anyone explain why Making Communications Buzz should be on page one of Google results for "National Workplace Napping Day"? Some matters in SEO are just beyond comprehension. But this makes it fun and keeps SEOs on their toes.

And until I figure it out, look for me on page one of Google results for "Saturday Night Live's Middle-Aged Man".

Realty Blogging: Marketing a Business Using a Blog Gains Focus

2007-03-12T12:29:00.000-04:00

The idea that you can market a business using a blog is beginning to catch on.

[This blog, Making Communications Buzz, has moved to the new McBuzz Communications website located at www.mcbuzz.com.]

If you are considering a redesign of your business website, don't take another step until you have looked at the possibilities opened up by "blogging" software like WordPress. WordPress is evolving into a fairly sophisticated content management system. It allows you to edit and update a website with no knowledge of HTML or any other code, and it's great for search engine visibility. I will return to this topic in coming posts.

The purpose of this post is to point out that marketing a business using a blog — and the information available to help you do so — is becoming more specialized. This is a great thing for anyone with a business to promote, and it's another reminder that blogging is not just for teenagers and techno-geeks.

A new book, Realty Blogging: Build Your Brand And Outsmart Your Competition (McGraw-Hill 2007) is reviewed by Gayle Pollard-Terry in the print edition of the Los Angeles Times (Sunday, March 11, 2007). Authors Richard Nacht and Paul Chaney are marketing consultants who offer clients direction in setting up and maintaining a blog to promote their business. Nacht and Chaney specialize in serving real estate businesses.

Their website, realtyblogging.com, calls itself "A Network of Blogging Evangelists Writing On Effective Real Estate Blogging". Good idea!

In coming years, we will see innumerable analogous sites, networks of "Blogging Evangelists Writing On Effective [Your Field Here] Blogging."

Here are the bullet points from the cover of Realty Blogging. This is what a blog can do for your business, according to the authors.

Build your brand
Find new customers
Attract major search engines
Dominate your market niche

The first three are well within reach for anyone who starts and regularly maintains a blog. The fourth may require a bit more than a blog to accomplish.

Before you can dominate your market niche, you have to define your market niche, and this is something owning and operating a business blog will help you to do.

Perhaps one of the greatest things you can do to promote your business — whether it's a small privately-owned shop, a start-up looking for funding, or a major corporation — is to perfect a 60-second "elevator pitch". This is the quick summary you give to anyone when you first meet and they ask, "What do you do for a living?"

A strong elevator pitch goes a very long way toward advancing marketing goals. It grabs people's attention, and states clearly and succinctly what sets your business apart from the competition.

By blogging regularly about your industry, you can learn to define what you do in concrete terms that your customers and your peers understand. Blogging about your industry, and your business's place in it, is like honing your elelvator pitch. You think about it before you "put it out there," and once you put it out there, you see how people react. If you get blank stares, don't worry! Tweak the material, find something more interesting to say, and try again.

It's trial and error all the way. Persistence pays off. Just be sure to ask for — and listen to — feedback.

If you are not getting any feedback, then start sending people links to your blog posts via e-mail. Ask them directly to read a post and to let you know what they think. Tell them you would really appreciate their feedback!

And ask them to forward the link to anyone else that might be interested, because you plan to write more about this topic in the future and you would like to incorporate their thoughts and address any questions they may have in your next post.

Marketing a business well is an ongoing conversation will customers, prospective customers and peers. Blogs make it possible to extend that conversation around the block, or around the world, all for the cost of web hosting and a little setup. Amazing!

Let me know what you think!

Philadelphia Pet Adventures: Business Blog Brings Buzz

2007-02-26T17:34:00.000-05:00

McBuzz Communications recently helped Philadelphia Pet Adventures of Philadelphia, PA, launch a new website and blog.

It's a local business looking for visibility in search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.com. Both the owners happen to be great writers, and this certainly helps when it comes to creating web marketing buzz using a blog. But it's possible to use a blog to gain search engine visibility even if writing is not your favorite thing to do.

There are many other possible sources of content for a blog. If you know someone who has expertise in a particular area relevant to your business, they may already have written a short article or presentation for some other purpose. Ask if you can use all or part of their work on your blog -- with attribution. There you have it. If you can find just one of these already-existing sources each month, you have half of what you need to keep your blog going.

Another excellent way to generate content for your blog is to do a short survey or review of existing resources. People are always looking for a good tip. There are lots of good resources out there, but who has time to look for them?! If you have experience with a particular kind of resource that's helpful in your line of work, sit down for a few minutes and compile a list, with a brief note saying what's good about each one. You don't have to love writing to be able to do this. Just imagine you are telling a good friend about it.

Here's one example from a fantastic blogger at Intuit named Avinash Kaushik. See his "Recommendation #6: Best WordPress Plugins" in that post. It's a list of additional features for blogging software called WordPress. The subject matter is not important. Just check out how Avinash gives a run-down of available resources.

This example is loaded with keywords (terms) pertaining to publishing a blog, which is great for search engine visibility with respect to those keywords, AND it positions Avinash's blog as a resource for people working in this field, which makes others want to link to his blog / website. In short, it's what good "search engine optimization" is all about.

Mark McLaren, McBuzz Communications and Buzz Marketing: A New mcbuzz.com Is In The Works

2007-02-23T10:56:00.000-05:00

Mark McLaren and McBuzz Communications will be launching a new blog-based website at mcbuzz.com in the next several weeks — hopefully no longer than that!

Here's a preview:

The current Making Communications Buzz site and the McBuzz Communications site will be combined at www.mcbuzz.com.

"Buzz Marketing" has never been easier thanks to free content management software from WordPress and others. The new mcbuzz.com will be a resource for any business or organization seeking to get their message out on the Web. In some respects, "Buzz Marketing" is becoming so easy that, if I do my job right, McBuzz Communications will become obsolete.

See you soon at the new mcbuzz.com!

Lexmark Printer Problem Now Visible in Yahoo Search Results

2007-02-20T10:44:00.000-05:00

The previous McBuzz Blog post, Lexmark Printer C522n Does Not Print OpenType fonts (aka Open Type fonts) - An Update (No Problem On Yahoo), noted that Yahoo search results for "lexmark opentype" did not include any of my posts on the topic, which was odd given that these posts have been at the top of page one in both Google and MSN.com results for many weeks.

When the McBuzz Blog first started posting about the fact that the Lexmark C522n printer does not print Open Type fonts, these posts were at the top of Yahoo search results. But after a few weeks, they disappeared altogether.

I also noted that Lexmark was, at that time, a top sponsor in Yahoo's Sponsored Links on page one of Yahoo search results for the word "printer", something Lexmark would have paid quite a bit of money for. This was probably coincidental.

And a few days after my "No Problem on Yahoo" post, the McBuzz Blog rocketed to the top of Yahoo's results for "lexmark opentype". What happened to prompt this? I have no idea.

Lexmark Printer C522n Does Not Print OpenType fonts (aka Open Type fonts) - An Update (No Problem On Yahoo)

2007-02-14T15:59:00.000-05:00

The Lexmark C522n Color Laser Printer does not print OpenType fonts (also called Open Type fonts) on either an OSX Macintosh or a Windows XP PC. The Lexmark Corporation has never responded to my e-mails pointing out that fact — with either a real solution or an explanation.

Today a reader commented that he or she did not have trouble printing TrueType fonts with the Lexmark C522 , which is not the problem. (Updated Review: Lexmark C522n Color Printer Does Not Print Open Type Fonts) The problem with the Lexmark C522 is that it does not print Open Type fonts. For a brief discussion of the difference between the 3 most common font formats, see this post: Installing New Fonts, Continued: What's the Difference Between TrueType, PostScript and OpenType Fonts?

This is a problem with the Lexmark printer. It is a Lexmark printer problem. It is not a memory problem. It is not an operating system problem. It is not a printer software installation problem.

Making Communications Buzz remains at the top of Google and MSN.com search results for "lexmark opentype" and "lexmark open type".

It is interesting to note that Making Communications Buzz is nowhere to be found in Yahoo search results for "lexmark opentype" or "lexmark open type".

I'm not sure why this would be the case. If you search for "printer" on Yahoo, you will see that Lexmark is listed prominently in the sponsored links on the right side of the page.

That posts on Making Communications Buzz — pointing out what appears to be a serious problem with the Lexmark C522n printer and OpenType fonts — are nowhere to be found in Yahoo search results for "lexmark opentype" or "lexmark open type" and Lexmark is listed prominently in the sponsored links on the right side of the page when you search on Yahoo for "printer" is probably just a coincidence. At least one can hope.

Google's Success Can Mean Web Marketing Success for Your Website and Your Business

2007-02-02T11:13:00.000-05:00

Google is a wildly successful company. The New York Times and many others reported yesterday that Google's fourth quarter revenue rose 67% over last year. In the two and a half years since the company went public, its stock has risen from $85 a share to just over $500. (Not only are they profitable, but they recently ranked #1 on Fortune magazine's list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For.)

Most of Google's revenue comes from its brilliantly simple business model of serving up advertisements along side free search results. This model would not work if the search results were no good. The supercharged minds at Google are constantly improving their search engine's ability to crawl and index the Web. The search engine is so good, Google can actually show fewer ads with their search results than they did when they first began doing so, "but those ads are more relevant to users, are clicked on more frequently, and hence, generate a better return for both Google and for advertisers." (New York Times, Feb 1, 2007)

Here's why Google's success is good news for anyone who wants to do marketing and PR for their business using their website.

Google can offer more relevant ads to its users because it "knows the meaning of a web page." The better you and I are at putting detailed content on our websites - and at getting other sites to link to ours with instructive links, in a format that search engines like Google can read - the better Google is at bringing the right traffic to our websites.

For the same reason Google excels at placing relevant ads next to search results, it excels at giving search users results that are highly relevant to the terms or "keywords" they plug into the Google search box.

The thing to keep in mind is that bringing the right traffic to your website may not be as difficult or expensive as you think. The "right traffic" is site visitors that want what your business or organization offers, as opposed to what your competitors or peers may have to offer.

You can differentiate your product or service from your competitor's by doing three things:
1. Figure out exactly what sets your product or service apart. This is a critical part of any business plan. There are many resources available to help you with it, including the U.S. Small Business Administration.
2. Write it down using clear, descriptive language. (If you are not a writer, you can have someone give you a hand with this.)
3. Put this language into your PR and marketing materials, including your website.

Some of your competitors are not actively improving their website on a regular basis. If you are actively improving your website, then you automatically win that race hands down.

As for competitors that are actively improving their websites, you can gain an edge by using plenty of descriptive language - and putting it where Google can find it. The goal is to attract searchers using 3 or 4 words in their search: for a pet sitting website, "pet sitting Wyndmoor PA" rather than just "pet sitting" or even "pet sitting Wyndmoor".

The best way to do this is to use a blog or other form of content management system (CMS) on your website so that you can get new content up on your site quickly and frequently, without having to know HTML or other code. There are plenty of blog software and CMS packages available for this purpose - many of them free.

The other part of this equation is to foster links to your website from other websites - preferably links that say something about your product or service. For example, a link that says, "Learn more about Philadelphia Pet Adventures pet sitting services" is far more instructive to the Google search engine than a generic "click here".

It's also important to use the same language your customers use whenever you talk about your products or services, because that is the language they use when they do a search. This point is fitting material for a follow-up post.

As Google continues to improve its search capabilities, you can benefit by giving Google plenty of rich text on your website to work with. The beauty of this approach to web marketing and website success is that you are already creating the kind of content you need for your website every time you create a brochure or newsletter, or write a press release, or even when you write an e-mail to a client or prospective client talking about your products or services.

Leverage the power of readily available, easy-to-use blog or CMS software to get that content up on your website the very same day.

The Google "crawler" - Google's automatic text reading and indexing machine - will come by soon enough to see what it is that sets you apart from your competition, and the next time anyone does a search, Google will let them know about you.

Web Marketing Buzz: Microsoft Knows The Importance, But Not The Howto

2007-01-26T11:16:00.000-05:00

Web marketing means using new media like blogs and Wikipedia to promote your cause, service or product. Here are two cases where Microsoft shows us how not to do Web marketing.

A Wake-Up Call to Microsoft's PR Team

From the January 1, 2007, edition of The New York Times:

Several bloggers reported last week that they had received Acer Ferrari laptops, which can sell for more than $2,200, from Microsoft. A spokeswoman for Microsoft confirmed on Friday that the company had sent out about 90 computers to bloggers who write about technology and other subjects" that could be affected by the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft's new operating system. Read the story...

Microsoft Offers Cash for Wikipedia Edit

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology Writer Tue Jan 23

Microsoft Corp. landed in the Wikipedia doghouse Tuesday after it offered to pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced Web encyclopedia site. Read the story...

News travels fast these days.

"www" in a website address: Why it matters to website success - continued

2007-01-25T13:28:00.000-05:00

Here is a follow-up to my post about why "www" in front of your domain matters to the rank of your website in search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN ("www" in a website address: Why it matters to website success).

If you want the code to use on your website host server to change all incoming requests for URLs without the "www" into URLs with the "www", simply put the following into your .htaccess file. The first 2 lines are a comment to remind you what the code is for.

# If an address without the "www." prefix is entered,
# this will redirect to the page with the "www." prefix.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

# That's it!

Here is a good resource on .htaccess files:
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/htaccess

Also, remember to change other settings and code on your website that involve the domain and whether it has "www" in it or not.

For example, WordPress blog software users should be sure to make the following changes.

Before adding the above code to the .htaccess file, WordPress users must be sure to login to their blog admin panel and go to Options > General.

Under *WordPress address (URI)* enter the address with "www." in front if it is not already there.

Likewise for the *Blog address (URI)*.

If these addresses don't have "www." in them, the .htaccess rewrite will cause an error. Other blog software, such as Typepad, is likely to require a similar change.

("URL" stands for Universal Resource Locator and "URI" stands for Universal Resource Indicator". For most purposes, the two terms are interchangeable: both mean "web address".)

If you use Google Site Search, you will need to make sure that the domain used in the Site Search code has "www" in it.

After adding the rewrite code to my .htaccess file, Google Site Search I use on McBuzz.com at http://www.mcbuzz.com/search.shtml did not work. The results page was blank. To make it work again, I went into the HTML and changed
input type="hidden" name="domains" value="mcbuzz.com"
to
input type="hidden" name="domains" value="www.mcbuzz.com"

The fact that Google Site Search requires the "www" is further evidence, it seems to me, of the importance of standardizing your URL to include "www". (You could try to standardize it to not include "www", but that seems -- well, not as standard, and thus harder to implement.)

If you have questions or comments about using the .htaccess file, or about the importance of standardizing your domain as either "www.example.com" or "example.com", please post your comment below or contact me through the McBuzz Communications website.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Web Marketing is Essential to Business: Blogs Are Essential To Web Marketing: Therefore...

2007-01-23T13:17:00.000-05:00

Blogs (Weblogs) are an essential part of any Web Marketing strategy. If you are not using a blog as part of your Web Marketing strategy, you need a very good reason not to. And you should still plan to use a blog within a few years.

Used effectively, a blog brings traffic to your website and it raises your website's ranking in search engines.

Blogs are an extremely economical way to market your business.

The Phoenix Business Journal recently highlighted the rise of the blog as a marketing tool.

The article notes that people are experiencing tremendous results by using a blog to market their business. As one new blogger in the Real Estate field puts it,

Blogging is easy, low cost, international in reach, and it increases your credibility while compelling you to become a student of your own profession.

Check out the article to learn more:
Blogging Makes Inroads as Effective Marketing Tool
Phoenix Business Journal
December 22, 2006

Contact McBuzz Communications to find out how easy and inexpensive using a blog for web marketing can be.

"www" in a website address: Why it matters to website success

2007-01-16T17:18:00.000-05:00

"www.mcbuzz.com" and "mcbuzz.com" -- what's the difference? None, right? Put either one in your browser's address window and you go to the same website.

No. Not exactly.

Business owners and others who want to be found on the Web should be aware that although http://www.mcbuzz.com and http://mcbuzz.com take you to the same website, www.mcbuzz.com and mcbuzz.com are, strictly speaking, different domains.

Strange as this may sound, here is why it matters to web marketing & website success. The two domains can have different rankings in a search engine like Google. Not only that, one can actually detract from the rank of the other.

How? Because when another website links to yours, it will either use www.example.com or example.com in the link URL (the web address).

Incoming links are a critical part, some would say the most critical part, of a web page's ranking in Google.

So, if half of the sites that link to yours use "www." and half do not, the positive effect on your site's ranking will be divided between the two domains.

Put another way, if all of the sites that link to your website use "www." in the link URL (http://www.mcbuzz.com instead of http://mcbuzz.com, say), then all of the positive effect on your site's ranking will be assigned to www.mcbuzz.com and its subpages.

There are several ways to make sure that visitors to your site all go to the same domain. You can start by making sure that you, or whoever works on your website, is consistent in creating URLs for the site. That way you ensure, at least to a significant degree, that incoming links to your site will all have the same form.

There are also some technical solutions you can use to change non-www. addresses into www. addresses on your website's host server. These are slightly complicated, "don't-try-this-at-home" kinds of things that I will write more about in the future. In the meantime, contact me through the McBuzz Communications Web site and I will help you with those. No purchase necessary.

Web Marketing, Website Design Gone Bad: Adobe Acrobat Reader in Your Web Browser is Vulnerable to Malicious Attacks

2007-01-09T17:34:00.000-05:00

Mark McLaren and McBuzz normally blog about web marketing, website design, etc., but here's an alert regarding Adobe Acrobat Reader: Versions earlier than version 8 are vulnerable to malicious code attacks whenever you open a PDF in your web browser.

See the eWeek website for more: Security Flaws Haunt PDF, OpenOffice Users.

There is a simple solution. Go to the Adobe website and get version 8 of Adobe Reader.

del.icio.us : Make Your Bookmarks Accessible on the Web, Share Them with Others, See What Others Are Bookmarking

2006-12-23T01:18:00.000-05:00

If you haven't checked out del.icio.us bookmarks yet, do so! It's a great service that allows you to keep your Web bookmarks in one place — that you can access from any computer with an Internet connection.

Just as cool is the fact that you can search del.icio.us to see what other people are bookmarking.

This can sometimes be a better way to find things on the Web than a simple Google search, because you can almost always look at bookmarks created by people who know more about a topic than you do.

When you are searching for info on a topic but you don't really know enough about it to know the best keywords to use, you can start by browsing through a collection of publicly available bookmarks.

Check out the del.icio.us Guide to Discovering Bookmarks for more ideas on how to research a topic using bookmarks.

Here are my mcbuzz bookmarks on del.icio.us

Here's another nice feature: You don't have to let everyone see all your bookmarks. If there are some bookmarks you would rather not share publicly, you just check a box to make those bookmarks private.

How to Blog About Faulty Products: Lexmark Printers and Open Type (.otf) Fonts

2006-12-18T19:07:00.000-05:00

My complaint regarding a flaw in the Lexmark C522n Color Printer -- that it does not print OpenType fonts (also called .otf or "Open Type" fonts) -- has created some blogger buzz.

Making Communications Buzz is getting significant traffic from search results on Google, Yahoo and MSN.com regarding this subject. Try searching "lexmark opentype" or "lexmark .otf" to see why.

These searches -- using only the words "lexmark" and "opentype", for example -- don't even mention that there is a problem. The mere association of "lexmark" and "opentype" takes you to my post as the top result. (Google and similar sites ignore capitalization for search, so "lexmark" and "Lexmark" -- or "opentype" and "OpenType" -- are essentially the same.)

Here's a challenge for search marketers and for anyone with a blog: Many people looking for information about OpenType fonts will spell it like this: "open type fonts" -- with two words for "open type".

Search on Google for "lexmark doesn't print open type" and you find my Making Communications Buzz blog post. What's more, Google offers you a link at the top of the page that asks, "Did you mean 'lexmark doesn't print opentype".

But, if you use the same keywords in Yahoo or MSN.com, my post is nowhere to be found.

This is unfortunate. It will probably not occur to some people that OpenType might be one word, and they will not find confirmation that a problem exists with their printer.

Hence the interjection above (also called .otf or "Open Type" fonts). This is one way to try to show Yahoo and MSN that searchers may be using the latter spelling. Let's give it a few days and see what happens.

Updated Review: Lexmark C522n Color Printer Does Not Print OpenType Fonts

2006-12-15T14:33:00.000-05:00

Thanks to a McBuzzBlog reader, we have confirmation that the Lexmark C522n Color Printer does not print OpenType fonts. (See the comment at the bottom of this post: Lexmark Color Printer for $299 - Read This Before You Buy .)

OpenType fonts are a common font format for use in both Macintosh and Windows computers. (Installing New Fonts, Continued: What's the Difference Between TrueType, PostScript and OpenType Fonts?)

A new laser printer that does not print OpenType fonts is seriously flawed.

The fact that a new Lexmark C522n Color Printer does not print OpenType fonts is unacceptable, regardles of how you plan to use the printer. Selling -- or reviewing -- the Lexmark C522n Color Printer without disclosing the fact that it does not print OpenType fonts is negligent at best. I have spent about 10 hours doing tests of my own, talking to Lexmark tech support by phone, corresponding by e-mail, and talking to the supplier I bought it from, CDW.com , in an effort to resolve the issue.

As mentioned in the previous post, it took Lexmark about 10 days to get back to me after I sent them an e-mail through their Web site. Phone tech support was completely unhelpful. They told me I needed to buy more memory for the printer! The printer comes with 128MB of memory, which is a lot by any standard. More importantly, memory has nothing to do with printing OpenType or any other font.

The McBuzzBlog reader who found that the Lexmark C522n Color Printer he bought had the same flaw wrote me by e-mail directly with his name and more detail about the circumstances, so I have good reason to believe what he says is true. He also notes that Printerbase Ltd, whom he bought the printer from, has now agreed to take it back. Printerbase Ltd told him that Lexmark is aware of the problem.

CDW.com is definitely aware of the problem. Whether they were before I told them about it, I don't know. They agreed to take back the Lexmark printer, pay for the shipping and refund my money. In general, I have found CDW to be a responsive and responsible company. I will be interested to see whether they continue to sell the Lexmark C522n Color Printer after this.

If Lexmark is aware that the C522n Color Printer does not print OpenType fonts, why are they selling this printer anywhere other than a swap meet -- with a big "SOLD AS IS" sign on it?

What's more, if they are really aware that the C522n Color Printer does not print OpenType fonts, why doesn't their tech support department have an immediate answer when someone asks about it? But, in truth, what could they say? -- other than, We're sorry and we have no explanation for why we continue to sell it that way without informing customers up front.

Will I ever buy a Lexmark printer again? Not likely.

Internet Addiction: (News Flash) Spending More Time Online May Not Lead to Increased Productivity

2006-11-14T11:42:00.000-05:00

Here's a quote to file under the category, "You know you're in trouble when...":

Scores of online discussion boards have popped up on which people discuss negative experiences tied to too much time on the Web.

This is from an article on today's washingtonpost.com titled, "Caught in the Web: More People Say Heavy Internet Use Is Disrupting Their Lives, and Medical Experts Are Paying Attention".

More and better technology has been a major contributor to increases in US productivity despite widespread downsizing, but some of the same technology can also be a seductive diversion that makes you feel like you are being productive when you are actually just downloading more new "gadgets" for your "desktop" -- or "widgets" for your "dashboard" -- or polishing your personal profile on MySpace or Yelp.com.

Care to comment about it on my blog?

Lexmark Color Printer for $299 - Read This Before You Buy

2006-11-11T00:09:00.000-05:00

I recently purchased a Lexmark C522 Color Laser Printer. Sounded like a great deal at the time, but it appears it was too good to be true. Now I'm thinking I may never buy a Lexmark again.

The C522 got favorable reviews, in some cases better than the comparable Hewlett-Packard C3600. The 3600 costs around $599; the Lexmark C522 is on special right now on a few sites like CDW.com for $299.

I have a black and white HP LaserJet that I bought in January 2000 and I use it all the time. The extent of maintenance over 7 years: replace the toner. The thing works just as great today as it did 7 years ago.

But that $300 savings was enough to get me to try a Lexmark. It did not take long, however, to discover a major shortcoming in the Lexmark: it seems it does not print OpenType fonts. [See the previous post(Installing New Fonts, Continued: What's the Difference Between TrueType, PostScript and OpenType Fonts?) for a quick rundown on OpenType fonts.]

I spent about an hour and a half on the phone with Lexmark tech support, and they were no help at all. So I guess I should say I wasted an hour and a half.

The tech guy actually suggested that the problem is due to the fact that I need to buy more memory for the printer before it will recognize OpenType fonts.

The printer comes with 128MB of memory. My 7 year old HP LaserJet has 8MB of memory, and it recognizes OpenType fonts just fine!

So the tech guy is either woefully misinformed and making up pseudo-solutions on the spot, or I bought a printer that requires me to buy an accessory in order to do something every new printer should be able to do right out of the box. And, Lexmark memory cards start at around $200!

I'm still waiting to hear back from tech support. It's a simple question: does the C522 print OpenType fonts or not?

I know enough about how printers work to know that memory is not the cause. OpenType fonts are usually about 50KB in size. You can get a whole lot of 50KB fonts into 128MB of memory.

Lexmark, you have not heard the last from me! I'm all about Word of Mouth Marketing and the BUZZ that comes with it.

Installing New Fonts, Continued: What's the Difference Between TrueType, PostScript and OpenType Fonts?

2006-11-08T11:56:00.000-05:00

TrueType (TT), PostScript (PS) and OpenType (OTF) use different patented mathematical methods of creating font shapes. It's all highly technical, and, thankfully, nothing you or I really need to know!

PS is the oldest of the three, but there have been several upgrades so it works just as well as TT or OTF.

You can use TT, PS and OTF fonts together in the same document.

Of course, if you ever plan to send something to a commercial printer (or a print shop like FexEx Kinko's or Minuteman Press), it's always good to ask them what they suggest you use. Different commercial printers and print shops have different preferences.

Installing PS fonts on a Windows PC used to be more complicated than installing TT fonts (Windows 95, 98, ME and NT), but this is not the case with more recent versions of Windows (2000, XP and Vista).

OpenType fonts are a significant improvement over TT and PS for two reasons:

1. They work on both Macintosh and Windows machines, whereas you need to buy a Mac version of a TT or PS font for your Mac, and a Windows version of a TT or PS font for your Windows PC.

2. OpenType fonts often come with expanded character sets that include things like small caps, special or alternate characters, and such.

In general, the instructions in this post: How to Install New Fonts on a Windows Computer should be sufficient to install new fonts on a Windows PC. If you would like more information about font types and installation, see Fonts: Which Format Should I Order? and related pages on fonts.com.

Want to Try Installing Fonts on Your Windows PC? Why Not Try These Free Fonts From MisprintedType?

2006-11-07T18:13:00.000-05:00

Phil Dunn of qualitywriter.com offered this tip as a comment to my last post (How to Install New Fonts on a Windows Computer).

More free stuff: some artsy fonts for PC and Macintosh. Go to MisprintedType.com. My favorite: DisgustingBehavior.

How to Install New Fonts on a Windows Computer

2006-11-06T12:22:00.000-05:00

Clients often ask how to install a font on a Windows Computer. Here's how. These instructions may seem complicated at first, but once you have done it a few times, it's a snap.

1. Save the font file or files to your hard drive in a place that you want to keep them. (I usually create a new folder in My Documents called Fonts McBuzz Installed, or something like that.)

2. If the files are in a ZIP file or folder, you will need to UNZIP this. Find the ZIP file on your hard drive. Right click on the ZIP file and select "Open with WinZip" or "Extract" or "Unzip" -- whatever you normally use to open a ZIP file/folder. If you need help, try this article: Zip or unzip a file - Microsoft Office Online.

3. Now go to Control Panel from the Windows Start menu and select Fonts. (Alternatively, open or double click on My Computer. Find Control Panel. Double-click on Control Panel. Find Fonts. Double-click on Fonts.)

4. With the Fonts folder open, go to the menu at the top of the window and select File > Install New Font...

5. In the dialog box that opens, use the Folders window to navigate to the folder where you saved the font files (or where you opened the ZIP file with the font(s) in it).

6. Select the fonts by clicking on their names. (You can select more than one by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on each one.)

7. Check the box next to "Copy fonts to Fonts folder".

8. Click OK.

Your fonts are now installed and should be available in the font menu of your word processing or graphic design software. You may need to close your word processing or graphic design software program and then reopen it before you can use the new fonts.

Searching for Ways to Achieve Basic Website Success? Tips from Mark McLaren and McBuzz Communications

2006-10-17T18:50:00.000-04:00

McBuzz Communications owner Mark McLaren recently wrote an article called "Achieving Basic Web Site Success May Be Easier Than You Think", published in Dynamic Business, a publication of SMC Business Councils in Pittsburgh, PA.

It's a quick read and well worth it, especially for small and medium-sized businesses.

Here's the gist: there are four very simple things you can do to increase the visibility of a Web site without spending more than a few hundred dollars. If you or someone at your company knows basic HTML, you can do it yourself.

By "visibility" I mean the likelihood that a Web site will show up in the results of a search done on Google, Yahoo or MSN.com. As I have mentioned in this blog before, more and more, people are using online search instead of the phone book.

If your business has a Web site, you ought to be able to find it at or near the top of the results when you search for the name of your business on Google, Yahoo or MSN.

If your business has a common name, include the name of the city or region it's in.

If this sounds useful, check out the article. Go to the SMC Business Councils Web site to download a PDF of the September '06 Dynamic Business magazine. The article is on page 20 of the actual publication (page 26 if you are looking at the thumbnail numbers in Acrobat).

Latest Blogging Buzz: HitTail - SEO for Blogs - Bring More Visitors to Your Site

2006-10-13T17:34:00.000-04:00

Tracking the search terms people use to find your Web site or blog can tell you a lot more than what the most popular terms are. It can tell you about the "long tail", the more unusual or unique sets of keywords that lead people to your site through Google, Yahoo and MSN.com.

If you haven't yet heard of the long tail, you will soon. Connors Communications has figured out a way to use the long tail to your advantange when you decide what to write about in your blog, and what unique terms or keywords pack the most punch in terms of bringing visitors to your site. Their free service -- that's right, free -- is called HitTail. Here is a brief introduction: HitTail: A Practical Alternative to Paying for Search Hits.

This is an area of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that is just beginning to be explored. Services like HitTail, and the companies that create and use them, are going to be well positioned as the technology continues to be developed. Definitely worth checking out. Or let McBuzz Communications show you how to use HitTail to your advantage.

Real Blogs, Fake Blogs: Explaining What a Blog Does Is Not Easy

2006-10-10T17:44:00.000-04:00

There is still a huge gap between what techno nerds can do with the latest Web applications and what the average Internet user knows how to do. In fact, there is a huge gap between what techno nerds know is available as a Web application and what the average Internet user knows is available.

I have nothing against techno nerds. I aspire to be one someday.

The real source of this gap, of the gap-age, if you will, the gapnicious state of Web knowledge, is that most techno nerds are not all that interested in explaining the latest in Web capabilities to the rest of us folks.

McBuzz Communications thrives on this fact, because we can (usually) explain the latest techno-rific electronic communications buzz to laypeople who just want to get something done. They want to put gas in the car and turn the key, not spend all day trying to understand internal combustion.

Jim Rapoza makes this point with respect to blogs: How to Spot Fake Blogs.

Who knows what a real blog is? Not many people. But even an accomplished writer and tech whiz like Rapoza has to cut his discussion short in order to avoid a lengthy technical exposition of "pings" and "trackbacks" and such. My guess is that any layperson who reads a post like Rapoza's (i.e. someone who uses the Internet every day, but who does not know "how it works") will get very little out of the post.

This is the paradox of the new Web (Web 2.0, Consumer Generated Media, the next generation of interactive online tools and experience) because the whole idea is that now every person can create her own world online, and be part of a network of like-minded individuals, with all the new tools available.

This gives the individual more input into, and influence on, mainstream media and the marketplace -- of products as well as ideas. But in order to realize this newfound potential, people have to know how to use the Web 2.0 technology.

From what I hear, it's all second nature to today's teens. But for most of us born before the mid '80s, it's all still pretty confusing.

MySpace? YouTube? Facebook? Who? What?

The workplace is going to be transformed by all this new media, according to information technology experts at Gartner, Inc. See articles Consumer Tech Is Next Wave of Enterprise IT and Age Does Matter, Says Gartner.

Execs and IT managers may think things like Instant Messaging, Skype, impromptu Web conferences and peer-to-peer file sharing pose risks to security, but these "Consumer Oriented Technologies" are here to stay. Gartner recommends getting ahead of the curve instead of left behind.

And in the meantime, let McBuzz Communications know if there's something we can make simple for you.

Links for 2006-10-07

2006-10-07T00:53:00.000-04:00

A good article about Vivisimo / Clusty appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review yesterday:

Clusty clouds Google's grip on Internet search
By David Conti

---------------------------------
Pittsburghers, here's a great (free) resource for Internet / Web / technology news. Go to the Pittsburgh Technology News website for more information and to subscribe to their weekly news digest. An invaluable resource and, from what I hear, an inexpensive and effective place to advertise.

---------------------------------
And here's proof that you can be named one of "Pittsburgh's Most Helpful Websites" without giving any thought to usability: Pittsburgh Business Calendar.org -- an excellent resource, but hard to read!! Please, Pittsburgh Business Calendar, take a few minutes to replace the default Times New Roman (serif) font with a sans serif font like Verdana, Arial or Helvetica -- and put some white space around your text blocks.

Some months ago I wrote to the Pittsburgh Business Calendar at Info@BusinessCalendar.Org and offered to clean up the site's usability and look-and-feel in exchange for a mention at the bottom of the page, but I never heard back from them. Maybe I'll try again.

Promising News: BizJournals May Have Corrected Its Search Watch Service Blunder

2006-09-21T10:21:00.000-04:00

Last month I wrote about the fact that a free online news service I had been using for years was summarily cancelled without notifying subscribers: BizJournals Abandons Search Watch E-mail Alert Access: A Disappointing Decision and Poorly Handled Since I had blogged touting the service only a few weeks earlier (Free News Alerts from BizJournals.com: Better Business News), it was an even greater disappointment.

It now appears that BizJournals.com has reinstated the free service.

I have not gotten a new Search Watch e-mail lately, but the links in previous e-mails now take me to complete stories instead of teasers like they did in August -- a promising development. I'm waiting for my next Search Watch e-mail before getting too excited.

News in Your E-mail Inbox That You Can Still Read for Free

2006-08-24T11:04:00.000-04:00

If you would like a good source of news via e-mail that is still free, check out the New York Times Online.

You can receive a daily e-mail of headlines and brief summaries with links to full stories. Set preferences for the sections of the paper you want to read about: Top Stories, World, U.S., Business, Technology, etc.

BizJournals Abandons Search Watch E-mail Alert Access: A Disappointing Decision and Poorly Handled

2006-08-24T10:38:00.000-04:00

This week BizJournals.com shot itself in the foot by discontinuing access to stories identified by the Search Watch feature of its e-mail alert service.

You can still signup for the service, select keywords and receive notice of stories in the 41 local business journals around the country that contain those keywords, but unless you subscribe to the print edition in the city where the article was published, you can't read the story.

Assuming you would like to read the stories that you get alerts about -- and that stories might come from any of the 41 journals -- you would need to shell out $4,059.00 ($99 x 41) a year for the privilege.

This is disappointing, but what was really short-sighted on the part of BizJournals.com and its parent, American City Business Journals, is that they made the switch from free access to Search Watch stories to the prohibitive fee-based "system" without telling customers that they were going to do so.

That is decision-making characteristic of a poorly run corporation. I experienced it from Aldelphia Cable in 2000 and 2001. And I experienced it from Verizon broadband before I switched to another provider.

For Now, Forget About Those Free E-Mail News Alerts From BizJournals. They Were Summarily Nuked

2006-08-21T10:04:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote extolling the virtues of BizJournals Business News E-mail Alerts: Free News Alerts from BizJournals.com: Better Business News. Well, I spoke too soon. BizJournals took away that privilege without even letting people know they were going to do it.

Here's my e-mail to the subscription manager in Pittsburgh.

---,
We spoke about e-mail alerts a few weeks ago on the phone and by e-mail. At that time, articles in other bizjournals besides Pittsburgh (I am a Pittsburgh print subscriber) were available to me when I got an e-mail alert.

This morning it appears this is no longer the case. I received the usual e-mail alert based on my search criteria, but any story I click that is not a Pittsburgh story is not accessible when I am taken to the respective Web site.

Since it would be unreasonable to expect me to subscribe to every bizjournal around the country, the purpose of these alerts appears to have been thwarted by your new subscription policy.

Unless bizjournals intends to offer individual articles for purchase for some nominal fee -- which, in my opinion, would still be a highly unsatisfactory solution -- or perhaps to offer a special subscription that would allow me access to articles other than those in the Pittsburgh edition -- why would I want to receive alerts any longer?

As a matter of public relations, it also would be fitting for a business professional-oriented publication like yours to do a bit more to keep subscribers in the loop regarding these changes. It does not seem like bizjournals values its customers much if it is willing to make dramatic changes to subscription policies and their relationship to your system of e-mail alerts without making any effort to let customers know what changes to expect.

For someone like me who has used the alerts for many years and considers them a valuable resource -- so much so that I recommend them to friends and customers all the time -- the unannounced termination of access to stories outside of Pittsburgh is a slap in the face.

I should add that after using the alerts for about a year, I decided to become a print subscriber. It seems plausible that those I have recommended the service to over the years might have done the same. Obviously, I won't be recommending the service any longer.

Please let me know whether bizjournals has plans to review the current subscription policy with regard to access to articles.

Another case of corporate bureaucracy acting without regard for its customers.

Your thoughts?

Local Merchants Can Now Offer Coupons for Free on Google

2006-08-15T12:19:00.000-04:00

In an effort to promote its local search service, Google will provide coupons from local merchants that list their businesses on Google Maps.

According to Marketing Sherpa, the conversion results of coupon offers using Google Local search was poor in at least one study. But there are clear advantages to making sure that your business is fully listed in Google Maps. For one thing, it appears to help your business' Web site in Google's search engine rankings.

To sign up for an account or for more information, go to the Google Local Business Center.

More on this in today's New York Times online: New at Google: Local Coupons

Google Maps and Google Local were, at one time, distinct. Google Maps can be incorporated into other Web sites in various ways. Google Local search results serve up maps from Google Maps. In practice, you can no longer find a different portal or search page called "Google Local" on the Google Web site. (Click on the "more" link on the Google home page and then on the "even more" link. Find the "Local: Find local businesses and get directions" link on that page and it takes you to Google Maps.)

Registering a Domain Name? Don't Pay More Than $10

2006-08-10T14:04:00.000-04:00

I just got a very slick-looking HTML e-mail from the marketing department at Network Solutions: "SUMMER SALE: Get 3 or more domain names for just $15 each!"

If you plan to register a domain name, read my post, "Whois Hijacking": Stealing Domain Names After They Are Researched, and check out Omnis.com and GoDaddy.com.

Their prices are under $10 per domain name, all year long, even during those cold winter months. How do they do it? I'm not sure. Everyone knows the price of domain names is seasonal, just like the price of fresh produce and clothing.

Free News Alerts from BizJournals.com: Better Business News

2006-08-07T13:21:00.000-04:00

Here's a very useful service, a free source of news information that you can customize to suit your interests. It's from bizjournals.com. BizJournals' parent, American City Business Journals, publishes 41 local business weeklies around the country.

Just tell bizjournals.com what kinds of stories you want to hear about and you will receive an e-mail each week summarizing the results. I have found the quality of stories to be much better than what you typically get from Google Alerts or Yahoo! News.

You can receive general alerts about a particular business sector like Health Care or Manufacturing. And you can receive a notification any time there is a story with a keyword you supply.

Track a business: "Exxon Mobil", "IBM", whatever. Or track any topic you like: "e-mail", "butter", "robotics", you name it. Be sure to use alternate spellings like "email" to capture all the relevant stories.

This is an extremely useful feature that allows you to receive a whole host of e-mail notifications regarding stories that appear in any of the 41 local BizJournals editions. The stories you have access to via these notifications tend to be of a much higher quality than what you will get from Google or Yahoo! because the latter do not filter their results much.

Most of the alerts I have ever gotton from Yahoo! tend to be highly commercial: they are practically -- if not plainly -- advertisements for some product or other. There's no way I have time to sift through all those results to find things I really want to read. Google is not much better.

BizJournals stories, on the other hand, are never endorsements for a product, and they are not biased toward some product or other. They are just quality business news reports.

And, given the nature of the BizJournals publications, you can get an inside look at a local business environment that's hard to find on a regular basis in national pubs like the Wall Street Journal or any of the business news magazines.

Go to bizjournals.com and register. (It's free. No strings attached. They won't give out your information.)

After registering, on the bizjournals.com home page, pick any city using the drop-down menu under "Choose Another Market".

Now you should see in the main navigation a button called "SUBSCRIBE". Rollover "SUBSCRIBE", and you'll find "Email Alerts". Select the types of news you prefer, add any keywords you like, and you are ready to go. You can change your preferences or unsubscribe at any time.

More Free Stuff: This Time It's College Education at Carnegie Mellon University

2006-08-03T16:26:00.000-04:00

Continuing with the "All things free" theme...

Ever wish you had paid more attention in Freshman Physics? How about French? Econ? Chemistry?

Well, now you can turn back the clock and take online courses created by the faculty at world-class Carnegie Mellon University -- for free! Check it out. It's called the Carnegie Mellon University Open Learning Initiative. Right now there are eleven online courses to choose from.

Conspicuously absent are courses in Computer Science. Carnegie Mellon's graduate program in Computer Science was recently ranked #1 in the nation by U.S. News and World Report.

But then I guess we are not talking about graduate level course work in the Open Learning Initiative. Maybe some day.

"Whois Hijacking": Stealing Domain Names After They Are Researched

2006-08-03T10:19:00.000-04:00

This is a hot story that deserves attention. Ever wonder if someone might be "listening in" when you check to see whether a domain name is available or not? They may well be, so be careful when you check availability of a domain name.

What happens is that unscrupulous people monitor a site that offers a domain name search, and then they go ahead and register the domain name before the person doing the search can do so.

Next they do something called "domain tasting", posting a Web page at that hijacked domain to see whether it is getting any traffic coming from search sites like Google and Yahoo! If it is, they will keep the page and put all sorts of ads and links to other sites there -- basically a trashy form of Web advertising.

Here's the best story I have found on this: Whois Hijacking My Domain Research? by Larry Seltzer at eWeek.com.

I spoke to someone at Network Solutions about this, and she assured me that there is no way anyone can monitor domain names researched on their site. Network Solutions is one of the largest domain name registrars, and presumably their employees have better things to do than to try and hijack any of the hundreds of thousands of individual research requests entered into their Web site every day.

For more information about domain registration, check out the WHOIS page at Network Solutions, which functions just like the search on their home page when you enter a domain name.

Want to register a domain name? Check prices at sites like Omnis.com and GoDaddy before you pay $34.99 a year at Network Solutions.

Trends in Online Communication: Not Getting Your Message Across? Insert a Gigantic Graphic Image

2006-08-02T17:01:00.000-04:00

McBuzz is still cruising the Web in search of a crystal clear explanation of RSS for non-techies. Robbin Steif does a good job of giving a basic explanation of RSS by emphasizing the fact that most people, even most techies, really don't care what RSS stands for. They need to know what it is good for and how to set it up in a reader. That's it.

But I'm still looking for a nice cogent explanation to use at parties.

Here's one trend I've noticed on the Web. If you are having trouble explaning something, just insert a gigantic graphic image somewhere on the page.

Examples: RSSPECT, Wikipedia, others?

So here you go. It's RSS. Just look at it! Isn't it obvious?

BlogHer Conference 2006 - Women Bloggers Unite

2006-07-28T16:13:00.000-04:00

If you happen to be in San Jose, California, tomorrow, check out the BlogHer Conference 2006, a conference for women bloggers.

Of course, there's plenty going on online to compliment the non-virtual event.

Wondering whether it's for real? Just have a look at the list of sponsors.

This blogging thing just might catch on. You go 2.0 gals!

Another Free Service: Online Office Collaboration Suite ThinkFree.com

2006-07-28T14:35:00.000-04:00

ThinkFree Online is a suite of Microsoft Office-style software available online (another manifestation of burgeoning "Web 2.0" services) akin to services available from 37signals (Making Communications Buzz post a few weeks ago:

Collaboration Online: It's Web 2-thiness)

This service is free.

(Remember to backup your files. It's always a good idea to keep multiple backups. Don't assume someone else is taking care of this for you.)

New Collaboration Features Give ThinkFree Online Users Expanded Options for Document and Content Sharing

Hosting Microsoft Office Suite with ThinkFree Server Edition

Free 411 Service for Your Cell Phone (or Any Phone)

2006-07-28T12:01:00.000-04:00

Speaking of Free Stuff, did you know there is a free telephone directory information (411) service you can call from any phone, including your cell phone?

It's called 1-800-FREE-411. That's the number you dial: 1-800-FREE-411 (1-800-373-3411).

You can get the lowdown on their Web site: FREE411.com

You have to listen to a short advertisement before you get the listing you want. I have been using the service for about a year, and it has never failed.

The Web site says 1-800-FREE-411 will never give out your phone number, which, in my experience, is true.

Given that Verizon Wireless charges about $1.50 per 411 call, I am more than willing to listen to a short ad. (Verizon Wireless 411 : 800FREE411 :: Microsoft : Google)

Maybe Making Communications Buzz — The McBuzzBlog — should be renamed Where to Find Lots of Free Stuff.

Looking for Fonts? The Price is Right (Free)

2006-07-26T11:42:00.000-04:00

You can never have too many fonts. Being a good designer usually means knowing which ones to use — and how to avoid using more than just a few in one design.
Free Font Resources courtesy of Fonts.com

Good font Web sites:
FontHaus

fonts.com (a much better font search engine than FontHaus)

Here's a very cool font identification tool that finds the name of a font based on its characteristics:
Identifont

PDF Software: Alternatives to Adobe Acrobat

2006-07-25T17:04:00.000-04:00

Check out this product (PDF Converter 3). It creates PDFs just like Acrobat but costs only $99.
http://www.nuance.com/pdfconverter/professional/

I'm wondering if there is a catch...

Here's an endorsement of sorts:
http://www.nuance.com/news/pressreleases/2005/20050527_pdfcodie.asp

Here is a general article that calls Adobe Acrobat a "Cadillac" and PDF Converter 3 a "Ford". Given the repair records of both makes, I'm not sure this is the most helpful analogy:
An Embarrassment of Riches: How To Choose a PDF Creation Tool
http://www.pdfzone.com/article2/0,1895,1948642,00.asp

Here are two more resources for PDF creation. Both sound promising and very inexpensive. (One is free.) I have not tried either one.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator [a free download]

http://www.docudesk.com/deskPDF_Main.asp

Links for 2006-07-18

2006-07-18T22:03:00.000-04:00

Here's a great free service that will create a PDF from an RSS feed: RSS 2 PDF.com You can probably think of all kinds of uses, the simplest of which is to take the feed link from any blog you like, plug it into RSS 2 PDF, and voila, blog in a box.

Here is Business Week talking about "Lessons in Corporate Blogging: What your company can learn about keeping an online journal from the likes of Dell, Microsoft, and Apple".

And here are the Web 2.0 Awards. Some very good stuff.

How to Empty Your Cache in Internet Explorer and Firefox Web Browsers

2006-07-13T10:30:00.004-04:00

Sometimes correcting a problem with a Web site or Web page is just a matter of emptying the "cache" of the Web browser you are using. The cache is a collection of temporary files saved on your computer by the browser.

Your browser saves these files so that it doesn't have to download them every time you visit the same page. "Caching" of files like graphics and code makes Web pages load faster, which is always a good thing.

But sometimes you may go to a Web page expecting to see an update or some other feature that fails to appear. When this happens, the first thing you should do is empty your browser's cache.

Firefox users can easily install a button that allows them to empty their cache with one click: Firefox Clear Cache Button

It takes about 60 seconds to install the button. Make sure you have Firefox version 1.5 first.

If you don't have Firefox, check it out. It's a nice alternative to Internet Explorer. It installs quickly and is less vulnerable to hackers than Internet Explorer.

For Internet Explorer users, here's how to empty the cache:

Emptying Your Cache in Internet Explorer
1. With Internet Explorer open, go to the Tools menu at the top of the window.
2. Choose "Internet Options... "
3. Select the "General" tab.
4. Under "Temporary Internet files" click the "Delete Files..." button. (Do not click the "Delete Cookies..." button.) In Internet Explorer 7, under the "General" tab, instead of "Temporary Internet files", find "Browsing history" and click the "Delete..." button. Then click on "Delete Files..." under the "Temporary Internet files" heading, then skip to step 6 below.
5. In the Delete Files dialog box, uncheck the "Delete all offline content" check box.
6. Click "OK" [in IE7 click "Yes" and then "Close"]. This may take a few minutes if you have not done it before. (You will see the hourglass instead of the mouse arrow. Wait patiently until the hourglass turns into an arrow again.)
7. Click "OK" to close the Internet Options dialog box.

The Delete Files button empties the cache in
Internet Explorer

And here's how to empty the cache in Firefox if you don't want to install the button:

Emptying Your Cache in Firefox 2.0
1. With Firefox open, go to the Tools menu at the top of the window.
2. Choose "Clear Private Data... "
3. The "Clear Private Data" dialog box opens
4. Check the "Cache" box.
5. Be sure to uncheck all other boxes.
6. Click on the "Clear Private Data Now" button.

The Clear Private Date button (under Tools > Clear Private Data...)
empties the cache in Firefox 2.0. Be sure to uncheck all other
boxes besides Cache before clicking the button.

Emptying Your Cache in Firefox 1.5
1. With Firefox open, go to the Tools menu at the top of the window.
2. Choose "Options... "
3. Select the "Privacy" panel.
4. Select the "Cache" tab.
5. Click on the "Clear Cache Now" button.
6. Click OK.

In Firefox 1.0, the Options dialog box looks a little different (see below), but the steps are essentially the same.

Firefox Tools menu > Options...
Select the Privacy panel.
In the Cache section, click the Clear button.

Local Search: Google is the New Phone Book, Yellow Pages

2006-07-12T16:53:00.000-04:00

Google is the New Phone Book and Yellow Pages. More than half of all Internet users use Google to find local businesses. And, according to Search Engine Watch, twelve Google patent applications were published last week, including seven that focus on geographical information and local search." So it's clear that Google knows what people are looking for.

Take a minute to type the name of your business — or your employer's — into Google. Is the company's Web site at the top of the results? It should be. If the company has a common name, add the location after the company name and search again. Still not there? If not, don't be surprised. This is true for many business Web sites.

Remember, more and more people will be using Google — and Yahoo! and MSN — to find local businesses, so if your site doesn't show up at or near the top of the list, send me an e-mail and I'll fix it for you. (e-mail link at right under Contact Mark McLaren)

Minimalist Header Brought To You By...

2006-06-26T14:56:00.000-04:00

For most of today, The McBuzzBlog featured a stark header with no images behind "Making Communications Buzz", due to the fact that an AT&T t3 line somewhere south of Pittsburgh was out of commission. Images for The McBuzzBlog are hosted at http://markmclaren.us, whose server connects to the Internet via that t3 line.

Some ISPs are more succeptible to outages than others. This is the third time in 12 months that this particular ISP has gone down, crippling the host of markmclaren.us Fortunately, mcbuzz.com is not on the same server, nor (obviously) is The McBuzzBlog itself.

It's always a good idea to have Web, or at least e-mail, hosting from two different suppliers who are not using the same ISP.

The mcbuzz.com supplier is pair Networks, a host who I have had very good luck with. Their customer service is quite good, although you cannot get them on the phone on the weekend.

Web Standards Solutions Are Not Practical or Helpful

2006-06-15T09:26:00.000-04:00

Warning: This is a rant. But if that's not what blog is good for, then...

Dan Cederholm and Jeffrey Zeldman are two of the best in the web development business. Their websites are beacons of cool, standards-based design.* Their books, like Cederholm's Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook and Zeldman's Designing with Web Standards, are best-sellers.

But, when I sat down this morning to start building a new website for a client, I picked up each one and, after a few minutes, put it back on the shelf in frustration.

I want to use a basic, two-column XHTML layout. But it's not in either of these books.

In Web design, XHTML is the way to go, each of these authors proclaim. No question about it. XHTML means designing without the old, outmoded use of tables in a layout. It separates formatting from content. Better accessibility. Loads faster. Makes formatting much easier to modify. Displays better in mobile devices.

Great, right? Books with titles like the above should come with code for a complete two-column layout, and they should explain how it all works.

Unfortunately, what these books come with amounts to a long discussion of how parts of some kinds of two-column layouts work, sort of, except when they don't.

Why? Because there is still (to my knowledge - and definitely not in these books) no standard XHTML two-column layout that works well in most popular browsers.

There are two-column layouts that work well for masters like Cederholm and Zeldman, and their books attempt to explain why these two-column layouts work well. But, as a less skilled developer like me (no slouch, mind you!) finds as soon as he tries to adapt one of these two-column layouts to a particular design - by including (god forbid) a vertical border on one of the columns, say - the layout goes south. In one browser or another, things on the page don't line up. Gaps appear. Etc.

A vertical border is not that much to ask, but using one between two columns calls for coding "hacks" (ad hoc code to make the layout look the same in popular browsers like Internet Explorer and Netscape).

And, if you add something else to the layout after you get your vertical border problems straightened out, well, that could require even more hacks. Meanwhile, your billable hours are wasting away....

Are Cederholm and Zeldman to blame for this state of affairs. Certainly not.

The real problem lies in the fact that browser makers like Microsoft and Mozilla won't agree about how to handle Web coding standards. This rant should really be directed at them.

Cederholm and Zeldman are stars because they have figured out how to use XHTML and make their sites look great in most browsers. I wish they could do more to make my XHTML sites do the same. A tall order, I admit.

*The look and feel of The McBuzzBlog draws heavily from one of several Blogger templates Dan created.

Google vs. Clusty/Vivisimo: Search Done Often vs. Search Done Right

2006-06-12T13:25:00.000-04:00

Google is approaching a 60% share of all online search, according to Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch (citing Hitwise).

As I blogged a few weeks ago (Is Google the Only Game in Town for Search?), Google's dominance is something that can't be ignored. But what makes Google so great?

At an Entrepreneur's Growth Conference sponsored by the Duquesne University Small Business Development Center last week, Vivisimo CEO Raul Valdes-Perez spoke to attendees about his search engine company's "search done right" strategy, which aims to exploit a major shortcoming of the Google interface.

A key problem with search results, as Valdes-Perez noted, is limited screen space. A Google results page offers 10 items, plus sponsored links.

How many of these are really what we are looking for? Maybe two or three? Maybe none? How do you find out? You almost always have to click on the links themselves to find out. The text clippings under the headings are rarely all that enlightening.

So you click on a link, wait for a page to load, scan the site... Not what you want? Back to the results page to try again. And so on, ad nauseum. It's far from ideal!

The Vivisimo interface offers a simple but potentially huge improvement: results are listed in categories. The categories appear as folders on the left side of the page. Click on a folder to see results that fall under only that category. Check it out. Vivisimo calls its engine Clusty. There's also a search window on the Vivisimo site itself.

You can 'Clusty' the Web, News, Images, Blogs. The Clusty-powered blog search combines results from several different blog search engines. If you have used any of the blog search sites, you know there is massive room for improvement in this area.

You can also customize Clusty search. This is a topic for a future post.

The more I think about it, the more the superiority of the Clusty results page over the Google results page seems apparent. Why would you want to waste time digging through a mash of (relatively) unorganized search results when you can eliminate whole categories of results in an instant?

The name "Google" sounds far better than "Clusty". Critics say the latter sounds too much like "crusty", "klutzy", the name of a goofy little train engine, etc., etc., as Valdez-Perez acknowledged. But, as far as search results go, who cares about the name? It's not all about branding, is it?

Of course, there's the more serious question of how search engines determine a page's ranking. Are Google's methods far superior to the competition?

It's a question worth considering.

Here's a post from Search Engine Watch ('Search: Thy Name Is Google') that notes "increasing dissatisfaction with the quality of search results" even as Google increases market share.

Vivisimo has focussed much of its marketing and development on enterprise search, creating custom search solutions for large businesses and other organizations like United Press International, RAND Corporation and the US Government (FirstGov.gov).

There are some sponsored listings on their Clusty.com results pages, but nothing to the extent of Google AdWords or Yahoo! Sponsored Search.

I'm very interested to see where Clusty/Vivisimo goes from here. Definitely one to watch. Try Clusty and let me know what you think!

Collaboration Online: It's Web 2-thiness

2006-05-23T13:54:00.000-04:00

While many of us wait for yet another invitation from Google (along with countless thousands of others, I am still waiting for an invitation to sign up for Google Analytics), this time for the honor of signing up for Writely, check out a similar suite of Web 2.0 products from 37signals.

This is what Web 2.0 is all about: Web applications that allow you to post a document that others can view, edit and comment on; manage a project; organize documents; group chat for businesses... All of which can be stored in secure, password protected server space.

Why didn't someone think of this stuff sooner? Because they were busy inovatively defending their various monopolies in court.

Maybe Google should hire away some folks from 37signals to help them get up to speed with Writely.

Search Engine Visibility: All About Name Dropping?

2006-05-23T09:48:00.000-04:00

Let me start by saying that this post has nothing to do with the Da Vinci Code. But I want to mention this because "Da Vinci Code" has a huge "buzz" index right now, so a link to anything having to do with "Da Vinci Code" will surely help to elevate the standing of Making Communications Buzz, aka The McBuzzBlog and McBuzz Communications.

Is this shameless self-promotion through name dropping? Yes. Is there any other reason for name dropping? This instance of name dropping is supposed to be humorous.

I mention the Da Vinci Code because one of the things McBuzz Communications does is help clients increase their Web site's ranking in search engines, and, at present, linking to Web sites with a high rank or having sites with a high rank link to you is one of the best ways to do this.

Web logs like Making Communications Buzz are, among other things, a new kind of tool to increase a site's rank because they are updated frequently and they usually include features that automatically tell search engines when they have been updated. Integrating a blog into a standard, more static, "brochure-like" Web site makes the standard site more visible to search engines.

When a blog covers topics with a strong "buzz" index (i.e., lots of people are searching for that content on Google, Yahoo! and MSN) and many highly-ranked blogs link to that blog by referring to it in their posts, or with a permanent link, that blog gets a high rank. A good example is Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion blog. And if you want excellent info on Web marketing and customer conversion, you can follow the rise in rank of Increasing Your Web Site's Conversion Rate, the LunaMetrics Web log by Robbin Steif.

As Wikipedia notes, name dropping is generally seen in a negative light. Question is, where do you draw the line between name dropping on the Internet and talking about important stuff (or at least stuff people think is important) with the good intention of spreading the word or exploring a particular topic for the benefit of readers?

XML Sitemap Generator - What a Great (Free) Tool!

2006-05-15T23:21:00.000-04:00

Someday soon this blog will bifurcate into a techie blog and a customer- and prospective customer-facing blog. Till then, here's a techie entry.

Thanks to Robbin Steif and her LunaMetrics Blog for this hot tip. Google Sitemaps is a service from Google that allows anyone to create a specially formatted sitemap file containing all the URLs in a Web site. Google crawlers use the file to index the site. Yahoo! offers a similar service as part of their "Submit Your Site for Free" submission process.

These services are particularly useful for sites with dynamically generated pages.

But how do I create such a file? And who has the time, you ask? Well, (here's the tip) that's where the very clever crew at xml-sitemaps.com come in with their free XML Sitemap Generator.

I tried a few other online sitemap generating tools before using this one, and it pretty much blows the others away. Compare the simplicity and ease of use of the xml-sitemaps.com Generator to the free Google Sitemap Generator and its lengthy page of instructions. Does this mean Google will be buying xml-sitemaps.com soon?

The xml-sitemaps.com site includes all the instructions you need to be able to create and upload a sitemap for Google and for Yahoo! in a matter of minutes. So check it out.

Is Google the Only Game in Town for Search?

2006-05-12T10:12:00.000-04:00

When was the last time you heard someone say, "If you want to find out more, just 'Yahoo!' it"?

Right. Never. Why? Because nearly 50% of all searches done on the Web use Google. The runner-up is Yahoo!, accounting for about 22% of all searches. (Source: Nielsen//NetRatings )

That is why, when we talk about "optimizing" a Web site for search engines, what we (more than likely) really mean is "making it show up on page 1 or 2 of Google results for certain keywords".

These results are what's known as "organic" search results, because no money is paid to the search site (Google, Yahoo!, MSN) to make your site show up at the top. Your ranking depends solely on the computer algorithmns used by the search site.

Google's algorithms favor sites with content that matches the keywords being searched and that are linked to by other highly-ranked (authoritative?) sites. Google does not screen its organic results, so sometimes searches can have unanticipated or disturbing consequences.

There is another option when it comes to search marketing on the Web: Paid Search Analysis. One form of Paid Search Analysis uses Google AdWords.

In general, here's how Paid Search works: You bid for the rights to specific keywords or key phrases on any number of search sites. When someone does a search using your keyword, your site is listed as a sponsoring link, and you pay again whenever someone clicks on that link.

A consultant like McBuzz Communications analyzes how your keywords are "converting" (bringing people to your Web site) and recommends changes to overall budgets, increases or decreases to keyword bids, additional keywords and keywords that should be dropped.

These results have nothing to do with how your site ranks in organic search results.

Whether you choose to focus on search engine optimization for organic results, or on paid search — or on a blend of the two (probably the best choice) — it makes sense to go with Google. Just remember, 50% versus 22%.

Are Blogs Really "Essential" to a Good Career?

2006-05-08T12:41:00.000-04:00

Here is an article from the Boston Globe: "Blogs 'essential' to a good career". The title tells you everything you need to know. Question is: Is this true? Answer: Well, no. Not exactly.

There are still plenty of other ways to advance your career: networking by going to conferences or joining the Lion's Club or whatever — the old-school stuff.

Sure, even if you are a computer programming genius or a successful entrepreneur, it's good to engage in a variety of networking forums and events.

But, here's the conclusion I have come to: You can start blogging now, or you can start a few years from now — when most of your competitors have already got it wired.

Web Site Marketing: Define Your Terms

2006-05-01T11:18:00.000-04:00

Site optimization: work in progress.
Here is a Web site home page with a fundamental SEO shortcoming: The term of utmost importance to the site's content, project alignment, is used twice on the home page but it is not clear what the term means: The Outset Consulting Group Home Page (Sample).

Sometimes, however, there is a quick fix when it comes to defining terms — and also optimizing a site for crawlers like Google's Googlebot. On this site, project alignment is defined (more or less) on an interal page: The Outset Consulting Group: Value Proposition.

The quick fix: Make the term project alignment on the home page a link to the Value Proposition page: The Outset Consulting Group Home Page (Revised).

This does two things:

1. It helps human site visitors find the definition of project alignment immediately. (Whether or not this defnition is an effective one, and whether it should appear on the home page itself, are different questions, to be addressed in another post.)

2. It provides a link within the site for the term project alignment, which shows crawlers like Googlebot that the term is significanct.

Using a Second Monitor With Your Laptop

2006-04-30T20:51:00.000-04:00

This post is what's know as "off topic" since it's about computer hardware, not digital communications or the Internet, but check it out anyway.

As further confirmation that computing is going mobile, 2005 was the first year laptop computer sales exceeded desktop sales.* But let's face it, most laptop screens are still smaller than we would like.

If you favor a laptop over a desktop, but you would like a bigger screen, don't throw out that desktop PC monitor just yet. Did you know that Windows XP makes it easy to hook up a second monitor to your laptop?**

This more than doubles the available space on your PC's virtual desktop whenever you use your laptop at home, or at some other fixed location where you might keep a monitor — on a desk in your office, say. (I'm not recommending that you take the second monitor with you when you leave the house or office.)

By hooking up a second monitor, you can display one or more programs on your laptop screen and other programs on the second monitor. No more hiding your e-mail window so that you can read a Web page or vice versa.

You can view Web pages on one screen and write e-mails and Word documents on the other — or whatever combination of programs you like. I find this very useful. Try it and let me know what you think.

* Source: Newsweek print edition, February 13, 2006
** I don't own a Mac laptop, but I am pretty sure you can do the same with a Mac just as easily.

How to Hook Up a Second Monitor to Your Laptop Using Windows XP
Open the big door on the back of your laptop and you will find a socket where you can plug in a monitor. Plug it in. (Be sure to plug in the monitor's power cord as well.) Turn on the monitor. Now turn on your laptop. If your laptop is already on, that's no problem, just restart Windows.

Once the laptop is on (or restarts), click on the Windows Start menu (in the lower left corner of the Windows desktop). In the menu, find Control Panel. Under Control Panel, select Display. In the Display Properties dialog box that opens up, click on the Settings tab.

Here you will see a window with two monitor icons. Click on icon number 2. If the actual second monitor is on the right of your laptop, make sure the monitor icon #2 is to the right of monitor icon #1.

Now you can play around with the settings for the two monitors. Under Display, you should see the words "(Multiple Monitors)". Under Screen resolution, select "1024 by 768" if it's an option (or you can choose a higher resolution if you like).

Now click on icon number 1. Under Display, you should see the name of your laptop display. Under Screen resolution, select "1024 by 768" if it's not selected.

Now click the Apply button at the bottom of the Display Properties dialog box.

On the external monitor's screen, you should now see a "desktop" background that resembles your laptop's screen background.

With your mouse, grab the top of the Display Properties dialog box and drag it over "into" the external monitor's screen. It should move right over. See it there? If not, send me a comment (below).

Click OK to close the Display Properties dialog box. Now open your e-mail program or a Web page in your Web browser or whatever. In order to move one of these windows over to the second screen, you have to first click on the "Restore Down" button.

The "Restore Down" button. Click this to make
the application window resizable and draggable.

When this button shows the two little window icons, you can click it to make the window resizable and draggable. Click the "Restore Down" button. Now you can resize the window by moving your cursor over any edge of the window until the cursor turns into a black double arrow. Hold down the mouse and you can drag any edge of the window to make it bigger or smaller. You can "grab" and move the whole window by clicking and holding down your cursor on the bar across the top of the window.

Grab and drag any window to the into second screen. Once the window shows up on the second screen, you can click the same "Restore Down" button (which has become the "Maximize" button) to maximize the window so that it fills the entire screen.

The "Maximize" button. Click this to make
the application window fill the screen.

NOTE: Here's a little caveat. This might be hard to picture, but you'll understand what I mean if it actually happens to you. If you are working in a program — any program, Microsoft Word, say — and you have all your windows on the second monitor when you shut down your laptop, that is where they will be the next time you boot up. Cool, eh?

Yes, except when you boot up again without the second monitor attached -- because you will not see any program windows at all.

There's a quick and easy solution. Just go back to using the laptop display without the second monitor. Open the Display Properties dialog box (right-click on the desktop and select Properties, or go to the Windows Start menu > Control Panel > Display). Click on the Settings tab. Select the icon for monitor number 2, and then uncheck the box next to "Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor". Click Apply or OK. Your missing program windows should now be visible on the laptop screen.

If this second monitor trick floats your boat even half as much as it does mine, you may want to keep your old PC monitor around a bit longer — at least until WebTV actually arrives.

Next Generation of the Internet: What's in It for Businesses?

2006-04-27T12:12:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, Newsweek magazine featured a great article on "The New Wisdom of The Web." Here's the gist: there's a whole lot of new stuff happening on the World Wide Web. In fact, it's looking like the second Internet boom.

What's happening and how can businesses benefit?

No one is really sure what it means yet, but the latest developments in online communication (often called "Web 2.0") have the attention of media moguls like Rupert Murdoch, who opted in in a big way last year when he paid $580 million for a Web site called MySpace.

One of the most significant features of the new Web is user generated content. Sites like MySpace allow users to share an online profile with the world that incorporates digital photos and video, blogging, podcasting, online chat and other, more esoteric eMaterial. Naturally, it's all very appealing to teens and young adults.

But why would Murdoch care about a huge online teen hangout? Because there is much more at stake than just meeting new friends. User generated content is reshaping all kinds of media. Go to news Web sites like BBC Online and The New York Times and you see the signs: the BBC Online home page now has a prominently displayed link to "See what's popular and new". Check out this page; it's all about user input. The Times home page includes a feature box of links for Most Popular news stories "E-mailed, Blogged, Searched."

RSS is another new development, a very useful tool to be discussed in another post.

Why should businesses care about these trends? One conclusion might be that a static, brochure-like Web site is no longer going to be enough to set your company apart from the rest. The new Internet offers innumerable ways to reach out to, and interact with, customers and potential customers.

The good news is that many of the new tools available are easy to use.

If you are skeptical about all this, you are not alone.

For now, it's still safe to say that a company Web site should be:
1. Easy to find
2. Stocked with useful, well-organized information, including easy-to-find contact information

These two things are hardly Web 2.0 characteristics, and they should be addresses first and foremost.

Let me know what you think.

Flash Detection: Who Cares?

2006-04-26T09:34:00.000-04:00

My version of Firefox (1.0.7) has only Flash Player 5 installed, not Flash Player 7. Shortly after switching to Firefox from Internet Explorer about a year ago, I noticed that some Web sites didn't display, or only partially displayed, in the Firefox browser. At first, this was annoying, but when I realized what was going on, I found it to be a useful tool, because it was a quick way to find out if sites used the latest version of Flash and — more significantly — how they chose to inform a visitor that their site requires the latest Flash Player.

Some sites don't bother to use Flash version detection at all. That is, they don't tell you that you need the latest Flash Player to use their site. All you see is a blank, or partly blank, screen. Here's one example: the WebSideStory site.

This is what the WebSideStory home page looks like in a browser without Flash Player 7. There's no Flash detection at all. No message displays to tell me I need to get the latest version of the player — nothing.

You can see the top of the page: the logo, utility naviagation, search box and horizontal navigation bar, but the dropdown menus for the horizontal nav don't work unless you have Flash Player 7. A totally useless interface.

I guess decisionmakers at WebSideStory.com think that unless I can figure out that I need Flash Player 7 on my own, or I work for a company where someone else will figure it out for me, they don't need my business.

There are many professionally-designed sites out there like this. For a while, I took the time to inform webmasters at these sites of their erroneous ways. But I soon realized that no one really thinks it's a problem. Am I the only one?

E-mail: how many lines is too many?

2006-04-24T21:48:00.000-04:00

Here's an idea for a new electronic communications product: E-mail software that remembers the reading habits of the people in your address book. What for? Have you noticed that some (all?) of the people you send e-mail to never seem to get to the end of your messages?

The e-mail software idea is meant to be humorous and somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but my point is not humorous at all. In general, people really don't read e-mail very carefully, and it is a mistake (sometimes a serious mistake) to assume that they do.

Knowing this, we can save ourselves some grief by using a few simple techniques of business e-mail style:

1. Put anything important at the very beginning of an e-mail message.

2. Never make "paragraphs" more than 2-4 lines long. Usually this means keeping them to about two sentences in length.

3. Separate paragraphs with two returns (two blank lines) instead of just one. This helps the reader to stay focused.

For more about effective e-mail communication, see "Increasing the success of your business communication," by PR consultant Elizabeth Robinson.

Some of us are "old school" when it comes to e-mail (if there can be such a thing), writing paragraphs, complete sentences, lines and lines of text.

This is also known as setting yourself up for a rude awakening, because (am I wrong about this?) very few people read more than the first paragraph of an e-mail.

There are exceptions. You know, it's the folks who reply to an e-mail by including the original message and then addressing each point, one by one, underneath a snippet of the original.

In the e-mail software I'm envisioning, these conscientious souls will earn the label (R) for "Reader" in your address book, and the software will allow you to send them messages that are as long as you like.

E-mail "skimmers", on the other hand will earn the label (DE) for "Don't even think of writing a message to this person that is longer than three lines."

When a message to a person with label (DE) goes beyond three lines, the messaging software will beep and the text you are typing will become red.

Go ahead, keep on typing. Just remember that you will be repeating everything in red over the phone to the recipient as soon as you realize that you forgot who you were writing to. Usually, a missed deadline or money -- or both -- will be at issue at that point.

How will the software know? Well, I plan to leave that up to the Google, Yahoo! and MSN folks mostly. Aren't they linking all this stuff up together in one humongous interconnected database?

How about this for the time being: Whenever you have to get on the phone to resolve something that results from a too-long e-mail, open your address book and select the name of the person involved. Now click the red sent too-long e-mail icon as many times as you think the situation/misunderstanding/crisis warrants. This incrementally reduces the number of lines you will be allowed to send them in your next e-mail.

Is this post too cynical? Misguided? Let me know what you think, and please tell me if you know of any other effective e-mail communication resources like Elizabeth Robinson (see above).

Giving Blogs a Bad Name

2006-04-24T12:13:00.000-04:00

What is a blog? In January of 2005, only 38% of Internet users knew what a blog was. Has anyone seen an update?

Of that 38%, how many really know what a blog is? How many of those think that blogs are just online "journals" for techno-geeks and disaffected teenagers with nothing better to do?

Up until about a month ago, I was of that opinion myself. Now I can't stop thinking about uses for blogs: in business, for families, for churches and other non-profits, for schoools and on and on.

Really, the meaning of "blog" is totally up for grabs, changing constantly. Potential uses for blogs are as unlimited as the Web itself.

Blogs have been given something of a bad name because of their association with bogus news, criminal cases and employee termination lawsuits. But when companies like Nielsen (BuzzMetrics) and Google invest in blogs and many major corporations explore the uses of blogs as customer relations tools, we can see the perceived potential for use in communication is much greater.

Where do you think blogs are going?

Try Google Page Creator

2006-04-20T15:14:00.000-04:00

If you haven't tried Google Page Creator yet, you really should.

Whether you are a pro Web developer, or a total novice to the Web, or somewhere in between, take a minute to find out what Google is up to. For instance, just go to this page and click on any link you see. There is a lot to choose from, and there's more on the way.

As a partner noted, the only problem with Google is that the average person doesn't even know what they offer.

That's true. I'm sure I don't know about everything Google has to offer. And yet whenever they roll something out, it seems that they can't handle the overwhelming positive response: too many people want to use it. The quick closing of access to Google Page Creator is one example.

Have you found something Google offers that you love to use? Have you found something that doesn't work so well?

Don't Use Frames. Period.

2006-04-20T09:29:00.000-04:00

Want to have your Web site show up on the first page of Google? Then you need to make sure that your site does not use frames.

What are frames? Frames are an outdated method of building a Web page. They don't do well in search engines. You shouldn't use them. That's really all you need to know.

How do you check to see if your site uses frames?
Look at your site in a Web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox or Netscape or whatever. Now go to the View menu at the top of the browser window and select View > Source (or View > Page Source).

Next, go to the Edit menu and select Edit > Find, or press Ctrl 'F'. Type 'frameset'. (Click 'Find Next' in Internet Explorer.) Is the word 'FRAMESET' or 'frameset' on the page somewhere? If yes, your site uses frames.

You might find the word 'frames' in a string like: 'parent.frames.length'. This does not mean that the site uses frames, however. If you see this, don't worry about it.

If your site uses frames and you want your site to show up on the first page of Google (or just do better in Google), then you need a new Web site.

If you want to test this assertion, type the keywords you would like people to be able to use to find your site into Google and see if any of the sites that show up on page 1 use frames. If so, send me a note! If not, there you have it.

Conversion Yes. Aesthetics Maybe. Now We Are Getting Somewhere.

2006-04-19T22:04:00.000-04:00

Andrew Johnson's Web Publishing blog poses a great question: Why do ugly sites work so well?

"Compared to Yahoo, MSN, or even Ask, Google is damn ugly. Has that had any negative affect on Google?" he asks. What do you think?

Here's another way to look at it. Yahoo and MSN are paying more for aesthetics when they could be putting that money into R&D. Who is the most innovative of the three?

Speaking of Less is More in the way of aesthetics, here's a link to My Very First Google Page Creator page.

Google Page Creator is easy to use, easy to understand. Just like the blogger.com blog interface. Well done.

Increasing Your Online Conversion Rate

2006-04-05T12:37:00.000-04:00

Robbin Steif gives a great summary of how to increase your online conversion rate. It has me thinking about how to measure the impact of aesthetics on conversion. There's art and then there's the art of conversion. How much are clients willing to pay for design - in usability or look-and-feel - that does not increase conversion rates? And where does one look for facts about what kinds of design increase conversion rates most?

When this blog grows up a little, I would like to see the discussion happen here. For now, I'm looking for others up to the task.

Any suggestions?

National Workplace Napping Day

2006-04-04T08:35:00.000-04:00

Monday was National Workplace Napping Day, the first work day following the shift to Daylight Savings Time, when we all lose that precious hour out of our week.

Well, I only just read about National Workplace Napping Day this morning, so I missed it. Not that I would have taken a nap anyway. Napping during the workday apparently increases productivity. I know it used to increase my productivity when my young sons took naps on weekend afternoons; I could finally get some work done! Now they have outgrown their naps, so that's over with.

My first thought in reading about how naps increase productivity is that of course they do because taking a nap during the day allows you to work later into the night. Somehow, I don't think that is what the napping experts had in mind.

My Very First Post

2006-04-03T12:54:00.000-04:00

Answer: Because it seemed like a good idea at the time.