Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
ehostsource.com killed my site
I really dislike kicking a dog when he's down, but ehostsource.com has been a big disappointment during their server migration this month. I mean, I was due for a site redesign, but the situation is ridiculous.
My site and e-mail reliability had been very poor for a couple of months before I finally heard that they were going to migrate to new servers. The migration started about three weeks ago. My site was down, and once the site was up again, my CMS (Joomla) wasn't working. The server move changed PHP paths and all kinds of stuff. So to keep things simple, I scrapped my site and started over with WordPress.
The site is up now, barely. From minute to minute, you may get a variety of errors trying to browse my site.
Once the dust clears, I see a hosting migration of my own coming...
For what it is worth, you can visit my newly redesigned, but decidely unstable, WordPress site here http://www.hastingsinteractive.com
Friday, April 3, 2009
Brush with Greatness: Dooce Book Signing
Last night I had my first "brush with greatness" since moving to Los Angeles. And this is a story for everyone who claims noone ever made money off of Twitter.
I discovered Heather B. Hamilton (aka Dooce) several months ago while I was still living in Memphis, TN. I spotted a reference to @dooce -- one of my Twitter friends had replied to her -- and the name caught my eye. Curious, I hit her website and discovered www.dooce.com and became a fan. I really enjoy her sense of humor and general outlook on life.
Earlier in the week, I saw her post that she was going to be at Book Soup in LA on April 2. So last night, we made the trek from our home in Alhambra to West Hollywood for the reading / signing.
It was a lot of fun. Heather was as funny and charming in person as I was expecting. She signed my copy of the book and I think I managed to get away without letting my star struck adolescent self make too big a fool of me.
Now think about this interaction for a moment. Heather is a writer. I found her first on Twitter. I became a fan of her work on her blog which I typically read via RSS in Google Reader. I travelled across town to a book signing at a book store I had not (yet) visited in person. And finally I purchased a book while I was there.
I can't say that I would have ever discovered her if I hadn't been on Twitter at just the right moment.
I think it is fair to say that being on Twitter was profitable for Heather. She is reaching an audience that might otherwise never find her. And since I have become a fan, I have been sharing her site with my friends (and the whole world) on my blog, on Twitter, and on Facebook, among other places.
Chalk one up for Twitter. If your business isn't on Twitter, you're leaving money on the table.
Not only that, but my site is down.
Not only have I spent the last two weeks leeching my neighbor's wifi -- read my previous post about getting DSL installed -- but my website hosting provider decided to move my personal website to a new server and broke the entire thing.
Ugh -- when it rains, it pours, as the saying goes.
But I was overdue for a redesign, so now is as good a time as any. And this time, I'm going to use WordPress, I think. (This after using pMachine for a few years followed by Joomla for a few years.)
Adventures in setting up a new AT&T DSL subscription
I moved to Los Angeles about two weeks ago, and it took nearly that long to get my AT&T order for DirectTV, DSL, and home phone service hooked up and running.
To keep things simple, I went to the AT&T website and ordered the lowest cost, all-in-one package of DirectTV, DSL, and home phone service.
The DirectTV tech arrived a couple days later and had the entire system with DVR in the living room and an antenna on the roof installed in just a hour or so. Quick and efficient.
Getting the home phone and DSL working had some snags.
First, they didn't include the apartment number when they shipped the DSL modem. So the modem arrived a few days later than it should have. I plugged up the modem and couldn't get a signal. So I had to brave the AT&T voicemail tree to get a tech visit scheduled.
A few days later, the DSL tech arrives. He checks the wiring in the house, then has to drive down the street to check the wiring on the pole somewhere. Turns out, the house isn't wired into the system properly. Once he gets that connected, he came back and verified everything was working. Not only that, he walks me through the entire AT&T/Yahoo/SBC account registration and setup.
I wish I had gotten the tech's name. He was friendly, helpful, and informative. Employees like that are gold. He turned what had been a frustrating, drawn out process into a happy ending with warm fuzzy feelings.
Part of the delay, I have to admit, is I didn't have a home phone I could plug into the wall jack. I cancelled home phone service years ago due to the high volume of telephone solicitations I was getting. So many, in fact, that it was a chore to delete the voicemails off the answering machine. And this was AFTER getting onto the Federal Do Not Call list and aggressively demanding my rights under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) to the companies calling me. So I killed my landline and had discarded my phone some time ago. If I had a phone on hand, I would have discovered the house wasn't getting dialtone.
So, two weeks of mooching on my neighbors' unsecured wifi and a handful of trips to Starbucks to use their wifi later, I'm legal again. I had gotten used to having my files on a local network, streaming videos and podcasts to my widescreen TV, and just generally living a digital lifestyle that doesn't work so well when you don't have your own spigot on the series of tubes that is the Internets.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Too Often Neglected: E-mail Subject Lines Get Your Message Read
Tips for composing a better subject line.
E-mail is a communications tool vital to modern life, both for business and personal use. You are probably already aware of this, as you’re receiving this article as part of an e-mail newsletter. You use and rely on e-mail, as do millions of others around the world. Composing an e-mail can be a reflexive act, one we do without much thought for how we are trying to communicate instead of just what we’re trying to communicate. But, depending on your relationship with your intended recipient, the tone of an e-mail can be very informal or quite formal. In any case, you will want to compose a subject line for every message that is as short as possible, as long as necessary, and specific so as to summarize the entire message to follow.
Keep in mind that your message has to compete with other messages in your recipient’s inbox. One popular method of managing e-mail is known as the Inbox Zero philosophy popularized by Merlin Mann of 43 Folders. If your recipient keeps his or her inbox empty, you are in luck. As soon as a new message is received, it sits there alone waiting to be read. But if your recipient is less organized, and leaves every message ever received in their inbox, your message may easily be swamped in a list of a thousand or more messages. How do you compose a subject line that stands out in that crowd?
E-mail is a communications tool vital to modern life, both for business and personal use. You are probably already aware of this, as you’re receiving this article as part of an e-mail newsletter. You use and rely on e-mail, as do millions of others around the world. Composing an e-mail can be a reflexive act, one we do without much thought for how we are trying to communicate instead of just what we’re trying to communicate. But, depending on your relationship with your intended recipient, the tone of an e-mail can be very informal or quite formal. In any case, you will want to compose a subject line for every message that is as short as possible, as long as necessary, and specific so as to summarize the entire message to follow.
Keep in mind that your message has to compete with other messages in your recipient’s inbox. One popular method of managing e-mail is known as the Inbox Zero philosophy popularized by Merlin Mann of 43 Folders. If your recipient keeps his or her inbox empty, you are in luck. As soon as a new message is received, it sits there alone waiting to be read. But if your recipient is less organized, and leaves every message ever received in their inbox, your message may easily be swamped in a list of a thousand or more messages. How do you compose a subject line that stands out in that crowd?
Here are some rules of thumb that can help you get your message read.
Keep it short. There is no practical limit to the number of characters you can place in a subject line, but some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) do place limits from 40 characters to 255 characters. Remember that people scan subject lines before deciding what to read first, and based on that scan they may forward, file, or trash the message instead of reading it.
Never leave a subject line blank. A blank subject indicates you are forgetful, that you can’t be bothered to take a moment to think clearly, or that you’re too busy to give attention to important details.
Don’t use ALL CAPS or exclamation points!!!! Or if you do use them, do so sparingly. Let your message speak for itself, without using these tricks to convince your recipient that your message is more important than it really is.
Don’t put your entire message in the subject line, no matter how short your message may be. If you do this your recipients will recognize your lazy attempt at communication.
Be specific. Don’t use generic subjects such as: quick question, meeting, website, or FYI. The more specific you can be, the better. If you are contacting a vendor, include your company name at the beginning of your subject.
So the next time you are composing an e-mail message, remember to keep the subject as descriptive, as short, and as specfic as possible. You contacts will appreciate your effort.
Keep it short. There is no practical limit to the number of characters you can place in a subject line, but some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) do place limits from 40 characters to 255 characters. Remember that people scan subject lines before deciding what to read first, and based on that scan they may forward, file, or trash the message instead of reading it.
Never leave a subject line blank. A blank subject indicates you are forgetful, that you can’t be bothered to take a moment to think clearly, or that you’re too busy to give attention to important details.
Don’t use ALL CAPS or exclamation points!!!! Or if you do use them, do so sparingly. Let your message speak for itself, without using these tricks to convince your recipient that your message is more important than it really is.
Don’t put your entire message in the subject line, no matter how short your message may be. If you do this your recipients will recognize your lazy attempt at communication.
Be specific. Don’t use generic subjects such as: quick question, meeting, website, or FYI. The more specific you can be, the better. If you are contacting a vendor, include your company name at the beginning of your subject.
So the next time you are composing an e-mail message, remember to keep the subject as descriptive, as short, and as specfic as possible. You contacts will appreciate your effort.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Using TweetDeck as a global chat room during Obama's "Not State of the Union" Address
Just finished watching President Obama address the joint houses of Congress, and had a great time using TweetDeck to monitor a couple of hashtags.
TweetDeck makes it easy to use Twitter to filter out just the information you want to watch. In my case, I set up two panes to follow specific subjects: one for #nsotu and one for #obama
When people posted a tweet during the speech, they used one or both of those hashtags to associate their tweet with the topical subject. (#nsotu stands for "not state of the union")
I was also pleasantly surprised to see people retweeting some of my posts. (Retweet is when you repost someone elses tweet -- just preface the tweet with RT and the original poster's name.) You can see this in action in the above screen capture on the Replies pane.
Using TweetDeck to track these subjects in almost realtime was almost like engaging in a world wide chat room.
Two thumbs up, TweetDeck!
Remarks of President Barack Obama -- Address to Joint Session of Congress
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