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I’m going to throw my iPod in my Blendtec blender.

None of us can deny the iPod is a beautiful piece of technology. In fact some of us may even have emotional attachments to the iPod. It contains our favorite music, and that music makes us feel a certain way.

So when Tom Dickson founder of Blendtec painfully put his own iPod into his blender and filmed it, the impact was pretty amazing. Not just because of his connection to his iPod, but because Tom Dickson will blend just about anything to prove that his blender is the top of the line of blenders. Tom actually puts on an amazing online show called “will it blend”. So far, Tom has blended golf balls, marbles, cubic zirconia, credit cards, Barbie dolls, a video camera … and well, you get the picture. (more…)

Could it be true in the world of cell phone, TV advertisements, blogs, forums, RSS feeds and pod casts that 90% of Internet users and 56% of all Americans still rely on email as their main way of communicating with other individuals. Americans send over 2.4 trillion emails a year. Still, if you use emailing as a marketing tool, you are fighting a battle that may do more harm to your business than good if you are not diligent in following the new rules of email marketing.

In this article, I discuss the ways email marketing has changed, as well as how important it is to engage your customer. You will learn how to actually help your customers benefit from your emails and avoid hammering them over the head to use your products or services. (more…)

Last Month we discussed the power of community and some of the ways that businesses can increase their profits and lower cost at the same time. One of the main topics was the power of online forums. We took our own advice, and we have modified our forums to allow members to assign areas of expertise under their avatar. We have also implemented a value system where individuals posting questions can assign different point values to the questions. When an expert answers questions, the individual can choose what he thinks is the best answer and award the points (or kudos on our site) to the expert with the best answer. (more…)

Have you ever had the feeling of being on a roll, the world aligned with you, and creative thoughts are flowing directly from the frontal lobe into your fast moving fingers. The adrenaline has kicked in, you feel unstoppable! Just a bit more of this, and by the end of today you will have finished that project that has been lingering on for 3 months, with time left over for a peaceful evening… Then the unthinkable happens, yes it is the dreaded ringing of your phone, a ring later you see the caller id and recognize it as one of your top prospects - you pick up the phone…

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You are a software developer. You have a client that hires you to develop a database system for their company. You work several months on the project and as you work through the development stages with your client, you are given nothing but green flags. Your client accepts your solution, and begins using it on a daily basis in their office. A month later, you receive a phone call, the client no longer wants the solution, it just isn’t what they had expected. You ask what the problem is and they reel off a list of problems that they see with the program.

The client then asks for a full refund. What do you do? What could you have done to prevent this?

Results and Goals

Let’s backtrack to the beginning of this process. You should never go into a custom programming project without clearly defined results and goals. You should develop a project proposal that gives an overview of the project - and then a clearly defined breakdown of each step of the project. I will not proceed with a project until I have a signed agreement from my client confirming that we both have a clear understanding as to what is to be accomplished. You need to have a complete understanding as to what the application is supposed to do, and how it is to perform. (more…)