Consider this . . .

Point to ponder. Take a moment to consider it. Then create your own point to think about, and share back.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Blogging for Business

Promote Your Business with a Company Blog

By AllBusiness.com
Published: September 18, 2007

As the head of your company, you're ideally positioned to lead an informal debate on the current issues that face small business owners and entrepreneurs in your market. So why not pen your thoughts with a CEO blog or company blog that's visible to your customers, clients, and others who might become inspired by your entrepreneurial wisdom?

Skip to next paragraph
AllBusiness logo

Articles and resources from AllBusiness.com

AllBusiness.com is a business Web site that provides information and services to small businesses.

Decide Whether to Host Your Company Blog

By AllBusiness.com

Most blogging packages are similar, but there is one main distinction -- whether the service hosts your blog on their servers or whether you must host it on your own server. Services that will host your blog tend to be more user-friendly but are generally less flexible.

Blogs are gaining more and more traction in the business world. Experts believe the trend will continue, and that companies should at least monitor blogs to gain knowledge about what's being said about their products and services. And if you have the time and inclination to launch your own blog, the result could be increased business visibility, excited audiences, and added revenue.

Following are 10 things to consider before launching your own company blog.

1. Determine what you have to offer. You have learned plenty of lessons along the way, some of them the hard way. You could use your blog to shed light on the complexities of running a small business, which can add to your credibility and create added exposure for your company.

2. Decide if your blog will be a marketing tool. Blogs are both far-reaching and cheap to produce and maintain. And while they might not be a substitute for traditional marketing materials like press releases and direct mail, they do provide an additional avenue that can be well worth your investment.

3. Define your editorial vision. There's a lot of work to do before you launch your blog. First, shape the editorial policy. How often will you publish? What will be the tone of your messages? What kind of content will you include? What will your blog look like?

4. Consider the content. Some content ideas for your blog might include industry trends, hot topic news, interviews with other industry leaders, your position on industry issues, industry innovations or innovations in your company, book and article reviews, cases studies, shared experiences and lessons learned, and links and downloads to related subjects that might be important to your readers.

5. Share your thought leadership. If you want to be a leader, you need to get others to buy into your ideas. That means writing about the sound tactics you've used to position, promote, and reinforce your credibility within your company and, more importantly, within your marketplace. Everyone loves to get valuable information for free, and if you're willing and able to provide it, that can only mean good exposure for you and your business.

6. Be a credible source. Remember that as soon as you put something in writing, it lives forever. So be careful about what you write and make sure you've done your homework before your write it. If you want to stray from your own personal experiences and opinions, consider devoting a section of your blog to breaking industry news, vital facts, key findings, and some behind-the-scenes information.

7. Decide who will be the writer. Will you be your blog's sole writer, or can your team and staff also make contributions? If a team is producing your blog, you may want to consider holding weekly editorial meetings to brainstorm ideas and give out writing assignments.

8. Choose your partnerships wisely. Once you've designed the blog, you'll want to consider which outside sources you want to share links with. Doing so is a great way to create cross traffic, and to ultimately increase traffic to your blog. Consider who your customers are and what other blogs they might be interested in.

9. Learn how to engage your readers. Your blog's success will depend on the number of readers you have, and increasing their numbers is a matter of motivating them to come back time and again. Make sure your blog is structured in a logical way on your site. You may want to provide access via links to recent topics, highlights, sub-topics, and monthly archives. A little humor never hurts either.

10. Know what matters to your readers. This kind of blog is all about sharing what you know, including your experiences and knowledge, with a wider audience. Do this, and do it well, and they'll come back to read your future good ideas.

How to Choose the Right Blogging Software

By AllBusiness.com

When it comes to creating and maintaining a blog, there are plenty of powerful, feature-rich packages from which to choose. But it is important to understand the benefits and drawbacks of a number of those packages, so that you can make an informed decision on which is best for you and your blogging needs.

Most blogging packages are similar, but there is one main distinction - whether the service hosts your blog on their servers or whether you must host it on your own server. Services that will host your blog tend to be more user-friendly but are generally less flexible.

Hosted Blogging Services

There are three main hosted blogging services: Blogger, Typepad, and a hosted version of Wordpress.

Blogger and Wordpress are both free hosted blogging solutions and are the best place to dip your toe into the Blogosphere. They offer an array of features including robust text editors, syndication, and an area for reader comments. They are easy to learn and allow you to get started within minutes.

What Blogger and Wordpress offer in convenience, however, they lack in flexibility. Both are limited in how much you can change the look and feel of your site, nor do they allow for the addition of third-party widgets or add-ons to augment your site's functionality.

Typepad is similar to both of these services, but it's slightly more robust. While not free, it offers great tech support, and the staff can help new users overcome some of the beginning hurdles easily. Monthly and yearly subscriptions to Typepad are available and range in price depending on the features you select. Visit the Typepad pricing page for current rates.

Wordpress is community supported, which means that often help is just a Google search away, but you're going to have to research a bit. Blogger's support is offered mostly through a robust index, but you'll need to conduct the search yourself. Many profitable, professional blogs are hosted on all three of these services, so try them out and find the one you are most comfortable with. They all provide solid exporting functions, so if you want to upgrade to a different platform in the future, you can take your work with you.

Blog Platforms You Host Yourself

Blogging platforms that you host yourself, like Movable Type and Wordpress, are the next level in blogging software. They offer the ability to change even the smallest detail of your site. For the most part, these platforms offer a framework to make publishing content to your site easier and leave the rest up to you. This means both are very flexible, but you have to know how to write some code at times. You'll also need to have the available server space and the technical knowledge to install them properly.

Wordpress is completely free and open source, while Movable Type is free for noncommercial use but requires a license for business use. Once again, you're paying for customer support more than anything else. Both offer a wide range of user-created plug-ins that can add any functionality from social bookmarking to live IM chatrooms.

User interface is often the deciding factor when choosing a blogging platform, and each of the above mentioned packages has a clean, easy-to-understand interface. Because they all have similar feature sets, the one you pick will likely be the one you find most visually appealing. Remember, though, that you need to determine your hosting environment before proceeding with any installations. If you want to get started blogging but your server isn't currently running Apache, PHP, and SQL, it is strongly recommended that you relocate your Web presence to a host that does.

For more information on blogging and business, be sure to check out 16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Business Blog and To Blog or Not to Blog? And be sure to visit AllBusiness.com blogger Denise Wakeman's own blog, Your Project Partner, where she discusses blogs and other tools available to help you build awareness for your business on the Web.



Check Out My Other Blogs (click on blog name to go there) = / 1.3rd Eye Blog / 2. Favorites Blog/ 3. Vita Excolatur (Living Well ...) Blog/ 4. Humor Me Blog/ 5. News and Current Events Blog/ 6. Consider This ... Blog/ 7. Consumer Warnings Blog/ 8. New Orleans Pentimento Blog/ 9. We Constant Gardeners Blog/ 10. Chaillot Family Blog/

posted by Joe Paris @ Sunday, April 27, 2008  

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Calibrating your HDTV

Personal Tech »
Cellphones, Cameras, Computers and more.
Basics

This Is Not a Test: Calibrate Your HDTV

By DON REISINGER
Published: April 10, 2008

BUYING an HDTV usually starts with research. You then may make a decision based on what it looks like in the store.

Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image

A screen used in the THX Optimizer calibration cool.

The SpyderTV equipment used by some technicians.

Enlarge This Image

Another screen used in the THX Optimizer calibration cool.

Take the set home and the picture may look slightly different. Some colors are brighter than others, and the contrast between dark and light colors is heightened.

Now you need to calibrate the TV. Photographers and graphic artists have been doing color calibrations for years on their monitors in order to ensure that colors on screen accurately match what will appear in print or on a Web site. But now, with more consumers owning high-definition TVs — where every pixel pops off the screen — calibration becomes more important than with the old cathode-ray tube TV.

The easiest way to do it is to ask the electronics store to adjust it for you. It may also be one of the most expensive options. Geek Squad, the service arm of Best Buy, charges about $300 for the in-home service. But other people may find satisfactory results either with software included on some DVDs or by buying a special disc that takes the viewer through calibration steps.

The manufacturers tweak red, green and blue settings a bit to make the colors pop. They intensify blue, causing red and green to overcompensate in the image. Some people may like that look. But it creates an HDTV that is not only too bright, but won’t give an accurate color representation of the leopard leaping from tree to tree on the National Geographic HD channel. You can also improve the image quality on your HDTV by reducing the amount of light that creeps into the room. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to spring for “room darkening” drapes, which are far more expensive than a Geek Squad visit.

Ultrasuede curtains, for instance, keep daylight out and are fairly inexpensive. Another trick that movie theaters use: Paint the walls a dark color, like burgundy, so less light is reflected. Putting the TV at eye level and at a distance of about three times the screen’s diagonal measurement can help you see a better picture.

The Geek Squad certainly puts on a show for its $300. Upon arriving at a customer’s home in Wilton, N.Y., Stephen Rhoades, a Best Buy technician who works out of the store in Crossgates Mall in Albany, N.Y., put on Shubee shoe covers — the company doesn’t want to risk marring floors or carpets — and begins by analyzing the customer, not the TV.

“What are your hopes for this service?” and “What do you think of the quality of your current picture?” he asks. Mr. Rhoades, whose title is elite service specialist, tries to calibrate their expectations before he adjusts the TV.

The technician then attaches an “eye,” a small circular camera like gadget that measures minute display changes, to the screen. The device, called the ColorPro V Color Analyzer, measures the red, green and blue levels to see just how far off the HDTV’s color settings are from an ideal level. From there, the technician uses Geek Squad’s software on a notebook computer that is connected to the eye to adjust the levels.

The customer’s TV was well out of whack. Mr. Rhoades said the TV, a 46-inch Sony Bravia, was overcompensating with blue and was making green and red work harder to create the picture. The result was an HDTV that wasn’t reproducing an accurate image and was using up almost 50 percent more energy than usual.

Upon completion, the difference was noticeable. Instead of an extremely bright image, the display showed every worldly imperfection in precise detail.

The Geek Squad said that other calibration methods address only about one-fifth of the factors necessary for a good picture. But according to Gregg Loewen, president of Lion Audio Video Consultants, which does color calibrations, people may get by just fine with a do-it-yourself method.

“Calibrating a display and using instrumentation does visibly make an improvement and is better than a test disc,” he said. “But I don’t think that instrumentation is five times better than a DVD disc. In fact, a test DVD, when used properly, provides the best bang for the buck.”

To calibrate your HDTV on your own, you might look for the THX Optimizer, which is found in the setup menus of a number of DVDs, including “The Incredibles” and “Toy Story.” THX Optimizer movies come with a pair of cardboard Optimizer glasses with blue lenses to help you adjust color and tint settings.

You can also buy the glasses from THX’s Web site (www.thx.com) for $2. THX-certified DVDs can be found at many retailers for about $20.

The Optimizer takes the viewer through a series of tests to set contrast and color. For example, eight white boxes that range from pure white to gray are used to set black and white levels. If you can see all eight boxes just fine, you’re in luck and can move on. If not, you should reduce your contrast settings until you can.

To configure color and tint, you don the THX Optimizer glasses and try to balance the brightness of individual letters displayed on screen. When the blue C-L-R of COLOR are the same brightness as the two white O’s, it’s calibrated. The same is done with cyan and magenta in the word TINT.

Although the THX Optimizer is a fine calibration tool, it adjusts the HDTV for ideal viewing only in the room with the TV; if you move the TV, you may need to recalibrate.

A number of companies sell similar calibration software on DVD, most of which you can find in an electronics store. Monster sells the HDTV Calibration Wizard for about $30. Digital Video Essentials’ High Definition costs about $35. The Avia II does more of the same for $40.

You could also try to do what the professionals do, though that entails investing in some equipment that will be used infrequently. Datacolor sells a $229 calibration device called the SpyderTV. The color-monitoring device connects to your screen with the help of suction cups and transmits information from your screen to your computer through a U.S.B. cable to tell you how to adjust the contrast, brightness and color levels.

A professional using this kind of tool can get an even better picture by tweaking a hidden service menu in the TV set that must be unlocked by a combination of codes or remote button presses. (It varies from one manufacturer to another)

The service menu gives the technician — or the TV owner if you can uncover the codes — greater control over settings, like individual red, green and blue changes. The codes are not secret. You can find them by typing the name of the manufacturer and the words “service menu” into a Google search. But be warned: fiddling with the service menu without a diagnostic tool like SpyderTV is risky.

It could make that leopard on the nature program change its spots.



Check Out My Other Blogs (click on blog name to go there) = / 1.3rd Eye Blog / 2. Favorites Blog/ 3. Vita Excolatur (Living Well ...) Blog/ 4. Humor Me Blog/ 5. News and Current Events Blog/ 6. Consider This ... Blog/ 7. Consumer Warnings Blog/ 8. New Orleans Pentimento Blog/ 9. We Constant Gardeners Blog/ 10. Chaillot Family Blog/

posted by Joe Paris @ Thursday, April 10, 2008  

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

getting organized

Op-Ed Columnist

Pitching With Purpose

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: April 1, 2008

A few years ago, a former professional baseball player mentioned a book that had made a great impression on him. It was called “The Mental ABC’s of Pitching,” by a sports psychologist named H.A. Dorfman. I read the book one spare evening, though, as you may have noticed, I’m not a pitcher — and no major league organization has expressed interest in making me one.

The book left an impression on me too, mostly for its moral tone. Dorfman offers to liberate people from what you might call the tyranny of the scattered mind. He offers to take pitchers, who may be thinking about a thousand and one things up on the mound, and give them mental discipline.

Others are eloquent about courage and creativity, but Dorfman is fervent about discipline. In the book’s only lyrical passage, he writes: “Self-discipline is a form of freedom. Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from expectations and demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear — and doubt.”

His assumption seems to be that you can’t just urge someone to be disciplined; you have to build a structure of behavior and attitude. Behavior shapes thought. If a player disciplines his behavior, then he will also discipline his mind.

Dorfman builds that structure on the repetitiousness of baseball. It’s commonly said that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master any craft — three hours of practice every day for 10 years. Dorfman assumes that players would have already put in those hours doing drills and repetitions. He urges them to adopt their own pregame rituals. He notes that Trevor Hoffman, the San Diego Padres closer, walks from the clubhouse to the dugout every game in the fourth inning and moves to the bullpen in the seventh.

As a pitcher enters a game, Dorfman continues, he should bring a relentlessly assertive mind-set. He should plan on attacking the strike zone early in the count, and never letting up. He will not nibble at the strike zone or try to throw the ball around hitters. He will invite contact. Even when the count is zero balls and two strikes, he will not alter his emotional tone by wasting a pitch out of the strike zone.

Just as a bike is better balanced when it is going forward, a pitcher’s mind is better balanced when it is unceasingly aggressive. If a pitcher doesn’t actually feel this way when he enters a game, Dorfman asks him to pretend. If your body impersonates an attitude long enough, then the mind begins to adopt it.

Dorfman then structures the geography of the workplace. There are two locales in a pitcher’s universe — on the mound and off the mound. Off the mound is for thinking about the past and future, on the mound is for thinking about the present. When a pitcher is on the pitching rubber, Dorfman writes, he should only think about three things: pitch selection, pitch location and the catcher’s glove, his target. If he finds himself thinking about something else, he should step off the rubber.

Dorfman has various breathing rituals he endorses, but his main focus during competition is to get his pitchers thinking simple and small. A pitcher is defined, he writes, “by the way the ball leaves his hand.” Everything else is extraneous.

In Dorfman’s description of pitching, batters barely exist. They are vague, generic abstractions that hover out there in the land beyond the pitcher’s control. A pitcher shouldn’t judge himself by how the batters hit his pitches, but instead by whether he threw the pitch he wanted to throw.

Dorfman once approached Greg Maddux after a game and asked him how it went. Maddux said simply: “Fifty out of 73.” He’d thrown 73 pitches and executed 50. Nothing else was relevant.

A baseball game is a spectacle, with a thousand points of interest. But Dorfman reduces it all to a series of simple tasks. The pitcher’s personality isn’t at the center. His talent isn’t at the center. The task is at the center.

By putting the task at the center, Dorfman illuminates the way the body and the mind communicate with each other. Once there were intellectuals who thought the mind existed above the body, but that’s been blown away by evidence. In fact, it’s easiest to change the mind by changing behavior, and that’s probably as true in the office as on the mound.

And by putting the task at the center, Dorfman helps the pitcher quiet the self. He pushes the pitcher’s thoughts away from his own qualities — his expectations, his nerve, his ego — and helps the pitcher lose himself in the job.

Not long ago, Americans saw the rise of a therapeutic culture that placed great emphasis on self-discovery, self-awareness and self-expression. But somehow the tide seems to have turned from the worship of self, and today’s message is: transcend yourself in your job — or get shelled.

A fitting reminder from opening day.



Check Out My Other Blogs (click on blog name to go there) = / 1.3rd Eye Blog / 2. Favorites Blog/ 3. Vita Excolatur (Living Well ...) Blog/ 4. Humor Me Blog/ 5. News and Current Events Blog/ 6. Consider This ... Blog/ 7. Consumer Warnings Blog/ 8. New Orleans Pentimento Blog/ 9. We Constant Gardeners Blog/ 10. Chaillot Family Blog/

posted by Joe Paris @ Wednesday, April 02, 2008