Okay, I might be a little obsessed with Steve Jobs and Apple products. But the following quote makes a good point…
“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” - Steve Jobs
But the point is innovation. You have to think about something that your customers will love before they are asking for it. Otherwise, they might ask someone else.
If you’ve been around email long enough, you have certainly experienced the misunderstandings that email can sometimes cause. But to go even further, how do you make sure that your emails will actually help get things done. The key is to write about one thing per email.
“The truth is that people don’t have time for long emails, and they don’t have time to try to find out exactly what you want. You have to tell them, in as short an email as possible.”
Lots of good tips for those of you that use email every day.
Now that Twitter is starting to hit the main stream, enter the publicity stunt of ColorWars2008. And if you are enticed, sign up for the veryGreenTeam, which is exactly what Ze Frank is trying to get you to do. “Tweet!“
If you find yourself fumbling with your cell phone, MP3 player, GPS or other devices in your car, get things neatly organized with ProClip. It is a 2 part solution where you pick the holder for your device and the mounting adapter for your car. A great way to securely hold the devices while keeping your windshield open. Certainly much cooler than the suction cup that came with my TomTom GPS.
As a follow-up to the previous post about understanding Wikis, here is a great segment from The Colbert Report. In August of 2006, Steven Colbert edited several Wikipedia articles during the taping of his show. After making his changes, Colbert encouraged his viewers to spread his concept of Wikiality by changing the Wikipedia entries on elephants to reflect the fact that the elephant population in Africa “has tripled in the last six months” - a way, he joked, to disarm environmentalists worldwide.
“Together, we can create a reality that we can all agree on – the reality that we just agreed on.”
Here is a great video from YouTube that explains the concept of Wikis in a 4 minute video. There are a number of other videos available from the YouTube Channel for the Common Craft Show.
I love the style of the Common Craft videos as they present technology in a “why should you care” format instead of “how it works.”
Andy’s house is at the Winery at Wolf Creek, somewhere near Canton, Akron, and Cleveland, Ohio. Andy and his wife Deanna had a nice spread of different foods and cheeses, and of course, wine. We started with a tour of the vineyard, which included meeting some of the goats (they are experimenting with goat cheese), walking the upper grounds and then to the winery. It was very cool to see all of the different equipment, the large tanks, barrels, and such with Andy describing the process along the way.
After the tour, I tried a whole bunch of different wines from the vineyard and purchased a bunch to take home with me. (My official tasting notes will be on Cork’d as I drink them.) Then it was back to the house for more wine and food and laughter.
Both the adults and children had a blast for hours and we went through A LOT of wine. I’m a light-weight as I usually have one a single glass each night. Needless to say, over the course of the evening more bottles than adults were opened and finished.
Andy was great. He actually helped teach me about certain types of tastes in wines that I could pick out from the wines we were sampling. So, I consider the evening educational.
Today, we are heading home from Ohio, but will stop at Troutman Vineyards to pick up a few more bottles. If you ever are in the area, make sure to stop in, say hello and try a few wines.
The excitement (?!) from yesterday was a trip to Lehman’s, a store that excels in pretending to connect tourists to the Amish. Apparently, they just completed major renovations and expanded significantly to add a café.
The store itself (and its newly expanded parking lot) is located in the center of downtown (ahem) Kidron, Ohio. Please note that I certainly would have live-blogged the whole trip but there is ZERO reception, let alone EDGE support in downtown Kidron.
So while browsing through this Amish-megastore, we saw all kinds of hand-made tools, housewares and such, wooden toys, glass jars, sausage makers and grinders. The kids loved it and I was amused by the laser bar code scanners.
We managed to escape with a few cookie cutters and cutesy tins (made in China) and some traditional candies (made in Indiana with California lemons). Make sure to visit the Lehman’s website so you can order online!
