Have you ever asked yourself that question? I did. In fact, many years ago I spent countless hours trying to figure it out. It’s easy to forget that…
In the 21st century, seniority doesn’t trump performance.
Case in point: The Khan Academy, a small team of non-traditional educators doing something big.
Have you ever heard this one?
“We love our template website!”
—Said no one, ever
The advertising business, what’s it really about?
The business of advertising, done right, is more about making things understandable than about persuasion.
Mar 21, 2013
A good name is the first step to fame
Is Panasonic Toughbook® the toughest laptop out there?
I don’t know, but I sure see people using it more than any other laptop in places and situations that supposedly demand toughness. (Think construction sites; emergency vehicles; etc.)
Complicated is the new defective
Consider Google Reader: it has now been officially announced as dead. (For details, see http://bit.ly/YbNgmw.) RSS feeds have been dead for a while (see Trust Me, I’m Lying, by Ryan Holiday), but Google decided to make it official.
My 2¢: The demise of RSS Feeds can be summarized in one word — complicated.
Mar 17, 2013
P.S.
What’s surprising is that people are apparently still sponsoring RSS feeds such as Tina Roth Eisenberg’s.
For those who are not selling a bright red Porsche 911
A bright red Porsche 911 convertible, for example, speaks—loudly and beautifully—for itself.
Very few services speak for themselves at all.
That’s not me talking. That’s Harry the Master of Simplicity Beckwith talking in his book Selling the Invisible.
I decided to write this post because my story titled Sometimes There Just Isn’t an App for That made some of the app developers I know quite unhappy. They did not like my suggestion to use advertising as a means of getting publicity for their apps.
Here’s what I told them: unlike a bright red Porsche, apps, just like many services, are not self-demonstratable to the public. To convey ideas and information to the general public, you need a tool. And that tool is advertising. Being the craftspeople that you are, you believe in tools, no?