Archive for April 24th, 2006
Admittedly, the title of this book feels a bit like hype to me as did much of the content. I feel a bit of queaziness about regarding blogging, a forum for the free and unrestrained expression of opinion, as one more tool for marketing spin. However, I still feel that Blog Marketing is worth repeated reading for the owners of small businesses.
Here’s why: in the new economy of information, content and community are as real a currency as is the US Dollar. Without either of these components, small businesses must spend non-existent capital to generate more-or-less disinterested Web traffic from the pay-per-click services provided by Google, Yahoo!, and others.
While I don’t mean to demean pay-per-click as a marketing strategy, I do acknowledge that it is extremely difficult to run pay-per-click marketing campaigns in a cost-effective way for start-up businesses (which make up most of my client list).
Blog Marketing’s author, Jeremy Wright, is a marketing veteran who points out the latest trends, tools, and tips for creating a successful blog marketing strategy for business. Though almost all of the many examples in this book are drawn from the ranks of big business, most of the principles you will extract from the case studies will apply to businesses of any size.
Blog Marketing covers topics ranging from getting into the blog mindset and how your company can use blogs to using external tools that will help you succeed as a blogging company. For companies with employees that blog, Wright has included a sample blogging policy that will help spur your internal debate and policy formation around this powerful new social phenomenon.
- Author: Jeremy Wright
- Hardcover: 321 pages
- Publisher: McGraw Hill (December 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN: 0072262516
- List Price: $24.95
April 24th, 2006
Joseph W. Lowery’s book, CSS Hacks & Filters, makes a great effort towards amassing all the current CSS Hacks available on-line and explaining their appropriate usage. To a great extent this volume succeeds in making order out of chaos and I heartily recommend its use as a supplemental resource for anyone who does not want to bookmark every CSS Hack Web page they might find useful.
While Lowery’s clear explanations of the rationale and appropriate application of each hack adds significant worth to this book, the real distinction between CSS Hacks & Filters and other CSS volumes I own is its focus on implementing CSS design with Dreamweaver’s internal template engine. This can be a real time saver for those new to Dreamweaver’s template engine and/or CSS.
CSS Hacks covers tasks like using Javascript/DOM to serve appropriate style sheets to various browsers, server side solutions for CSS, CSS based navigation systems, and image scaling with CSS. In addition, it includes several example templates that have been broadly tested on current browsers and that can provide a more secure foundation for your cross-browser design project than your own untested layout. Lowery also includes a detailed appendix that lists the various CSS Hacks/Filters and their applications.
This book is an excellent resource for those beginning CSS, especially if they are interested in Dreamweaver and Web development or scripting languages like Javascript, PHP, or ColdFusion.
You can find a bit more information about the author at his Flashbang! Web site.
- Author: Joseph W. Lowery
- Paperback: 266 pages
- Publisher: Wiley (June 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN: 0764579851
- List Price: $29.99
Wiley books are available at your local bookstore or by calling 1-800-225-5945. In Canada, call 1-800-567-4797.
April 24th, 2006
An idea is neither more nor less than a new combination of old elements.
If you have never been stumped by a problem that seemed too complex for you to solve or overwhelmed by a creative challenge, then read no further. In fact, you can probably stop reading altogether because you have surpassed the need for learning! Almost every day, I face challenges that need problem solving. I used to wonder how it was that I sometimes found ideas that worked well and failed miserably to generate ideas in other situations.
Though I still am mystified by the mind’s ability to synthesize data and create solutions, I have found a process that works quite predictably to minimize the confusion I feel when facing a tough challenge. James Webb Young’s little book, A Technique for Producing Ideas, has been on my bookshelf for about three years now and rarely gathers dust. The ideas Webb presents are simple, effective, and discipline is required to apply them.
Originally presented as a lecture to graduate students in advertising at the University of Chicago’s School of Business, the book contains a simple framework on which to hang the shreds of creative thought that pass by us so fleetingly. After some excellent discussion of the social theory of Pareto, Webb clearly explains his framework. I’ll provide a simple summary below, though it in no way replaces the book!
When facing a project whose solution requires a creative idea:
- Gather specific materials related to the project.
- Seek a synthesis of facts by focusing on new relationships between ideas
- When you have exhausted all avenues of inquiry and have applied all your efforts to finding a solution, put the project completely out of your mind.
- A solution will arise when you least expect it as a “Eureka” moment.
- Bring your baby idea into the real world for critique and application.
So run out to the bookstore today and grab a copy of this resource and tackle your next challenge head on!
- Author: James Webb Young
- Paperback: 48 pages
- Publisher: McGraw Hill (2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN: 0071410945
- List Price: $6.95
April 24th, 2006
