An oldie but a goodie… This guy puts the YOU in youtube…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60og9gwKh1o

But the interesting question is… how can a small business do something to promote themselves… 38 million people is pretty wide exposure!

These are oldies but goodies… for event planners and hotel staff that have a tech trend interest:

Sites to Read
Mashable – http://www.mashable.com – social media news
Techcrunch – http://www.techcrunch.com – tech business news
ReadWriteWeb – http://www.readwriteweb.com – web news

“Want to be a winner at what you do? Just make sure you’re the first one in and the last one to leave. Why? Because there’s lots of competition between 9am and 5pm, but very little before and after, and when there is no competition, you are the winner!”

Today in History (Sept 7th)

1986 Desmond Tutu becomes Anglican archbishop of Capetown

1981 Judge Wapner and People’s Court premier on TV

1977 President Carter and Gen Herrera sign Panama Canal treaties

1963 Pro Football Hall of Fame dedicated in Canton, Ohio

1936 Boulder Dam, now Hoover Dam, begins operation

Art Quote of the Day Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.

I was at a breast cancer fundraiser at which Lance Armstrong was the keynote speaker. I found him to be engaging and personable.

He talked about the story of the “LiveStrong” rubber wrist band. An interesting sidenote was his sharing of a visit to the Dalai Lama:

I visited the Dalai Lama and noted that he was wearing a rubber wristband with the word compassion on it. I also noted that the wristband was made in China.

I think it made it easier for him to take the questioning he received about why his wristbands were made in China…

A really smart guy by the name of Paco Underhill wrote a book called “Why We Buy”.  Even though it was written for retail store owners, I think it’s really pertinent to shopping on the internet.   A paragraph from page 62 is a perfect example:

First you have to get your audience’s attention.  Once you’ve done that, you have to present your message in a clear, logical fashion – the beginning, then the middle, then the ending.  You have to deliver the information the way people absorb it, a bit at a time, a layer at a time, and in the proper sequence.  If you don’t get their attention first, nothing that follows will register.  If you tell too much too soon, you’ll overload them and they’ll give up.  if you confuse them, they’ll ignore the message altogether.

So when we do form design on the web, we try (and I emphasize try) to ensure something important: when we do a paragraph, or more importantly when we create a question or a summary paragraph, that we avoid the 1 or 2 word lines.

For example:

Electionbuddy is the complete online voting platform for running
elections, polls, or referendums for boards, associations, schools, or
anyone!

vs.

Electionbuddy is the complete online voting platform for running elections,
polls, or referendums for boards, associations, schools, or anyone!

A single word on 1 line in a paragraph looks “funny”.  And if you are trying to give instructions on the web,  that single word might mean the difference betweeen your user understanding what you want them to understand…

or not!

So, we suggest avoiding that hanging word!  It’s better to change words to make it easy for the reader to read.  It also forces you to look for less text (say more with less) – always a good thing!

But it’s pretty hard to control this with all the new browser experiences (iPhone, iPad, netbooks and very large monitors);  it’s becoming harder every day! But we think it’s still important to try and avoid the hanging word. Your users and readers will thank you for it!

We were for awhile!

We use Google Maps and their API within InviteRight.com alot. We were one of the original Maps partners, way back 5 years ago when MapQuest was the rage and even before there was a Google maps API. Back then, we wanted to integrate with something that gave personalized directions to each person to ensure that they could easily arrive at the gala, graduation or golf tournament. And it worked really well; all our InviteRight organizers had to do was type in the address of the event, and a link to a Google Map would appear on the invite, registration page and the confirmation.

But about 3 months ago, we noticed that Google maps in Edmonton, Alberta, were looking really funny. 1 address would give 5 different points on a Google map, and all of them were wrong! Not only was it happening in our application, it was in Google Maps for the majority of addresses.

So, I sent them an email. Someone at Google actually read it, and fixed the problem, and let us know, and thanked us.

Seems like a small thing, but it was nice to know that a company like ours can have an influence on a really big company like Google. And it was really nice when they said “Thank you”

Way to go Google!

While we think we make it easier for you to design forms with our InviteRight.com, we want to share some of the form design vision for whatever application you use.  When you need to create forms that tie into your CRM (like highrise or batchbook), or you tie them into your e-newsletter application, or you are custom designing forms as a developer, we hope this helps! We seem to do a lot of work on how to make RSVP, Registration and Ticket Sales forms look great.  So our great developers and designers went back to the drawing board for our InviteRight application.

One of the things we have learned from really smart folks such as Steve Krug, is that when something looks good and is easy to use, more people use it.  And we want our event organizers to have their guests say great things about their forms…  and so those forms have to look great on the iPhone, Blackberry, all the way up to a 27″ monitor.  A difficult task.

I want to give you a quick snapshot of what we are working on:

After:                                                                                         Before:

The point is not to tell you that I think the developers are doing great work, but to note some of the differences:

• As mentioned above – we wanted it to work better on smartphones – we found that less scrolling on smartphones = happier guests, hence the left alignment and the descriptions above the question.
• We want to make the answer POP because we wanted the guest to focus on the answer, not necessarily the question itself.  The grey outline highlights the white in the fields.
• Because organizers create these forms, we wanted them to be forgiving, and make sure they still look ok if organizers use a lot of text or a little bit of text in questions – again another reason to put the description above the field.
• We wanted a stronger visual hierarchy, so both our organizers and their guests understand what is important on the form.  We used the 2 tones of grey in conjunction with the size difference (headings are bigger).

What we don’t do:

• Have multiple fonts or font styles – bold seems to be enough to add emphasis, and too many styles seem to just create a busy looking form.
• Have fields and questions appear in multiple alignments (left, right, centre).  While some organizers wanted this, in the majority of cases we found it just created clutter and issues with how people used the table and how it appears in multiple browser clients.  When we explained this to those organizers, it became a “nice to have” and not a requirement.

I am keen to discuss any likes and dislikes, or anything that you can point out what makes a great looking form…

I have seen a bunch of articles/books/magazines on how to run a software company.  And while everybody has their own ideas, it seems that there are lots of different ways to accomplish the same thing.

If you have the ability to get lots of venture funding, it gives you the ability to make bigger and better mistakes, without completely wrecking the entire organization.

What is great about a smaller company, to me, is that everything counts.  You have to make great decisions, because when you don’t, it really has a big impact.

It seems to keep me honest and forces me to look for innovation all of the time.  A little tiring, but also really cool, as I think our team gets a bunch of great stuff done, and done quickly.

Seems to bring home the old catch phrase – “Necessity is the mother of invention.”