April 2012
1 post
Brown Recluse Spider Bite treated with Activate...
09/29/2006: Elizabeth from Woodbury, TN: “We’ve used activated charcoal many times in our family and friends for the brown recluse spider bite. Even a couple of doctors here were amazed at what it did! We would make up a paste and change the first day about every 2 hours and then the next day just a few times and would keep watching it. Usually the bite was shrunk and just a little...
March 2012
28 posts
Facebook Like button for your whole site, not your...
The App Store would not have 4.5 Million Likes if they had a per app like button. They have a site wide like button which combines all likes for their tool into one likable pool. Consider this when planning your like button implementation and make sure you give the right instruction to your developer. Posted via email from SwBratcher’s Posts | Comment »
I like TNW's share functionality. Easy engage on...
Play with it here: http://thenextweb.com/us/ Posted via email from SwBratcher’s Posts | Comment »
The ulitimate money pit... dynamic and...
The ulitimate money pit… dynamic and interactive. Link: Money Pit Posted via email from SwBratcher’s Posts | Comment »
Senate Passes Crowdfunding Bill
Under the Senate bill, entrepreneurs will be allowed to raise up to $1 million per year through approved crowdfunding portals. The amount investors will be able to spend will be capped based on their income, with some people only allowed to put in a maximum of $2,000. Though the House and Senate bills will have to be reconciled and signed, excitement about legalized crowdfunding has people...
Cool Starbucks Interior Store Design
(I think it’s in japan. Anyone know for sure?) See the full gallery on Posterous Posted via email from SwBratcher’s Posts | Comment »
10 Ways to Land The Job
Here are ten great tips to help you put together a great application, ace the interview, and ultimately work for a company you’ll love rather than hate. Note: This week’s top 10 list is more in the order of the process of getting a new job than a ranking of the best tips. 10. Put Together a Resume That’s Actually Compelling While I’m no fan of the resume—as...
Well Designed: Settings Interface Example by Fab
Fab has an easy to understand settings panel for their email engine that is a pleasure to interact with. Here’s a video of my using it. View on screencast.com » Posted via email from SwBratcher’s Posts | Comment »
The Power of Doing One Thing at a Time
Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? Do you bring your laptop to meetings and then pretend you’re taking notes while you surf the net? Do you eat lunch at your desk? Do you make calls while you’re driving, and even send the occasional text, even though you know you shouldn’t? The biggest cost —...
Peer-to-Peer Car Rental From People Near You
via relayrides.com Posted via email from SwBratcher’s Posts | Comment »
30 Small Ways To Show That You Value Your...
Small businesses can compete for talent without breaking the bank. Yes, you still need to pay competitive wages to get people in the door, but it’s the perks that will help you retain them. Here are 30 low-cost ideas for small businesses who want to show employees that they are highly valued. 1. Flex time. Some organizations require employees to be at work during core hours, and employee can...
Serving Images For The iPad 3 Retina Display
At first sight the new iPad 3 seems to be a vindication of Moore’s Law. Apple wanted to significantly increase the pixel density of the screen, and had to wait until the components were cheap enough to sell the iPad for its usual price. Now, apparently, that wait has ended and the iPad 3 with Retina is here. Still, not all is well with the iPad 3. Put simply, what Apple forgot here (or...
Email Clicks Are Only Step One
As much as we love helping you figure out your email response rates, we know that your email marketing doesn’t stop there. In fact, for most messages, email is just a starting point for a customer who will then go on to purchase, donate, share, comment or RSVP.The great news is that these folks are your most captive audience. So how can you encourage them to complete a task (or buy something)...
15 Simple SEO Mistakes Commonly Made
Search Engine Optimization is a very hot topic in the World Wide Web. After all, everybody wants to rank higher and come up on the first page of Google search and get more traffic. I have identified and made a list of top 15 SEO practices that I tend to forget quite often. These simple SEO techniques if practiced properly can make a significant difference as to how my pages are ranked in the...
Pinterest's Dead-Simple Design Philosophy
“Designers, designers, designers” has become the new “developers, developers, developers.” Witness the ever-growing list of job postings for product designers, UI designers, user research designers, UX designers. They’re posted faster than I can read them. Someone needs a “senior design champion” (versus a normal design champion?), while another is looking for a “catalyst of creativity.”...
Peer-To-Peer Carsharing Is Now Available In Your...
The sharing economy may be growing, but up until now, peer-to-peer carsharing (where people rent out their idling vehicles by the hour to other people) has been relegated to certain forward-thinking cities. That’s no longer the case now that RelayRides, the oldest of the carsharing startups, is expanding nationwide. “There’s more momentum around carsharing in dense urban areas. There...
Game Tech To Keep You From Turning Off Ads
Not so long ago Apple introduced iAd as a serious attempt to shake up traditional Net advertising on its iDevices—it was deeply integrated into the iPhone and iPad OS, and offered rich media interactivity as a hook to snag yet more customer engagment. But it hasn’t necessarily solved all the problems of audience engagement, and we’re all accustomed to not really paying...
Edmodo, A "Facebook For Schools," To Become...
Edmodo started out as the Facebook (or Yammer) for classrooms—a social network-style place for teachers to coordinate online with their students (and sometimes parents). Today the company becomes even more like Facebook as it opens up its API so that outside companies can build apps that sit on top of the Edmodo platform. CEO and cofounder Nic Borg tells Fast Company the change will make...
iPad Reading That's Gorgeous, But Unfinished On...
You may be familiar with Readability, a popular web app that sucks text content out of uglified web pages and re-presents it in a calm, clean design optimized for, y’know, reading stuff. Readability’s open-source code has been adopted by Safari, Apple’s browser, as well as many other apps and services. But the service has conspicuously lacked an app of its own. Until now: Readability for iOS has...
The Key To A Unified Brand: A Consistent UI
I recently went online to pay a credit card bill with a well-known financial institution. Upon logging in, I was presented with a promotional advertisement for the company’s iPad application. As a designer, I was naturally curious as to how the app differed from the Web experience, assuming it might just surpass my expectations. And why not? The iPad presents a blank slate on which many...
Video Mixed with Email Marketing
A while back, I decided to revisit a craft I’d always wanted to hone: video editing. And, wouldn’t you know it, ever since upgrading to my fancy new software, I’m seeing the potential to make videos all over the place. It’s like my Dad always said: “Give a man a hammer, and every problem looks like a nail.” As a medium for your message, online video is a mighty fine-looking hammer. Internet...
How to Tell If You Are Ready to Raise Money
Many entrepreneurs view raising outside angel or venture investment as a baseline requirement for starting their business – before they even write a line of code or bring a customer on board. An idea, a big scalable market target, a set of powerpoint slides and you are ready to go. This has predictable consequences: You get told that the company isn’t ready or that the market is too...
Finding Customers Ahead of a Startup Launch
When Ariel Seidman left Yahoo last year to start his own tech company with two former co-workers, he knew that success out of the gate would hinge on having some big-name customers already lined up. So he spent most of his time in Silicon Valley coffee shops or on conference calls explaining the idea behind Gigwalk—harnessing the power of millions of iPhone users to create what the company...
5 E-mails Successful People Don’t Send
Whatever you decide about whether some workplace communications are necessary, don’t ever send the ones that follow. 1. Screw-up e-mails The “you’re a screw-up” e-mail is almost always a mistake. You think it makes you seem powerful, but bitching to someone in e-mail reflects lousy social skills. And people with lousy social skills make lousy leaders. If you need to tell...
10 Dirty Negotiation Tactics and How to Beat Them
Here’s how to spot 10 tactics that many negotiators use. These have nothing to do with the win-win successful agreements of a good negotiation. Learn what to do when somebody pulls these tricks. Awareness of these tactics can strengthen your own negotiation skills. Left at the altar - The other party feigns backing out of a deal just before you are ready to complete the agreement....
Buffer Users From Complexity: Seamless and Fax...
Pick a restaurant on Seamless, the online food-ordering service, and with just a few clicks, your meal will be ready for pickup or delivery. It’s a slick experience, made even slicker by Tuesday’s release of Seamless’ iPad app. But on the back end, the experience is anything but seamless, a minefield of 8,000 restaurants, each with different requirements, resources, and...
Unlimited Vacation Ensures Productivity not...
By tossing the two-week standard in favor of an honor system with unlimited time off, some companies are seeing an exponential rise in productivity. Now, they just have to be mindful of staff burnout. Sharon Rosenblatt confesses she suffers from self-diagnosed workplace paranoia—and even her company’s unrestricted vacation policy sometimes (negatively) affects her...
12 Useful and Free Downloadable Web Design Books
There are a multitude of books (whether in digital format or print) that cover every possible aspect of web design, each one is unique and offers a personalized opportunity for the author to both educate, inspire, and guide the reader through there knowledge. In this post rather than offer all of my favorite web design books, I have listed 12 books that I have either downloaded and read (or at...
Facebook's 'Offers' and 'Reach Generator' Can...
All anyone seems to be talking about these days is how much they dislike Timeline, Facebook’s new user interface for business and brand Pages. Fortunately, the social networking giant also offered a couple of new advertising options that might just ease the tension surrounding the new look and feel. During Facebook’s Marketing Conference in New York last week, the company announced...
February 2012
14 posts
WePay: An ecommerce alternative gateway.
Collect payments without the hassle Start collecting money online in under a minute No merchant account, website, or programming required Great customer service provided by real people No set up fees, contracts, or monthly fees Get started, it’s Free! or Learn More via wepay.com ...
Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire...
Lack of security control transparency is a leading inhibitor to the adoption of cloud services. The Cloud Security Alliance Consensus Assessments Initiative (CAI) was launched to perform research, create tools and create industry partnerships to enable cloud computing assessments. We are focused on providing industry-accepted ways to document what security controls exist in IaaS, PaaS, and...
Brooklyn. How Sweet It Is! -...
via peanutbutterslugs.com This is awesome. Laser cut graphics board. Posted via email from SwBratcher’s Posts | Comment »
Here's The Entrepreneur Test For The Rest Of Us
take my entrepreneurship test to see if you are prepared to venture out on your own. 1. Are you resilient? This is the key skill all entrepreneurs need to be successful. Can you ride the rollercoaster of good and bad results on a daily basis? 2. Can you ask for help? Surprise, you don’t know everything. Can you listen and evaluate the advice of the people around you? 3. Can you get people...
Signs That Your Business is Successful
Running a small business can be confusing. Many owners are just successful enough not to go out of business. The path forward is often unclear. Should they keep the business open in hopes of future success or close up shop? What is that moment of truth that tells the small-business owner they will be successful? Here are 12 signs that you’ve got something going beyond survival. 1....
Lessons Executives Can Learn From An Entrepreneur
1. From Shut to Open In his corporate executive avatar, the more senior he became, the more he unknowingly shut himself off from people. As he became busier, he instructed his secretary to screen his calls and sequester his time. After all, how could he entertain every caller when he could barely finish his work? His assistants also took control of his e-mail in-box, only involving him in...
Nikon Trying to Kill Camera Repair
On Monday, January 16th, Nikon Inc. sent a letter to independent camera repair technicians in the US to say that “it will no longer make repair parts available for purchase by repair facilities that have not been authorized by Nikon Inc. to perform camera repairs.” So after July 13, 2012, all Nikon repairs will be pushed through Nikon’s own repair service or one of 22 “Nikon authorized repair...
Agile: Extreme Profit Sharing in a Small Business
In the small-business world, profit sharing is the new black. But one company, software training firm Agile Learning Labs, has taken it to the extreme. Agile’s six-member team is paid the same share of the company’s profits, regardless of title or role. Apparently, there are big advantages. First, since it impacts them directly and equally, all team members are constantly looking out for...
Debbie Brewster Lists how Great Leaders GROW
Debbie Brewster has become an accomplished leader, and now becomes a mentor to Blake, the son of Debbie’s former mentor. She teaches him not just how to lead, but emphasizes the critical importance of continually learning and developing his leadership abilities throughout his career. She identifies four areas in which every leader must continue to G.R.O.W.: Gain knowledge of themselves,...
Debbie Brewster Lists how Great Leaders GROW
Debbie Brewster has become an accomplished leader, and now becomes a mentor to Blake, the son of Debbie’s former mentor. She teaches him not just how to lead, but emphasizes the critical importance of continually learning and developing his leadership abilities throughout his career. She identifies four areas in which every leader must continue to G.R.O.W.: Gain knowledge of themselves,...
9 Sources of Employee Motivation (hint: Not Money)
Josh had 12 years in the corporate world, which included running a major department at Comcast. I knew he was seasoned, but I was still skeptical at first. We were going through some tough growing pains, and I thought that a lack of cash would make it extremely difficult to improve the company morale. I was wrong. With his help and the help of the great team leaders he put in place, Josh not...
Tips on Retaining Your Top Performers
Hopefully you haven’t been faced with this scenario. And if you keep reading, you may never find yourself on the receiving end of such bad news. That’s because the following is some of the best advice on how to retain your rock stars. Take this list to heart and you may land a top dog for life. Learn their language You may think you know what motivates your top employees, but have you sat down...
Body Language To Avoid
Body language includes all the things that are being said by everything from your posture to the way you play with your hair in the midst of a conversation. Believe it or not, all these things express what you may not be saying verbally, and the person on the other side of the table is picking up on every non-verbal word! Here are some of the most common mistakes that people make: 1. Looking...
Email footer design: unsubscribe links vs. profile...
I’m subscribed to GigaOm Pro newsletters. I get weekly technology news from them, and I love it. Hard to put my finger on it, but their news just seems — smarter. Anyway, here’s their footer: As a publication, they obviously would prefer that you not unsubscribe from their list. They’d prefer that you change your settings. But they don’t hide their unsubscribe link (in fact, they make it more...
January 2012
23 posts
Snickers’ social media campaign is genius
Katie Price and Rio Ferdinand are facing a probe by the Advertising Standards Authority for their part in a wicked spoof by Snickers that quickly went viral across the ‘net. The celebrities posted a series of out-of-character tweets: Katie, whose breasts are bigger than her head and, almost certainly, than her brain – posted about quantitative easing, liquidity in the bond market, and the...
Notice I still have my money. Intelligentsia just...
Taken at Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea Posted via email from SwBratcher’s Posts | Comment »
iOS5 Jailbreak.. ;)
@pod2g has created a terrific gift for iOS fans — an untethered 5.0.1 jailbreak for non-A5 devices! Many of you have already been following @pod2g’s blog where he’s been keeping everyone up to date on his progress. And so you know that he recently decided to push the button on a release for all devices except the new iPhone4S and iPad2. @pod2g’s untether involves two separate exploits and a...
Why Gold is Doing What It's Doing
Borrelli goes on to say, in part: Gold in a Major Bull Market Gold is beginning the twelfth year of major bull market; perhaps the most unprecedented bull market in our lifetime. [Below is] a quick snapshot of what that bull market has looked like since the 1999 bottom and the 2001 retest of that bottom. From the point of view, as an investor, this is about as beautiful as it gets. Gold has...
The State Of The Union Address: A Master Class In...
After listening to President Obama’s State of the Union (SOTU), I am once again reminded of how powerful delivery skills can be. We can debate whether style trumps substance or vice versa all we want. The truth is that leaders—political and business—who are able to connect emotionally with their stakeholders will win hearts and minds and those who don’t, won’t. Candidates who come...
Five Best Wallpaper Sites
via lifehacker.com Posted via email from SwBratcher’s Posts | Comment »
The Pros & Cons of Google+ for Small Business
A bulk of the small businesses we spoke with said they feel Google+ is an important social platform because it was developed by Google, one of the Internet’s favorite brands and one of the most influential websites when it comes to site referrals. But small business owners gave a plethora of reasons for being early adopters of the platform. Here are some of the top reasons we heard for using...