Archive for December, 2009

Operation Chihuahua is a go

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

This is your captain, we are ready for take-off.

If you live in California, this will come as no surprise; there is an overpopulation of Chihuahuas here.

Concerned that our sunny streets will soon be overrun with unruly gangs of these little critters, Virgin America has partnered with the San Francisco Animal Care and Control to transport the homeless dogs to New York where the demand for the dogs is high. Once in New York, the Chihuahuas will be under the care of American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals employees, who will work to find adoptive homes for the micro-mutts.

Mispelllllling intenshional

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

stopFrom an early age, we’re taught that misspellings are a no-no. In school, they can lower your grade. In the professional world, they can mean missing out on an opportunity. But when it comes to your URL, you might want to consider registering one or several misspellings of your domain. Why? Because unlike your fifth grade English teacher, many of us are poor spellers.

Case in point: I have a friend who can’t spell his way out of a paper bag. One day he asked me to check his spelling on something and I came across the word “braw.” When I told him he spelled “bra” wrong, he replied, “Oh, did I leave off the ‘w’?”

He’s not the only one out there, which is why we need to anticipate how they might misspell our company names when doing a Google search.

For example, if your company is named Lemon Anchovies, we’ll assume your URL is LemonAnchovies.com. But you might also consider registering LemonAnchovees.com and maybe even LeminAnchovies.com.  The cost of registering additional domains is little in comparison to the business potential of grabbing new customers. And really, just because they can’t spell, that doesn’t mean they can’t spend.

Facebook – enhanced privacy or invasion of privacy?

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

big-brotherFacebook recently announced its new privacy enhancements that may just make our information less private. Although there are new controls that allow you to limit who sees your personal information, posts, photos, etc., the change that’s causing blow back is due to a new category, called “publicly available information,” that is beyond users’ control. This new category includes a person’s name, picture and city, the list of their Facebook friends and the Facebook pages they have endorsed. As a recent LA Times editorial observed, “The friends list is particularly sensitive, privacy advocates note, because of the amount of personal information that can be gleaned from knowing a person’s associates.”

Why did Facebook do this? According to the LA Times, it’s simply good business. For them, not necessarily for you. Read the Op-ed piece here.