The Hot Iron

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Is Your Web Site Ready For Its Close-Up?

Whenever I meet with a new client to talk about delivering a new Web site or enhancements to an existing one, I always talk about who may be visiting it.  At the end of the discussion, I always add to the list “anyone” as the reality is that if you have a public Web site, truly anyone can see it.

When people think about viewing a Web site, most of the time the though is that it would be viewed online, using a browser.  The next natural way is that it is viewed on a handheld device.  But what about TV?  Last night, one of my client’s, Foresight Childproofing, was featured on a local Minneapolis TV station relating to a child safety story.  At the end of the story they showed the home page of their Web site, childproofhome.com.  You can watch the story here:

http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_066101558.html

So the next time you think of who will be looking at your Web site, realize it could be a couch potato.

Monday, March 05, 2007

You Are The Light

The Olympics are coming… well, the committee from the US Olympics organization that will be choosing between Chicago and Los Angeles for the US entry for the 2016 summer Olympics is coming.  They will arrive on Tuesday, and are promised to be given the red-carpet treatment by the city organization that has well-packaged plans and millions of dollars in the bank to make it happen.

The Sears Tower will feature the Chicago Olympics logo projected over 20 stories on its north side.  Several weeks back I was in Millennium Park and saw workers testing a similar logo on the side of the AON Center.  Here’s how I was able to capture it with my Treo smartphone:

Do I want the Olympics to come to Chicago?  Of course!  It will be a boost for the local and regional economy, not to mention property values.  Though it is difficult for me to determine if I will be here in Chicago – we are talking about an event nine years from now, and nine years ago I had no idea I would be in Chicago!

As for the title of this blog post – You Are The Light is the name of the Olympic fanfare song; you can hear the trumpets right now in your head.

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Are blog calendars useful?

Many blogs feature a calendar of the current month, where days are bolded to indicate one or more blog posts were written that day.

When I setup The Hot Iron, one of the first things I did was to remove the calendar, and I have done so on other blogs.  I did not see a value in the calendar, especially compared with lists of categories and most recent posts.  I am now seeing more blogs without calendars.

So what do you think?  Would a calendar add value to this blog?

Saturday, March 03, 2007

The Non-Personal Touch

The other day I got a letter from a vendor whose name I will purposely withhold.  By the nature of their business, my relationship with them is always personal.  The letter I received was addressed to, “Dear Valued Client.”

Am I really a valued client?  They have my contact information to generate the mailing label that went on the envelope.  How hard was it to do a mail-merge and address the letter personally to me?

Perhaps the letter was misaddressed after all?

Friday, March 02, 2007

Nickels Don’t Shred Well

I shred about 80% of the postal mail I receive.  Most of the items chewed up by my shredder are the old stand-bys – offers for credit cards and insurance – and a few are for charities I have never heard of.  As my intuition on junk mail has heightened over the years, many of these go right into the shredder without being opened.

The other day, my shredder stopped in the middle of shredding an item.  When I pulled it out, I saw a shiny new Jefferson nickel in the address window.  A nickel?  Messaging inside the envelope mentioned something about sending the nickel back to the charity, accompanied by many more.

Just as spammers are trying to get their message across, so are snail mailers.  Continuing that comparison, are nickels the new Trojan files attached to email?  I cannot recall the name of the charity that sent that mailing with the nickel, and they certainly did not get it or a red cent from me.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

GMail Going the Way of MediaOne.net?

Recently I wrote about the canceling of the use of domain names by Internet providers, sending their users into a tailspin to change their email address and notify all of their contacts of the change.  Now it seems like Google may be the next to do so.

The search giant lost the trademark rights to the GMail name in the UK, and the company that won the case is now taking the case to the US.  This article on the GMail trademark case outlines much of the detail that led to Google losing the case.

Yet another reason to own your own domain name!

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Seattle Turnarounds

There has been much talk about Starbucks’ founder Howard Schultz’s Valentine’s Day memo entitled “The Commoditization of the Starbucks Experience.” In short, he says that decisions made by the coffee chain in order to scale to its massive size, such as automatic espresso machines and putting beans in flavor-lock bags, have had a detrimental effect on the overall Starbucks experience.  Or as I take that, Starbucks stores are losing their mojo.

Will Starbucks be able to turn it around and return some of the magic to the experience of paying several dollars for a cup of coffee?  They can look to their neighbor in Redmond, Microsoft, for how to make a dramatic turnaround… from over a decade ago.  In the early 90’s Microsoft did not have an Internet strategy.  Within a year, they were able to turn it around, introducing the Internet Explorer browser and the Active Server Pages language, and take a lead in delivering Internet solutions.  Granted they licensed the Spyglass browser and remade it into IE, but they were able to go from nothing to something relatively quickly.  Not bad for the early 90’s.

Then again, maybe Microsoft should look to its past for some help itself.

Vote if It’s Election Day for You

Today is Election Day in Chicago and many other cities around the country.  Winter or spring elections in the U.S. tend to be more for local offices and positions rather than national offices.  If voting is going on in your city, town or other name for where you live, please vote.

As much as people think they do not have a say in whom their elected officials are and what they do, this is the one opportunity to make your voice heard.  With record lows in voter turnout around the country, imagine what would happen if it were record highs instead.  And all of the people, who didn’t vote because they didn’t think their candidate would win, went ahead and voted?

If you are not registered to vote, please let this be a reminder to do so.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

More Than an Olympic Feeling

This past week the language got hot between Chicago and Los Angeles, the American cities vying to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.  Once a decision is made between the two, that city will be competing against cities around the world to be the host.  A decision will be coming in April on the US entry.

Various elements of the plans for the Olympics have already been released.  Most of the Olympic village will be on the South Side of the city, and will feature a “temporary” stadium as the main venue for the games.  Temporary means it will be torn down after the 2 week event.  Other elements will remain, namely the residences that will become housing afterwards.  Other existing venues in the city will be used for the games, including Grant Park as a main party spot and Millennium Park for medal awards.

The notion of temporary structures is not new to the Second City.  Most all of the buildings and landscape of the 1893 Columbian Exposition were designed to be temporary and are gone, with the exception of the rebuild building now housing the Museum of Science and Industry.  Temporary structures is not unique to us, as the stadium from the 1996 Summer Olympics became Turner Field in Atlanta.

I hope this is not completely a case of history repeating itself.  Granted, Chicago is a city that believes it has to continually improve and in some cases reinvent itself, which is part of the reason I live here!  I only hope that in the planning of changes to the city, consideration is made to develop some structures that, long after 2016, are blatant, lasting symbols that the world came to Chicago to compete.  The spirit of the Olympics would build leading up to the event, but those symbols would make it last a lot longer.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Return Hangers to the Dry Cleaners

If you are “ferrously challenged” like I am, which means you can’t iron a garment to save your life, you probably use dry cleaners to get your shirts and other clothes nice and crisp.  Over time, you probably accumulate many wire hangers.  So what do you do with them?  Allow me to make a suggestion – return them to your dry cleaners.

Recently I brought back a whole stack of hangers to the cleaners.  After pulling them out of my garment bag, the owner thanked me profusely, telling me that the cost of hangers has been on the rise.  So as a result, I am keeping their costs down, which will hopefully relate in keeping my costs down.

There’s also the question of recycling hangers that are used for clothing.  When I take a garment off a dry cleaning hanger I do not reuse it, as I prefer to use a more stable hanger.  Thus the hangers I return are, as far as I am concerned, clean.

Is that the case for all hangers?  Am I thinking about this too much?