Reading Time: < 1 min There are a lot of awards given out to companies and websites that are various levels of scam. It can be a pretty lucrative business to “sell” awards to other companies, and it’s frustrating. However, there are many awards out there that are legitimate and merit-based, and I’m thrilled that GreenMellen was chosen as one […]
Brandolini’s Law
Reading Time: 2 min This is something we’ve all seen before, but I never knew what it was called. When someone posts false or misleading information online, the effort to refute it is generally an order of magnitude larger than to produce it. Coined in 2013 by Alberto Brandolini, it’s known as Brandolini’s Law, sometimes known as the “bullshit […]
I’ve been around since 1976
Reading Time: < 1 min When a visitor first arrives on your website, they want to know three basic things (sometimes known as “the grunt test“): What do you offer? How will it make my life better? What do I need to do to buy it? Something that isn’t on that initial list? The age of your company. That information […]
Averages or adjustments?
Reading Time: 2 min It can be easy to try to design something to fit “the average person”. But do you want to? Or more importantly, is it even possible? In many cases, an average may not exist. If you’re with a group of people where 50% are Christian and 50% are atheist, it’s not useful to say “the […]
The Barnum Effect
Reading Time: 2 min I find the “Barnum Effect” to be a fascinating concept. It’s the idea that you can publish a description of someone that seems very precise and descriptive, but it is really vague enough that it applies to most everyone. Some examples might be: You have a great need for other people to like and admire […]
How the hierarchy of attention affects deep work
Reading Time: < 1 min I’ve talked about the hierarchy of attention on here a variety of times. When communicating with people, different types of communication imply different types of urgency, with a phone call meaning “I need your attention right this moment“. That’s not always ideal. We all have times during the day when we’re really focused in on […]
Problems come from ignored complaints
Reading Time: < 1 min Businesses hate to see complaints, and we all know that. You work hard to put something out into the world, and then someone reaches out to explain why they don’t like it. As bad as a complaint may feel, though, ignoring it could be far worse. As Nico De Bruyn said in We’re All Marketers: […]
Why are self-titled albums often the best?
Reading Time: < 1 min You see it a lot — not every time, but quite frequently. A band releases their first album and it’s a huge hit, and subsequent releases can’t quite stand up to it. In cases where this is true, I think there is one big reason for it. For a band’s first album, they have songs […]
Facial recognition and encryption can’t be put back in the bottle
Reading Time: < 1 min There are two topics that I hear come up repeatedly with groups trying to stop them, but I think it’s too late for both. First you have facial recognition technology, which privacy advocates are trying to stop. It’s a noble cause, for sure, but it’s likely to impossible to stop at this point. There are […]
Organized browser tabs with Workona
Reading Time: < 1 min I try out a lot of productivity tools over the course of a month, and most come and go pretty quickly. If they stick around in my workflow for at least a few weeks, I like to share them here. That’s the case with Workona. Here’s a quick intro video that they created for it […]