General Musing

I needed a way to be able to shamelessly plug the posts I recently bundled into the booklet “Write Something” again.In a similar way to the last time I did it in Proof of Concept: Google Docs Mail Merge Form

As I explained before I have set up a system to automatically mail somebody when the enter their address in the form, my issue was that I wanted to add a unique blogpost which they would only be able to get by signing up. Naturally I wanted to style it in the same way the posts are styled in this blog. Again I turned to the documentation, specifically the Class MailApp which I was using to send the mail. Using this documentation I had a starting point. I wanted three changes to the current script:

1. keep the plain text
2. add HTML message
3. add inline images

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I needed a way to be able to shamelessly plug the posts I recently bundled into the booklet “Write Something“. I want to build a list, and offering something which adds value for the subscriber is a good way to do this. There is a host of good material which you can use to help, so I won’t elaborate on that in this post.

I have a hosted WordPress.com blog, which means that I can’t run a local script to collect the mail addresses and mail them, so I turned to Google Docs’ Form functionality for the entry form, naturally I give them the option to download the booklet there, and I wanted to send the subscriber a message to thank them. In the Google tutorial: Simple Mail Merge they explain how to do a mail merge using the Script Editor. I wanted to go a little further and have it send a mail with thank you note and a link to each subscriber as soon as they filled in the form.

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I have a confession, I am a former software vendor, I’ve worked for software vendors as a consultant, and I’ve been guilt of delivering a solution which didn’t work as advertised. This is sadly an all too common occurrence which can be due to many things which I will not be discussing here. Here I will identify some of the common pitfalls that all vendors face, and what can be done to reduce and mitigate the risks these pose.

There are a number of pitfalls that a vendor can fall into when addressing the issue or the customer, Groopman calls^[1] these the 3 A’s: Read the rest of this entry »

In 2008, and again early 2011, I wrote articles about the Social Networking Job Trends, again I checked the graph I’d included, continued to be updating and had shot over 1% of all the job postings on Indeed.com in December 2011. Perhaps these employers and sourcers should be reading Why I Will Never, Ever Hire A “Social Media Expert”:

Social media is just another facet of marketing and customer service.
Say it with me.

What else could this mean?

It’s obvious to me that this graph shows that Social Media as a term is winning ground over web2.0, which is lost from the mid 2011 high of 0.35%.

^{“social networking” Job Trends}

technorati tags: social, networking, jobs, business, work

Image source: zerojay, indeed

Last year I was so happy to see this instant feedback for the toilets at Schiphol I thought about the ways in which I give instant feedback for a job done. I send the occasional Thank You card, and on occasion hand deliver them to the person in question. This is not instant. How can I give somebody instant feedback?

In a food service establishment, such as a café or restaurant it is customary to leave a tip, for shops this is not as customary and it still only allows the employee to see the appreciation for the service performed. Location based recommendations with a geolocation service, such as foursquare, is ideal although this is unlike a tip that it only promotes the establishment and there is no feedback loop within the establishment. Service cards or books, a mainstay of hotels and small catering services also don’t entirely cover it. And naturally this example has price as the prohibiting factor.

How would you get instant on- and offline?

Image source: me

I recently saw a note from the Tech Journalist Russell Holly who calls on the Scumbags of the Internet to stop making demands of developers from whom they get their free software:

You don’t demand ETA’s on shit you aren’t paying for. You don’t get angry when something doesn’t work quite right on an Alpha or Beta build of something you didn’t pay for. You don’t start shooting off at the mouth about how you are going to move to someone else’s free software if this developer doesn’t fix the software you didn’t pay for.

I was naturally in agreement with the spirit of what he said. And I think that he and these developers miss a number of simple facts: Read the rest of this entry »

I recently started noticing that certain locations that I check into had tips which were usually for companies close to that location. An example it the ING Bank advertising their career site when you are in the discount electronics shop across the road or in the mall. Or Heineken informing you that you can link your FourSquare profile to your Heineken profile.

Image source: me

Some weeks ago I read an interview with a Dutch Internet Entrepreneur who was launching a book on how to create a start up. I haven’t read the book so I can judge that, however what surprised me was his tip to give smokers only 23 days holiday rather than 26 days as they are 1.5 hours less productive every day. I think that he’s missed the point when it comes to productivity, and I’ll tell you why:

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