Category: Websites

Own Your Online Content – Don’t Trust Platforms

Business / Marketing / Technology / Websites

TLDR: Social platforms should be used to amplify your presence, not define it. When you own your domain and your content, you’re no longer at the mercy of arbitrary censorship. You’re building your brand, and something that can last. For many people / content creators and businesses today, they think “social media” IS the internet. They are mistaken. They think facebook pages replace websites, and instagram profiles are portfolios. LinkedIn acts as resume (now with more spam than ever before.) People and businesses put almost all of their …

WordPress Doesn’t Want Honest Reviews

Business / Reviews / Software / Technology / Websites

WordPress (Automattic) has blocked and banned me before for writing reviews that weren’t positive about a plugin or theme. (Kinda sounds like fascistbook, right?) And now they’ve done it again when my review was very simple and clear – that a plugin doesn’t mention that it’s VERY limited unless you upgrade to their paid version. Of course I support developers making money on the code they write – but bait and switch should have gone out with greasy car salesman and wide ties. So why does WordPress think …

Dr. Ben Franklin or: How I Learned to Ignore Lazy Entrepreneurs and Love the Email Address

Business / Marketing / Microsoft / People / Software / Technology / Websites

I’ve been searching for a local or regional marketing consultant to hire, to put together a marketing plan. To me, the most obvious place to me to find that person is LinkedIn – the social network for business. To my great disappointment, of the more than 60 profiles I opened for people listed as “Marketing Consultant” or “Independent Marketing Consulting” only THREE of them had contact information on their LinkedIn profile. It should be a giant red flag if a MARKETING CONSULTANT doesn’t know how to market themselves… …

Simple Twitter Feature – Show Number of Blocks

Business / Software / Technology / Websites

Here’s a very simple Twitter feature that could make a huge difference in the quality of Twitter. It’s unlikely Elon Musk will ever see this but here’s hoping that someone will pass it along. Over the years I found that way too many fake, spam, and fishing Twitter profiles follow my account. I assume they’re doing this with the hope of getting a ‘follow back’ so they can spam more profiles and get into more news feeds. Unlike many people, I don’t care how many followers I have …

In 1996 – 25 years ago – I got my first website ‘award’

Websites

25 years ago today, on Friday July 26th, 1996, MSN chose my website – Bodie.net – as “MSN Pick of the Day”. My passion for Bodie State Historic Park started on a multi-week, summer high school camping trip, where we ended up making a quick stop at a pinpoint on the map to see the ghost town of Bodie. Bodie was a gold mining town in the late 1800s, located at 8,375 feet in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. I still remember the van rattling like it would fall …

Disney+ : Lessons in Agile

Business / Software / Technology / Websites

Having worked on hundreds of websites since the early 1990s, I’m confident in saying that I understand what works and what doesn’t. And, having worked in waterfall and agile software environments, and as a project manager / program manager, I know what the business teams wants vs. what the development teams can deliver (usually based on the timeline that the business owners want.) With the recent launch of Disney’s streaming video service, Disney+, it’s easy to see that Disney is trying to follow some agile methodologies. One of …

Back to Top