Jude Hansen » Uncategorized

More Opportunities For Social Media Reach Coming Soon?

Jude — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 02:52:44 +0000

Sounds like Google has larger plans in the works for social media. This could mean more opportunity for app platform development and marketing to the social graph.

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/06/28/former-facebook-executive-adam-dangelo-confirms-new-google-social-networking-effort

Help Your Friends Get the Message

Jude — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:00:17 +0000

David Pogue of the New York Times is instigating a campaign to have the 15 second voice mail instructional message made optional or removed. To this I say, “good luck with that” and “more power to you.” However, in the article comments was provided the codes that can be used to skip the message if . It is also suggested that these be added to the recorded message to help your callers skip the “blah blah is not available right now. Please leave a detailed message after the tone. When you have finished recording, blah blah blah”. I thought this would be particularly helpful and thought I’d pass it along.

Here are the codes*:

* for Verizon
1 for Sprint
# for AT&T
# for T-Mobile

Now when you record your personal message, you should say something like, “Hi, you’ve reached [an incredibly helpful person]. Leave me a message by pressing [code to skip message] to get to the beep.”

You friends, family, and associates will surely lavish wonderful gifts and praise upon you for such a thoughtful consideration.

* I'm taking this on faith, I have not confirmed that these are true and correct.

Every Company Should Provide Logos

Jude — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:08:37 +0000

As a designer I am regularly adding logos to printed pieces and websites. These are usually for sponsorships or partnerships or associations or whatever. It is also common to make regular requests to whomever I am work with to retrieve good, usable versions of company logos. This person then contacts said company representative–who is likely a sales person–for their company logo of which they provide a toothy business card from which to scan. Oye. On really good days, with larger companies, the sales person provides a link into a marketing area of the company site where many hoops are jumped through and secret passwords conveyed to received the coveted logo/brand kit. It’s usually a PDF, with a multiple version of (albeit necessary) color overlay and white space information. The logo file doesn’t come with it, you have to extract it from the PDF file yourself ..somehow. Screenshot? Yep. Photoshop? Sure, why not.

I’m pretty naive about a lot of things, my wife reminds me of this regularly and she is not mistaken. So, maybe someone could explain to me why companies do not create a place on their website where versions of their logo, in various file formats, can be attained? All the color and placement information can be placed on the page too. Is it because they don’t want anyone to abuse the brand? If so, I have news for them. It’s being abused anyway, we are clipping it out of their website’s mast and scanning it from business cards. If there isn’t a good reason, I’m going to start suggesting and implementing this page for my clients.

Label sent mail in Gmail to ensure you find all email

Jude — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:40:24 +0000

Have you ever been in gmail looking for a particular email within a label and not find it? If you’re like me, you’re diligent about labeling email to ensure all of a particular type of email stays in one place. Every now and again, I find that the email that I’m looking for is one that I *sent*. Once I figure this point out it’s easy enough to find the email. When I do find it, sure enough, there is no label. Why? Because labelling outgoing mail isn’t really part of the standard sending-email workflow. This is unfortunate because finding sent email on a particular topic can come in handle. For instance, when proving that you sent or conveyed something in dispute or to resend instructions to someone else. To remedy this problem, any email that I may want to reference in the future, I click the view message link after it is sent and then label it. voila, next time you’re perusing a label for an email, you’re sent mail with appear there as well.

Twitter Needs Spam Designation

Jude — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:36:03 +0000

Now that Twitter is a part of everyone’s marketing plan, I receive more and more “so-and-so is now following you” notifications each day. These teasers wish and hope I’ll be enticed enough to visit the fake profile of what looks like the mail-order Russian bride I was so enchanted by when I was younger. The profile hosts what I call a “hook line and linker” — a one line teaser and a link to whatever wares they are pawning today.

This type of marketing is expected with any technology that catches on with the general population. I’m not surprised or even overly bothered by it. Most technologies provide tools to deal with it though, once it becomes problematic. I believe it has reached that point. Twitter provides the ability to block a user but this feature doesn’t go far enough. The problem for me is that these junky profiles remain in my Followers list permanently and frankly I never want to see them again. What Twitter can use is a Spam designation that removes individuals from my profile and also blocks them.

Most Twitter users have thousands of people following them or are following thousands of people. They probably don’t see this as a problem, they probably don’t spend their time sifting through thousands of listings–I wouldn’t. I’m probably using the Twitter service incorrectly but I tend to only follow (and like to be followed) by legitimate people. Keeping my followers and followees clean is important to me. With the upgrades Facebook is doing to compete with Twitter, maybe Facebook will be all I really need.

Do others have this problem? How are others dealing with Twitter spam?

[UPDATE: They totally got this idea from me!]

How to forward junk email to your family and friends

Jude — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:19:08 +0000

I don’t mind getting emails that are passed around from one person to another. I’m not a particular fan of what I like to call ‘life lists’–emails with lists of wisdoms and suggestions about how to live your life–but I understand that they strike with people and they just want to help others out and make people feel good. I’m down with that. I also don’t mind funny emails, who doesn’t like a good chuckle. What I do mind is email poorly formatted. It makes me to not want read it. When I forward an email, I want my recipients to read it. I do a few thing to clean up their presentation:

Strip out any request or coercion to send the email to other people. I intend to send something humorous or pithy, not a chain letter. Nothing bad has ever happened to me because I did this.
Strip out any reference to forwarding or sending to others such as carats or bars in the left
Remove any signatures that have been attached but never removed. I’ll leave mine so that my recipients are more assured that the email is from me.
Remove extra lines.
Remove any other superfluous comments or content from other that are unrelated to the email and were added along the way by others who wanted to be funny, cleaver or poignant.
As well, remove any political, religious or overly vulgar content. If the context of the email is political, religious or vulgar in nature, I ensure my recipients are open to receiving these types of emails.
Edit the email for content and remove anything that does not flow with the content.
Lastly, I put everyone’s email address in the bcc fiend and send the email to myself. This prevents everyone’s email address from being divulged.

The downside to the last point is that because all the recipients are hidden from each other, none of them know who also received my email. The recipients may foward it inadvertently to people whom have already received it giving them multiple copies. I rest easy, though, knowing that my version probably looked the best.

Enjoy Great Rewards by Leading an Empty Life

Jude — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:44:38 +0000

A nice article about the tribulations of managing your inbox. The author, Mr. Manjoo, discusses the process everyone goes through once they decide to try to wrangle their email. We attempt to categorize, label and filter our way out of the mess but find that it only creates more work to do and does not bring us any closer to our goal. At last, we arrive at the solution–maintain and empty inbox. It is the concept for which Gmail was created. To recap, here are Mr. Manjoo’s steps and suggestions to achieving Intergalactic Emptiness (as Ace Ventura may have called it):

Limit your time in your inbox
Clear out your inbox
Archive messages that don’t require action
Respond to emails quickly and immediately if possible
Forward it if there is someone else who can handle it
Hold it for later if it requires more time and attention but don’t let it languish

To go one step further, once you have become a practiced in-box cleaner, you can then move onto the next challenge of leading an managed life–the To-Do List. To a degree, this overlaps the last step in Mr. Manjoo’s list. Oftentimes, the hold-overs go into the interminable To-Do list that has probably become unmanageable as well. If you get to this point, keep in mind that To-Do lists are created to get things done. If you find yourself organizing your to-do list too much, much like with email, you’ll find that you’re heading down the wrong path. Treat your to-do list like your inbox, it is only organized when it is empty.