Recently in Off-Topic Category

To help with this post I brought in a guest blogger, my good friend Greg Gibson, whose Elf Needs Food blog covers videogames, the gaming industry, and movie and book reviews. He's also on Twitter: @ElfNeedsFood.

1. Yahoo! News
I was excited when Google introduced Google News. It made sense to me at the time: Google's engineers are so smart that they can program algorithms that find interesting news much better than people can, right?!? Wrong. When I want a firehose of information, I go to popurls.com. When I want the news of the day, in the way I once might have read a daily newspaper, I go to Yahoo! News. Google News is only good for their keyword alerts. CNN.com gives me a headache.

2. YUI
The YUI library is an extensive collection of JavaScript and CSS tools. Basically, YUI provides everything a front-end web developer/designer needs, short of HTML and content.  Because Yahoo! uses YUI for its own applications, the code has already been tested at one of the most visited sites on the web, it has to work in all major browsers, and it's likely to be supported and updated for a long time to come.

There's no other library that provides a combined JavaScript and CSS solution of YUI's caliber, but even separately, I'd probably use its tools in my web projects. YUI's CSS framework is the best I've tried (Blueprint is pretty nice, too). As for JavaScript libraries, picking one is often a matter of preference. For example, plenty of people love jQuery, which has a great community that creates plugins to extend the library. I prefer YUI, because it has so much included functionality and it mixes in seamlessly with the other JavaScript I write.

Finally, the genius of YUI isn't just the library itself. Yahoo! has stocked the developers' area of their site with excellent videos, examples, and documentation, making it easy to get started with the library -- and providing a path to becoming an expert.

3. Yahoo! Finance
I once had a client who was interested in advertising on Yahoo! Finance. No problem, I thought. I'll just find the advertising contact info on their site, call them up, and I'm sure they'll be glad to take your money. After repeated phone calls and voicemails and emails, I got nowhere. I finally had to call in a favor from an ad agency to get someone's direct line at Yahoo!, only to learn that they have separate departments for handling agency inquiries and direct purchases. I also learned that the minimum ad buy is $25,000—not a huge sum in the advertising world but quite different from Google's $0.01 minimum.

So why is it so hard to advertise on Yahoo! Finance? Because it's been a great site since it launched and they've never relinquished their lead. More importantly, it's where financial advisors and other sophisticated investors go—along with the masses. When you ask investment professionals what sites they visit, the top three are usually CNN, ESPN and Yahoo! Finance. Yahoo! knows they've got a good thing with Finance. They should still pick up the phone, though.

4. Yahoo! TV Listings
    Yahoo! Movie Showtimes
These no-frills utilities are the best at what they do precisely because they're no-frills. When looking up movie times and TV show listings, I just want the information displayed cleanly and quickly. Yahoo!'s TV and movie listings meet those two qualifications better than any other site on the web. (Recently, though, I've found myself using iPhone apps for both these tasks.)

5. Yahoo! Sports
From a sports site, I usually want two things: analysis and in-game box scores (which I usually prefer to animated gamecasts).

ESPN is the king of reporting on trade rumors, team politics, and sports-related social issues. These are easy things to write about, because they require little expertise, just access. But the network seems to have very few analysts who really understand -- or even seem to watch -- the sports they cover.

About a dozen full-time basketball writers work for ESPN, only two of whom (John Hollinger and Henry Abbott) are credible hoops junkies. Yahoo's "Ball Don't Lie" blog -- which is just one part of their basketball coverage -- has just as many. And one of those contributors, Kelly Dwyer, is the single best basketball analyst at any mainstream site. He's a fan, he understands the game, and he can write.

From a box score, I just want something up-to-date, quick-loading, and easy on the browser. Yahoo!'s and ESPN's box score formats are pretty similar, but Yahoo! does a better job of organizing data for a quick snapshot of the game in progress. Without scrolling my browser down, a Yahoo! baseball box score features the inning-by-inning score, the team lineups, and a display showing many runners are on base, who's pitching, who's up to bat, the current balls-and-strikes count, and what happened on the last pitch. ESPN's box scores show only the inning-by-inning scoring.

(As a recent convert to English Premier League soccer, Yahoo!'s Eurosport Football site is also the best gameday resource I've found, at least so far.)

Honorable Mention: Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo! Mail was once the clear winner over its competitors—Hotmail and AOL—and then Gmail came along and squashed them like a bug. I dutifully got a Gmail invite (from Greg, now that I think about it) but never made the switch, not completely anyway. The threaded conversations in Gmail are great once you get the hang of them but sometimes there is comfort in the familiar way of doing things, even if Google engineers think it's silly. And since Yahoo!'s acquisition of Oddpost in 2004 allowed them to introduce AJAX functionality, they have had a pretty damn good email client. Gmail is probably better, but to me it's a marginal difference and not enough to make me force my friends and family to update their address books.

Honorable Mention: Yahoo! Personals
I haven't used this site in about eight years, but it did allow my eventual wife to discover me. I can't complain about a 100% success rate.

"You're a musician? What instrument?"

"Guitar-bass-drums. Mostly."

I have some version of this conversation every week. If it's not about music, it's about my career trajectory. You know, the usual path of the film and art major turned restaurant critic turned NYC subway musician who became a marketing manager for a financial services company and also built websites and is now a consultant. (I'm leaving a bunch out.)

Refusing to specialize was never a conscious decision. At the time it felt more like dabbling until I achieved competence and then moving onto something else. But I now realize that my "failure" to decide what to do with my life has become my biggest asset. Life is a process of constant adaptation and if I'd stuck with some of my earlier interests at the expense of later ones, at best I'd be a mediocre comic-book artist. At worst, a juggler.

You never know what skills will benefit you later in life. The computer science courses I took in college taught me DOS and Lotus 1-2-3 and nothing about the web. But outside of class I guiltily frequented the pre-web Prodigy network which turned out to be time well spent. As a musician I was never in any danger of commercial success but I learned how to collaborate with other creative people, particularly when I worked with directors and actors at Inverse Theater Company. My writing, most of it doggerel,  was published in a few places but more importantly taught me to operate on tight deadlines. And come to think of it, being able to juggle five tennis balls or three machetes is incredibly dorky but requires significant grace under pressure.

Some call me a jack of all trades, which implies, of course, "master of none." But there's an older, better word for it: polymath. It's not such a bad path to take.       

This is a fairly typical night for us. I have not slept soundly in six years. I don't expect to until both kids are long gone.

8 PM Both kids asleep. Hallelujiah.

10:30 PM Lights out for Sarah and me. Sarah falls asleep pretty quickly. I toss and turn like I always do. Finally start falling asleep when...

11:30 PM Charlie lets out a wail. I fly out of bed to stop him before he wakes Ava. I put my hand on him and he falls back asleep in his crib. I head back to bed and toss and turn until drifting into an uneasy sleep.

2:30 AM Charlie unleashes a scream that peels paint off the walls. I bolt out of bed on autopilot, my eyes still closed when I reach his room. This time he's wide awake, screaming "Mama" and "Daddy." This is the scream of "Even though I'm almost two years old, I didn't eat any dinner, and now I'm starving, and what are you gonna do about it?" Answer: Give him milk at 2:30 a.m. Like a newborn.

Now Charlie is in bed with us. There is no point trying to force him back into his crib. He used to snuggle against Sarah so that I barely noticed him in our bed, but now I'm his preferred victim. He wedges against my back, leaving approximately 8" of mattress on which to lie. Still, I manage to sleep until...

4:30 AM Sarah is shaking me awake. "Ava!" she says. I'm so tired I think she is actually talking to Ava until I realize that she is telling me that Ava is screaming her head off, which she is. Sarah and I have a tacit agreement that I get up for the majority of these episodes because I can function on about 2/3rds the sleep that Sarah needs. It's a plain fact and I harbor no resentment. So off I go to Ava's room.

Upon entering, Ava instantly composes herself and says, "Daddy, I am screaming for two reasons. One, my stomach hurts. Two, I had a bad dream."

"Rest is the best thing for your stomach," I say.

"OK. What about the bad dream?"

She has me there. I am too tired for conversation. "Snuggles from Daddy," I admit.

Ava sets about rearranging approximately 8.5 million stuffed animals to give me more room. I curl myself around her like a question mark and go to sleep on even less square footage than I had in the bed with Charlie. Every time I shift to get comfortable, Ava grabs me and begs me not to leave. Normally I can convince her that she just needs another million animals in her bed and she'll be fine, but again, I am too tired for conversation. I sleep intermittently until...

6:30 AM Sarah enters the room and says she needs to get in the shower. Charlie is still asleep in our bed and can't be left alone. Relishing the idea of 20 minutes in a king-size bed and only a toddler to share it with, I head back to our bedroom, ignoring Ava's protests. Charlie has somehow managed to stretch himself horizontally so that he occupies 80% of the bed. The other 20% is occupied by our smelly cat, Lucie. It's a bad idea to wake either one of them, so I wedge myself in and stare at the ceiling until...

6:50 AM Ava wanders in. I extract myself from my two sleeping companions and lead her into the kitchen to make breakfast. The day has begun.   

Winning industry awards can be a great way to get recognition for your company and, perhaps more importantly, your personal contributions. Who pays the most attention to them? Your bosses. That's why industry awards are important, even if no one outside your field gives a poop.

I have a pretty good track record of winning industry awards. For example, this year I submitted five entries to the Mutual Fund Education Alliance's STAR Awards and won all five. While I certainly stand by the accomplishments the submissions represent, I think at least 50% of the reason we won is the submissions themselves. Here are some steps you can take to improve your chances.

1. Choose the award carefully.

Most of us will never win an Academy Award—or even a Webby, for that matter. Choose awards you have a realistic chance of winning, but that are still meaningful to people within your industry. Within the mutual fund industry, everyone has heard of the MFEA. There were enough entrants to make it a legitimate competition, but not so many that we'd get creamed by bigger players with more resources. (It especially helped that entrants were grouped according to assets under management, so we competed against other mid-size companies.)

2. Follow the rules.

It's amazing how many awards submissions get discarded because people can't follow the rules of the competition. If you're asked for a one-sentence summary, keep your summary to one sentence. If they want quantitative evidence, include quantitative evidence. If they want eleventeen copies of each submission, bound together with masticated Zebra Stripe gum and airplane glue... you get the idea. However, following the rules is no excuse to be boring. (See steps #3 and #4).  


3. Know your audience.

You are writing for the judges—and no one else. Judges have to sift through dozens, maybe even hundreds or thousands, of identical-seeming submissions. They're tired. Their eyes look like chewed grapes. They kinda wish they had never volunteered for this gig. (I once judged an independent film contest and the experience nearly put me down for a dirt nap.) So you need to make your submission stand out. Which leads to...  

4. Treat your award submission as a marketing opportunity.

Because you are marketing to the judges, and no one else, there is no need to be stodgy. No need to employ industry jargon that most of us hate. Write succinctly and confidently. Don't be afraid to be a little edgy, too. And above all, BE BRIEF! (I pared the communications objective of one submission down to one sentence, something like: "The goal of this web page is to provide financial advisors immediate access to the most salient information with the lowest possible barrier to entry." Boom!) You are not being judged on how many synonyms you can find for "synergy" and "leverage." You are being judged on how well you can paint a picture for the judges, without wasting a moment of their time. As Strunk and White wrote, "Omit needless words."

My most recent experience is in the financial services industry. But these tactics apply to all industries that are big enough to celebrate their own, which is most of 'em. I hope you find this useful. Let me know if you do. Good luck! 

Ever run across a piece of writing that seems only vaguely familiar until you realize that you wrote it? I found these Amazon reviews from 2000 that I (apparently) penned. The millennial Noah was cleverer—and had more spare time—than the modern Noah. Enjoy.

				Music Price: $6.99 Availability: In Stock
1 of 4 people found the following review helpful: Better Than Patsy Cline!, November 12, 2000 On this disc, Madonna--the most diversely talented human since the late Steve Allen--explores her heretofore unexplored country/western side with phenomenal results. The opener, "Music," carries the listener on a delightful magic carpet ride to a smoky honky-tonk, complete with sawdust on the floor and bottles a-flyin' through the air. She out Patsy Clines Patsy Cline when she pulls aching low notes from her diaphragm. "Impressive Instant" explores the fleeting nature of love: a star struck female rodeo clown is impressed by a swaggering bull rider -- but only for an instant. The twang of a distant lap steel only adds to the heartbreak. "I Deserve It" is about good love gone bad, as a trailer resident with low self-esteem cries herself to sleep at night after her nightly beating by her truck-driving husband. Willie Nelson ably acts the part of the hubby in this soul-wrenching duet. "What it Feels Like for a Girl" answers an age-old question: why do girls like horseback riding so much? Finally, "Gone" is a chicken-fried tribute to Greg Ginn's post-Black Flag days in the band by the same name. Merle Haggard lends his voice to this a cappela number; Madonna and Merle conjure memories of old-stlye barbershop quartets. Bravo! Five Stars! Buy it Now!

Back in July, I posited that favorable customer reviews led to a considerable spike in Amazon sales of the book I co-published with my wife, DC BABY. This seems pretty obvious, but several articles on this subject have been recently published in major media.

For example:

Web Shoppers Trust Customer Reviews More Than Friends (Adweek)

Companies are learning to make the most out of customers' online reviews of their products (WSJ)

I figured it was a good time for an update. Since my initial post, sales have continued to rise:

I think what makes our story unique is that all we had to do was ask our customers for the reviews. It was that simple.

Shot this last weekend in our new Austin house. This video demonstrates both the sibling rivalry we're dealing with and the reason we don't have much video of the kids -- they can't keep their hands off the camera!

I'm working on a long post about Charles Willeford that I might never complete. In the meantime, here are some websites I've discovered recently.

Why There Are No Girls in San Francisco

"The progression was this: Hippies were like, “Yeah, free love man, stop getting all hung up on artificial, culturally contingent and totally oppressive conventions of hygiene and sexuality, man,” and the Man was like, “Hey stop that, that’s disgusting,” and Hippies were like, “Try and stop us” and then Nature was like, “AIDS.”"

Slow Web

"There's a web that's well-considered and worth savoring. We'll show you where."

Alice and Kev

"This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes." (Needs to be updated, but worth reading from the beginning!)

Straight Sets

NY Times tennis blog.

...at least it's consistent!

We're always looking for new ways to sell copies of my wife's book, DC BABY. (Lowering the price works every time, but that has the added effect of, well, lowering the price.)

The book is available through a variety of vendors, including Amazon. The latest edition of the book has been available on Amazon since fall 2008. But even though the book has sold at a steady clip, no one posted any reviews until last week. As of today there are 11 reviews, nearly all with a 5-star rating. How did we do it? It's simple: We asked. We also offered a free e-book in exchange for an Amazon review. Less than half of the reviewers requested the e-book; the rest just did it because they felt like it.

The results? In just one week, sales for the month have nearly doubled, as demonstrated in this chart: