Having a positive attitude.

A positive attitude is the absolute most valuable asset a person can cultivate; and sometimes the hardest. Especially now when the economy is tight, jobs are scarce and stress seems to be at an all-time high. Makes you think about the sarcastic comment that goes something like "I’m positive I’ll have a bad day." Sometimes it seems like that's about the closest you can come to having a positive attitude.

Having a positive attitude isn’t just about feeling good either. Positive people attract— money, jobs, opportunity; a positive attitude will do more for your career than the best education! Whether you're working on a website, creating a logo, or designing a business card, having a positive attitude will result in a much better design; guaranteed! Better designs will result in happier customers, more repeat business and lots more referrals! A positive attitude is a requirement when you’re in the creative arts industry. It's almost impossible to create anything when you're in the doldrums. Been there, done that. I have some seriously ugly ads to prove it too.

So when the days seem their darkest and you feel as though the only thing in your life is despair, what can you do to help nullify the negative and polish the positive?

1. Smile. Funny thing about smiles, they have the ability to grow from the outside in. So plaster a big one on your mug and smile even when you don’t feel like it. You’ll soon feel the positive rising to the top.
2. Get Busy. Boredom is depressing! No doubt about it. So rather than sitting around focusing on how bored you are, get up and get busy. The more active you become, the better you’ll feel.
3. Listen to up-beat music. Surround yourself with energetic music. Find those songs that make you feel good and sing along with them. Music is a fantastic tool to control one's mood.
4. Read motivational, positive thinking self-help books. Listen to motivational tapes as you drive to work or to the store. Keep the positive energy flowing inward and don't allow the negative to take up residency in your mind. Seek out things that make you feel good about yourself, your world and your life.
5. And my favorite…. Choose to be positive. Attitude is a choice. When I'm faced with a "bad day", I often times think of the story of the man who chose to be happy every day. The story went something like this:
   

   “A 92 year old man who is dressed and shaved every morning by 8 A.M. even though he's legally blind, moved into a nursing home. As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, an aide described his tiny room.
   "I love it!" he said.
   "Mr. Jones, you haven’t seen your room," the aide said.
   "That doesn’t have anything to do with it," he replied. "Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged. It’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it."
   "It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do."
   "Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I'll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I've stored away."

And that, to me, is the definition of a positive attitude. And I chose today, that I will wake up with a smile on my face and a song in my heart knowing that today will be a great day… and of that, I’m positive!

Communication – The most basic function of a website

A Failure to Communicate

Regardless of the type of website you have or are planning, the most basic function of any website is to communicate. The effectiveness of this communication can be directly responsible for the site’s success or failure. When determining the effectiveness of the site and its communication, evaluate whether a visitor to the site can immediately tell what the site’s purpose is? Then determine what elements of the site help this communication and what elements hinder it.

Primary in a sites communication is the text which includes the language, grammar and spelling along with the organization and structure. Breaking up huge chucks of text with the use of headings, tags, paragraphs and bullets makes the site easier to read, promotes scanning and gives the visitor the ability to quickly determine the purpose of the site. Using appropriate fonts for the content type can also help the visitor get a quick “feel” for the tone of the site.

Images are the second form of communication found on a website. Images support the textual content and give the website more interest and impact. A visitor to your site will scan your images first before reading a single word, and used to your advantage, images can be a great way to entice the visitor to check out the rest of your content. A good web design will present the text and images in a well-thought-out structured way that delivers the maximum impact in terms of the sites communication.

Additional considerations regarding the way the site communicates are:

• Amount of whitespace

When I think of a site “speaking” or communicating to a visitor, I think of the whitespace as “taking a breath”; the same thing as a speaker taking a breath. It gives the listener a break, a second of quiet in which to process what they have just heard, or in the case of the website, what they have just seen or read.

• Navigation

Navigation can tell the visitor what other information or products can be found on the site. Structured properly it can convey which pages are important or relevant.

• Colors

Over 80% of visual information or communication is related to color. Colors can communicate in powerful ways. They can make us feel pleasure, happiness, disapproval, attracted, repelled, depressed, energetic, calm, or a myriad of other emotions. Colors can even encourage a visitor to purchase your product, but using the wrong color can have the opposite effect. Colors also have vastly different meanings in different countries or cultures, so care should be taken when choosing colors. Knowing who your audience will be can help you choose the correct colors to communicate your message more effectively.

Communication and the methods to be utilized are a critical factor in the effectiveness of a website and should be thought out well in advance of the actual site creation. Additionally, consider usability testing prior to launching the site to insure that your site does not have a failure to communicate.

Drupal Ubercart vs e-Commerce

When I first noticed that Drupal was a part of the Database Development LAP, I was excited to say the least. I have a client that needs an e-commerce site created and I had heard that Drupal was the best CMS option out there. So I was anxious to dive in and get started.

However, as the training progressed, I got the impression that Drupal wasn’t intended for these types of applications. From what I saw in the Lynda.com Drupal Essentials course, Drupal is designed more for blogging type sites and sites that change content fairly often. So how the heck does that work with an e-commerce site? It didn’t appear to be the solution I had originally thought it would be.

Unwilling to just let it be, I decided to do a little searching on my own. Drupal is a CMS that uses modules and themes to structure the website’s content. Modules give added functionality to Drupal sites while themes are responsible for display. A search of the Drupal modules led me to two different shopping cart modules; Ubercart and e-commerce.

UBERCART:

From the Ubercart webpage (http://drupal.org/project/ubercart):

Project Information

• Maintenance status: Actively maintained
• Development status: Under active development
• Module categories: e-commerce
• Reported installs: 28903 sites currently report using this module. View usage statistics.
• Last modified: October 31, 2010

“Ubercart is an e-commerce suite developed for Drupal. It has been designed with the end user in mind, focusing on usability in three key areas: store configuration, product and catalog creation, and order administration. On the front end, all major systems are configurable and integrate with the standard Drupal systems (node, taxonomy, user, etc.). On the back end, the settings pages and order administration pages have been designed with ease of use in mind, and we are constantly working to lower the barrier to entry for new Ubercart users.”

“Current Features:
View the What is Ubercart? page for more info.

• Configurable product catalog includes catalog pages and a block to display product categories.
• Flexible product creation system with product classes.
• Multiple product image support out of the box.
• Flexible product attributes system.
• Basic product stock level tracking and notification.
• Product features to add file downloads, role promotions, and more to products.
• Single page checkout.
• Automatic account generation (anonymous checkout).
• Customer and administrator checkout notifications.
• Simple order processing (with workflow-ng integration for automated order processing).
• Simple order creation and editing.
• Integrated payment system that acts as a bridge between acceptable payment methods (check, credit card, purchase order, etc.) and payment gateways (Cyber Source, Authorize.net, PayPal, etc.).
• Shipping quotes and fulfillment, including integration with UPS, FedEx, USPS.
• Sales, product, and customer reports.
• Activity logging.
• Much more… and more to come.

Ubercart is PayPal certified and listed in PayPal’s solutions directory as an e-commerce solution that integrates PayPal Website Payments Standard, Website Payments Pro, and Express Checkout. For more information, you can read the Ubercart PayPal information page.”

My impression of Ubercart:

The Ubercart page has a “Live Sites” section and I had the opportunity to see Ubercart in action. (Side note: One of the live sites is http://www.altoncaskets.com/ and I noticed they have a category listed on their homepage called “Rental”. This one left me with lots of questions regarding casket rental…like WTH? Another interesting note…. I was surprised to find on all the “Live Sites” I visited that dead links were very common. On the Alton Caskets site they’re featuring their Borden PC casket on the home page with a broken link… Hmmm…. Doesn’t instill much confidence in a company when a site “feels” abandoned by having so many broken links. Additionally they do not have a cart function on this site… But moving on…)

On most of the sites I visited I noticed the shopping cart checkout was all contained on one page. You entered your shipping info, payment info and any discount coupons all on the same page. Most of the sites also included a shipping calculation function on that same page. The shopping carts on all the sites were intuitive and easy to use when adding or removing merchandise. Most checkout pages were very similar but there were some obvious customizations although they appeared very limited. After visiting several sites it became easy to spot the Ubercart shopping cart.

e-Commerce:

From the e-Commerce webpage (http://drupal.org/project/ecommerce):

Project Information

• Maintenance status: Actively maintained
• Development status: Under active development
• Module categories: e-commerce, Rules
• Reported installs: 979 sites currently report using this module. View usage statistics.
• Automated tests: Enabled
• Last modified: December 12, 2010

“Create your own online store!
The most complete e-Commerce solution for Drupal.” (Side note: not very informative compared to the Ubercart site!)
“Features
Currently, the e-Commerce includes core modules and several

• Shopping cart and product ‘look and feel’ are themeable
• Create taxes, charges and discounts
• Subscriptions and recurring payments
• Receive donations
• Sell file downloads, shippable items, bundles or even on-the-fly customizable products
• Inventory management
• Payment and shipping plugins: The system can use PayPal, Authorize.net, eWAY, C.O.D. or you can roll your own.
• Invoice generation and email notifications
• Transaction and payment workflows
• Reports and sales summaries
• Customers can review their order history
• Run an auction site”

My impression of e-Commerce:

Unfortunately there weren’t any “Live Sites” listed on the e-Commerce site. Further searching led me to this page: http://groups.drupal.org/ecommerce on which the following comment was posted by George@dynapres.nl on November 1, 2010:

“With Drupal 7 around the corner, there is still no final release of Ecommerce for Drupal 6 available. I see we’ve arrived at Release Candidate 22 (seriously, RC22?!) after some 2 years of development.
Is it time to realize that Ecommerce for Drupal 6 will never appear due to the lack of developers?
Wouldn’t it be wise to discontinue the Ecommerce project all together and shift focus to Ubercart or Drupal Commerce?”

Further review of this page led me to the conclusion that e-Commerce is quite possibly a dying entity as evidenced by the lack of postings to this site. Postings for the entire year are November 11, Nov. 1, Sept. 24, Sept. 23, Aug. 17, Aug. 5, July 20, July 19, June 15, Mar. 31, Mar. 25, Mar. 23, Mar. 18, Mar. 11, Feb. 2, Jan. 20, and Jan. 6 for a total of only 17 new submissions for the whole of 2010; a dismal lack of activity coupled with an obvious lack of support as evidenced by the comment posted on November 1st.

Further evidence that the e-Commerce module is not being maintained can be found in the comments section on the first episode of D’ eC Report: http://www.drupalecommerce.org/content/episode-1. It’s seems fairly obvious nobody’s home.

Conclusion:

e-Commerce is showing only 979 sites currently report using their module while Ubercart shows 28903 sites currently report using their module. In the contest between Ubercart and e-Commerce, it’s pretty obvious there is no contest.

Teamwork

Most everything we do in life involves some type of teamwork, from the mother getting her children ready for school while the oldest child prepares the lunches, to the secretary at the fortune 500 company assisting the president prepare his presentation on the benefits of the latest product. While it’s possible to do most of these things alone, the result will most often be less than it would have otherwise. The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.
Being part of a team benefits all the participants in the team. Projects get completed faster, and creativity is higher. I’m sure most have heard the saying that many hands make light work. And it is just as true in our field of web development and design as it is in any other field.
Benefits from working together in a team include increased creativity, more job satisfaction, faster production, better skills, feedback, and team support.

Increased Creativity: All members on a team come to the “computer” with different skills and knowledge. Pooled, these individuals are able to create more ideas, and more ideas result in more creative solutions which leads to better end results. Having more than one person eyeballing a project almost always guarantees a higher level of creativity and a lower level of errors.

Job Satisfaction: Employees are happiest in a job where they have the opportunity to grow as an individual and to improve their abilities. Being part of a team exposes each member to more knowledge and as the team interacts, more energy and enthusiasm is created within the team. This energy and enthusiasm creates a positive impact on motivation and leads each team member and the team to higher levels of success, and increases job satisfaction. Working together to create that dynamite website and getting to experience the client’s appreciation of the end result is definitely a motivator!

Faster Production: It goes without saying that when you have 10 hands working on a project, and that project is organized effectively, more gets done in a shorter time span. The key here is the organization. Otherwise you might have two people duplicating the work.

Better Skills: Each team member comes to the “computer” with different skill sets. One team member might be great at color modeling, while another is a nuts and bolts person and is a great programmer or coder. Some might be better at seeing the immediate needs of the project while others excel at seeing the big picture. Everyone working together creates a well-balanced, higher quality team and by the very nature of teamwork, each team member is made better by experiencing those other skills and having the opportunity to learn from their teammates.

Feedback: With the team evaluating the project, the feedback comes from a variety of perspectives and from those with various talents. This feedback helps the team as a whole to grow and to produce a superior end product.

Team Support: One of the huge benefits of a team is the support. Where one member’s skills might be weak in color theory, another might excel in this area. And if a particular segment of the project begins to lag, again the team support advantage can come to the rescue and bodies can be moved from one aspect of the project to another to bring the project progress back into balance.

And one additional benefit to teamwork that I haven’t yet mentioned is the camaraderie and enjoyment of knowing you have teammates and a support system to help you achieve great things and become a better web designer or developer.

Trustworthiness

You have the best optimized, most perfectly validated semantic website that has ever been plopped on a hosting site’s web server and you have thousands and thousands of visitors coming to your site and it’s failing to achieve its purpose!

What?????

How can that be?????

Seriously????

If you build it, they will come… right?

They might, but that doesn’t guarantee they will buy what you’re selling and when it comes right down to it, every website has something to sell. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a tangible product like jewelry, widgets or gizmos, or a brilliant idea that has the capability of eliminating America’s dependency on foreign oil (or maybe it’s just your point of view on the best way to colonize Mars); your site is there for a reason and has a specific purpose.

Ok, then what is it that’s causing my site to fail? Why are all those people coming to my site but nobody’s buying? The answer could be given in one word… Trustworthiness!

Dictionary.com defines trust as:

the reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence; and also defines trustworthy or trustworthiness as deserving of trust or confidence; reliable.

So how do you establish trust with someone you have never met, might not ever meet and from whom you would like to exchange your widget, gizmo or idea for their money or time? It’s not like you can have your mom write a letter and plaster it on your website assuring your visitors of your honesty and integrity; obvious virtues that every mom maintains an objective, realistic account of and which would stand up to the eye-to-eye scrutiny of Dr. Lightman of “Lie to me” fame. (Talk about someone who needs a crash course on personal space!) So what can you do to show the world that you’re someone they need not fear doing business with?

First, think about some of the sites you might have stumbled upon that made you hit that back button faster than Harry Potter’s Professor Snape would when landing on a site featuring a prominently displayed bottle of Pantene shampoo. What did you see or not see that caused you to leave that site in search of another one on which to spend your hard-earned yet heavily sought after money or time?

Some of the more obvious trust-busters are sites that contain poorly worded product descriptions, incomplete or missing information, unprofessional or downright lousy site design containing lots of flashing banners or popups. Another serious flaw is having little or no information on the company or person who is in effect standing with outstretched hand hoping to snag some of that valuable coinage you’ve arrived at their site with and with which you have hopes of obtaining a much needed doohickey for your poor sick mom.

Ok, so you can see what some of the things might be that you need to avoid, but telling you what not to do doesn’t really give you the information you need to have in order to build that trustworthy site. It’s akin to telling you to go look up a word in the dictionary when you have absolutely no idea how the dang thing is spelled in the first place and wouldn’t need the services of a dictionary if you did! (Didn’t you just hate it when your mom did that to you? I can still remember searching the dictionary for what seemed like hours in search of the word "alliterate"… it sure sounded like it started with an "I"!)

So without further ado let’s get to the part that leads to the treasure chest of website trustworthiness; the part which is sure to bring the vast wealth and success you dreamed of while enduring hundreds and hundreds of hours of tutelage at the hands of the brilliant instructors to whom you’ve entrusted your education. (A small nib of brown-nosing hidden amongst the pearls of wisdom could only serve to improve the “grade” ahem I mean “value” of said wisdom, right?)

Now, take just a moment and think about some of the sites you’ve visited recently that immediately instilled in you a sense of trust. What did you notice that made you feel that way? Was there something you saw or read that said “Hey, you can trust me!” … some beacon of trustworthiness that indicated your confidence in that site was sure to survive even the severest of buyer’s remorse? It probably wasn’t any one thing, but rather a combination of things.

For a site to be trustworthy, paying close attention to the following points whilst building your site will help ensure your site not only attracts multitudes of money-wielding visitors, but that said visitors will pry open their purses or at least consent to spend sufficient time on your site so as to absorb the vast amounts of wisdom contained therein.

• Domain name – your domain name should be a unique top-level domain and not part of some other company’s or entity’s site. For example widgets-r-us.com and definitely not something such as www.cox.net/widgest-r-us.html.
• Domain name email addresses – most hosting packages include POP3 email addresses or accounts such as you@widgets-r-us.com, which are much more professional than email addresses such as widgets-r-us@hotmail.com.
• Contact information – make sure your site contains information on how to contact you. Include phone numbers, email addresses, physical address if appropriate, and business hours.
• About Us page – it’s common practice for sites to contain an "About Us" page which contains information regarding yourself, your company, bios on the principals or management team, a company history, company policies and the company’s mission statement.
• Dates – Some sites contain last updated time/date indicators or copyright dates. Make sure these are updated properly and that your site shows recent activity. If the last time your site was updated is shown as three years ago, your site isn’t going to be very credible. Keep your content up-to-date and anything that dates your site must be within at least the last 30 days.
• Links – Check your site often for broken or outdated links. Nothing says “abandon ship” quicker than a site containing a bunch of broken links. Broken links raise the question “Is this company still in business or has this site been abandoned?”
• Testimonials – feature customer testimonials on your site. Ask your happy customers to provide you with feedback to use on your site. Be sure to quote the customer’s feedback accurately and get their permission to publish this on your site. Respect your customer’s privacy though and use initials for their first or last name.
• Spelling and grammar – Check, double check and even triple check all your spelling and grammar. Ask colleagues or friends to look over your site and report anything that is incorrectly spelled or worded poorly. You might even consider hiring a professional to proofread your site. Every misspelled word or error in your site results in a direct hit to your site’s perceived credibility and trustworthiness.
• Guarantees – If offering a service or product for which you charge your customers, provide some type of guarantee in the form of a refund or revision of a provided service in the event of an unhappy customer. If you don’t offer a guarantee, be upfront about it and make sure you state that information where a customer is likely to see it, not in 3 pt type buried at the bottom of your site below the footer and in the same color as the background.
• Privacy policy – it’s always a good idea to provide your customers with a page containing your company’s privacy policy or code of ethics. In most cases you’re asking them to provide you with sensitive, oftentimes confidential information and you need to let them know what you intend to do with that information.
• Secure your site – If you transact business that exchanges goods or services for money, make sure your site is secure using a secure server or secure gateway, and include information that lets your customers know their transaction is as secure as possible.

Following these suggestions will help ensure that you not only have the best optimized, most perfectly validated semantic website that has ever been plopped on a hosting site’s web server, but that it accomplishes the purpose for which it was intended.

JavaScript vs Flash, Adobe vs Apple… Adobe claims Steve Jobs is ignoring Flash to make a few extra dollars.

JavaScript vs Flash, Adobe vs Apple… Adobe claims Steve Jobs is ignoring Flash to make a few extra dollars.

Adobe claims that Steve Jobs has refused to make his products such as the iPhone, iPad and the iPod compatable with Adobe’s Flash product in order to make a few extra bucks in his App stores.
Not true answered Steve Jobs. In his response to Adobe’s claims, Jobs highlighted six specific reasons Apple shies away from Adobe Flash.
1. Openness
Adobe’s products including Flash are proprietary products and are only available from Adobe. Job states “By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.” He acknowledges that Apple also has many proprietary products but that Apple believes all Web standards should be open. In an effort to support this belief, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, which are all open standards. Additionally, Jobs also points at the openness of WebKit, which is the open-source HTML5 rendering engine used in the Safari browser.

2. Full Web
Abobe claims that without Flash users are not allowed access to the “full Web,” since most of the video currently on the internet is flash based. However, there are a variety of of App Store apps from various media outlets including YouTube, Netflix, and Facebook, which according to Jobs, proves that “users aren’t missing much video.” Additionally Jobs points out that there are over 50,000 games available in the App Store that are just as good as the flash based games that Apple product users are not able to use.

3. Reliability, Security, and Performance
Jobs claims “Flash is the number one reason Macs crash” and he doesn’t want to “reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.” He went further by saying that Adobe has not demonstrated a workable version of Flash on a mobile device despite repeated requests that Adobe provide a viable version of Flash on a mobile device. “We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it,” Jobs said.

4. Battery Life
Flash decodes in the software, which according to Jobs shortens battery life. A better solution is to decode in the video hardware. “Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash Web sites currently required an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software,”Jobs further stated. According to Jobs, decoding in the software can reduce the battery life up to 5 hours on an iPhone.

5. Touch
Flash was designed for PCs with mice and rely on pop-up, roll-over menus. Apple’s iPhone, iPad and Ipod do not use mice and have rollovers are alien to these devices. As a result, Flash web sites need to be re-written to support touch devices. Jobs adds “If developers need to rewrite their flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?”

6. Third-party Apps.
Adobe wants application developers to develop third-party apps that run on Apple devices. According to Jobs, this could result in a “painful experience” that “results in sub-standard apps that hinder the enhancement and progress of the platform. He further goes on to say that Apple “cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.” According to Jobs, Adobe has no interest in writing apps for the iPhone, iPad or iPod. He states, “It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps.” He further adds “Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms.”

Jobs concluded by accusing Adobe of running an antiquated system that was “created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. “Flash falls short when it comes to mobile applications.

With Internet Explorer’s next version being reported to finally suppoprt HTML5, the battle between Flash and JavaScript will heat up. Open source web standards, including JavaScript are available to all users and developers, which will be one of the strong reasons why web designers with a strong background in JavaScript will be more in demand in the future.

Honesty and Integrity

Honesty and integrity are, in my mind, two of the most valued traits in a person. As humans, we rely on the other members in our "herd" to be reliable and trustworthy. In earlier times the lack of these traits had the potential to destroy the lives of all the others in the family, herd, pack… whatever name you want to give to these early groupings of humans. And today the same can still be said. It’s not an honest, trustworthy person that drives a car into a building full of people with the intention of setting off the bomb inside their car. It’s not an honest, trustworthy person that robs the 7-Eleven down the street and shoots the cashier over less than $50 in ill-gotten gains. And it’s not an honest, trustworthy person that takes home that box of paperclips from the office where they work.

There’s a saying "If you forgive the fox for stealing your chickens, he will take your sheep." The meaning is clear: if a person’s dishonesty is not punished, they will do worse; or if a person will steal something small, like a box of paperclips, they can’t be trusted and will probably steal something more valuable next time. Some people justify their petty theft by saying, "Oh, it’s just a box of paperclips, they’ll never miss them and they’re not worth much anyway." But the truth is they are worth a fortune!, for when the theft is caught the thief has lost their integrity and quite possibly their job. Working in an industry that has a close knit group of people such as the web design industry, you could quite possibly have lost your ability to earn a living in an occupation for which you have trained for many hours if not years. Although most employers won’t tell an inquiring potential new employer why they fired you, just by saying that they would not rehire you is reason enough for most potential managers to shy away from you.

In an industry such as web design and development, theft goes beyond the tangible and into the intangibles of intellectual property and copyright infringement. If someone has been caught lifting an article, photo or other copyrighted image, word has a way of getting around. After all, our business is the internet and word spreads like wildfire on our own wage-earning medium.

We’ve all heard that saying "Honesty is the best policy" and it sure does make life a lot easier too. Being less than honest or outright lying requires that a person continue to lie to support the earlier falsehood in order to avoid being caught and punished and then oftentimes getting wound up so tightly in a web of deceit that it’s easy to forget what lies have been told and what exactly the real truth is. Then when lying in bed at night, they’re unable to sleep as they tremble with fear, and their stomach is tied up in a knot and the sweat rolls from their forehead as they contemplate the public humiliation and the punishment to come when their deceit is discovered, and discovered it will be for the truth will always come out. It would be so much better to live your life with honesty and integrity knowing that you can be trusted. Because of this trust, you will have so many more opportunities presented to you that the long-term potential gains far outweigh the value of that box of paperclips, or that image you found on the web or the cool code that seems to do just what you want on your client’s website. So stay true, value honesty and integrity in yourself and others, and sleep well my friend.

Anger Management

Anger Management… the subject of numerous comedic movies and hilarious skits on shows such as Saturday Night Live; but in reality, a not so funny subject. Working with someone who has anger issues can cause a great deal of stress in the work place between employees and is most often a manager’s nightmare. Anger is a basic human emotion; a “normal” response to frustration, opposition, and perceived mistreatment or wrong-doing.
Every person experiences anger in different degrees. Some fortunate people seem to be able to just roll with it, to be able to shrug it off and go on, while others react as portrayed in cartoons. You can see their face get beet red and you just know that at any second steam will begin spewing from their ears; a funny scene in cartoons, a not so funny vision when faced with it in the workplace. These are the people who make others walk on egg shells and to dread coming to work. The ones that can make everyone’s life difficult, for at least the time they’re subjected to the tirade of their fellow anger-challenged office mate.
So what can you do as the person that has to work with someone with anger issues? Remain calm, if possible and try not to increase the person’s anger response. This doesn’t mean you need to “give-in” to an angry person’s demands or allow them to control your actions with their anger. Focus on being professional, even if it means just walking away from the confrontation with an angry person. Lower the tone of your voice. A higher pitched voice is an indication of excitement and can oftentimes increase the level of someone else’s anger. Don’t let yourself be goaded into responding in kind; anger begets anger. You can choose to address this issue now, if it’s possible to defuse the situation, or later when tempers have cooled.
But what if you’re the angry person that is making everyone’s life miserable? If you’re the one that throws the monitor across the room because your website doesn’t validate even after repeated attempts at getting that code under control probably means you have “issues”, specifically anger management issues. First, acknowledging that you have a problem is the biggest step. Seeking help is the best thing you can do, whether that’s through the services of a professional or through the countless anger management books or programs found on the internet. Understand that this is a life-long process, something you’ll have to work on every day for the rest of your life, you’ll have to constantly work on how you respond to the things that make your blood boil. But the benefits are not just a better work environment, but better health too. Anger is both a physiological and psychological process and is often times referred to as a stomach emotion; it’s why people often feel anger in the pit of their stomach. The body goes through a lot of chemical reactions to stimuli that results in the feelings of anger. These chemical reactions have been linked to a multitude of maladies, including a shortened life span and are directly related to heart disease and heart attacks. Obviously there are plenty of valid reasons for seeking help for anger management issues and I encourage you to seek out help in appropriate places if you do.

Customer Service

I know there must be a company or two in this world that doesn’t have to be concerned with customer service, but I guarantee you they’re in the minority. Every company has something to sell whether it’s a tangible product or a service and the people who purchase/use their products are customers that these businesses depend on for their survival.
The cost of acquiring a new customer is high. Advertising, networking, time spent prospecting, travel, promoting; the task is a daunting one and many businesses don’t ever acquire enough customers to become profitable which can account for the huge number of businesses that fail in their first year. One of the biggest challenges for any new company is the acquisition of new customers. It’s never enough to hang an open sign on the door. You have to spend a lot of time developing your customer base.
You’ll find a lot of information regarding customer acquisition or sales in books, management courses, sales courses and online. But too often companies stop there. They have the customer… they have closed the sale, great…job well done. A huge pat on the back, a commission check for the sales rep and everyone goes home happy.
But the job, at this point, has only begun. You have a proven, valid money-spending customer. A “bird-in-the-hand” if you will. Now you need to keep them coming back. You do this by providing service after the sale… good quality customer service! While the cost of acquiring a customer is high, the price of losing a customer due to poor customer service is even higher! One disgruntled customer can spread the word faster than the best advertising campaign can bring ‘em in.
Every company, no matter their level of customer service has to deal with unhappy customers. It helps if you can view taking the time to help an unhappy customer as an opportunity to improve your customer service, your company, and ultimately your bottom line. Don’t avoid the confrontational customer, but rather listen, hear, and do your best to understand what the customer is saying, and then do whatever you reasonably can to resolve the customer’s issues… Even if it’s not your fault! I can’t stress this enough. Many a customer has been frustrated with an “it’s not our problem” from every direction and they value the company that stands with them even though the difficulty may not lie with your product/service. For example the customer who has web hosting with another company and whose site is experiencing problems because of the hosting company and not the brilliantly designed site you provided for them. And one important consideration in a situation like this… never bash the other company! Another thing I can’t stress enough! Provide solutions even if it means contacting the hosting company on behalf of your customer. View this customer contact as importantly as you do the sales calls; and even more so, because as fast as the word can spread from a disgruntled customer, whether the fault is yours or not, making this same customer happy will increase your exposure substantially in the same manner, but in a much more beneficial way. That customer will be bringing more customers in your door.
But customer service isn’t just about dealing with unhappy customers. It’s also about providing a positive customer experience after the sale, or in a service business such as web design, after the project is completed. Some ways to increase your customer’s satisfaction with your company would be to send the customer a thank you card thanking them for doing business with your company. This is also an opportunity to present other products/services you think this customer might be interested in. This card should go out no later than one week after the product or service has been delivered. Additionally, call or stop by and make sure this customer is still doing well with their product or service. Most often these calls result in additional sales for the customer conscious company.
Having a newsletter is another way of insuring that your customers keep you in mind the next time they have a project that fits in with what your company has to offer. It’s also a great way to let customers know about all the products/services you have to offer. Especially in the field of web design or any other product or service that exists in a rapidly changing environment. As new trends or technologies present themselves, include information about them in your newsletter. It’s sad to run into a customer somewhere and hear them tell you about the new product or service they just bought from your competition because they didn’t know you offered that product/service.
And remember the old adage… no, don’t just remember it, engrave it in your heart and in your mind and always keep it in the forefront of everything you do: “ If you don’t take care of your customers, someone else will.”

Diversity

Diversity—–

No place in the world can boast a population as diverse as we can here in the United States. In every community you will find residents from all over the world, from countries such as India, Africa, Mexico, China, Germany, Iran, Brazil, Korea, and the list goes on and on. This diversity brings a wealth of experiences and perspectives to our country and to our workplace.

Diversity isn’t just about nationality; it’s also about gender, education, sexual preference, family status. It’s about people and the things that make us different or similar to one another.

Diversity shouldn’t be something that is viewed only as what makes us different and how can we change others to be like us, but rather seen as an opportunity to learn from those that have different perspectives, views, opinions and beliefs. An opportunity to broaden our own views on the world. We are not the square hole to every round peg in the world.

Diversity becomes important to a web designer because the internet transcends all borders and cultures requiring the designer to take into account how certain colors, objects and expressions might impact other cultures.

To illustrate a point, take a look at these phrases which have totally different meanings to Americans and to the British and could result in a very shirty customer:

• Belt up – To an American it would mean to put on a belt or to tighten something as a belt. To someone from England it means shut-up.
• Pissed – if we’re pissed, we’re mad, or angry. But getting pissed in England is an activity people might look forward to as it means to get drunk!
• Homey – in America, if someone says your house is very homey, it’s a compliment as it means it’s very comfortable, or inviting. But not so in England; you have just been insulted as it means ugly in England, probably similar to our “homely”.
• Biggie – we say it’s no biggie.. meaning it’s no big deal. But say that to a Brit and you’re sure to get a “look”. A “Biggie” in England is what a child calls his poo! Imagine what they would think if you added Biggie Fries to the menu on a website for a restaurant in England. I don’t think you’d attract many customers. Another definition for Biggie in England is an erection. Now we’ve just gone from bad to worse!
• Bite your arm off – I’ve heard that expression in America in the context of a joke about a man who wakes up with an unsavory bed-mate and would rather bite his arm off then wake her. But to someone from England, “Bite your arm off” means someone is eager to get something or to have something. For example it’s said that kids would bite your arm off for a candy bar or other treat.
• Saying “Blow me” would certainly cause a huge reaction in an American setting, but in England it’s an expression of surprise, short for “blow me down,” meaning I’m so surprised you could knock me over by just blowing.
• Blow off – to us it means to dismiss something as trivial, or of little importance, but to someone in England its flatulence. So saying she just blew me off would make someone think we have absolutely no manners in this country.
• Bottle – What would you think someone was saying if they said you have a lot of bottle? Would you immediately think of courage?
• “Bugger All”? How much would you have if you had bugger all? If you lived in England you would have nothing!
• Bung – well, I’ll just tell you that it’s not even close to our translation which is often paired with hole. Bung means to throw in, as in throwing in a tire (or would that be tyre?) when someone buys the wheel. It’s also used to indicate a bribe.
• Camp – an innocent word, right? Couldn’t be too dissimilar, right? Wrong! Camp in England is someone who displays effeminate or gay behavior and to “camp it up” would be to dress in drag. It’s easy to imagine what a Brit pictures when someone is going “camping”. Yikes!
• And what would your response be to the British gentleman asking if you wanted to be “knocked up” tomorrow? He’s only asking if you want him to wake you up in the morning.

These are just a few examples of how a common phrase could easily be misinterpreted in another country or culture. Having a familiarity with the country or culture with which you’re working would certainly be important. So don’t “cock up” when working with diverse cultures and avoid becoming redundant.