6 Reasons I’m Obsessed With WordPress
By Julie Hanks, LCSW
WordPress is a fantastic platform for your private practice website. Originally a blogging platform, it’s commonly used for websites because it’s user friendly, functional, and easy to customize. I’m completely “in love” with it. For clarification, I’m talking about WordPress.org that is installed on your web hosting system, not WordPress.com – a web-based blogging platform.
Since I changed to WordPress about a year ago for my practice website, I’ve been able to create a more dynamic and interactive website with fresh content, social media interaction, and an integrated a blog. So here’s more about why I love WordPress:
1) You can be the webmaster
Even without knowing HTML, you can be the webmaster of your website with the ability to customize the function and appearance at any time. You can easily add or delete pages, change the color scheme, add blog posts, and customize the features at any time and from anywhere. Once I paid to have the basic WordPress site installed on my web host and had a few custom images made, I took over from there.
2) Free themes
WordPress allows you to “try on” different themes to your site with the click of a button. A “theme” is the skin of your site — the format, colors, layout, etc. There are many free themes available, in addition to customized themes for a variety of fees. ThemeForest.net is a great site to explore variety in custom website themes.
3) Plugins and widgets galore
Plugins are tools that extend the functionality of your WordPress site and allow customization to your site. Widgets are WordPress plugins “that add visitor visual and interactivity options and features, such as sidebar widgets for post categories, tag clouds, navigation, search, etc.” (WordPress.org)
Here are a few of my favorites:
YouTube Videos — feeds YouTube channel to websites
Author Bio — shows customized bio at the bottom of each blog post
Amazon Associate — integrates a bookshelf of our recommended books with a link to buy on Amazon.com.
Google Analytics — tracks visitor information.
Constant Contact API — integrates our newsletter sign up on the website.
SexyBookmarks (by Shareaholic) — add social media share links to each blog post.
Share and Follow — adds social media links bar on pages.
4) Easy to navigate
OK, that one’s partially true. Though navigating the WordPress dashboard can be a bit overwhelming at first, once you’re familiar with it, you can easily navigate it. For example, my juliehanks.com and wasatchfamilytherapy.com sites are built on WordPress, so when I started writing for PsychCentral (also built on WordPress) it was easy to jump right in.
5) It’s cheap!
After paying for domain registration, web hosting service, and basic site installation costs, there are minimal expenses to update and maintain your WordPress website. I will occasionally hire a web designer to consult or add elements that are beyond my abilities, but that is the exception. I used to pay around $60 a month for a website service but I quickly outgrew the options they provided. Even with the start up costs, WordPress has been a cheaper option and much more fun to create a dynamic practice website.
6) Integrated blog
One of the reasons I started looking for a better website platform was that my current site platform didn’t allow for an integrated blog. I had a blog on an external blogging site, but hated sending my visitors away from my private practice website in order to read my blog. Since WordPress is a blogging platform, visitors can stay on our site and read blog posts.
What platform do you use for your practice website?
Are there any other WordPress lovers out there?
http://blogs.psychcentral.com/private-practice/2011/11/6-reasons-im-obsessed-with-wordpress/
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Angry Bird
http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/stomp/sgseen/this_urban_jungle/770318/inconsiderate_commuters_this_chicken_will.html
Friday, November 11, 2011
What Bill Gates Says About Drug Companies
What Bill Gates Says About Drug Companies
Most of what Bill Gates said to me over the course of two interviews found its way into the cover profile of him I wrote for the most recent issue of Forbes. But one set of ideas didn’t really make it: his unique and thoughtful perspective on the pharmaceuticals industry.
Few outsiders have had as clear a view of the drug business as Gates. Over the past decade, Gates has relied on giants like Merck, Pfizer, and Sanofi-Aventis to provide the vaccines that are a lynchpin of his charitable work. He’s had a long-standing collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline over a malaria vaccine. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recruited its last research head, Tachi Yamada, from Glaxo, where he had headed drug R&D. During his tenure, Yamada helped the Gates Foundation develop a meningitis vaccine from scratch to help people in parts of Africa. Yamada’s replacement, Trevor Mundel, hails from Novartis, where he ran clinical trials – a sign that some industry insiders say means that the Gates Foundation may be heading even further into the development of new vaccines and drugs.
After a conversation with Gates, one wonders if the drug industry has hurt itself by focusing too much on $100,000 cancer drugs and blockbuster pills that can be sold to millions, and not enough on products that are far more cost-effective. And then, of course, there’s the fact that the entire $600 billion pharmaceutical industry has spent the past decade in a research drought, getting comparatively few new medicines to market.
“Fortunately, our vaccine discovery rate has been better than the recent drug discovery rate of pharma,” Gates said. “And, you know, pharma doing well is important for the world, so hopefully their discovery rate will go up.”
Ten or fifteen years ago, nobody in the drug business would have held up vaccines as profit centers. That was the age of Pfizer’s Viagra having the fastest drug launch in history, of the even bigger cholesterol-lowering medicine Lipitor becoming the best-selling drug in history and forcing Pfizer’s $116 billion buyout of partner Warner-Lambert, ushering in a new age of megamergers that experts believe may have squelched innovation in drug company labs.
Says Gates: “If you 15 years ago had said, ‘How important are vaccines to these various businesses?’ They would have said, “You know, our drug businesses are going to do so well. And vaccines are so tough, particularly because of liability issues.’”
But vaccines, Gates argues, “actually have more impact on health than all the new drugs.” And the pharmaceutical businesses didn’t do as well as expected. For Pfizer, for instance, a big bet on a Lipitor follow-up went down in flames when the drug turned out to increase, not decrease, the death rate. But now Pfizer is betting big on a vaccine, called Prevnar, against the pneumococcus bacteria. After Lipitor loses patent protection, Prevnar may well be the company’s top seller.
Gates thinks it is “ironic” that vaccines have done so well, along with AIDS drugs that have been a boon to companies like Gilead, one of the biggest biotechnology companies, and Merck, while heartburn medicines, cholesterol drugs, and antidepressants have failed to pay off.
When it comes to cancer drugs like Avastin and Erbitux, some of the biggest sales successes of the past decade, Gates seems unimpressed. “There’s always this divergence between what’s financially attractive and what has dramatic profit and the number of life years that you really save.” Take for instance, Novartis’ Gleevec, the crown jewel of targeted cancer drugs that can put chronic myelogenous leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumors into remission. “Do the math on that versus, says, preventing Parkinson’s or preventing Alzheimer’s. It’s in a different universe.”
The good news, to Gates’ mind, is that right now people are making money in the vaccine business. That means that more research is getting funded, and more innovation is happening.
“The rich world companies do more,” he says, “and that means the Chinese and Indian companies see that and they do more. You know, so it’s a pretty good virtuous cycle right now in terms of focus on vaccines. ”
Part of the drug industry’s problem, though, is that the process of inventing new drugs and vaccines has gotten more complex. Forty years ago, Leo Sternbach, a Roche scientist, could invent whole swaths of anti-anxiety drugs, and Merck vaccine researcher Maurice Hilleman, one of Gates’ heroes, could develop the bulk of the vaccines still given to children today.
“It’s like the breadth of software I got to do at Microsoft,” says Gates. “Things become more specialized and, you know, and more complex. So the idea that one guy does, like, ten different vaccines, including multiple iterations of them. And the combinations of them. He was on a roll. He got Merck into that. He figured out how it worked. He had the guts to go and try things.”
The sad reality: as innovation piles on innovation, doing something new and different only gets harder.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2011/11/10/what-bill-gates-says-about-drug-companies-2/2/
Most of what Bill Gates said to me over the course of two interviews found its way into the cover profile of him I wrote for the most recent issue of Forbes. But one set of ideas didn’t really make it: his unique and thoughtful perspective on the pharmaceuticals industry.
Few outsiders have had as clear a view of the drug business as Gates. Over the past decade, Gates has relied on giants like Merck, Pfizer, and Sanofi-Aventis to provide the vaccines that are a lynchpin of his charitable work. He’s had a long-standing collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline over a malaria vaccine. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recruited its last research head, Tachi Yamada, from Glaxo, where he had headed drug R&D. During his tenure, Yamada helped the Gates Foundation develop a meningitis vaccine from scratch to help people in parts of Africa. Yamada’s replacement, Trevor Mundel, hails from Novartis, where he ran clinical trials – a sign that some industry insiders say means that the Gates Foundation may be heading even further into the development of new vaccines and drugs.
After a conversation with Gates, one wonders if the drug industry has hurt itself by focusing too much on $100,000 cancer drugs and blockbuster pills that can be sold to millions, and not enough on products that are far more cost-effective. And then, of course, there’s the fact that the entire $600 billion pharmaceutical industry has spent the past decade in a research drought, getting comparatively few new medicines to market.
“Fortunately, our vaccine discovery rate has been better than the recent drug discovery rate of pharma,” Gates said. “And, you know, pharma doing well is important for the world, so hopefully their discovery rate will go up.”
Ten or fifteen years ago, nobody in the drug business would have held up vaccines as profit centers. That was the age of Pfizer’s Viagra having the fastest drug launch in history, of the even bigger cholesterol-lowering medicine Lipitor becoming the best-selling drug in history and forcing Pfizer’s $116 billion buyout of partner Warner-Lambert, ushering in a new age of megamergers that experts believe may have squelched innovation in drug company labs.
Says Gates: “If you 15 years ago had said, ‘How important are vaccines to these various businesses?’ They would have said, “You know, our drug businesses are going to do so well. And vaccines are so tough, particularly because of liability issues.’”
But vaccines, Gates argues, “actually have more impact on health than all the new drugs.” And the pharmaceutical businesses didn’t do as well as expected. For Pfizer, for instance, a big bet on a Lipitor follow-up went down in flames when the drug turned out to increase, not decrease, the death rate. But now Pfizer is betting big on a vaccine, called Prevnar, against the pneumococcus bacteria. After Lipitor loses patent protection, Prevnar may well be the company’s top seller.
Gates thinks it is “ironic” that vaccines have done so well, along with AIDS drugs that have been a boon to companies like Gilead, one of the biggest biotechnology companies, and Merck, while heartburn medicines, cholesterol drugs, and antidepressants have failed to pay off.
When it comes to cancer drugs like Avastin and Erbitux, some of the biggest sales successes of the past decade, Gates seems unimpressed. “There’s always this divergence between what’s financially attractive and what has dramatic profit and the number of life years that you really save.” Take for instance, Novartis’ Gleevec, the crown jewel of targeted cancer drugs that can put chronic myelogenous leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumors into remission. “Do the math on that versus, says, preventing Parkinson’s or preventing Alzheimer’s. It’s in a different universe.”
The good news, to Gates’ mind, is that right now people are making money in the vaccine business. That means that more research is getting funded, and more innovation is happening.
“The rich world companies do more,” he says, “and that means the Chinese and Indian companies see that and they do more. You know, so it’s a pretty good virtuous cycle right now in terms of focus on vaccines. ”
Part of the drug industry’s problem, though, is that the process of inventing new drugs and vaccines has gotten more complex. Forty years ago, Leo Sternbach, a Roche scientist, could invent whole swaths of anti-anxiety drugs, and Merck vaccine researcher Maurice Hilleman, one of Gates’ heroes, could develop the bulk of the vaccines still given to children today.
“It’s like the breadth of software I got to do at Microsoft,” says Gates. “Things become more specialized and, you know, and more complex. So the idea that one guy does, like, ten different vaccines, including multiple iterations of them. And the combinations of them. He was on a roll. He got Merck into that. He figured out how it worked. He had the guts to go and try things.”
The sad reality: as innovation piles on innovation, doing something new and different only gets harder.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2011/11/10/what-bill-gates-says-about-drug-companies-2/2/
Twenty-One Top Twitter Tips
Twenty-One Top Twitter Tips
Daniel Adler
Silly time waster? Sure. Powerful business tool? You bet.
You've heard about Twitter--that curious, strangely addictive social-networking technology that facilitates torrents of truncated messages among millions of users. You might even know your hashtags from your re-tweets. But how can you make money with it?
Forbes canvassed scads of businesses and pricey social-networking gurus looking for honest answers. Admittedly, we were skeptical. After all, how much can you accomplish in 140 characters or less?
Turns out there are myriad ways Twitter can have an impact, and not just as a marginal marketing tool. Indeed, we found 21 clever ways to use Twitter--for everything from boosting sales and scouting talent, to conducting market research and raising capital. Chances are, there will be many more.
"I believe Twitter is a communication platform," says Nathan Egan, founder of Freesource Agency, a social-networking consultancy in Philadelphia. "In a year or two, everyone will be on it, using it in totally new ways." Better yet, getting results "doesn't take a year or six months, but a matter of weeks," adds Mark Schaefer, head of Schaefer Marketing Solutions in Knoxville, Tenn.
Some strategies take more time, or are more industry-specific, than others. Taken together, though, this collection of techniques and real-world examples constitutes a powerful online arsenal for companies large and small. Herewith, some highlights:
Coupon Campaigns
Congratulations for getting to the end of this sentence. "As an online culture, people are not reading; they're scanning," says Dell ( DELL - news - people ) Computer's Stefanie Nelson, voice of @DellOutlet. "The shorter and more direct your message is, the more successful you're going to be." Dell tweets links to coupons at Dell Outlet's Facebook page, which shoppers use during checkout at Dell.com.
This strategy works for small companies, too: The abbreviated offers are easy to produce--you don't need an ad agency to write 140 characters. California Tortilla, a chain of 39 causal Mexican restaurants based in Rockville, Md., spread coupon "passwords"--through its Twitter feed @caltort--that must be spoken at checkout to be redeemed.
Viral Marketing
In July, in honor of its 10th birthday, London-based do-it-yourself Web site builder Moonfruit gave away 11 Macbook Pro computers and 10 iPod Touches. Contestants had to tweet using the hashtag #moonfruit. (Hashtags collate Twitter responses.) Nearly a month after the contest ended, traffic to Moonfruit's Web site is up 300%. Sales are up 20% this month, more than paying off the $15,000 investment. And the Moonfruit Web site has climbed onto the first Google ( GOOG - news - people ) page for "free website builder" (it used to be on the fourth).
Word to the wise, says Moonfruit founder Wendy White: Such campaigns must be courteous and fit with a company's brand, lest you draw the ire of the Twitter-sphere: "There's a fine line between annoying people and getting the thumbs up."
Artful Customer Service
Frank Eliason, director of digital care at Comcast ( CMCSA - news - people ), uses Twitter to help 200 to 300 subscribers a day with issues ranging from sporadic Internet service to errant e-mails. Frank and his team receive direct questions at the @comcastcares account and search for complaints. Twitter has a built-in search, but it's more efficient to set up a permanent search on one of the free, third-party Twitter applications, such as TweetDeck.
Eliason's key to success: maintaining friendly relationships, not foisting unwanted advice. "If they want assistance, they'll let me know," he says. Eliason has a 10-person help desk at his disposal, but small businesses can use Twitter to provide better customer service, too. Even a little help goes a long way.
Focus Groups
Back in the old days (last year), companies actually paid customers to solicit their opinions. There were 3.37 million mentions of Starbucks ( SBUX - news - people ) on Twitter through early May 2009, and all of that information is available for less than the cost of a frappucino. "There is a major element of Twitter that's about listening and learning," says Brad Nelson, the man behind @Starbucks. "Twitter is a leading indicator." Collecting the information is as simple as searching for references to your company.
Morgan Johnston, manager of Corporate Communications at Jet Blue, abolished a $50 fee for carry-on bikes after hearing complaints via Twitter. "Think of Twitter as the canary in the coal mine," says Johnston. "We watch for customers' discussions about amenities we have, and what they'd like to see made better." For a more formal approach, lob a simple post asking for feedback and provide a hashtag to collect the responses.
Poaching Customers
"Twitter is not just a kid story," says Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs. Brogan should know: He is one of several Twitter experts advising companies on how to spy on their competition and to swoop in with a better service or discount.
Freesource's Egan describes how to do it: Using TweetDeck, set up a permanent search for all permutations of your competitor's name, as well as words that convey dissatisfaction ("sucks" or "hate"). Public replies to those new prospects are dangerous, as your competition may see them, so the best bet is to follow them and get followed back, allowing you to send direct messages.
Customer Expectation Management
Bad things happen--it's how you condition customers to deal with it that counts. Jet Blue tweets flight delays. In April, when a Stanley Cup broadcast was interrupted, cable provider Comcast used Twitter to immediately inform its subscribers that the culprit was a lightning storm, and that transmission would soon be restored.
Small companies--like United Linen, a linens and uniform company in Bartlesville, Okla.--can manage expectations this way, too. When a major snowstorm hit the area, Marketing Director Scott Townsend used Twitter to let customers know deliveries would be delayed. "It was a great way to send information to everyone," he says. "They understood we wouldn't be there, but they wanted to know what our status was and updates as the situation changed."
Corralling Eyeballs
During last year's NBA Eastern Conference Finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Orlando Magic, Turner Broadcasting managed to weave social-media feeds into its home page. Fans accessed the conversation by logging onto Twitter through TNT.com, and the tweets were also posted on Twitter with links back to TNT.com. Those forums mean more Web traffic--and thus more advertising revenue. "It's exciting to sell this to an advertiser," said Liza Hausman, vice president of marketing for Gigya Socialize, the brains behind the integration technology.
Vendor Selection
Twitter can snag customers, but how about suppliers? Crowdspring, an online marketplace that marries businesses with graphic designers (see "The Creativity Of Crowds"), used Twitter to build up its stable of contributors--now 12,000 strong globally.
Business travelers can apply this same logic: Tweeting that you're about to visit a city can scare up discount offers from hotels, bus companies and other travel-services providers.
Conflict Resolution
Wiggly Wigglers, a Herfordshire, U.K.-based marketer of gardening and farming supplies, was recently overcharged $10,500 by British Telecom. Five months passed without restitution.
Finally, Wiggly owner Heather Gorringe hit the Twitter-sphere, asking if anyone else had had problems with BT. @BTCare sent Gorringe a message within 30 minutes promising help; two days later, the bill was amended. "When I phone them up, I'm an isolated call to deal with, so I'm less important," says Gorringe. "But if I tweet, and 1,193 people re-tweet, 100,000 people see it within 30 seconds."
Employee Recruitment
Sodexo, a food services and facilities management company, trains its recruiters on Twitter and other social media. An automated program sends prospects a direct message whenever a position opens up, and the messages are opened 30% of the time.
The trick, says Arie Ball, vice president of talent acquisition at Sodexo, is to be as personal and engaging as possible: "People get an insider's view, a sense if this is a company they want to work for." The company says that using Twitter as a recruitment tool has helped cut its investment in online job boards by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Raising Capital
As in the physical world, no one likes to be solicited for contributions online. A better Twitter tack: Don't ask, just inform.
Last Thanksgiving, Epic Change, a nonprofit that encourages people to tell their stories to transform communities, launched the Tweetsgiving Web site, with the help of theKbuzz, a word-of-mouth marketing firm. Tweetsgiving asked people to tweet what they were grateful for, and compiled the responses at #tweetsgiving, with a link back to the Tweetsgiving site, where users had the option of contributing money to build classrooms in Tanzania.
Over the 48-hour campaign, 15,000 people came to the Tweetsgiving site; 360 donated, for a total of $11,000. "We never asked people to give," says Stacey Monk, founder of Epic Change. "We got people invested in their own, personalized way."
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/31/top-twitter-tips-entrepreneurs-technology-twitter.html
Daniel Adler
Silly time waster? Sure. Powerful business tool? You bet.
You've heard about Twitter--that curious, strangely addictive social-networking technology that facilitates torrents of truncated messages among millions of users. You might even know your hashtags from your re-tweets. But how can you make money with it?
Forbes canvassed scads of businesses and pricey social-networking gurus looking for honest answers. Admittedly, we were skeptical. After all, how much can you accomplish in 140 characters or less?
Turns out there are myriad ways Twitter can have an impact, and not just as a marginal marketing tool. Indeed, we found 21 clever ways to use Twitter--for everything from boosting sales and scouting talent, to conducting market research and raising capital. Chances are, there will be many more.
"I believe Twitter is a communication platform," says Nathan Egan, founder of Freesource Agency, a social-networking consultancy in Philadelphia. "In a year or two, everyone will be on it, using it in totally new ways." Better yet, getting results "doesn't take a year or six months, but a matter of weeks," adds Mark Schaefer, head of Schaefer Marketing Solutions in Knoxville, Tenn.
Some strategies take more time, or are more industry-specific, than others. Taken together, though, this collection of techniques and real-world examples constitutes a powerful online arsenal for companies large and small. Herewith, some highlights:
Coupon Campaigns
Congratulations for getting to the end of this sentence. "As an online culture, people are not reading; they're scanning," says Dell ( DELL - news - people ) Computer's Stefanie Nelson, voice of @DellOutlet. "The shorter and more direct your message is, the more successful you're going to be." Dell tweets links to coupons at Dell Outlet's Facebook page, which shoppers use during checkout at Dell.com.
This strategy works for small companies, too: The abbreviated offers are easy to produce--you don't need an ad agency to write 140 characters. California Tortilla, a chain of 39 causal Mexican restaurants based in Rockville, Md., spread coupon "passwords"--through its Twitter feed @caltort--that must be spoken at checkout to be redeemed.
Viral Marketing
In July, in honor of its 10th birthday, London-based do-it-yourself Web site builder Moonfruit gave away 11 Macbook Pro computers and 10 iPod Touches. Contestants had to tweet using the hashtag #moonfruit. (Hashtags collate Twitter responses.) Nearly a month after the contest ended, traffic to Moonfruit's Web site is up 300%. Sales are up 20% this month, more than paying off the $15,000 investment. And the Moonfruit Web site has climbed onto the first Google ( GOOG - news - people ) page for "free website builder" (it used to be on the fourth).
Word to the wise, says Moonfruit founder Wendy White: Such campaigns must be courteous and fit with a company's brand, lest you draw the ire of the Twitter-sphere: "There's a fine line between annoying people and getting the thumbs up."
Artful Customer Service
Frank Eliason, director of digital care at Comcast ( CMCSA - news - people ), uses Twitter to help 200 to 300 subscribers a day with issues ranging from sporadic Internet service to errant e-mails. Frank and his team receive direct questions at the @comcastcares account and search for complaints. Twitter has a built-in search, but it's more efficient to set up a permanent search on one of the free, third-party Twitter applications, such as TweetDeck.
Eliason's key to success: maintaining friendly relationships, not foisting unwanted advice. "If they want assistance, they'll let me know," he says. Eliason has a 10-person help desk at his disposal, but small businesses can use Twitter to provide better customer service, too. Even a little help goes a long way.
Focus Groups
Back in the old days (last year), companies actually paid customers to solicit their opinions. There were 3.37 million mentions of Starbucks ( SBUX - news - people ) on Twitter through early May 2009, and all of that information is available for less than the cost of a frappucino. "There is a major element of Twitter that's about listening and learning," says Brad Nelson, the man behind @Starbucks. "Twitter is a leading indicator." Collecting the information is as simple as searching for references to your company.
Morgan Johnston, manager of Corporate Communications at Jet Blue, abolished a $50 fee for carry-on bikes after hearing complaints via Twitter. "Think of Twitter as the canary in the coal mine," says Johnston. "We watch for customers' discussions about amenities we have, and what they'd like to see made better." For a more formal approach, lob a simple post asking for feedback and provide a hashtag to collect the responses.
Poaching Customers
"Twitter is not just a kid story," says Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs. Brogan should know: He is one of several Twitter experts advising companies on how to spy on their competition and to swoop in with a better service or discount.
Freesource's Egan describes how to do it: Using TweetDeck, set up a permanent search for all permutations of your competitor's name, as well as words that convey dissatisfaction ("sucks" or "hate"). Public replies to those new prospects are dangerous, as your competition may see them, so the best bet is to follow them and get followed back, allowing you to send direct messages.
Customer Expectation Management
Bad things happen--it's how you condition customers to deal with it that counts. Jet Blue tweets flight delays. In April, when a Stanley Cup broadcast was interrupted, cable provider Comcast used Twitter to immediately inform its subscribers that the culprit was a lightning storm, and that transmission would soon be restored.
Small companies--like United Linen, a linens and uniform company in Bartlesville, Okla.--can manage expectations this way, too. When a major snowstorm hit the area, Marketing Director Scott Townsend used Twitter to let customers know deliveries would be delayed. "It was a great way to send information to everyone," he says. "They understood we wouldn't be there, but they wanted to know what our status was and updates as the situation changed."
Corralling Eyeballs
During last year's NBA Eastern Conference Finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Orlando Magic, Turner Broadcasting managed to weave social-media feeds into its home page. Fans accessed the conversation by logging onto Twitter through TNT.com, and the tweets were also posted on Twitter with links back to TNT.com. Those forums mean more Web traffic--and thus more advertising revenue. "It's exciting to sell this to an advertiser," said Liza Hausman, vice president of marketing for Gigya Socialize, the brains behind the integration technology.
Vendor Selection
Twitter can snag customers, but how about suppliers? Crowdspring, an online marketplace that marries businesses with graphic designers (see "The Creativity Of Crowds"), used Twitter to build up its stable of contributors--now 12,000 strong globally.
Business travelers can apply this same logic: Tweeting that you're about to visit a city can scare up discount offers from hotels, bus companies and other travel-services providers.
Conflict Resolution
Wiggly Wigglers, a Herfordshire, U.K.-based marketer of gardening and farming supplies, was recently overcharged $10,500 by British Telecom. Five months passed without restitution.
Finally, Wiggly owner Heather Gorringe hit the Twitter-sphere, asking if anyone else had had problems with BT. @BTCare sent Gorringe a message within 30 minutes promising help; two days later, the bill was amended. "When I phone them up, I'm an isolated call to deal with, so I'm less important," says Gorringe. "But if I tweet, and 1,193 people re-tweet, 100,000 people see it within 30 seconds."
Employee Recruitment
Sodexo, a food services and facilities management company, trains its recruiters on Twitter and other social media. An automated program sends prospects a direct message whenever a position opens up, and the messages are opened 30% of the time.
The trick, says Arie Ball, vice president of talent acquisition at Sodexo, is to be as personal and engaging as possible: "People get an insider's view, a sense if this is a company they want to work for." The company says that using Twitter as a recruitment tool has helped cut its investment in online job boards by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Raising Capital
As in the physical world, no one likes to be solicited for contributions online. A better Twitter tack: Don't ask, just inform.
Last Thanksgiving, Epic Change, a nonprofit that encourages people to tell their stories to transform communities, launched the Tweetsgiving Web site, with the help of theKbuzz, a word-of-mouth marketing firm. Tweetsgiving asked people to tweet what they were grateful for, and compiled the responses at #tweetsgiving, with a link back to the Tweetsgiving site, where users had the option of contributing money to build classrooms in Tanzania.
Over the 48-hour campaign, 15,000 people came to the Tweetsgiving site; 360 donated, for a total of $11,000. "We never asked people to give," says Stacey Monk, founder of Epic Change. "We got people invested in their own, personalized way."
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/31/top-twitter-tips-entrepreneurs-technology-twitter.html
Law of Patience, with business
Patience is not a skill that comes naturally. At least not to me. I’m just as aggressive as the next person when it comes to wanting to see the impact from my ideas. What I have plenty of is impatience. I want to see the results now, not years down the line. The reality is that innovation takes time.
One example of getting it right is the story of David Packard and HP’s decision to jump into the computer market. At the time, the industry was dominated by IBM, DEC and others. HP managers made their case that HP should enter the market based on the companies expertise and capabilities. David wasn’t convinced but made the decision to follow the expertise, commitment and passion of his executives. When the decision was made, David made it clear to everyone inside HP, that this was a total commitment on the part of the company. The timeline he set out? To be the #1 computer manufacturer in the world in 25 years. How long did it take? HP became the #1 computer manufacturer in 23 years. That’s what I call “sticking with it“.
At the same time, some innovations do need to be killed. They should be killed when all other options for success have been exhausted and its obvious that they aren’t going to deliver.
Be careful not to be too quick to pull the trigger and kill an idea. Anyone can use short term metrics to rationalize a decision not to go forward. The safe answer is “no” as it eliminates the risk while the risky answer is “yes”, when the path to success is not guaranteed. There are no guarantees in life. I’m sure Bill and Dave questioned the decision to go into computers, but they had patience and stuck with it.
How should you instill patience into your innovation programs?
1. Be realistic about how long this is going to take and set an appropriate time horizon. If it will take decades, then set the timeline accordingly.
2. Define regular checkpoints/gates with clear objectives for each gate. Do not make these gates correspond to budget or planning cycles.
3. Do NOT use the gates to rationalize killing the project, but instead, use the gates as a prompt for management to know where to commit time and resources to ensure the project is successful.
4. Only after you’ve exhausted all options over multiple gates, do you consider killing the project. Even then, make sure you aren’t killing it for the wrong reasons (e.g. getting nervous, wall street pressure, etc)
The point is, when you start down the path of creating breakthrough innovations, realize that you are making one of the most significant commitments for the organization. Once you commit, then really commit. Don’t throw in the towel at the first sign of trouble.
How important is the law of patience to your organization?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/philmckinney/2011/09/07/innovation-law-4-the-law-of-patience/
One example of getting it right is the story of David Packard and HP’s decision to jump into the computer market. At the time, the industry was dominated by IBM, DEC and others. HP managers made their case that HP should enter the market based on the companies expertise and capabilities. David wasn’t convinced but made the decision to follow the expertise, commitment and passion of his executives. When the decision was made, David made it clear to everyone inside HP, that this was a total commitment on the part of the company. The timeline he set out? To be the #1 computer manufacturer in the world in 25 years. How long did it take? HP became the #1 computer manufacturer in 23 years. That’s what I call “sticking with it“.
At the same time, some innovations do need to be killed. They should be killed when all other options for success have been exhausted and its obvious that they aren’t going to deliver.
Be careful not to be too quick to pull the trigger and kill an idea. Anyone can use short term metrics to rationalize a decision not to go forward. The safe answer is “no” as it eliminates the risk while the risky answer is “yes”, when the path to success is not guaranteed. There are no guarantees in life. I’m sure Bill and Dave questioned the decision to go into computers, but they had patience and stuck with it.
How should you instill patience into your innovation programs?
1. Be realistic about how long this is going to take and set an appropriate time horizon. If it will take decades, then set the timeline accordingly.
2. Define regular checkpoints/gates with clear objectives for each gate. Do not make these gates correspond to budget or planning cycles.
3. Do NOT use the gates to rationalize killing the project, but instead, use the gates as a prompt for management to know where to commit time and resources to ensure the project is successful.
4. Only after you’ve exhausted all options over multiple gates, do you consider killing the project. Even then, make sure you aren’t killing it for the wrong reasons (e.g. getting nervous, wall street pressure, etc)
The point is, when you start down the path of creating breakthrough innovations, realize that you are making one of the most significant commitments for the organization. Once you commit, then really commit. Don’t throw in the towel at the first sign of trouble.
How important is the law of patience to your organization?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/philmckinney/2011/09/07/innovation-law-4-the-law-of-patience/
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Steve Jobs regretted cancer surgery delay, biographer says
Steve Jobs regretted cancer surgery delay, biographer says
David Sarno
October 21, 2011 - 9:33AM
For months after his pancreatic cancer diagnosis in 2004, Steve Jobs decided to try to treat his illness with eastern-style remedies, rather than surgery. But delaying that surgery may have cost him his long-term health - and it was a decision he regretted.
This comes from Jobs's biographer, Walter Isaacson, who will appear in an interview this weekend on 60 Minutes in the US to discuss Jobs and his upcoming book, Steve Jobs.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Walter Isaacson.
Watch: preview the 60 Minutes interview
According to Isaacson, Jobs had a "very slow growing" type of pancreatic cancer "that can actually be cured", but still opted not to get the surgery until nine months had gone by and it may have been too late.
"I've asked him" why he didn't get the operation, Isaacson told Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes. "And he said, 'I didn't want my body to be opened. … I didn't want to be violated in that way'. I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don't want something to exist, you can have magical thinking. It'd work for him in the past. He'd regret it."
Soon, Isaacson says, Jobs's wife and everyone around him convinced him to "quit trying to treat it with all these roots and vegetables and things", he said. But by then it may have been too late, as the cancer had spread to surrounding tissues.
Isaacson is the only author to whom Jobs gave long-term access, and he conducted more than 40 interviews. The book is scheduled to come out next week.
LA Times
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/steve-jobs-regretted-cancer-surgery-delay-biographer-says-20111021-1mb1m.html#ixzz1bQ5HpB9T
-----------------------------------------------------------------
David Sarno
October 21, 2011 - 9:33AM
For months after his pancreatic cancer diagnosis in 2004, Steve Jobs decided to try to treat his illness with eastern-style remedies, rather than surgery. But delaying that surgery may have cost him his long-term health - and it was a decision he regretted.
This comes from Jobs's biographer, Walter Isaacson, who will appear in an interview this weekend on 60 Minutes in the US to discuss Jobs and his upcoming book, Steve Jobs.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Walter Isaacson.
Watch: preview the 60 Minutes interview
According to Isaacson, Jobs had a "very slow growing" type of pancreatic cancer "that can actually be cured", but still opted not to get the surgery until nine months had gone by and it may have been too late.
"I've asked him" why he didn't get the operation, Isaacson told Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes. "And he said, 'I didn't want my body to be opened. … I didn't want to be violated in that way'. I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don't want something to exist, you can have magical thinking. It'd work for him in the past. He'd regret it."
Soon, Isaacson says, Jobs's wife and everyone around him convinced him to "quit trying to treat it with all these roots and vegetables and things", he said. But by then it may have been too late, as the cancer had spread to surrounding tissues.
Isaacson is the only author to whom Jobs gave long-term access, and he conducted more than 40 interviews. The book is scheduled to come out next week.
LA Times
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/steve-jobs-regretted-cancer-surgery-delay-biographer-says-20111021-1mb1m.html#ixzz1bQ5HpB9T
-----------------------------------------------------------------
'I'm going to destroy Android': Jobs declared 'thermonuclear war' on Google
'I'm going to destroy Android': Jobs declared 'thermonuclear war' on Google
Rachel Metz, Barbara Ortutay and Jordan Robertson
October 21, 2011 - 1:35PM
Steve Jobs ... regretted not having surgery earlier. Photo: Paul Sakuma
Apple closes for staff to say last goodbye to Jobs
A new biography portrays Steve Jobs as a sceptic all his life - giving up religion because he was troubled by starving children, calling executives who took over Apple "corrupt" and delaying cancer surgery in favour of cleansings and herbal medicine.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, to be published in the US on Monday, also says Jobs came up with the company's name while he was on a diet of fruits and vegetables, and as a teenager perfected staring at people without blinking.
The Associated Press purchased a copy of the book on Thursday in the US.
The book delves into Jobs's decision to delay surgery for nine months after learning in October 2003 that he had a neuroendocrine tumour - a relatively rare type of pancreatic cancer that normally grows more slowly and is therefore more treatable.
Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He went to a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproved approaches before having surgery in 2004.
Isaacson, quoting Jobs, writes in the book: "'I really didn't want them to open up my body, so I tried to see if a few other things would work,' he told me years later with a hint of regret."
Jobs died on October 5, at age 56, after a battle with cancer.
The book also provides insight into the unravelling of Jobs's relationship with Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google and an Apple board member from 2006 to 2009. Schmidt had quit Apple's board as Google and Apple went head-to-head in smartphones, Apple with its iPhone and Google with its Android software.
Isaacson wrote that Jobs was livid in January 2010 when HTC introduced an Android phone that boasted many of the touch and other popular features of the iPhone. Apple sued, and Jobs told Isaacson in an expletive-laced rant that Google's actions amounted to "grand theft".
"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $US40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong," Jobs said. "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."
Jobs used an expletive to describe Android and Google Docs, Google's internet-based word processing program. In a subsequent meeting with Schmidt at a cafe in Palo Alto, California, Jobs told Schmidt that he wasn't interested in settling the lawsuit, the book says.
"I don't want your money. If you offer me $US5 billion, I won't want it. I've got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that's all I want."
The meeting, Isaacson wrote, resolved nothing.
The book is clearly designed to evoke the Apple style. Its cover features the title and author's name starkly printed in black and grey type against a white background, along with a black-and-white photo of Jobs, thumb and forefinger to his chin.
The biography, for which Jobs granted more than three dozen interviews, is also a look into the thoughts of a man who was famously secret, guarding details of his life as he did Apple's products, and generating plenty of psychoanalysis from a distance.
Jobs resigned as Apple's CEO on August 24, six weeks before he died.
Doctors said on Thursday that it was not clear whether the delayed treatment made a difference in Jobs's chances of survival.
"People live with these cancers for far longer than nine months before they're even diagnosed," so it's not known how quickly one can prove fatal, said Dr Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.
Dr Michael Pishvaian, a pancreatic cancer expert at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Centre, said people were often in denial after a cancer diagnosis, and some took a long time to accept recommended treatments.
"We've had many patients who have had bad outcomes when they have delayed treatment. Nine months is certainly a significant period of time to delay," he said.
Fortune magazine reported in 2008 that Jobs tried alternative treatments because he was suspicious of mainstream medicine.
The book says Jobs gave up Christianity at the age of 13 when he saw starving children on the cover of Life magazine. He asked whether his Sunday school pastor knew what would happen to them.
Jobs never went back to church, though he did study Zen Buddhism later.
Jobs calls the crop of executives brought in to run Apple after he was ousted in 1985 "corrupt people" with "corrupt values" who cared only about making money. Jobs himself is described as caring far more about product than profit.
He told Issacson they cared only about making money "for themselves mainly, and also for Apple - rather than making great products".
Jobs returned to the company in 1997. After that, he introduced the candy-coloured iMac computer, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, and turned Apple into the most valuable company in America by market value for a time.
The book says that, while some Apple board members were happy that Hewlett-Packard gave up trying to compete with Apple's iPad, Jobs did not think it was cause for celebration.
"Hewlett and Packard built a great company, and they thought they had left it in good hands," Jobs told Isaacson. "But now it's being dismembered and destroyed."
"I hope I've left a stronger legacy so that will never happen at Apple," he added.
Advance sales of the book have topped best-seller lists. Much of the biography adds to what was already known, or speculated, about Jobs. While Isaacson is not the first to tell Jobs's story, he had unprecedented access. Their last interview was weeks before Jobs died.
Jobs reveals in the book that he did not want to go to college, and the only school he applied to was Reed, a costly private college in Portland, Oregon.
Once accepted, his parents tried to talk him out of attending Reed, but he told them he wouldn't go to college if they didn't let him go there. Jobs wound up attending but dropped out after less than a year and never went back.
Jobs told Isaacson that he tried various diets, including one of fruits and vegetables. On the naming of Apple, he said he was "on one of my fruitarian diets". He said he had just come back from an apple farm, and thought the name sounded "fun, spirited and not intimidating".
Jobs's eye for simple, clean design was evident early. The case of the Apple II computer had originally included a Plexiglas cover, metal straps and a roll-top door. Jobs, though, wanted something elegant that would make Apple stand out.
He told Isaacson he was struck by Cuisinart food processors while browsing at a department store and decided he wanted a case made of molded plastic.
He called Jonathan Ive, Apple's design chief, his "spiritual partner" at Apple. He told Isaacson that Ive had "more operation power" at Apple than anyone besides Jobs himself - that there's no one at the company who can tell Ive what to do. That, said Jobs, was "the way I set it up".
Jobs was never a typical CEO. Apple's first president, Mike Scott, was hired mainly to manage Jobs, then 22. One of his first projects, according to the book, was getting Jobs to bathe more often. It didn't work.
Jobs's dabbling in LSD and other aspects of 1960s counterculture has been well documented. In the book, Jobs says LSD "reinforced my sense of what was important - creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could".
He also revealed that the Beatles were one of his favourite bands, and one of his wishes was to get the band on iTunes, Apple's revolutionary online music store, before he died. The Beatles' music went on sale on iTunes late last year.
The book was originally called iSteve and was scheduled to come out in March. The release date was moved up to November, then, after Jobs's death, to Monday. It is published by Simon & Schuster and will sell for $US35.
Isaacson will appear on Sunday on 60 Minutes in the US. CBS News, which airs the program, released excerpts of the book on Thursday.
Watch: preview the 60 Minutes interview
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/im-going-to-destroy-android-jobs-declared-thermonuclear-war-on-google-20111021-1mbaq.html#ixzz1bPhla9Io
Rachel Metz, Barbara Ortutay and Jordan Robertson
October 21, 2011 - 1:35PM
Steve Jobs ... regretted not having surgery earlier. Photo: Paul Sakuma
Apple closes for staff to say last goodbye to Jobs
A new biography portrays Steve Jobs as a sceptic all his life - giving up religion because he was troubled by starving children, calling executives who took over Apple "corrupt" and delaying cancer surgery in favour of cleansings and herbal medicine.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, to be published in the US on Monday, also says Jobs came up with the company's name while he was on a diet of fruits and vegetables, and as a teenager perfected staring at people without blinking.
The Associated Press purchased a copy of the book on Thursday in the US.
The book delves into Jobs's decision to delay surgery for nine months after learning in October 2003 that he had a neuroendocrine tumour - a relatively rare type of pancreatic cancer that normally grows more slowly and is therefore more treatable.
Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He went to a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproved approaches before having surgery in 2004.
Isaacson, quoting Jobs, writes in the book: "'I really didn't want them to open up my body, so I tried to see if a few other things would work,' he told me years later with a hint of regret."
Jobs died on October 5, at age 56, after a battle with cancer.
The book also provides insight into the unravelling of Jobs's relationship with Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google and an Apple board member from 2006 to 2009. Schmidt had quit Apple's board as Google and Apple went head-to-head in smartphones, Apple with its iPhone and Google with its Android software.
Isaacson wrote that Jobs was livid in January 2010 when HTC introduced an Android phone that boasted many of the touch and other popular features of the iPhone. Apple sued, and Jobs told Isaacson in an expletive-laced rant that Google's actions amounted to "grand theft".
"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $US40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong," Jobs said. "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."
Jobs used an expletive to describe Android and Google Docs, Google's internet-based word processing program. In a subsequent meeting with Schmidt at a cafe in Palo Alto, California, Jobs told Schmidt that he wasn't interested in settling the lawsuit, the book says.
"I don't want your money. If you offer me $US5 billion, I won't want it. I've got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that's all I want."
The meeting, Isaacson wrote, resolved nothing.
The book is clearly designed to evoke the Apple style. Its cover features the title and author's name starkly printed in black and grey type against a white background, along with a black-and-white photo of Jobs, thumb and forefinger to his chin.
The biography, for which Jobs granted more than three dozen interviews, is also a look into the thoughts of a man who was famously secret, guarding details of his life as he did Apple's products, and generating plenty of psychoanalysis from a distance.
Jobs resigned as Apple's CEO on August 24, six weeks before he died.
Doctors said on Thursday that it was not clear whether the delayed treatment made a difference in Jobs's chances of survival.
"People live with these cancers for far longer than nine months before they're even diagnosed," so it's not known how quickly one can prove fatal, said Dr Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.
Dr Michael Pishvaian, a pancreatic cancer expert at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Centre, said people were often in denial after a cancer diagnosis, and some took a long time to accept recommended treatments.
"We've had many patients who have had bad outcomes when they have delayed treatment. Nine months is certainly a significant period of time to delay," he said.
Fortune magazine reported in 2008 that Jobs tried alternative treatments because he was suspicious of mainstream medicine.
The book says Jobs gave up Christianity at the age of 13 when he saw starving children on the cover of Life magazine. He asked whether his Sunday school pastor knew what would happen to them.
Jobs never went back to church, though he did study Zen Buddhism later.
Jobs calls the crop of executives brought in to run Apple after he was ousted in 1985 "corrupt people" with "corrupt values" who cared only about making money. Jobs himself is described as caring far more about product than profit.
He told Issacson they cared only about making money "for themselves mainly, and also for Apple - rather than making great products".
Jobs returned to the company in 1997. After that, he introduced the candy-coloured iMac computer, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, and turned Apple into the most valuable company in America by market value for a time.
The book says that, while some Apple board members were happy that Hewlett-Packard gave up trying to compete with Apple's iPad, Jobs did not think it was cause for celebration.
"Hewlett and Packard built a great company, and they thought they had left it in good hands," Jobs told Isaacson. "But now it's being dismembered and destroyed."
"I hope I've left a stronger legacy so that will never happen at Apple," he added.
Advance sales of the book have topped best-seller lists. Much of the biography adds to what was already known, or speculated, about Jobs. While Isaacson is not the first to tell Jobs's story, he had unprecedented access. Their last interview was weeks before Jobs died.
Jobs reveals in the book that he did not want to go to college, and the only school he applied to was Reed, a costly private college in Portland, Oregon.
Once accepted, his parents tried to talk him out of attending Reed, but he told them he wouldn't go to college if they didn't let him go there. Jobs wound up attending but dropped out after less than a year and never went back.
Jobs told Isaacson that he tried various diets, including one of fruits and vegetables. On the naming of Apple, he said he was "on one of my fruitarian diets". He said he had just come back from an apple farm, and thought the name sounded "fun, spirited and not intimidating".
Jobs's eye for simple, clean design was evident early. The case of the Apple II computer had originally included a Plexiglas cover, metal straps and a roll-top door. Jobs, though, wanted something elegant that would make Apple stand out.
He told Isaacson he was struck by Cuisinart food processors while browsing at a department store and decided he wanted a case made of molded plastic.
He called Jonathan Ive, Apple's design chief, his "spiritual partner" at Apple. He told Isaacson that Ive had "more operation power" at Apple than anyone besides Jobs himself - that there's no one at the company who can tell Ive what to do. That, said Jobs, was "the way I set it up".
Jobs was never a typical CEO. Apple's first president, Mike Scott, was hired mainly to manage Jobs, then 22. One of his first projects, according to the book, was getting Jobs to bathe more often. It didn't work.
Jobs's dabbling in LSD and other aspects of 1960s counterculture has been well documented. In the book, Jobs says LSD "reinforced my sense of what was important - creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could".
He also revealed that the Beatles were one of his favourite bands, and one of his wishes was to get the band on iTunes, Apple's revolutionary online music store, before he died. The Beatles' music went on sale on iTunes late last year.
The book was originally called iSteve and was scheduled to come out in March. The release date was moved up to November, then, after Jobs's death, to Monday. It is published by Simon & Schuster and will sell for $US35.
Isaacson will appear on Sunday on 60 Minutes in the US. CBS News, which airs the program, released excerpts of the book on Thursday.
Watch: preview the 60 Minutes interview
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/im-going-to-destroy-android-jobs-declared-thermonuclear-war-on-google-20111021-1mbaq.html#ixzz1bPhla9Io
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