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Setting up iPhone to Sync with a Google Account

Mark — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:01:35 +0000

When you set up your iPhone with a Google Apps account, it’s best to set it up as an Exchange account and NOT a gmail account as Google tells you in the set up. For whatever reason, they don’t tell you this in the account settings page. Here’s the link on how to properly set it up to sync to a I-phone

http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=138740

Setting it up as a gmail account may work, and in fact has for me on several occasions, but every once in a while, it just doesn’t work.

This is what Google says right from the link in the Forwarding and POP/IMAP link:

Why do you suppose it’s different?

The Difference Between “Proprietary” and “Open Source” by Shawn Coyne

Mark — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 08:02:15 +0000

In the internet world, there’s a strong polarity between companies that create “Proprietary” software that is kept secret, developed by employees and that you have to pay for and “Open Source” software that is written by contributors around the world and is given away. Shawn Coyne authored an article on stevenpressfield.com, called The Bubble Men that pretty much sums up the difference between ”Open Source” and ”Proprietary”.

But, one one friend of mine emailed me after reading this sums up this article even better;

“I wonder how many times in one day we each accidentally walk past a person, whose heart we could very easily reach out and touch. I think I’ll look out with different eyes tomorrow…”

It’s definitely worth a read. Find it here.

And, if you haven’t read any of Mr. Pressfield’s books yet, I suggest starting with The War of Art and Do The Work. Also, find him here

Remembering and Making an Impact, with thanks to Brad Meltzer.

Mark — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:56:50 +0000

Brad Meltzer's website, circa 2000

I recently saw this Ted Video by Brad Meltzer called How to Write Your Own Obituary, which I highly recommend. Brad was a client of mine from 2000-2005 in the days of small, narrow, author websites (see screenshot to the right). We say howdy via email every couple of years, and I guess it’s about time to say hi again. So, “Hi Brad, loved the website! Let’s have lunch next time you’re in Colorado!”

Anyway, I’d like to add a bit to his legacy that he can choose to use in his obituary or not.

Early on in our relationship, at about the time when The First Counsel had come out, He had a book signing in Denver at the Tattered Cover. I jumped in the car and headed down there. He was a client from the DC area at this point and I’d never met him in person and wanted to finally meet him. I enjoyed the book reading and the quick chat we had in the long line afterwards. Since my Mom had just finished reading The Tenth Justice and really liked it, I purchased The First Counsel and Brad gratefully autographed it for my Mom. He didn’t know my Mom, but that was ok. He said just the right thing that a Mom wants to hear about her son. It shows just how much that a “Mom” means to Brad and I’m very grateful for it (as a side note, it’s a nice compliment to me too! Thanks again!). It supports everything he talks about in the video about his Mom and what I’ve heard from him about her since her passing.

In his Ted talk, he speaks about his mother and her impact on his life as part of her legacy after her passing. There’s much that he says about his mother that I could say about mine, but you can view his talk below.

Jump ahead 11 years.

Last January, my Mom passed away too. In being home in VA and helping my family go through some things, I discovered The First Counsel on the book shelf and opened it up to see the inscription that had been there for more than 10 years and had to smile. It brought back the memory of meeting Brad and working with him over the years. I also still have a post card he sent promoting another book with a handwritten note on it about my Mom. It’s so easy to not take the time for a personal note, but so meaningful when you do.

A couple days later as I was waiting in the airport for my flight home, I started reading it. Unfortunately, at the book signing, I only bought the one copy and had neglected to get a copy for myself, but was grateful to have a chance to read it… finally. I read almost all of it on my 2 flights across the country (and a long layover in Atlanta) and, Brad, this is a long time coming, but I loved it! Keep ‘em coming! I’m working through the ones I’ve missed.

So, Thanks to Brad for increasing his legacy by making an impact in my life and my Mom’s life (and being a great client). I know she was a fan of your books and I wish you could have met her – and I wish I could have met your Mom too (who knows, maybe there’s a place for them to meet and share stories about us).

It’s amazing what a simple inscription to a fan in a book can do. And that night at the Tattered Cover, you weren’t a client, but you certainly turned me into a fan (and I still am).

So, as part of finishing Brad’s Obituary: “He was a… son who loves his Mom.”

Thank you!

P.S. here’s Brad’s great talk:

TEDxMIA – Brad Meltzer – How To Write Your Own Obituary

3 Reasons Why Your Website Should be Like an Online Dating Website

Mark — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 05:48:50 +0000

In the last 15+ years, I’ve worked with more than 400 clients on more interactive projects and websites than I think I can count anymore (including a couple online dating sites). The result of all of this work is that I’ve come to realize that websites really fall under one main model, and that is The Online Dating Model.

Why is that? Well, 3 reasons.

Users are looking for something that meets their needs.
You are looking for users that are interested in what you have to offer.
You really want to build a relationship with your users and your users want to build a relationship with you.

The online dating community purports to be pros at compatibility. They all say that they have the best way to match you and someone else. Their primary function is to build a relationship between 2 people, to show information about one that is interesting to the other and to build understanding and trust in order to inspire one to make a commitment of some sort to the other.

How is this different from what you’re trying to do on your website? Probably more so than it should be.

Think about it. What are you trying to do online? Unless you really don’t care if anyone listens or sees whatever you’re doing online, you’re probably looking for customers, donors or readers to to take some sort of action. And how do you inspire commitment? By getting your readers to learn about you, to feel comfortable with you and start a relationship with you – just like dating. If they’re not comfortable with what they see and learn from you, then they’ll move on to someone else – just like dating.

So do yourself a favor and have another look at your own website and compare it to some dating websites to see how you stack up against these common qualities from some of these online dating sites.

Character
Passion
Intellect
Humor
Energy
Kindness
Confidence
Education
Honesty
etc…

Are you exemplifying qualities that will inspire someone to make a commitment to you? If not, maybe you should be.

Understanding How to Change Your Feeds in Feedburner

Mark — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 04:24:17 +0000

Recently I launched a new site for a client and needed to change 5 exiting feeds to new RSS feed addresses. I searched a long time on the Google Feedburner docs looking for some information and confirmation and couldn’t find exactly what I needed. There were 3 questions I had:

How do I change the feed address without losing my subscribers? since I didn’t want to add the addresses again.
If I needed to add the addresses again, could I import them via CSV?
If I can change the address, and keep my subscribers, when Feedburner runs, will it send the new posts since it last ran. or will it send ALL posts in the specific category?

Question 1 was easy. At the top of the Feedburner account page, Google says this:

You should not change “Original Feed” unless you move your original feed to a new domain or a new location on your existing server. Also, changing “Feed Address” will require you to update your feed subscribers with your new address; the previous feed address will no longer work.

After I read this sever times, I understand it means that you can change the ORIGINAL FEED address and keep your subscribers.

But, if you change the FEED ADDRESS, you’ll lose your subscribers.

Question 2 was even easier. After searching a while, I found many responses to this question from Google over the last few years saying “no, you can’t import as it would be a spam/security hole.” and I certainly didn’t want to manually enter all the addresses again, so I wasn’t going to touch the FEED ADDRESS.

Question 3 was more difficult to find. In fact, I never saw anything definite about it. So I tried some tests and changed some mostly abandoned feeds to see what would happen. Since I wasn’t confident that my tests were going to be 100% accurate, I didn’t put a lot of faith in them. But, it looked like the feed was going to send more than just the last post.

We ultimately decided that we could manage the issue of readers potentially getting several posts again in a single Feedburner email and wrote a post to that effect so the readers would get that too. So, we changed the Original Feed and waited…

After a couple hours, after dinner and after the kids went to bed, the feeds started coming in. I signed myself up for all 5 feeds we transferred and, (spoiler alert) all 5 feeds sent the last 10 posts in their respective categories, and not the only ones posted since the last feed was delivered.

Ultimately, it’s pretty easy to manage in Feedburner, but a couple things would be more helpful. Especially, if Google could remove many of the REALLY OLD posts that don’t seem to help much anymore.

If you have questions, let me know.

Easy, Delicious White Fish Marinade

Mark — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 05:09:42 +0000

I put this marinade together a couple times for some Tilapia and Halibut. It’s really easy and while I love grilling, I decided to sauté to sear in the flavor. It also helped to keep it from drying out. Amounts are all what you feel like…

Olive Oil (with some rosemary)
A lemon
Some brown sugar – a tablespoon or so
Couple cloves of garlic
Dijon Mustard
Salt and pepper

Mix it up well and let the fish sit in it for a little while and then sauté. Sear for a couple minutes on high heat on each side and then cook on low heat until flaky and delicious! The kids will love it!

List Posts: the Good, the Bad and the Irony.

Mark — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:54:21 +0000

Or maybe I should call this “1 thing I noticed that made me laugh about list posts since mostly they’re overused except for David Letterman and what you should do instead.”

I noticed this article in my Daily Smart Brief for Social Media email today about the over use of the List Post format in Blogs. It’s called The One Reason You Read So Many List Posts. I very much agree with Jay Dolan about this. There have got to be better ways to title and promote your content without using lists all the time (the Bad way). Really, the only place I still like them is when Letterman uses them (the Good way).

Speaking of which, here’s the one from yesterday:

Top Ten Ways To Mispronounce Muammar Qaddafi
10.Mallomar Cookie
9.Milli Vanilli
8.Grande No-Foam Latte
7.Live! with Regis and Kelly
6.Lady QaQa
5.Mumizzle Qadizzle
4.Mouthful of Taffy
3.Kathy Mavrikakis
2.Qadaffi Duck
1.Qarmelo Anthony

Ok, to be fair, sometimes List Posts do have their place and can be beneficial. I do also like them when they’re on a topic that I think I know at least something about and then getting some quick, new insight is pretty nice. But, you can also tell when bloggers are just looking for some quick, cheap and easy Google Juice.

Anyway, this post really didn’t start out to discuss the List Post, nor was it supposed to head down the Letterman tangent. Really, I thought that the email I got from Daily Smart Brief displayed the article in a somewhat ironic way (the Irony way) that I wanted to share. See it below:

The anti List Post irony....

So, Let’s be creative and start looking for additional ways to promote your content. And to be fair, I’ve done it too and am not proud of it. Maybe I should’ve call this post “2015 characters to support my point that you shouldn’t use List Posts for everything.”

I think my next article will be called: “Three ways I’ll stop using List Posts to drive content.”

And I’ll have it celebrity-Tweeted by Garfield, Hobbes and Marmaduke.

Internet Safety and Cell Phone Safety for Your Kids

Mark — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 21:46:07 +0000

I was asked recently to give a presentation on Internet Safety for parents at the school my kids attend. I did a lot of research and found more information then I could possibly consume in any reasonable time frame. I also talked with some friends who are parents, teachers, contacts from the FBI and more and was able to put a presentation together that I think summarizes what I found very nicely. It will be available here soon.

In all my research, I found that keeping your kids safe online and with their cell phones boils down to 2 main points.

Internet Safety is more about your relationship with your children, than about the technology.
Internet Safety is also about knowing as much or more than your kids do about the internet.

I was also able to gather some very good links to many online resources.

Internet Safety Links

City of Lakewood Address in Denver

Mark — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 19:09:43 +0000

Anyone else find this city tax form address ironic?

I love @xmarks!

Mark — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 05:13:42 +0000

I love @xmarks!