Aaron Neville released his haunting version of Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927” in 1991, but listening to it now, given the events of Katrina, will absolutely send chills down your spine. It’s the first song in installment #128 of Brian Ibbot’s excellent Podcast, Coverville.
“There’s an old photographers’ axiom that says, ‘There’s a prize-winning photo within five feet of you.’ This is true. There is all the humor in all of mankind, all the sadness, all the greatness, all the gladness, and all the idiocy of all the man — is within five feet of you. Just look around.”
—Jean Shepherd
B.L. Ochman’s blog alerts us to the impending publication of Blogging For Dummies. (Hurry off to Amazon now and add it to your wedding registry!)
Technorati says there’s 16.8 million blogs out there. Sturgeon’s Law holds that 90% of everything is crud. Do the math: That’s a lot of cruddy blogs. Maybe this volume will help those blogs improve. Maybe it will spawn millions more cruddy blogs. Probably a little of both, so I suspect the book will do very well. Nevertheless, here’s my advice to the dummies: Save your 15 bucks and use the time you’d otherwise spend reading the book to blog and play and experiment and refine and improve and learn and …
That’s the title of this article from Forbes. No massive revelations, certainly not to anyone who’s been doing online marketing with their eyes open for at least a few months, simply some solid, basic advice that’s always good to keep in mind, no matter where you are in your Web development plans.
I wholeheartedly agree with this: The key to building a well-oiled Web site is excruciatingly obvious, says Cameron Moyer, head of Moyer DCS, a small Web-design shop in Chicago: “You have to approach the experience through your customer’s eyes.”
Takeaway for marketers: Think like a customer … and a potential customer. Surround yourself with people who do the same.
It’s tempting to post all-Katrina all the time here, but I’m trying not to, in large part because so many others are doing it so much better. For example: Marketing Sherpa has assembled this excellent page of Hurricane Katrina resources for marketing, advertising, and PR professionals.
