I just wrote an email and hit the send button… check out the popup that I got:

I admit it is a little eerie that gmail reads my mail, but you must realize this has been happening with all hosted email for over a decade… right?

Anyway, I regularly hit send before putting the attachment in…. it looks like that might not be an issue anymore?!?

Brilliant user design Gmail!

Have an inclintation to be an entrepreneur?

Read this post by Tim Ferriss, called Why Grow? and other wisdom from 37Signals.  Here are some of my favorite parts:

>> 37Signals is focused on getting sh*t done instead of chasing the Silicon Valley venture capital death spiral. Financing has it’s place, but it’s a means to an end and shouldn’t be confused with an end.

I’ve played around in the funding space for almost four years, thinking about getting funded, talking to people who have gotten funding, asking advice, talking to investors, etc.  I have recently been going to any Funding Universe Crowdpitch I can, which is really enjoyable, but I’m still leery of looking for outside investors, so I really appreciated that line

>> More than 3,000,000 people worldwide use 37Signals products

WOW.  3M.  That is amazing.

>> Have you ever noticed that while small businesses wish they were bigger, big businesses dream about being more agile and flexible?

Talking about the perfect size of a company… everyone is looking for that greener grass. Huge used to be the goal, but look at all the huge companies and all the problems they have?

>> The easiest, most straightforward way to create a great product or service is to make something you want to use.

I love that entire section… examples of companies that started because founders had their own itch to scratch, came up with a solution, and have done very well.

Very nice, inspiring post. I’ll have to check out the book.

I pick up a little side work as a social marketing consultant here and there.  Today I was working on a project looking for relevant bloggers to network with in a niche space. I went to alltop to find the blogs they have listed for this topic and opened all of them in tabs so I could see if I liked them.

I was specifically looking for people who had street cred as a blogger in that space.  I found a bunch that I liked. I was also reminded of things I hate.  Here’s my hate list:

1. Very dark background, very light font. Think black background, white font.  IT SUCKS.  I hate this. I have bad eyes, and I’m in front of a computer about 10 hours a day.  When I get to a site that has black background with white font I find my eyes hurting pretty quickly and I just have to go away.  (surprisingly, many people have this sucky color scheme on their Twitter bio area.  Do they not realize it SUCKS?)
2. Funky font.  Bright colors. Really big text.  Different font types throughout a post.  Look, I get it… you want to somehow accentuate something, right?  Bring out a big idea, or whisper or something… my heavens, don’t do it by making the font 8 times bigger than what it should be.
3. Too many linked distractions. I like to read blogs without a lot of noise.  Don’t have dozens of links all over the place. Here’s an example – don’t put a link to a community or forum unless you have enough people (that is: more than you) in that community and forum.  Work up to it, but don’t lead me all over your site to places that have tiny bits of information, but none of them have any real substance.
4. Too little information. I want to know about YOU or the topic.  Don’t doodle in blah blah blah.  I’m amazed at the contrast between a very strong, on-topic blogger compared to a blogger that wanders all over Boringville and never makes a relevant point.
5. Lots of off-topic posts. I know you like your kitty cat.  I know you like your spuds, flowers, car, favorite pair of jeans, etc.  But if you have a topical blog (that is, not a personal here’s-what-i-ate-for-lunch-this-last-month blog, then severely  restrict your off-topic posts.  If you want to have a following for your topic and you talk too much about junk you’ll lose people.
6. Cussing. You are a big boy or a big girl, I get that.  But the more strong language you use on your blog the more you are going to turn people off.  Or maybe you don’t care… that’s fine.  Your blog is more about venting your feelings than about developing an audience and a community – that’s fine.  But I can’t follow you much if you are constantly offending me.  Prude, I know.
7. Link bait, or dropping a lot of keyword searchable words. I don’t want to read your blog because I’m a search engine, I want to read it because I’m a human being.  It’s okay to put the link stuff in there, and put keywords in there, but can you at least work it into proper grammar and have it relevant to what you are writing?
8. Widgets. Kill most of them.  If you are widget crazy I won’t even wait the three minutes it takes for your blog to come up… I’ll just close the tab and not come back.  Seriously, don’t YOU have something more value-add on your blog than 18 widgets?  You are better than that (I hope).  Don’t distract me with useless crap.
9. Google Ads, if you are a legitimate business/blogger. I’m amazed at the sites that have Google ads on their site.  I’m quite biased against google ads because the goofballs at Google shut down my ad program (lame story).  But here’s why I don’t recommend it: (a) it is a distraction that you can’t really control, (b) if I click on the ad, I GO AWAY from your site, and (c) I wonder why a business or legit blogger would ever sell valuable real estate on their blog for $18/month (what I’m guessing most bloggers are getting).  Seriously, figure out something more value-ad to give to your audience.  Google ads to me says “I don’t care to build a community, I’m just hoping the brainless drone who happens to come to my site will be dumb enough to realize I don’t have any value for him/her and they’ll click on the Google ad so I can make five cents.”
10. ______________________________________. What’s the thing you hate to see on a blog?

There are two picture (avatar or image) problems that I constantly see online:

1. Picture is too dark.

This is usually an avatar on a social networking profile like LinkedIn or Twitter.  Mine was too dark, to the point of being accused of being GOTH (lol).  I loved my picture, actually, but I got too many complaints about it and finally changed it to something lighter.

I didn’t think too much about it but lately I have seen a number of pictures on LinkedIn or Twitter – these are SMALL pictures – they are so small that if you have a lot of dark shadows and background it won’t look good.

One reason I see too much shadow is because the image is cropped from a networking event – not an on-purpose picture.

2. Picture is too BIG.

This is a problem I see on many small business owners websites – it is either their professional picture they had taken, or a corporate picture, or something like that.

It’s easy to figure out if it is too big – the way I find out is when I go to an About Us page and the page takes forever to load.  Actually, the page loads while the picture slooooowly creeps up.  Any slowly creeping photo is TOO big.

If you right click the image you can see the properties, which will tell you the size.  Anything under 100K is good.  Anything over that can be optimized (in just a few seconds).  Anything over 500k or 1MB is HORRIFIC.

Change your picture size to something small (this is the file size, not the dimension of the image) and you’ll have that About Us page loading lickity-split!

(I know, kind of a weird post but it’s been on my mind :p)

Once again I changed my email signature (here’s another post when I did it before)… here’s the old one:

I did indeed like this one, but I still felt it was too long.  Also, I had the “check out the second edition… ” which I think served it’s purpose, but it’s time to move on.  And I wanted to emphasize JUST two things – JibberJobber and the DVD… so here’s the new one (as of today):

I don’t think I’m getting any goodness out of saying I’m an author or speaker on my signature… you can eventually see that if you click on my LinkedIn blog… but really what I want you to know about is just the two things, so this is an effort to put the more important stuff in front and again clean out the noise.

I am changing this more than I ever thought I would… we’ll see how long this signature lasts   BTW, the links go to JibberJobber and my LinkedIn blog.

I spent some time with Carl Chapman, website and SEO expert, and he made some suggestions to me about this page, which he said confused him (no in-your-face call to action, etc.):

Here’s the new one that I reworked:

Here’s what I did differently … notice the underlines are not included in the changes listed below, but they are different than the old page:

1. Instead of the text title, this is an image… flashier… jumps out, even has … color (!).
2. I made the price line more obvious, especially with this red strikethrough, and noting the S&H that the customer isn’t paying for now.
3. This is broken out from the old statement, which I think is good…
4. This is bold, green, and on it’s own line.
5. Buy Now button, instead of a link… this is more clear (there’s your call to action Carl).
6. Carl mentioned it said “LinkedIn Webinars” but there is currently only one webinar… SO… here’s this italicized statement that the rest are coming.

What do you think?  How else should this be improved?

BTW, if you are interested in the DVD, you can order here. OOPS! I mean,

I need to update you on the video thing… last post I asked for some input on a video from my new video editor…and since then we have changed some stuff and started to put out new videos (which are now live, and in production).

You can see all of the videos we’ve put out for JibberJobber user tutorials here, on Vimeo.  They are hi-def, which means crazy big files, but Vimeo handles it well, and the user doesn’t see slow download time (afaik). Also, if they make the video bigger the quality is good.  Cool.

I’ve also been working on the first series that I’ll sell – because it is HD we can’t do downloads as it’s GBs of info – just barely enough to fit on one DVD.  More on that soon!

Thanks to everyone who gave input on the video post from last time

I love the song If I Had A Million Dollars by Barenaked Ladies.  When I watched these very cool/funny/clever videos I got jealous of TheLadders marketing budget, and thought, indeed, if I had a million dollars this is what I would want to come up with:

And,

More here.  Props to Cheezhead for turning me on to this.

I’m a strong advocate of having an email signature that helps me know who you are.  I want you to know who I am, and what I can offer you.  Thus, I created and have used this email signature for a long, long time:

In Outlook (with html):

In Gmail (no html):

After getting a comment on my LinkedIn blog (it’s pretty funny), and another comment on Young PR Pros (in jest, of course), I decided it was time to try something else.

So here’s my new signature:

I could only do this since I redesigned JasonAlba.com (it used to just be a blog, but now has a landing page with all my other stuff).

I worry that people won’t know about all the cool stuff I do, and not know what I’m about.  It’s kind of scary.  However, I wonder how many people previously sifted through my other signature… how many JibberJobber signups I got because of my sig, how many book sales, blog readers, CEO Webinar purchases…

It’s kind of like when you come up with your 30 Second Commercial… you feel like you are leaving so much out, and how in the world could you cut stuff out??  But you have to.  And so did I.

It’s a new day, and perhaps I’ll regret it, but I doubt anyone will suggest I shorten my signature.  Scary but good… that’s my gut feel right now.

Yesterday I had a pretty rough day. More on that next week on my JibberJobber blog.

To end the day, though, I thought I’d carve out some time and put together a powerpoint to try slideshare.net. I’ve been wanting to do it for a while, but really wish I had a really creative person to do it for me, or at least check it out. Someone like Armano, or Geno (both of whom I’ve met in person).

It’s not that I don’t like to pretend I’m creative. But something happened two years ago that made me stop and think harder about what I was doing.

I put out a press release.

It was uber-successful.

And that success scared me.

Scared me into thinking I had to be more thoughtful, more careful, with these types of things.

And I stopped. No more press releases. Nothing that an ad agency, or a PR firm, should do.

I scared myself into non-action.

And that was dumb.