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Five Best Online Image Editors [Hive Five]

2009-07-05T16:00:00Z

Editing your images on a desktop image editor might be ideal, but sometimes you're away from your home workstation and need to do some impromptu editing. Check out these five options favored by Lifehacker readers.

Photo by karlfrankowski.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite tools for editing images online, independent of any downloaded or portable software.

You responded and we rounded up the top five nominees for best online image editor. All of the editors are free so don't hesitate to jump into any editor that catches your eye and give it a test drive.

Sumo Paint

If you're expecting online image editors to be anemic, you'll be surprised by the extensive features of many of the nominees like Sumo Paint. Sporting a toolbar, image navigator, swatches, and layers, Sumo Paint does more than just crop and rotate images. In addition to having layers, as some other editors do, Sumo Paint has support for blending modes and other advanced layering magic like drop shadow and outer glow. The brushes and ink tools offer a wide variety of shapes and textures. If you like some of the paint-centric features of Sumo Paint, you'll definitely want to check out the Gravity tool, which creates some pretty interesting abstract paint effects. Sumo Paint also supports drag and drop image opening for pictures you have stored in your Sumo Paint account. Sumo Paint doesn't require a login for use, but if you sign up for a free account you can store images online and participate in the Sumo Paint community by submitting your work and ranking the work of others. Photo by Randy Son of Robert.

Adobe Photoshop Express

Photoshop Express is Adobe's offering in the online editing arena. One of the first things you'll notice, and if you're an avid Photoshop user it's sure to elicit at least a chuckle, is that out of all the online image editors in the world, the one that looks the least like Photoshop is the actual legitimate Photoshop offering from Adobe. Nonetheless, the interface is easy to use and covers the basics nicely. One of the best features of Photoshop Express is the film strip view provided along the bottom of the editor when using a variety of the adjustment tools. Instead of just giving you a slider to adjust the saturation, white balance, and other subjective photo tweaks, Photoshop Express displays the changes incrementally, letting you pick your favorite from the gradient of choices. It's much faster for quick tweaks than fiddling with sliders. If you want to use a slider, however they haven't removed the feature; the more granular slider is underneath the pictures, allowing you to fine tune to your heart's content. Under the advanced feature set, you'll find tools like tinting, sketching, and distortion. Adobe Photoshop Express is free but, unlike all the other nominees in the Hive Five, it requires an account for you to use your own photos. If you just want to play around with it, the demo account contains sets of pictures for you to play with. Photo by pasotraspaso.

Pixlr

Pixlr takes a two-prong approach to image editing. When you visit Pixlr, you can opt to use Pixlr Express or Pixlr Editor—seen here—depending on your needs. Pixlr Express is a simple image editor with a right hand toolbar which covers basic tasks like cropping, rotating, applying basic correction filters, and so on. Pixlr Editor looks like a more traditional photo-editing application, complete with a toolbar, menu bar, and even navigator, layers, and history panels. If you're familiar with desktop applications like Photoshop and GIMP, it won't take you very long to find the location of tools like the clone stamp, selection wand, and gradient map. The Pixlr Firefox extension allows you to grab images and screenshots from your browser and send them to Pixlr.

Picnik

Picnik doesn't seek to emulate desktop editors with its simple toolbar design, instead opting to make the most popular tools as high profile and easily accessible as possible. Picnik has no Photoshop-esque sidebars, palettes, or other advanced features in the main editing window. The features it provides, however, are extremely intuitive and easy to use with tool tips that pop up to help you use the various tools. If you want to tweak your photo beyond basic cropping and color correction, you can find over 30 image filters and a variety of tools (like a blemish touch-up wand) under the Create tab. A premium version of Picnik is available for $25 a year and gives you access to more advanced tools, special effects, and other perks like bulk uploading. Photo by jurvetson.

Aviary Phoenix

Aviary Phoenix is an image editor that is part of the Aviary Suite of online editing tools, which—on top of image editing—boasts a vector and filter editor, among other tools. Aviary Phoenix has an advanced interface and plenty of options to help you edit your images, like layers, blending, and magic wand selection. You can use Aviary without signing up for an account, but with an account you can save your creations, collaborate with other users, and otherwise participate in the Aviary community. The Aviary Phoenix Firefox extension, called Talon, adds in an assortment of functionality like screen capture, quick editing of images you find online, and—unique among the Hive Five candidates this week—it adds support for pressure sensitive input devices. The premium version of Aviary Phoenix is available for $25 a year and unlocks advanced features and the ability to save your work to your Aviary account without adding it to the public area of the Aviary community. Photo by tinyfroglet.

Now that you've had a chance to check out—and hopefully play with!—the nominees for best online image editor, it's time to cast your vote in the poll below:

Which Online Image Editor is Best?(opinion)

See your favorite in the Hive? Can't believe your favorite didn't make it? Still chuckling that one of the least Photoshop-like offering is from Adobe? Let's hear about it in the comments below.

Get Better Customer Service by Being a Better Customer [Customer Service]

2009-07-05T20:00:00Z

One of the easiest ways to get better customer service when dealing with companies is to becomes a better customer, at least in the other side's eyes. It's easy, too, once you've got the basics down.

Photo by striatic.

Being a better customer radically increases the chance that you'll get good customer service, have your problems resolved promptly, and can lead to all sorts of perks, like finding out about discounts, future sales, and other money savers. What's one of the big things you can do to be a better customer, aside from not ranting like a jerk when things don't go your way? Simple documentation, according to the Wise Bread blog:

If a frontline agent isn't doing a service to their company by being rude to you, get their name. Consider recording your calls (be aware of obtaining consent; companies will often say on the line they're recording you for training purposes!). Tagging the emails they send you. And so on. Create a history if you're routinely being wronged.

While the example they give relates to a negative experience, documenting all your interactions is important across the board. I picked a habit of making notes on every customer service call from my mother, one that's simple to follow and pays off time and again.

Every phone call to a company gets at least an index card with the date, time, name of the person I'm talking to, what we talked about, and any additional relevant information. This way, should I need to explain some past event I can say "I spoke with Nick on August 27th, at 2:30, and he applied promotion code 0808PHONE to my account." You're more likely to get help and a resolution to your problem if the customer service rep knows that you know what is going on, and that you've been taking careful notes all along. After all, who doesn't like helping someone who has already demonstrated a willingness to help themselves and listen?

For more ways you can be a better customer and score yourself better customer service, check out the full article at WiseBread. If you have your own tips for being a better customer, getting better customer service, or both, we definitely want to hear about it.

How to Be the Best Customer [WiseBread]

How To Stop Procrastination

2009-07-06T10:00:00Z

Mondays are productivity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

Back in April Tim asked me about procrastination tips. I am assuming that we want to know about how to get around procrastination, rather than how to procrastinate!

Awareness

The first trick to getting around procrastination is to know when you are procrastinating. This means being aware at the time, rather than looking back on a day or a week with little progress made. By recognizing it when you are in the middle of it, you have a chance to fight it.

Symptoms of Procrastination

You can figure out if you are procrastinating by taking measure of your feelings. Perhaps you have a vague sense you should be doing something else. Or while looking at a list of things you need to do, you rapidly skip over something with a bit of guilt. The signs of procrastination can be subtle, but they are there and you can learn to recognize your particular brand of them.

Differentiate

Sometimes a task gets procrastinated on simply because it is not in line with your goals, interests or intents. Take a look through the list of things you have to do right now, and ask yourself if there is anything on there that doesn’t need to be done at all, should be done by someone else, or that you said yes to in a weak moment? Take steps to get them off your list. If the task doesn’t need to be done at all, cross it off. If it needs to be done by someone else, hand it off. If you were conned into doing it, contact the original requester and back down (”I’m sorry, I know I said I would do this, but I just don’t have the time to do it well right now…”)

Use PATs

Zen To Done recommends a method of making progress on your major projects by picking out Most Important Tasks (MITs) to do every day. If you are trying to blast through a list of tasks that have been outstanding too long, I suggest picking out three Procrastination Avoidance Tasks (PATs) every day.

Pick three tasks that you want to get off your list. Do the tasks as soon as possible in the day, ideally first thing in the morning. Within weeks you will have whittled the list down.

But I Still Can’t Get Moving…

If the task is still bugging you, and you can’t seem to get going on it, here are the strategies I use:

Make it ridiculously easy. If you have a paper to write and can’t get started, just do as Mark Forster recommends and tell yourself that all you have to do is get out the folder. Just making a start often gets me moving on the task.

Break it down. Often I will procrastinate if a task seems overwhelming. I apply David Allen’s method of determining what the very next action that needs to be done is. For example, instead of “Plan party” the task would become “Call Angela for caterer recommendations.” And if I didn’t have Angela’s phone number, the next task would be “Look up Angela’s phone number.”

I can’t possibly get enough done in the time I have. I always underestimate how much I can get done in a small chunk of time. FlyLady’s 15 minute rule helps with this. If my task is to clean the dining room, I set a timer for 15 minutes and go at it, with permission to stop when the timer goes off – even if I am not “done”. I usually find that I finish the task within the 15 minutes.

But I don’t WANT TO! When I find myself whining, I give myself a reward for working on the task for a given amount of time. Let’s say I’m reading a technical book and I simply don’t want to. I use the (10+2)*5 method to plan breaks. I work 10 minutes, do whatever for 2, then repeat the whole thing four more times. An hour will have elapsed, and I will have worked 50 minutes of that hour on my task.

These are the ways I get around procrastination. Does anyone have other methods that work for them?

Photo by flattop341

Science moves from the stacks to the Web; print too pricey

2009-07-06T18:16:54Z

Last week, the head of the US branch of Oxford University Press noted an event that was striking, if unsurprising. When grading an assigned paper, a Columbia University professor found that the majority of his students had cited an obscure work of literary criticism that was roughly a century old. The reason? Because the work was in Google Book Search, while much other (more recent) work was not.

The relative invisibility of offline information has an impact on almost all areas of life, but it's felt especially acutely in the academic world, where work builds on the existing body of knowledge. Getting all of that dead-tree information onto the Internet (or into archives like J-Stor) would be of tremendous utility to scholars and students, but convenience isn't the only reason for digital distribution of academic work. A recent decision by a prominent academic publisher to switch to digital-only distribution was apparently motivated by simple economics: print no longer made financial sense.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Free: It Works, It Cries, It Bites

2009-07-07T07:33:25Z

Chris Anderson's new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price (available for free in text form and as an audio book), is stirring controversy and a spicy conversation around the blogosphere. The current wave of discussion started with a critical review by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker. In his review, Gladwell defends journalism and goes negative on "Free." Seth Godin, who till then had stayed out of the debate, penned an instantly classic Godin post titled "Malcolm is wrong."

Mike Masnick followed on TechDirt with an insightful post in which he attributes some of Gladwell's confusion to the way that Anderson wrote the book. Masnick says that the book does not provide enough details on the mechanics and applications of Free. (I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on that.) Fred Wilson joined the conversation with a sharply delivered post on Freemium and Freeconomics. He gives examples of the kinds of Free that actually work.

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Mark Cuban followed with the somewhat metaphysically titled post, "When you succeed with Free, you are going to die by Free." And last but not least, Brad Feld pondered, "Would you want it if it were free?"

So, as Albert Wenger wrote recently, there is "continuous confusion about free."

This is because the topic is broad, and everyone is taking a different angle. In this post, we will break down Free into three separate classes: the kind that actually works, another that struggles, and the last that can be dangerous.

Freemium: When Free Really Works

Fred Wilson nails it on the head when he identifies the two instances when Free actually works. The first instance is the service or software that offers a free trial and then converts users into paying customers. There are different flavors of this approach, the most popular being, give the basic version for free and charge for the advanced version.

An early example of this model was online email, where you got a certain amount of storage for free and had to pay for more (see more about this, though, in the section on when Free is dangerous). Other examples in this category include project management software, like 37signals, and online photo collections, like Flickr.

The second instance that Wilson identifies is the consumer service that manages to build a massive audience. Citing Facebook as an example, Wilson says, "Free gets you to a place where you can ask to get paid." He argues that because Facebook has managed to amass such a valuable asset, it is able to monetize in any number of ways. Citing Business Insider, he lists Facebook's revenue:

$125 million from brand ads,
$150 million from its ad deal with Microsoft,
$75 million from virtual goods,
$200 million from self-service ads.

Interesting that all but one revenue source here (the virtual goods) is advertising. The only thing that consumers of this Free service were willing to pay for was a supplemental service in the form of virtual goods.

In any case, the main point is that, given a truly massive audience, monetization opportunities present themselves, at the very least in the form of advertising.

Old Media: When Free Cries

It is ironic that the very thing that makes large consumer services successful also makes old media cry. Online advertising does not seem able to deliver the kind of revenue that old-fashioned subscription services did. The culprit? A drastic drop in the cost of publishing, and complete destruction of barriers to entry. Even at the turn of the century, publishing was a closed game. Today, anyone can be a publisher, thanks to the read/write Web (no pun intended).

What really angered Gladwell was Anderson's verdict on journalists. Gladwell writes:

"It is not entirely clear what distinction is being marked between 'paying people to get other people to write' and paying people to write. If you can afford to pay someone to get other people to write, why can't you pay people to write? It would be nice to know, as well, just how a business goes about reorganizing itself around getting people to work for 'non-monetary rewards.' Does he mean that the New York Times should be staffed by volunteers, like Meals on Wheels?"

While this question is valid, it misses the point. It does not matter whether journalism should be free or not. The issue is that those old media profit margins are nowhere to be found anymore. And so the money dissipates, the way that the big VC money from the '90s can no longer be deployed in tech.

To answer Gladwell's question, journalists will still get paid, but they will get paid to work at smaller outfits, like ReadWriteWeb.

Free, abundant content and more nimble, agile news sources from the blogosphere and Twitter are striking a deadly blow to old media. Old media cries because it can't figure out how exactly to remain the way it was. Ultimately, it can't.

Monopoly: When Free Bites

Most of the discussion around Free focuses on the freemium model and media. When we wrote about Free earlier, we focused on a different side of it: how Free can be dangerous.

The problem is that large companies can exploit Free in a way that is essentially monopolistic. A large company could enter a brand new market to undermine competition. Consider Google Docs, a completely free consumer product that serves no ads and competes with Microsoft Office. A subtler example is Gmail, which does display ads (even if they don't attract many clicks) and has limited storage, but the limit is so high (2.5 GB) that the product is essentially free.

Free can also be used to kill off competition and create a barrier to entry. IBM was the main player behind the open-source project called Eclipse, a platform for building software applications. Seemingly innocent and even good for the world, the initiative managed to kill off all of the small and mid-sized players in the market within five years. In doing so, it killed innovation and became the de facto tool for building Java applications.

When I spoke about the danger of Free during a recent summit on Freeconomics, I brought up a point that did not seem to resonate with the audience. I wondered, what are the moral implications of Free, and what specific impact does Free have on children? For example, what is it like to grow up in a world in which most software is Free? Does Free create a sense of entitlement? Does it lead people to wonder why they should pay for anything at all? Where do we draw the line on what should and should not be free? These questions are not simple and are certainly far from being answered.

Conclusion

Clearly, Free and Freeconomics are broad and complex topics. No single post could begin to address all of the issues involved. Anderson's book is timely and important. While we need to be careful, Free is also inevitable. Not only is it our future, it is already our present. So we need to understand what it is and what impact it has on the Internet, our lives, and our children.

The debate that is unfolding around Free is fascinating to follow and even more fascinating to participate in. So join the conversation with your posts, comments, and tweets!

Discuss

Firefox stability to get a boost with multiprocess browsing

2009-07-07T13:38:59Z

Mozilla has launched a new project called Electrolysis that aims to bring multiprocess browsing to Firefox. According to Mozilla, splitting up the page rendering workload into multiple processes will improve the browser's performance, security, and stability. The developers have already assembled a prototype that renders a page in a separate process from the interface shell in which it is displayed.

Mozilla has explored the possibility of adopting a multiprocessing approach for Firefox in the past, but the idea didn't gain serious traction in the Firefox developer community until it was implemented by Google and Microsoft in their respective web browsers. Google's Chrome browser uses a separate process for each page, an architectural approach that facilitates much more effective security sandboxing and prevents page-specific rendering glitches from crashing the entire browser. Chrome even includes a process manager tool that can be used to see the status and resource consumption of each page.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Google Maps Improves Real Estate Search [Real Estate]

2009-07-07T00:00:00Z

Google Maps first added real estate results to their maps about a year ago, and today they've announced several enhancements to the already impressive location-based real estate search tool.

We've added lots of markers that will show not only the ten most relevant listings with pins on the map, but also show a small circle on every other listing in that area using the search results layer, so you can get a really good idea of the distribution of properties for sale. You can click on each marker and each small circle to get more detailed information about the property.

This feature means you can now conduct a real estate search around a specific neighborhood, or see at a glance all the properties close to a BART stop. You can also pan the map to another area entirely to see listings there if you decide that another part of town is more your speed.

We've featured our 10 favorite real estate search tools in the past, and Google Maps was already on that list, but it's great to see Maps' real estate search getting even better.

Improving real estate search on Google Maps [Google LatLong]

Announcing BookCamp Vancouver 2009 Unconference

2009-07-06T20:03:23Z

HERE IT IS: Details are still coming together but we have laid the foundation for the BookCamp Vancouver 2009 Unconference: Exploring New Ideas in Books, Publishing and The Future of Reading…

Scheduled for Friday October 16th at the SFU Harbour Centre campus in downtown Vancouver from 9am to 5pm.

Fellow organizers are Monique Trottier from SoMisguided and Boxcar Marketing, John Maxwell and Suzanne Norman from the SFU Masters of Publishing program, Nick Bouton from Protagonize.com and Morgan Cowie from BookNet Canada.

Lots of more details to come. Media requests have been rolling. I spoke to Stuart Woods at the Quill and Quire last week. Check out his post about BookCamp Vancouver 2009.

Blogathon 2009 – BC Children’s Hospital

2009-07-06T21:32:39Z

This year’s Blogathon takes place on July 25th, starting at 6am PDT. As most people know, last year I teamed up with Rebecca Bollwitt to help support the Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver. With some help from Matthew Good, the three of us raised around $8,000 I believe for Vancouver’s homeless.

Without a doubt, Blogathon is an event that I wanted to be a part of this year. I briefly debated supporting a local Chilliwack charity, but given that I really don’t know of many here, I decided not to go that route.

Lately I’ve found myself spending quite a bit of time with my niece and nephew. Thankfully, they’ve been healthy their whole lives, but it’s not lost on me that one day one of them might hurt themselves, or possibly get extremely sick. Even though I’m relatively young, I’ve lost some of my friends, some of which even passed away in high school. My own cousin Darren was out with his girlfriend one night years ago, felt sick, and ended up dying in the hospital that night from an undiagnosed heart defect. My friend Katherine here in Chilliwack also has a little girl with an inoperable brain tumor, one that nearly cost her her eyesight just a few weeks ago.

This year I’ve decided to support the BC Children’s Hospital for Blogathon. I’m still working out the details, but on July 25th, I’ll hopefully be doing a 24 hour writing marathon to see if I can raise both money and awareness for the hospital and the families there. I’m also hoping to profile a few kids to showcase their stories during the event.

Hopefully I’ll have my new website up before July 25th, in which case I’ll have a special Blogathon section going. Last year was a bit of a rollercoaster ride for me during the event, since I had never done it before, but this year I should be an old pro, so it should be quite a bit smoother.

Geocaching Down, Too

2009-07-03T19:45:56Z

Today a fire hit a major datacenter in Seattle, taking money processor Authorize.Net down. This has caused many web-based financial transactions to grind to a halt, but Authorize.Net isn’t the only website that’s gone offline today.

Another popular website has fallen, Geocaching.com, a worldwide GPS-based treasure hunting game, leaving thousands of people trying to figure out just what’s going on and why it went down. Wikipedia explains the game’s worldwide reach:

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called “geocaches” or “caches”) anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container (usually a tupperware or ammo box) containing a logbook and “treasure,” usually toys or trinkets of little value.

Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica. There are over 820,000 active geocaches in the world right now.

While the fire may or may not be responsible for this specific outage (we cannot confirm), it’s clearly had an effect on the entire web. Even Microsoft’s search engine Bing was affected, specifically Bing Travel.

We will provide updates on Geocaching and Authorize.Net as we receive the information.

Reviews: Wikipedia, bing

Tags: geocaching

Get Ready For Summer With Homemade Sunblock [Summer]

2009-07-03T18:00:00Z

Choosing the right sunblock is important, but let's say you're more of a DIY type, or maybe your skin is sensitive to many of the common ingredients. The solution is simple: make your own sunblock.

Instructables user scoochmaroo's detailed guide to making your own sunscreen demonstrates the process either completely from scratch or using a store-bought lotion as a base. She goes as far as to include a chart that gives you measurements for the ingredients based on the SPF you're aiming for.

Follow the link for the "recipe," and make your high school science teacher proud by heeding the warnings about wearing gloves and a mask while blending the ingredients (zinc oxide should be on your nose, not in it).

Have you ever tried a homemade sunblock? What do you use to protect yourself from the sun? Let's hear it in the comments.

Homemade Sunscreen [Instructables]

How to Be an Effective CEO

2009-07-03T04:25:00Z

This is one post/chapter in a serialized book called Startup 101. For the introduction and table of contents, please click here.

First-time entrepreneurs are usually also first-time CEOs. When you look at your first business card that says CEO, don't forget that it is not necessarily telling the truth. You earn the title of CEO through your actions and your results. You still have your training wheels on.

Fortunately, there is probably more advice available on how to be an effective CEO than on almost any other subject. This chapter gives you a quick guide, but do invest the time to read the classics, particularly:

Sponsor

"The Effective Executive," by Peter Drucker,
"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," by Stephen Covey.

These are timeless classics. Their authors do not attempt to create any modern theory or expound on any particular business or market trend. The books work because they are based on observation. The authors observed effective people to find out what they did right.

The Effective Executive

Peter Drucker's "Effective Executive" was written in 1966. It is a slim tome and easy to read, even if the language is a bit dated. Drucker focuses on how to allocate time, because you can get more of almost any resource except time. His advice to find time for uninterrupted work is particularly relevant to today's multi-tasking world. He is also very clear about the need to allocate enough time for people. If you need an hour with someone, don't think you are being efficient by rushing through the meeting in 15 minutes.

CEOs allocate resources. The first resource they need to allocate is their own time.

One popular book today is "Now, Discover Your Strengths," by Marcus Buckingham. Drucker was a big proponent of accentuating a person's strengths rather than managing their weaknesses.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," first published in 1989, is a self-help book written by Stephen R. Covey. It has sold over 15 million copies. Drucker observes the following habits in effective people:

Habit 1: Be proactive.
Change starts from within. Most people react to external forces. To lead effectively, you have to overcome that natural tendency.

Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind.
You cannot lead unless you know where you want to get to.

Habit 3: Put first things first.
This is similar to what Drucker recommends. You need to have a very clear view of what is important, so that you know what to spend time on. Note that this often means leaving your comfort zone by acting on tasks that you don't naturally like or feel competent in performing.

Habit 4: Think win/win.
Seek agreement and relationships that are mutually beneficial. In cases in which a win/win deal cannot be achieved, accept that agreeing on "no deal" may be the best alternative. In developing an organizational culture, be sure to reward win/win behavior among employees, and avoid inadvertently rewarding win/lose behavior.

Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
First seek to understand the other person, and only then try to be understood. Stephen Covey presents this habit as the most important principle of inter-personal relations. Effective listening is not simply echoing what the other person has said through the lens of your own experience. Rather, it is putting yourself in the mindset of the other person, listening empathetically for both feeling and meaning.

Habit 6: Synergize.
Through trustful communication, find ways to leverage individual differences to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Through mutual trust and understanding, people can often solve conflicts and find better solutions than would have been obtained through either person's own solution.

Habit 7: Sharpen the saw.
Take time out from production to build production capacity through personal renewal of the physical, mental, social/emotional, and spiritual dimensions. Maintain a balance among these dimensions.

Three Things a CEO Has to Do Well

This is all you need to do as a CEO:

Set direction and milestones (resisting the tempting distraction of juicy diversification). The ability to clearly say, "No, we are not doing that," is very important.
Allocate resources (both financial and human, starting with your time).
Hire and fire the top team (we have devoted a separate chapter to hiring an A-Team because this is much harder to say than do).

Making the Transition from Entrepreneur to CEO

Your average entrepreneur would probably say, "Yeah, right!" if told that they have to do only three things. The reality of a startup is that you usually have to do a bit of everything. You have to be product manager, if not the actual coder and designer. You become the chief marketing officer, chief financial officer, chief of just about anything that needs to get done.

This, of course, is unsustainable. You have to work out a transition plan that allows you to hire people to take over all the jobs that you currently do except the three CEO jobs.

Here are five tips for managing that transition:

Record how much time you spend on these tasks. Understand the process. You cannot hire for, outsource, or automate a task unless you understand it yourself. Look at this "chief of everything" phase as your chance to learn.
Recognize the reality that you are not an expert in these tasks. So K.I.S.S.
Understand the difference between "core" and "context" in your business. Core is what you have to do really well and do in-house. Everything else you can and should outsource.
Hire, outsource, and automate in proportion to the growth of your business. If you can manage five clients with everything else you are doing, and your two-year plan calls for 20 clients, hire someone who knows how to win and manage 20 clients (not someone who managed 1,000 clients at their last job). When you finally get the resources, there is a huge temptation to over-engineer.
Pay particular attention to hiring someone to do the one job that you love and could continue doing very competently (whether that is coding, design, marketing, sales, or finance). Holding on to this one job, your comfort zone, is hugely tempting. But it is a huge mistake that will prevent you from becoming an effective CEO.

Discuss

Publisher: Google book settlement flawed, but essential

2009-07-01T00:12:06Z

The settlement between Google and book copyright holders has been examined by everyone from librarians to the US Department of Justice. Most of the issues identified by outside parties have focused on two issues: the market power it cedes to Google, and the ability of the public to access the knowledge that is contained in out-of-print works. The latest organization to weigh on the settlement is Oxford University Press, which occupies an interesting position, as it's both a publisher of copyrighted works and has a mission of disseminating knowledge. As such, the position taken by the head of its US division is quite nuanced: the deal is flawed, but may be essential for maintaining the public's access to knowledge.

Tim Barton, the head of OUP USA, discussed his views on the settlement in an essay that appeared at The Chronicle of Higher Education. He starts it off with a telling anecdote: a professor at Columbia, when grading an essay assignment, found that most of the class cited a work that had been published in 1900, which had largely been forgotten since. Why so many citations? It was in Google Book Search. More recent and relevant work isn't.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Exploiting the Blog-to-Book Bubble: A Guide

2009-06-30T22:49:08Z

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Two blogs, Texts From Last Night and Look at this Fucking Hipster, scored contracts at Penguin's Gotham Books imprint in the past week, the latest in an endless series of such deals. Shouldn't you get a piece of the action?

It's not like there's any shame in aiming for a book deal right when you start your blog. As the New York Observer puts it:

These days it seems more and more like people start goofy Web sites practically counting on seeing their stuff between two covers.

If someone's going pay $20 for a bound collection of stale weblog posts, they might as well be yours. Here are some tips for living what seems like the new American Dream:

1. Focus on a hot technology like Twitter or iPhone apps - nothing scares the publishing industry more than a platform that basically makes it irrelevant.

2. Intimidate this shit out of people with your sheer Internet randomness. This worked well for "I Can Has Cheeseburger" and "Chuck Norris Facts," two websites old people do not understand at all.

3. Racial commentary. (Well, it worked for that site about white people — Park Slope's Blognigger still seems to be waiting on his book deal.)

4. Be this guy. (You're next, Bonerparty. The world is watching.)

5. Three words: Stalk Patrick Mulligan: The editor who acquired "Texts" for Gotham, Patrick Mulligan, is like the Ari Gold of Tumblr-to-book deals, responsible for more of these deals than almost anyone else out there: Chuck Norris Facts, I Can Haz Cheezburger, Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle and GraphJam.com the novels are all his doing.

Words of Wisdom from Patrick:

"Not all websites make great books," Mr. Mulligan said in an email. "You have to be confident that you can curate the material in such a way that it still hits its audience while also taking advantage of the book medium. For the books that I've worked on… my aim is that the person in the bookstore who picks up a copy will fall in love with the material the same way as someone who stumbles onto the website."

See you in hell Mulligan.

5 Alternatives to The Pirate Bay

2009-07-01T00:40:02Z

For those ready to jump ship after the recent Pirate Bay sale, here are five alternatives keeping the torrent spirit alive.

CBC Book Club - Will Ferguson's Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw.

2009-06-30T19:07:59Z

Will Ferguson explains what inspired the title of his book, Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw. This book is July's feature for the Canada Reads Book Club of the CBC.

Take Back Your Personal Power (Part 1)

2009-07-01T13:00:13Z

“But I know What’s Best for You…”

Do you ever feel like you’re a mere pawn in someone else’s game; a powerless player that is regularly used, abused and manipulated for the gain and self interest of others? Self interest that’s often thinly disguised as some kind of action, decision or “plan” that’s somehow in your best interest? Isn’t it amazing how some people know what’s best for their life and yours? If only you and I had the ability to think and choose for ourselves; things could be so different. Have you ever felt like your life (or part of your life) has been taken hostage by someone else’s ego, insecurity and/or greed?

Welcome to a very large club.

Manipulators of the Masses

Perhaps you feel like you’re trapped in some kind of on-going poker game where you’re never dealt any decent cards. As a result you feel like you have no real power or leverage… just the occasional bluff. The truth is, knowingly or not, many of us have given away our personal power (or part thereof) and allowed situations, circumstances and other people to dictate, direct and control our reality for far too long. Some of us have let others tell us what we can do and what we can’t do. What we should think. What we should believe. Where we can go. Who we should spend time with. Why we’re here. What our future holds and even what our life purpose should be. And because on some level we all want acceptance, approval, connection, security and love (and a whole bunch more), far too often we compromise… and compromise… until we eventually lose the real “us” and become a simulated version of us: looks like you and me – but isn’t.

Surrendering of Self

Clearly this “surrendering of self” – that is dreams, goals, ideas, values, beliefs (not to be confused with the Christian notion of “dying to self”) – ain’t a great personal strategy for my life or yours. So if it’s all the same to you manipulators and self-centred control freaks, the rest of us will find our own life purpose, discover our own limits, explore our own potential and keep our personal power. Thanks anyway. Not.

“People can only take our personal power if we give it to them.”

Being a humble, generous and occasionally selfless individual is to be admired and respected but being a person who has essentially handed over the reigns of their life is tragic, sad and ultimately terminal. Someone who has given away their personal power is a person who has given away control, hope and happiness.

“It’s nice to be nice but it’s stupid to be a doormat”

Some people confuse feelings with reality. Not “feeling” powerful doesn’t necessarily equate to not “being” powerful. Unless we make it that. For the most part, feelings (read, fear) merely get in the way of our potential, personal power, growth and success. As a rule, our emotions and thoughts are in no way an indicator of our potential or the incredible future we might create and results we might produce if we should choose to use our power rather than give it away — as we have done in the past. Just because you don’t “feel” powerful or consider yourself to be powerful doesn’t mean that you’re not or you can’t be; it simply means you’re denying your potential and buying into a fear mindset. A feeling is only a feeling and a thought is only a thought until you make them a reality; good or bad.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” Marianne Williamson

Just to clariff: I just re-read what I’ve written so far and I want to make a few things clear:

We give away our power – people can’t take it without our permission;
We allow people and things to have an unhealthy level of control and influence in our life;
Getting angry, bitter and/or resentful at others will fix nothing – although it’s totally understandable;
Positive change starts with awareness, understanding and acknowledgement; and
The situation will change when you change – and you can change any time you like.

Now, is that me over-simplifying the complicated or you complicating the simple?

You decide.

The Last Bit…

Even as you read this right now, some of you might be rationalising your less-than-desirable existence and situation (1) to make yourselves feel better (thereby ignoring those buttons I just pushed) and (2) to avoid confronting the things you know you should deal with. My advice? STOP IT! Your world will change — when you do.

You have the ability, you have the understanding and you have the reasons – now find the courage.

Next time I will share some ideas to help you shift your reality from power-less to power-ful.

Peace.

Craig Harper (B.Ex.Sci.) is a qualified exercise scientist, author, columnist, radio presenter, television host, motivational speaker and university lecturer. For the past 25 years he has been a leading presenter, educator, motivator and commentator in the areas of personal and professional development. You can visit Craig's blog at Motivational Speaker. FREE eBook – So… You’ve Decided to Get in Shape (Again) Craig's FREE eBook takes 20 – 30 minutes to read, and addresses the REAL getting-in-shape issues based on his 25 years of experience. To get Craig’s FREE eBook click here, weight loss books.

Old-School Marketing No Longer Working? Blame Canada

2009-07-01T13:45:59Z

Canadians are a funny lot.

They use strange words and spell with a U. They kiss cod. They enjoy being frozen solid nearly 8 months a year, and they call their money Loonies and Toonies.

Don’t get me wrong; they’re nice people just the same. They’re nature lovers and humanitarians and they like things simple and friendly.

And contrary to popular belief, they’re actually pretty smart.

But there’s just one problem. Your marketing strategies? You notice how they’ve been changing? That the old-school methods aren’t working anymore . . . at all?

Well, I’ve figured out whose fault it is.

Blame Canada

You see, Canucks have a strange mindset. They’re gentle people, and mostly kind of quiet. If you drove up to the frozen tundra and started screaming, “Buy my stuff!” at the top of your lungs, you’d probably startle the wildlife and be ushered off (politely) by Mounties in red coats and really great hats.

It’s happening all over. Those wily Canadians are causing a marketing revolution, and it’s spreading too fast to contain.

Think about it for a minute. All of a sudden, your potential customers hate screaming and being pushed around, don’t they? It’s almost like they’ve been influenced by an evil foreign power.

And no one wants to be told what to do anymore. They want to be persuaded, gently convinced that what you have to sell is really good for them.

It’s those Canadians; I’m sure of it.

If you were trying to persuade a Canadian, he’d listen — as long as you were making sense. In Canada, they know when you’re pulling the wool over their eyes. They like to hear good reasons they should trust you, and they observe you for a while to see whether you actually mean what you say.

Now everyone’s picking up on that. Your potential customers are looking for good reasons to trust you, and they’re watching every move you make.

They’re thinking more, too, damn them. And getting slower to make a decision to buy.

They even want you to be a nice person.

That whole “nice” thing

I’m noticing the “nice” thing cropping up all over the place these days. And once again, I blame Canada.

You see, Canadians have a reputation for being really, really nice. They take care of each other and they ask if anyone needs help.

They actually like doing it, too. The whole “no man is an island” saying? They actually believe that in Canada. They’re all about caring and sharing and being kind to the animals. (Especially the moose. They’re kind of obsessed with moose.)

Well, that do-good attitude is leaking all over. You might have noticed it yourself. Customers expect you to be nice to others and ethical in general and do the right thing. They want to know that you actually care about their well-being. Then they’ll think about buying from you.

Tough stuff. Customers who want you to care before they buy.

Yeah, I blame Canada.

It gets worse

The other thing about those Canucks? They like to help other people. All the time. It’s like a compulsion.

If you need information, directions, help . . . You can’t go wrong up north. Everyone’s so nice and helpful that it would almost make you cry.

So now everyone wants you to be helpful like that. They want you to give them valuable information and tell them directions and hold open doors for them. They need to know that you’re willing to give before you receive.

No more me, myself and I. It’s all about asking what you can do for your customers today.

Don’t forget to ask in their language, too. No fluff. No fancy words. No jargon.

Canadians hate that. And now everybody tunes you out if you use fancy fluff and jargon. You have to learn to speak in words your target market understands. Yes, even words like “aboot” and “hoose.”

So if you have to change how you’re reaching your customers, I say blame Canada.

If you have to learn how to simplify your message and talk in the language of your target audience, blame Canada.

If you have to become more convincing, quieter, and more ethical, blame Canada.

Oh, and when you start reaching more people, gaining more readers, and making more sales?

Beauty, eh?

(Happy Canada Day, everybody.)

About the Author: James Chartrand is an unrepentant Canuck who survives exclusively on maple syrup, poutine, and beer. He is unfailingly polite and helps entrepreneurs and freelancers earn a decent living online at Men with Pens (dot CA, of course).

OpenConferenceWare is Beautiful Software for Events

2009-06-04T21:57:36Z

An open source development team in Portland, Oregon has released OpenConferenceWare, a sophisticated free package for processing event session proposals and displaying event schedules. Igal Koshevoy and Reid Beels built the system and put it on display as the scheduling system for the forthcoming Open Source Bridge conference, Portland's response to losing the popular O'Reilly event OSCON to San Jose, California.

Events planners would be well served to check out the software; it's not just free and extensible, it's also quite full-featured right out of the box.

Sponsor

Developers familiar with UNIX and Ruby on Rails will be able to use OCW right away. Features include support for OpenID, extensive access to data and feeds, sub-events and personal, shareable schedules.

If you like the scheduling service Sched.org that was popularized at SXSW, but would like to build out an even more sophisticated system for yourself, OpenConferenceWare could be a good option. We learned about it on the Portland local tech blog Silicon Florist.

"Events scheduling 2.0" apps are not uncommon in the tech industry (Pathable is another well known cutting edge app in this market) but Koshevoy and Beels have said that their goal in making OpenConferenceWare a free and open source is "to empower other people so they can better organize and participate in more events that support free sharing of information, open society, and involved citizenry."

A little navigation around the Open Source Bridge conference schedule shows that such a package can be not just empowering for organizers and developers, but very pleasing for users as well.

Discuss

Best Alternative File Copier? [Hive Five Call For Contenders]

2009-06-05T00:00:00Z

Let's be candid. The default file copier in Windows is so bad, one can only assume it was actually built to be so horribly inadequate and frustrating. Luckily, better alternatives are out there.

This week we want to hear what program you use to alleviate the frustrations caused by the lackluster default file copier in Windows. What program zips your files from drive to drive, across the network, and never leaves you staring at the animated pages floating by wondering whether your files are actually copying or the computer is just toying with you. What features set your favorite tool apart? Do you love it for the speed, the ease of use, or the amazing array of features? If you've never used an alternate file copier Hive topic may not seem all that sexy; for those of us who don't know how we'd live without our alternative of choice, these utilities are a must-have.

Hive Five nominations take place in the comments, where you post your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: VOTE: Alternative File Copier. Please don't include your vote in a reply to another commenter. Instead, make your vote and reply separate comments. If you don't follow this format, we may not count your vote. To prevent tampering with the results, votes from first-time commenters may not be counted. After you've made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition.

About the Hive Five: The Hive Five feature series asks readers to answer the most frequently asked question we get: "Which tool is the best?" Once a week we'll put out a call for contenders looking for the best solution to a certain problem, then YOU tell us your favorite tools to get the job done. Every weekend, we'll report back with the top five recommendations and give you a chance to vote on which is best. For an example, check out last week's Hive Five Best Netbooks.