I am not ashamed to admit that I consult yelp.com for everything ranging from places to get good gelato to dentists to help me when I’ve found too many good gelato joints. I also use Google Local to find other service providers and to compile my own reviews. On top of that, I can’t buy anything, in real life or online, without checking Newegg or Amazon reviews. I’m a social review junkie and for good reason: I’m rarely disappointed with purchases as of late.
The whole review landscape has changed for the better lately. What used to be just lazy one-liners have turned into a type of creative outlet for people with something to say about the things they consume. The more I research the more I find people taking their own time to really give back to people they’ll never meet. Also, with the proliferation of Twitter and Facebook connect, reviews have gone social. Reviews have gone from an anonymous thumbs-up to a network-wide recommendation.
It’s easy to forget that this valuable information comes from real people taking their own precious time to construct helpful and sometimes very creative reviews to help others avoid pitfalls and find the best [insert anything here] available. There are people out there with nothing better to do, that’s true, but so many reviews (mine included) come from a strong desire to give back to a community that caused the discovery of something great. It’s more about community than ego, more about making sure this system stays healthy than just quenching boredom.
So I’m here to remind you in the nicest way possible to get out there and write reviews about the stores and products you can’t live without and the ones you want to annihilate.
Continue reading »
Share this article:
Will you follow me on Twitter? You can also subscribe to my posts via RSS here or via email here.
Increasing the page load speed of your website has been proven to increase conversion rates (reduce the number of people who get fed up and leave), increase site usage (time on site and pages per visit), and reduce the chance you’ll be taken down by a sudden spike in traffic. WordPress in particular is fairly resource heavy right out of the box so speeding up everything else is a critical piece of running a site on this platform.
But I’m not going to talk about increasing WordPress speed, I want to show you how to improve you page load speed by cutting down on the number of external scripts you’re loading on a particular page. We’re going to do this by hard-coding share buttons into your theme.
Continue reading »
Cliff notes: Art deadline is January 14th (see below). Join us for the exhibition on Saturday, Jan 16th, at Voz Alta Art Gallery, 1754 National Ave, San Diego, CA 92113.
In the summer of 2008 I was given the opportunity to learn from a very talented and enlightened individual, Daniel Hopkins aka Pose2. Pose is a graffiti artist with decades of experience in his craft and since taking his class, he has remained my teacher, became a good friend, got on with Josh Can Help as a client, and soon to become immortalized on my wall.
Pose travels around the world taking on projects, teaching people, and spreading knowledge. He also does amazing things for global communities like beautification projects and teaching kids how to express themselves artistically. This time, however, he’s taking on a very important issue in a way that only he can.
I’ll let him explain this inspiration:
Continue reading »
If you take a good look around, you’ll probably find it’s completely overwhelming to try to get a handle on what we’re capable of doing these days. Between amazing web applications, unprecedented communication options, and practically incomprehensible medical technology advances, we’re living in a time of incredible ideas that have come to fruition. After recovering from awe at the vast technological landscape that surrounds us, some of us have a decidedly self-defeating thought creep into our mind:
Why can’t I come up with an idea like that?
Continue reading »
If you’re using Google Analytics and you’re not taking advantage of its built-in campaign tracking, you’re missing out on important insights. Campaign tracking uses URL query strings to determine where your traffic is coming from specifically. URL query strings are the funny “?something=this&somethingelse=that” text that you see on the end of URLs (try a Google search and look in your address bar). By using this tracking method, you can understand your traffic better and learn what’s working and what isn’t. It’s particularly beneficial for people who are promoting their site across several different channels like email, Twitter, and Google Adwords. Here is a little more in-depth description from Google.
The most annoying part about using tracking codes, however, is creating the URL. You need to append at least two (and up to five) query strings to your URL to use this function in Analytics and making this happen while tracking what codes you’re actually using is frustrating enough to make you rethink this whole thing in the first place. Google provides a cute little tool to help you but it’s still a pain in the ass.
Google Docs to the rescue! Using similar code as my simple Google Docs CMS, I created a script that parses a spreadsheet full of tracking codes and turn them into usable URLs that you can then copy and paste. It makes it easy to keep track of the campaigns you have while quickly creating error-free URLs. See the Google Docs UTM appender in action.
Download the UTM URL builder (updated 8/31/2010)
Continue reading »
I love email, I really love it. Email is a simple communication medium that creates a historical record and is dead-simple to manage (if you’re a Gmail user). I use email as much as possible and prefer it over pretty much any communication method besides meeting face-to-face.
Having said that, it’s terribly easy to use email poorly. Email is a disconnected way of communicating which makes it tough to get just right. It’s also subject to abuse in so many ways.
Because email has been my primary method of communication over the last several years, I want to share with you a few things I’ve learned about communicating via email. I’ve learned these tips by making mistakes, hearing from other people, and just practicing over time. Hopefully I can help you like others have helped me before!
Note: though several of these apply to personal emails, I’m speaking generally about business email. I write long, pointless, unfocused emails to my mom and have no shame in admitting that.
Continue reading »
