Thirteen-year-old wins phone texting contest

From MSNBC.com: Teen pockets $25,000 in texting contest
Thirteen-year-old defeated nearly 200 other competitors in Manhattan

NEW YORK - OMG! Thirteen-year-old Morgan Pozgar, of Claysburg, Pa., was crowned LG National Texting champion on Saturday after she typed "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from "Mary Poppins" in 15 seconds.

"I'm going to go shopping and buy lots of clothes," the teen said after winning her $25,000 prize from the electronics company LG.

Pozgar defeated nearly 200 other competitors at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan to become East Coast champion. She then beat West Coast champion Eli Tirosh, 21, of Los Angeles texting the message: "Supercalifragilisticexpialidoucious! Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious. If you say it loud enough you'll always sound precocious."

She estimated that she sends more than 8,000 text messages a month to her friends and family.

Photo caption: Morgan Pozgar of Claysburg, Pennsylvania, uses a phone to send a text message as she competes in the LG National Texting Championship in New York. Pozgar, who is 13-years-old, defeated "West Coast Champion" Eli Tirosh of Los Angeles.

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If you haven't thought much about how communication is changing, especially among younger folk, maybe it's time to start. Better brush up on your texting.

7777...88...7...33...7777...[expletive]...[back]...777...222...

You could be waiting awhile for me to finish this text message. Morgan, your record is safe from me -- for now.

2...555...444...3333...[expletive]...[back]...333...777...2...4...

Is it done yet?

Just when you think your web site is finally finished, finally perfect, finally just the way you want it... you read an article like this from Shane Atchison at ClickZ. Reminding you that a web site is never really done and there's no such thing as perfect.

Even if you think your site is darn near perfect, you may want to make some changes anyway. Why? Shane gives you 4 really good (nearly perfect?) reasons to continue to work on your site.

1. The best time to change the game is when you're winning.
2. You may be missing something obvious.
3. Improvement is continuous.
4. The top may be higher than you think.

I know I'm always tweeking, adding, changing my site. I'll never be satisfied. But it's important to make strategic changes. Changing things simply for the sake of change, is rarely a good business decision.

If you want help or advice on what changes to your site could be beneficial to your business, feel free to contact me.

Are you signing it right?

My friend Reg Gupton reminds us to "Sign it right" in this post on his blog, Reg Gupton's Success Tips.

Every day I receive emails from folks without email signatures nor following accepted email etiquette. Look here for a post I wrote some time ago on the "rules of the email road"

That said, one of the biggest mistakes I see is not having a proper and complete email signature.

See below for a sample of one that meets CAN-SPAM and provides all your prospects and others the information they need to contact you.

This is especially true if you have an AOL, juno or yahoo acct which does not display your name in the "from" line of most email programs.

Reg Gupton, MBA
Coach, consultant, trainer
Creative Growth Seminars
1900 13th Suite 302
Boulder, CO 80302

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article outlining the rules of the CAN-SPAM Act that still apply today. It's good to be reminded of what information every business email should include.

The worst communications job ever

Thanks, Steve Crescenzo at Corporate Hallucinations, for this great post. Puts things in perspective. When I think my job or my life sucks, I'll remember this one.

Would you do this job?

Having a bad day? Hate your job? Your boss sucks?

This story might cheer you up . . . because as bad as you have it, at least your job isn’t the one “Billy the Kid” had to do for almost a year.

I met Billy The Kid in Atlanta this week. His nametag said William, but he introduced himself as Billy, and in my mind he immediately became Billy the Kid, because he's from Texas.

After Day One, Billy was one of the drinkers in the bar, and I asked him what he did before he came to his current job.

Turns out Billy worked for the Red Cross . . . but in a very unusual role. He was on the ground in Iraq, near Tikrit, Saddam’s home town.

Billy’s job? He was responsible for delivering bad news from home to soldiers. So if a soldier’s parent died, Billy had to go tell him. If something happened to their spouse, or their kids, Billy had to pay them a visit.

“I was like the Grim Reaper,” he told me. “People would see me coming and tell me to get the hell away from them.”

That may be the worst communications job I’ve ever heard of, and I’ve heard of a lot of bad ones. Telling soldiers—who are miserable enough already—that they now have to deal with a personal tragedy could suck the soul right out of you.

The worst kind of news Billy had to deliver—even worse than the deaths—was when he had to tell a soldier who had been in Iraq for more than a year without a break that his wife was pregnant with somebody else’s child.

“I had to do that quite a bit,” he said.

If there is a worse job out there, I’d like to hear about it.

5 Reasons NOT to Blog

A blog, or web log, is a regularly updated online journal or diary. The difference is that they often connect with other blogs through comments and linkbacks.

I frequently get questions about blogging from clients, associates and friends. Blogging is becoming something people think they should do, but they're not always sure why. It just sounds like a good idea, or someone along the way told them they should have a blog. (Sounds like the same reasons many people want a web site.) Many of them don't even understand what a blog is or what blogging is about.

I always caution people to think before they jump head first into the blogosphere. Sure, there are some great reasons to start a blog, but there are even better reasons not to.

1. Quality vs. quantity. You don't have to be a great writer to start a blog, so that's not what I'm talking about when I say quality. But you do need quality content. It doesn't matter if you write ten times a day if you're filling up your blog with useless information. You have to have something interesting to say; something interesting to write about that other people will want to write.
   
2. Afraid of commitment. Blogging well can be a huge time commitment. Your readers expect you to post regularly. Blog-tracking service Technorati is tracking more than 57 million blogs, of which it believes around 55% are "active" and updated at least every three months (1 post every 3 months isn't what I would call "active"). Analysts at Gartner have said that 200 million people have already stopped writing their blogs. Did they run out of things to say? Got bored? Didn't have the time? Couldn't make the commitment?
   
3. No time like the present. Blogs are current. If you're always behind and writing about topics that were hot a couple months ago, you're readers might not stick with you. Many bloggers spend hours each day surfing and researching topics(or have staff to do it). Be sure to factor this into your time commitment.
   
4. Everyone's a critic. Not everyone will love or agree with you, so be prepared for negative comments. The internet allows for a great degree of anonymity which emboldens many people to be nastier than they might be if they had to put their real name on their comments. Sure, you can restrict comments so that only the nice ones are displayed, but that may discourage some readers from posting at all. And if someone has a legitimate complaint, it's better to get it out in the open so you can address it.
   
5. Love the sound of your own voice. You may wonder if anyone is actually reading your blog. It's always more fun to write when people are leaving comments and talking back to you, but the majority of readers never make themselves known. Especially when you're first starting out, you have to love writing for yourself. If you set up some means of gathering statistics (like Google Analytics) you'll know if anyone is actually showing up. And give your blog time to gather momentum before you abandon it.

Blogging can be fun and interesting. There are a lot of great reasons to blog, but it's important to know what you're getting into. Let me know why you like to blog and what benefits you see; but also let me know what challenges you've faced or why you haven't jumped into blogging yet.

Spring Forward

The April edition of Brainstorm!(TM) is available online.

Spring Forward!

• No Dumb Questions and No Dumb Answers: Encouraging community participation
• Smart Tools: Our favorites for your business
• Brain Candy: 13 Most Fun Buzzwords of 2006
• Updates, News & Announcements from Kayda the News Hound