Category: Google Plus Archive

I love this explanation of “opt-in” co-reg marketing “permission”

I love this explanation of “opt-in” co-reg marketing “permission” (if you can call it that):

A husband gets permission from his wife to go to the pub on certain nights of the week with his mates, then sometime later later gets divorced, re-married, and then uses the original permission as an excuse when his new partner moans about his social habits.

Cloudmark Blog | Optical express SMS Spam in the UK

This email was broadcast to…

“This email was broadcast to UCLA Volleyball ticket buyers, Volleyball Insiders and data collection contacts subscribed to the Olympic Sports Bruin Alert.” None of which apply, so get out of my inbox.

Bonus points for making me wait in line to unsubscribe.

Extra bonus points for, as near as I can tell, automatically subscribing me to new lists when I had previously unsubscribed from everything after giving them the benefit of the doubt last time. (I never did sign up for UCLA athletics, but I did sign up for UCLA arts, and I suspect they got their lists mixed up at some point.)

It’s long past time to start reporting this junk as spam.

Unknown Caller is still trying to call me twice a day.

Unknown Caller is still trying to call me twice a day. But I guess it must not be that important, since they can’t be bothered to leave a message, and they went to the trouble of blocking Caller ID so that I can’t call them back.

Wayne comments: I’ve been getting regular calls from an 800 number that also doesn’t leave a message. Wonder if they’re related. ;p

–GP

Finally picked up the “Unknown” caller who’s been calling 2-3 times daily and not leaving a message. They hung up immediately. #WTF

–T

When blocking obvious spam on a site contact form, is it better…

Website best practices poll:

When blocking obvious spam on a site contact form, is it better to discard the message silently or kick back a 403 error?

Wayne answer on Google+: I think it’s better to give a custom message stating their action is invalid. A 403 would just be a number to most people. And wouldn’t get the message across as clearly. You need to make them aware of their wrongdoing

How Seanan McGuire Perfected Her Fictional Zombie Virus

I finished reading “Blackout” earlier this month. Highly recommended. The three novels aren’t zombie stories per se so much as they’re thrillers set in a world where zombies are a fact of life. Look under the name Mira Grant for “Feed,” “Deadline” and “Blackout.”

How Seanan McGuire Perfected Her Fictional Zombie Virus

I think someone’s confused about the concept of step-by-step directions.

I think someone’s confused about the concept of step-by-step directions.

Step 1: Following the above illustration and assemble the toddler bed. (Every single piece of the bed is shown in the single picture, below the text.

Wayne comments on Google+: Haven’t they heard of baby steps? sheesh

Lia comments on Facebook: Soon you will have your very own doomsday device. That is what those instructions are for, right?

Cross-posted (later) on K2R

Battling the stress of email.

Battling the stress of email. “[Professor Gloria] Mark jokingly calls it the “zombie” paper because, like zombies, no matter how many times you delete e-mails they keep on coming.”

Email ‘vacations’ decrease stress, increase concentration

Wayne comments on Google+:

Email management is definitely a mindset one needs to train. I remember when I first used email more frequently at UCI, I did feel that pressure of the immediacy possible and often consequently expected with email. I had felt I needed to answer every email immediately and would check it regularly so as not to disappoint my contacts.

It wasn’t until later (much later) that I realized I need to focus on priorities and that email isn’t a ruling factor of my life. My emotional state (and heart rate 😉 ) became much more stable as a result.

That’s not to say emails aren’t a major part of my life. I still do a lot of work and activities through them. (Today in fact wasn’t as productive, work-wise, due to email access issues.) But I don’t let them rule my mood for the day. I don’t let them be the determining factor of my life.

In this digital age, I think we often forget that email isn’t the only way we can communicate with someone. 🙂 Nor is it the only lifeline between two people.

Always consider what you’re training your email recipients to do with the mail you send them…

Always consider what you’re training your email recipients to do with the mail you send them. Whether it’s “ignore most of what we send you” or “don’t worry if you see something from us that’s at a random domain, we send using different domains all the time.”

Training Recipients – Word to the Wise

Want to see a WWF style smackdown? Put a marketer and a delivery expert in a room and ask them to discuss frequency and whether or not more mail is better. The marketer will point to the bottom line…

Want pain? Try loading today’s websites over dial-up

Ouch! It’s worth remembering that not everyone has a high-speed connection, and that all those images and scripts add up. This isn’t just for the minority stuck on dial-up, but with the rise of mobile computing, a lot of people are on spotty connections that might be high-speed one moment, then dog-slow the next.

Want pain? Try loading today’s websites over dial-up

Even today, in 2012, some people don’t have broadband Internet connections, relying instead on phone lines and those good old dial-up modems. By today’s standards, those connections are extremely slow…