Cora Syndicate Blog http://corasyndicate.com/blog Bankable Brainpower, Served Fresh Daily! Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:27:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 en Extension Development http://corasyndicate.com/blog/firefox-extension-development/2008/10/31 http://corasyndicate.com/blog/firefox-extension-development/2008/10/31#comments Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:27:19 +0000 admin http://corasyndicate.com/blog/?p=107 Some cool new things are in the works here at Cora, and we are working on our first Firefox extension that will be released to the public in 2009. This extension will be a means to interface with one of our new web-based initiatives. Stay tuned and we’ll let you know when it is ready!

]]> Some cool new things are in the works here at Cora, and we are working on our first Firefox extension that will be released to the public in 2009. This extension will be a means to interface with one of our new web-based initiatives. Stay tuned and we’ll let you know when it is ready!

]]> http://corasyndicate.com/blog/firefox-extension-development/2008/10/31/feed Simple, Lightweight Fadeshow Script http://corasyndicate.com/blog/simple-lightweight-fadeshow-script-using-jquery/2008/10/03 http://corasyndicate.com/blog/simple-lightweight-fadeshow-script-using-jquery/2008/10/03#comments Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:19:23 +0000 Jonathan Kelly http://corasyndicate.com/blog/?p=12 While developing on a recent project, I needed to display some client quotes in the footer space of a website, and periodically rotate to another quote. Let me take this opportunity to say I am *not* a fan of drowning a website in dozens of third party javascript libraries / scripts. I feel the best approach, when dealing with javascript, is to stick with a single library such as jQuery, and modify where needed. Here is a simple script that utilizes the built in feature set of jQuery to create a fadeshow of content.

The concept here is to have an array of the content I want to ‘fade through’, loop through them sequentially, fade in an array element, show it for a bit, fade out that element, move to the next element in the array, fade in that array element, and keep it movin’. So, here is the solution. Nothing fancy, but a lightweight and scalable solution for all your fading pleasure:

Fadeshow Demo
Download the script
The download includes the latest stable release of jQuery, which as of this writing is 1.2.3. Click here to download the most recent jQuery release.


Step 1 : The HTML markup.
Call our javascript files in the head of the html page, and start the process by calling the fadeInContent() function onload. This function could be called anytime on this page, for example with a link or button click.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
    <head>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="js/fadeshow.js"></script>
    </head>
    <body onload="fadeInContent();">
        <div id="fadeshow" style="display: none"></div>
    </body>
</html>


Step 2 : Setup some vars, and create our data array.
My array contains text only - the content that I want to swap out. You could just as easily drop in HTML content into any of the array elements. Here we also set a counter, so we know when we have reached the end of our array - so we can start back at the beginning. We also define, in milliseconds, the amount of time each element will show before fading out, and how long of a pause there is between iterations.

/* counter that gets incremented each iteration */
var counter = 0;
/* how long each array element shows */
var stamina = 2000; /* 2 seconds */
/* how long to pause between fading in the next element */
var intermission = 500; /* 1/2 second */

/* build our content array */
var fadeContent = new Array(
    "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.",
    "In placerat accumsan tortor.Etiam imperdiet orci eu justo.",
    "Quisque risus justo, facilisis, ornare vel, eros."
);


Step 3 : The fadeInContent() and fadeOutContent() functions.
These two functions work in tandem with each other. When one has completed, it places a call to the other function. All this starts once the process is initialized by calling the fadeInContent() function.

/* swaps the content to the next element in the array,
then fades in the content */
function fadeInContent() {
    /* reset the counter if we have reached the end */
    if(counter == fadeContent.length) {
        counter = 0;
    }

    /* swap the html content */
    document.getElementById('fadeshow').innerHTML = fadeContent[counter];

    /* then fade in the next element */
    $('#fadeshow').fadeIn('slow');
    setTimeout("fadeOutContent()",stamina);
}

/* fades out the current element, increments the counter,
then loops back to the previous function */
function fadeOutContent() {
    /* fade out the current element */
    $('#fadeshow').fadeOut('slow');

    /* increment the counter */
    ++counter;

    /* wait...then fade in the next element */
    setTimeout("fadeInContent()",intermission);
}
]]> While developing on a recent project, I needed to display some client quotes in the footer space of a website, and periodically rotate to another quote. Let me take this opportunity to say I am *not* a fan of drowning a website in dozens of third party javascript libraries / scripts. I feel the best approach, when dealing with javascript, is to stick with a single library such as jQuery, and modify where needed. Here is a simple script that utilizes the built in feature set of jQuery to create a fadeshow of content.

The concept here is to have an array of the content I want to ‘fade through’, loop through them sequentially, fade in an array element, show it for a bit, fade out that element, move to the next element in the array, fade in that array element, and keep it movin’. So, here is the solution. Nothing fancy, but a lightweight and scalable solution for all your fading pleasure:

Fadeshow Demo
Download the script
The download includes the latest stable release of jQuery, which as of this writing is 1.2.3. Click here to download the most recent jQuery release.


Step 1 : The HTML markup.
Call our javascript files in the head of the html page, and start the process by calling the fadeInContent() function onload. This function could be called anytime on this page, for example with a link or button click.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
    <head>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="js/fadeshow.js"></script>
    </head>
    <body onload="fadeInContent();">
        <div id="fadeshow" style="display: none"></div>
    </body>
</html>


Step 2 : Setup some vars, and create our data array.
My array contains text only - the content that I want to swap out. You could just as easily drop in HTML content into any of the array elements. Here we also set a counter, so we know when we have reached the end of our array - so we can start back at the beginning. We also define, in milliseconds, the amount of time each element will show before fading out, and how long of a pause there is between iterations.

/* counter that gets incremented each iteration */
var counter = 0;
/* how long each array element shows */
var stamina = 2000; /* 2 seconds */
/* how long to pause between fading in the next element */
var intermission = 500; /* 1/2 second */

/* build our content array */
var fadeContent = new Array(
    "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.",
    "In placerat accumsan tortor.Etiam imperdiet orci eu justo.",
    "Quisque risus justo, facilisis, ornare vel, eros."
);


Step 3 : The fadeInContent() and fadeOutContent() functions.
These two functions work in tandem with each other. When one has completed, it places a call to the other function. All this starts once the process is initialized by calling the fadeInContent() function.

/* swaps the content to the next element in the array,
then fades in the content */
function fadeInContent() {
    /* reset the counter if we have reached the end */
    if(counter == fadeContent.length) {
        counter = 0;
    }

    /* swap the html content */
    document.getElementById('fadeshow').innerHTML = fadeContent[counter];

    /* then fade in the next element */
    $('#fadeshow').fadeIn('slow');
    setTimeout("fadeOutContent()",stamina);
}

/* fades out the current element, increments the counter,
then loops back to the previous function */
function fadeOutContent() {
    /* fade out the current element */
    $('#fadeshow').fadeOut('slow');

    /* increment the counter */
    ++counter;

    /* wait...then fade in the next element */
    setTimeout("fadeInContent()",intermission);
}
]]> http://corasyndicate.com/blog/simple-lightweight-fadeshow-script-using-jquery/2008/10/03/feed New Form of Advertising? http://corasyndicate.com/blog/new-form-of-advertising/2008/09/03 http://corasyndicate.com/blog/new-form-of-advertising/2008/09/03#comments Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:15:25 +0000 Jonathan Kelly http://corasyndicate.com/blog/?p=84 I’m the guy that catches the latest episodes of my favorite TV series’ online, frequent YouTube to watch some videos for entertainment, and if I am trying to figure out how to do something, the best find is a video tutorial. I, like most Americans, am visually stimulated. Catch my eyes and ears at the same time, and ya got me.

A while back, I discovered hulu, which has it right when it comes to marketing to their video viewers. Their slogan is “Watch your favorites. Anytime. For free.”. Wanna see the latest episode of The Office? Check. What about House? Got it. Prison Break? Yup. So…how do they market to the viewers? They insert ~15 second ad spots throughout a video. For a 45 minute episode, there will be an ad spot before the video plays, then 5 or so more scattered throughout the duration of the video.

I have already seen quite a few sites adopting this method of getting ads in front of us oh-so-wary web users; and I think it is the perfect solution for sites that focus on the video medium (at least, for now). But is this the “brilliant new form of internet advertising” that everyone says it is? (ok , I exaggerated like a million percent there…) I think it is a very smart and effective way to advertise, but it is nothing new. It is just being introduced online.

Think about the last time you went to the movies. Once the lights went out, what composed the next 15 minutes of your life? You were being marketed to! The other night when my wife and I were watching an animated Disney movie (Pixar animations are our favorites), I swear for a second I thought the Disney logo had actually burned my retina. Oh crap, are my eyes going to be like my mother-in-law’s TV screen that has the QVC number permanently burned into the screen?!

The point I want to make is that there is nothing new under the sun. Let’s always be looking to adapt historically effective techniques to new mediums. Billboards became banner ads, and that era is ending. We are now in the era of video flooding every website, and advertisers jumping on board with these forerunning advertisements. What’s next?

By the way, if you do the numbers, 15 minutes of marketing before a 1.5 hour movie is 14% of the time you spend in the theater. Six 15 second ad spots scattered throughout a 45 minute episode on previously mentioned hulu, is only 3%. Interesting.

]]> I’m the guy that catches the latest episodes of my favorite TV series’ online, frequent YouTube to watch some videos for entertainment, and if I am trying to figure out how to do something, the best find is a video tutorial. I, like most Americans, am visually stimulated. Catch my eyes and ears at the same time, and ya got me.

A while back, I discovered hulu, which has it right when it comes to marketing to their video viewers. Their slogan is “Watch your favorites. Anytime. For free.”. Wanna see the latest episode of The Office? Check. What about House? Got it. Prison Break? Yup. So…how do they market to the viewers? They insert ~15 second ad spots throughout a video. For a 45 minute episode, there will be an ad spot before the video plays, then 5 or so more scattered throughout the duration of the video.

I have already seen quite a few sites adopting this method of getting ads in front of us oh-so-wary web users; and I think it is the perfect solution for sites that focus on the video medium (at least, for now). But is this the “brilliant new form of internet advertising” that everyone says it is? (ok , I exaggerated like a million percent there…) I think it is a very smart and effective way to advertise, but it is nothing new. It is just being introduced online.

Think about the last time you went to the movies. Once the lights went out, what composed the next 15 minutes of your life? You were being marketed to! The other night when my wife and I were watching an animated Disney movie (Pixar animations are our favorites), I swear for a second I thought the Disney logo had actually burned my retina. Oh crap, are my eyes going to be like my mother-in-law’s TV screen that has the QVC number permanently burned into the screen?!

The point I want to make is that there is nothing new under the sun. Let’s always be looking to adapt historically effective techniques to new mediums. Billboards became banner ads, and that era is ending. We are now in the era of video flooding every website, and advertisers jumping on board with these forerunning advertisements. What’s next?

By the way, if you do the numbers, 15 minutes of marketing before a 1.5 hour movie is 14% of the time you spend in the theater. Six 15 second ad spots scattered throughout a 45 minute episode on previously mentioned hulu, is only 3%. Interesting.

]]> http://corasyndicate.com/blog/new-form-of-advertising/2008/09/03/feed No Functional Spec?! http://corasyndicate.com/blog/68/2008/08/12 http://corasyndicate.com/blog/68/2008/08/12#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:18:37 +0000 Jonathan Kelly http://corasyndicate.com/blog/?p=68 I recently ran across an article by a company that I really admire. I am referring to 37 Signals. They are the folks behind the great apps Basecamp, Backpack, Highrise, and Campfire. We use Basecamp internally, and would have to implement many other methods to accomplish what we accomplish using their app.

Initially the article “Getting Real, Step 1 : No Functional Spec (Signal vs. Noise)“ really took me back. In this article, they talk about the traditional way of developing (in this case) an online application, and how this is a backward approach. The traditional method being the creation of a Functional Specification document that outlines, well, how the application will function. Here is what 37 Signals had to say about this traditional process:

Functional specifications documents lead to an illusion of agreement. A bunch of people agreeing on paragraphs of text is not real agreement. Everyone is reading the same thing, but they’re often thinking something different. This inevitably comes out in the future when it’s too late. “Wait, that’s not what I had in mind…” “Huh? That’s not how we described it.” “Yes it was and we all agreed on it — you even signed off on it.” You know the drill.

Historically Cora has developed online applications for clients. Often times for clients that do not understand the web development process, or understand the difference in time that it would take a developer to swap out the color of a link, vs. reworking the way the signup process operates. This isn’t to say anything bad about these people, as we all have our areas of expertise, and one of our objectives in every project is educate our clients on the process whenever possible.

37 Signals is in somewhat of a different game, hence their approach to the development process is different. If you are sitting around a table with a designer, programmer, and usability geek that have worked together for years, then we can skip over some of the baby steps. For example, when we develop applications for internal use, or for our pet sites, the process never includes a functional specification. It typically starts with a whiteboarding stage, then goes to Photoshop, then gets coded. And this approach works for us, because the programmer knows that when the designer put a comments link under the blog entry in the mockup, that is meant to go to display a comment form using AJAX, blah blah blah.

In our world, the Functional Specification document is key to the success of a larger project. If the document leaves room for ambiguity, then it isn’t serving it’s purpose. The document should outline, in no uncertain terms, how the application will function. True, the outline is meant more for the technical stakeholders of a project, but this is because this document will serve as the outline for the development process. At the same time, a key objective has got to be having the input of the client and non-technical stakeholders. If the specification cannot be read and understood by non-technical stakeholders, the specification has failed. If there isn’t a meeting of the minds before development begins, yes scope creep will quickly ensue.

Case in point : I recently wrapped up and delivered a functional specification document to a prospect. This ideation and spec’ing period was a mini-project, before we started development. In fact, at that time our prospect wasn’t sure who was going to be developing. We were one firm in a handful that he was shopping. Our recommendation was to take a couple of weeks before he jumped into development and let us sit with him, brainstorm ideas, make notes on those ideas, and draft a document that combined his input with our experience that would serve as a road map for the developers. So what happened? For us (as developers) it allowed us to get a firm grasp on the project and properly set a project budget and milestones. What initially appeared to be a 20K project ended up being a 8.5K project. How is that for unmet expectations and ambiguity? Just today I ran across this prospect-turned-client, and he raved about how smart it was to first spec out the project before getting started developing.

]]> I recently ran across an article by a company that I really admire. I am referring to 37 Signals. They are the folks behind the great apps Basecamp, Backpack, Highrise, and Campfire. We use Basecamp internally, and would have to implement many other methods to accomplish what we accomplish using their app.

Initially the article “Getting Real, Step 1 : No Functional Spec (Signal vs. Noise)“ really took me back. In this article, they talk about the traditional way of developing (in this case) an online application, and how this is a backward approach. The traditional method being the creation of a Functional Specification document that outlines, well, how the application will function. Here is what 37 Signals had to say about this traditional process:

Functional specifications documents lead to an illusion of agreement. A bunch of people agreeing on paragraphs of text is not real agreement. Everyone is reading the same thing, but they’re often thinking something different. This inevitably comes out in the future when it’s too late. “Wait, that’s not what I had in mind…” “Huh? That’s not how we described it.” “Yes it was and we all agreed on it — you even signed off on it.” You know the drill.

Historically Cora has developed online applications for clients. Often times for clients that do not understand the web development process, or understand the difference in time that it would take a developer to swap out the color of a link, vs. reworking the way the signup process operates. This isn’t to say anything bad about these people, as we all have our areas of expertise, and one of our objectives in every project is educate our clients on the process whenever possible.

37 Signals is in somewhat of a different game, hence their approach to the development process is different. If you are sitting around a table with a designer, programmer, and usability geek that have worked together for years, then we can skip over some of the baby steps. For example, when we develop applications for internal use, or for our pet sites, the process never includes a functional specification. It typically starts with a whiteboarding stage, then goes to Photoshop, then gets coded. And this approach works for us, because the programmer knows that when the designer put a comments link under the blog entry in the mockup, that is meant to go to display a comment form using AJAX, blah blah blah.

In our world, the Functional Specification document is key to the success of a larger project. If the document leaves room for ambiguity, then it isn’t serving it’s purpose. The document should outline, in no uncertain terms, how the application will function. True, the outline is meant more for the technical stakeholders of a project, but this is because this document will serve as the outline for the development process. At the same time, a key objective has got to be having the input of the client and non-technical stakeholders. If the specification cannot be read and understood by non-technical stakeholders, the specification has failed. If there isn’t a meeting of the minds before development begins, yes scope creep will quickly ensue.

Case in point : I recently wrapped up and delivered a functional specification document to a prospect. This ideation and spec’ing period was a mini-project, before we started development. In fact, at that time our prospect wasn’t sure who was going to be developing. We were one firm in a handful that he was shopping. Our recommendation was to take a couple of weeks before he jumped into development and let us sit with him, brainstorm ideas, make notes on those ideas, and draft a document that combined his input with our experience that would serve as a road map for the developers. So what happened? For us (as developers) it allowed us to get a firm grasp on the project and properly set a project budget and milestones. What initially appeared to be a 20K project ended up being a 8.5K project. How is that for unmet expectations and ambiguity? Just today I ran across this prospect-turned-client, and he raved about how smart it was to first spec out the project before getting started developing.

]]> http://corasyndicate.com/blog/68/2008/08/12/feed 3 Web Development Tips for Your Business http://corasyndicate.com/blog/3-web-development-tips-for-businesses/2008/07/12 http://corasyndicate.com/blog/3-web-development-tips-for-businesses/2008/07/12#comments Sat, 12 Jul 2008 18:50:56 +0000 Jonathan Kelly http://corasyndicate.com/blog/?p=11 Today, it is extremely difficult to stay competitive in the marketplace without an online presence. Let’s disregard the corner store in the small town that has been doing business for 50+ years and knows all their customers by name, and focus on those that are striving to grow their customer base state-wide, country-wide, or globally. Let’s also disregard the company who has built a completely proprietary technical infrastructure and relies on very focused technicians to support and maintain that infrastructure. This article will focus on the vast majority of websites that deal with information and e-commerce meant for the mainstream. The word “developer” is used to represent a single web developer, or a web development firm.

Tip #1 : Remove ambiguity.
I believe this is the most important of the tips, so let’s cover it first. The #1 killer of a web development project is unmet expectations. Period. Unmet expectations can be in the area of budget, timeline, or deliverables. For example, something was said in passing or on the phone that was not explicitly defined in the project scope. When this item is left out, the developer may be blamed for leaving out a key element. If the item is included, the developer may spend more of the project resources to create / debug / execute on an item that wasn’t a necessity. Be sure that all project requirements are clearly defined in writing, and that proper time is spent before the project begins, to define how the final product should operate. This burden is on both parties, and there absolutely must be a meeting of the minds before a project begins. This will ensure any ambiguity is cleared up, and both parties have a clear understanding of what is being delivered, when it is being delivered, and how much hit will cost.

Tip #2 : It isn’t too late.
Have you ever heard the adage that “two wrongs don’t make a right”? What about “two bad decisions do not make a good decision”? Well, this is all too often what happens when a project goes wrong during development. Problems may include issues with the budget, scope creep, personality conflicts, ambiguity leading to unmet expectations, and unfortunately the list goes on. The painful thought of “throwing all that money away” will keep one in a bad business deal, and loss of money / resources / market influence will ensue. So, how do you fix it? It is so hard sometimes to change course even when we know that our current strategy isn’t working. We sometimes become comfortable with the fact that the problems are not completely ours, and that even if it does go bad in the end, we can blame someone else; or we will try to “think positively” and hope that everything will just work out alright in the end, without our intervention. I heard it said once that people (in this case entire businesses) most often do not make a change for the better until the pain of the change becomes less than the pain of the current situation. The bottom line is that in most projects, it is never too late to reassess the original plan, and make the necessary adjustments to make the project a success. Of course time, money, and quality are the big three factors that will cause one to keep moving forward, or cut their losses. A paradigm shift from focusing on the problems, to focusing on what needs to be done to remedy the problems, is most often the prescription to get things back on track and moving in an upward direction. When this shift is made, projects that seem doomed can come back to life.

Tip #3 : You get when you pay for.
A couple of years ago, I started to retreat when I heard these words from a prospect : “I could figure this out myself”, or “I have a brother-in-law that is going to do it for free”. This relayed to me that the prospect did not believe they were getting from me the value they want or need for their money. When you are building a house, do you sit in meetings with the contractors and tell them which saw to use? What about where to use 3 inch screws, and where to use 4 inch screws? No. You hire the builder, and trust the builder to do their job. It would be equally as laughable if you hired a builder, then never gave them any direction on how many bedrooms or bathrooms you want. Be involved in the web development process, but be sure your involvement is efficient, and necessary. If you do not understand certain aspects of a project, it is the job of the developer to educate you, even if at a basic level, on the process. It is your job to educate the developer of how many “bedrooms” you want. When there is a clear understanding of what is being delivered, and the level of effort and cost for the deliverables, budget and timelines move from being a mystery to being the base of a well executed and successful project.

]]> Today, it is extremely difficult to stay competitive in the marketplace without an online presence. Let’s disregard the corner store in the small town that has been doing business for 50+ years and knows all their customers by name, and focus on those that are striving to grow their customer base state-wide, country-wide, or globally. Let’s also disregard the company who has built a completely proprietary technical infrastructure and relies on very focused technicians to support and maintain that infrastructure. This article will focus on the vast majority of websites that deal with information and e-commerce meant for the mainstream. The word “developer” is used to represent a single web developer, or a web development firm.

Tip #1 : Remove ambiguity.
I believe this is the most important of the tips, so let’s cover it first. The #1 killer of a web development project is unmet expectations. Period. Unmet expectations can be in the area of budget, timeline, or deliverables. For example, something was said in passing or on the phone that was not explicitly defined in the project scope. When this item is left out, the developer may be blamed for leaving out a key element. If the item is included, the developer may spend more of the project resources to create / debug / execute on an item that wasn’t a necessity. Be sure that all project requirements are clearly defined in writing, and that proper time is spent before the project begins, to define how the final product should operate. This burden is on both parties, and there absolutely must be a meeting of the minds before a project begins. This will ensure any ambiguity is cleared up, and both parties have a clear understanding of what is being delivered, when it is being delivered, and how much hit will cost.

Tip #2 : It isn’t too late.
Have you ever heard the adage that “two wrongs don’t make a right”? What about “two bad decisions do not make a good decision”? Well, this is all too often what happens when a project goes wrong during development. Problems may include issues with the budget, scope creep, personality conflicts, ambiguity leading to unmet expectations, and unfortunately the list goes on. The painful thought of “throwing all that money away” will keep one in a bad business deal, and loss of money / resources / market influence will ensue. So, how do you fix it? It is so hard sometimes to change course even when we know that our current strategy isn’t working. We sometimes become comfortable with the fact that the problems are not completely ours, and that even if it does go bad in the end, we can blame someone else; or we will try to “think positively” and hope that everything will just work out alright in the end, without our intervention. I heard it said once that people (in this case entire businesses) most often do not make a change for the better until the pain of the change becomes less than the pain of the current situation. The bottom line is that in most projects, it is never too late to reassess the original plan, and make the necessary adjustments to make the project a success. Of course time, money, and quality are the big three factors that will cause one to keep moving forward, or cut their losses. A paradigm shift from focusing on the problems, to focusing on what needs to be done to remedy the problems, is most often the prescription to get things back on track and moving in an upward direction. When this shift is made, projects that seem doomed can come back to life.

Tip #3 : You get when you pay for.
A couple of years ago, I started to retreat when I heard these words from a prospect : “I could figure this out myself”, or “I have a brother-in-law that is going to do it for free”. This relayed to me that the prospect did not believe they were getting from me the value they want or need for their money. When you are building a house, do you sit in meetings with the contractors and tell them which saw to use? What about where to use 3 inch screws, and where to use 4 inch screws? No. You hire the builder, and trust the builder to do their job. It would be equally as laughable if you hired a builder, then never gave them any direction on how many bedrooms or bathrooms you want. Be involved in the web development process, but be sure your involvement is efficient, and necessary. If you do not understand certain aspects of a project, it is the job of the developer to educate you, even if at a basic level, on the process. It is your job to educate the developer of how many “bedrooms” you want. When there is a clear understanding of what is being delivered, and the level of effort and cost for the deliverables, budget and timelines move from being a mystery to being the base of a well executed and successful project.

]]> http://corasyndicate.com/blog/3-web-development-tips-for-businesses/2008/07/12/feed Tools We Use : Part I - Transmit http://corasyndicate.com/blog/tools-we-use-transmit/2008/06/28 http://corasyndicate.com/blog/tools-we-use-transmit/2008/06/28#comments Sat, 28 Jun 2008 19:48:58 +0000 Jonathan Kelly http://corasyndicate.com/blog/?p=64 Panic Software makes, what has to be, the best ftp app for Mac OS X. The app is called Transmit.

Like most of the ‘best’ apps out there, this one isn’t free. But I gotta tell you after using Transmit for a few years now, I would pay $30 for this app all day long. The feel of the app is very consistent with the mac vibe, and for those of you that are used to browsing in Finder in List mode, they offer that too.

I don’t know much about Panic Software, apart from using their apps of course, but I love the fact that this product has been around for years, and the price hasn’t changed. It’s been 30 bones (well, $29.95) since I first discovered it.

The Transmit Sales Pitch

Download the 30-Day Free Trial of Transmit

]]> Panic Software makes, what has to be, the best ftp app for Mac OS X. The app is called Transmit.

Like most of the ‘best’ apps out there, this one isn’t free. But I gotta tell you after using Transmit for a few years now, I would pay $30 for this app all day long. The feel of the app is very consistent with the mac vibe, and for those of you that are used to browsing in Finder in List mode, they offer that too.

I don’t know much about Panic Software, apart from using their apps of course, but I love the fact that this product has been around for years, and the price hasn’t changed. It’s been 30 bones (well, $29.95) since I first discovered it.

The Transmit Sales Pitch

Download the 30-Day Free Trial of Transmit

]]> http://corasyndicate.com/blog/tools-we-use-transmit/2008/06/28/feed PimpVisual Store http://corasyndicate.com/blog/51/2008/06/26 http://corasyndicate.com/blog/51/2008/06/26#comments Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:43:12 +0000 Jonathan Kelly http://corasyndicate.com/blog/?p=51 We’ve been heads down and hard at it for days getting the PimpVisual Store live. This is just phase 1 of what will be one of the baddest toy and swag sites on the web.

If you’re interested in seeing what is going on in the art community, checkout the main site PimpVisual.

The Pimp also has quite a few whores. No really:
ArtsWhore
PosterWhore
PhotographyWhore
DesignerWhore

]]> We’ve been heads down and hard at it for days getting the PimpVisual Store live. This is just phase 1 of what will be one of the baddest toy and swag sites on the web.

If you’re interested in seeing what is going on in the art community, checkout the main site PimpVisual.

The Pimp also has quite a few whores. No really:
ArtsWhore
PosterWhore
PhotographyWhore
DesignerWhore

]]> http://corasyndicate.com/blog/51/2008/06/26/feed Crazy at work? It may just be office ADD http://corasyndicate.com/blog/crazy-at-work-it-may-just-be-office-add/2007/10/16 http://corasyndicate.com/blog/crazy-at-work-it-may-just-be-office-add/2007/10/16#comments Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:17:28 +0000 Josh Cole http://corasyndicate.com/blog/?p=10 After having a conversation with a group of friends, regarding our belief that technology is contributing to “head overload” and “mass distraction”, I received this article via email (yes, yet another in my packed inbox of digital information overload). Don’t get me wrong, I love technology. But at some point technology WILL begin to have a diminishing affect as our ability to process does have a limit. I believe we are closer than we think to finding out what that limit is.

What follows is the forwarded article written by Tom McGrath for Mens Health. Would love to hear your thoughts on it as well.

———-

Crazy at work? It may just be office ADD
How to deal with communication overload and clear your head
By Tom McGrath, Mens Health
Updated: 8:03 a.m. ET Oct 9, 2007

How bad is it for Adam Campbell? This is how bad: Before he can send an e-mail, he has to delete one.

“Arggh,” he grunts, staring at the error message on his computer. Adam has just finished composing an e-mail to his boss, postponing a 3 p.m. conference call.

But Adam’s mailbox is so stuffed with messages that this new missive refuses to go anywhere. His fingers now stomp over the keys as he deletes some old (and useless? let’s hope so!) e-mail. Finally, the message zooms off into cyberspace.

Across the cluttered office, noted psychiatrist Ned Hallowell, M.D., watches with a bemused look. “Adam,” he says calmly, “why don’t you just empty the whole thing out?”

It’s a reasonable enough question, akin to asking a man who complains of headaches why he doesn’t simply remove the railroad spike protruding from his skull. Adam seems a little flustered by it. Well, he starts to explain, I still need to respond to a lot of these e-mails, and, yeah, okay, some of them are, like, 9 months old, but… .

Suddenly Dr. Hallowell is on his feet and moving toward Adam’s computer. He reaches into his shirt pocket for his reading glasses and peers over Adam’s shoulder at the screen. Spotting just how many e-mails Adam has yet to respond to, he chuckles, then sits back down. For a moment it seems that Adam may continue protesting, but slowly a look of defeat washes across his face. “What are you supposed to do,” he asks forlornly, “when you’re down by 3,200 e-mails?”

It’s a rainy afternoon in rural Pennsylvania, and Dr. Hallowell has come to Men’s Health’s editorial offices for a 21st-century Information Overload Intervention. Lord knows, the MH staff — in particular Adam Campbell, features editor — can use it. On a typical day, the two dozen or so people who put together the editorial portion of this magazine send and receive upward of 10,000 e-mails. That’s 10,000 messages ranging from tiny, tinny “thanks” to epic, complex screeds rivaling documents put out by the Vatican. To say nothing of all the other information exchanges that take place on a daily basis: countless landline and cellphone calls, voice-mail and text messages, even honest-to-goodness, face-to-face conversations. It’s a mushroom cloud of messages.

The same is probably true of your workplace. “Our brains field more data than ever before,” says Dr. Hallowell, “and with no acknowledgment of it.” Indeed, though most of us act as if nothing big has changed in our lives, Dr. Hallowell says we’re actually in the midst of a historic shift not seen since Gutenberg fired up the first printing press.

The problem, as Adam Campbell and the rest of the Men’s Health staff would be the first to attest, is that our Gutenberg-era brains may not actually be capable of handling all this Bill Gates–era info. Meanwhile, Dr. Hallowell himself — one of the country’s foremost authorities on attention deficit disorder — says that in his private practice he’s seen a spike in people reporting ADD-like symptoms: difficulty focusing, inability to complete a project, irritability, anxiety. To paraphrase Dean Wormer in “Animal House”: Frazzled, distracted, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.

The good news is that there are ways to regain control of our lives. And there may be no better person to help than Dr. Hallowell. A stocky, affable New Englander with wiry salt-and-pepper hair and bright blue eyes, he has spent the past several years focusing on how the pace of modern life messes us up. He wrote an award-winning book, “CrazyBusy,” and frequently consults with corporations about how they can help their employees. That’s his mission here today: to help three Men’s Health editors — and by extension, you — manage the mass of information we all deal with.

The really good news is that none of the solutions involve tossing out our iPhones, dusting off our Leo Sayer records, and pretending it’s 1974 again. Although maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. As Adam says, “At least in 1974, 125 people weren’t contacting me every day.”

Case Study 1
Subject: Peter Moore
Problem: Brain Interrupted

When Peter Moore landed his first magazine job back in the ’80s, the Internet, e-mail, and fax machines hardly existed. So, of course, the pace of life in the magazine business — and offices generally — was far slower.

But Peter, who as Men’s Health’s editor is essentially COO of the editorial department, isn’t so sure that a faster pace translates to “more productive.” At least not as far as his ability to edit a story goes. Today, this task is constantly interrupted by frequent, frequently urgent e-mails from MH’s hard-charging editor-in-chief, David Zinczenko, and the rest of the staff. Peter appreciates the value of those messages, but admits they’re a mixed blessing. “They sap my concentration,” he says.

Now, conventional wisdom says that handling a few pressing e-mails and phone calls during the day shouldn’t be such a huge deal. After all, do we not have big brains? Are we not multitaskers? The short answer, unfortunately, is no. Study after study shows that our gray matter really can’t handle two complex tasks at once — at least not without slowing us down or screwing us up. It’s why, for instance, someone on the other end of the phone can always tell from your distracted tone that you’re checking e-mail (”e-mail voice,” Dr. Hallowell calls it), and why studies say that talking on a cellphone while driving impairs you as much as having had a couple of drinks.

“Our brains have billions of neurons, each making thousands of connections, and yet the truth is we can really focus on only one thing at a time,” says René Marois, Ph.D., a neuroscientist and an associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University. In a study published last year in the journal Neuron, Marois and his colleagues used fMRI to show that an actual neural bottleneck occurs in our frontal lobes when we attempt to do two tasks at once.

And don’t assume that once you’ve finished responding to an e-mail, you can seamlessly go back to what you were doing before. A study done at Microsoft last year looked at how long it takes people to return to a task when they’re interrupted by an e-mail or instant message. The average: an astonishing 15 minutes. More than a quarter of the subjects didn’t return to the task at hand for 2 hours. “It’s inertia,” says Eric Horvitz, M.D., Ph.D., the principal researcher for Microsoft Research and a coauthor of the study. “We found that people, once interrupted, take the opportunity to do other things, like check more e-mail. Or go to news or sports pages.”

Dr. Hallowell calls this “screensucking,” and he says it’s a turbocharged version of a natural human trait: procrastination. “Technology gives us even more of an excuse not to do tough work,” he says.

What’s more, when people do finally start working again, they don’t reach their earlier level of concentration for 10 additional minutes. Total time that can be lost answering just one e-mail: a half hour, and that’s the best case scenario. “Every e-mail interruption is like a hand grenade being thrown in the middle of your brain,” says Dr. Hallowell.

Disable your distractions

Protect your morning burst. That’s what Dr. Hallowell calls the rush of energy and focus most of us have in the early part of the day, and he says we should be ruthless about shielding it from interruptions. His advice: Do 60 to 90 minutes of work in the morning before you check e-mail or go online. “Protect that time to do stuff before e-mail and other distractions,” he says. “Be rigid: ‘I’m going to do top-quality brain work.’ ”

Monitor your online time. How many hours does Web surfing suck up? If you use Firefox as your Internet browser, go to pageaddict.com and download the software, which gives you a summary of the time spent (wasted?) on each Web site. Or just measure your time with a stopwatch some day. When you see how much time you’re wasting, you’ll be more motivated to stop.

Case Study 2
Subject: Bill Phillips
Problem: Overconnected

As much as modern technology drives us crazy, many of us can’t get enough of it. “I check e-mail hundreds of times a day,” says Bill Phillips, the magazine’s executive editor. It’s like an Information Age version of a nicotine addiction: the constant need to hit Send/Receive or glance at our PDAs in order to find out whether somebody somewhere is trying to tell us (or sell us) something.

Repeatedly refreshing your inbox at work has its own cost, but the bigger problem is the ability to read e-mail anytime, anywhere, which has obliterated the wall between home and office, work and play. “If I weren’t checking e-mail 30 times in an evening, would I be writing a book?” Bill wonders. And this is to say nothing of the toll that e-mail addiction can take on personal relationships. Bill says that although his wife rarely complains, she did balk when he brought his BlackBerry on vacation and sat on the beach, firing messages back to the MH mother ship.

Why are we compelled to check our messages constantly, even though most of what we receive is only junk or more work? Sometimes it’s pure fear: If you’ve taught your supervisor or clients that you respond to e-mail in 5 minutes, even on weekends, you become afraid of not knowing what’s in your inbox. More often, though, what keeps us coming back is the possibility of a thrill: information we need for a project, great news about something, positive feedback from a colleague or superior.

Tom Stafford, Ph.D., a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Sheffield in Britain and coauthor of the book “Mind Hacks,” believes that what’s at work with e-mail addiction is classic psychological behaviorism: operant conditioning 101. Basic psych theory holds that the best way to reinforce behavior is to reward it — but not all the time, only sometimes. If you want a rat to run through a maze, give him a piece of cheese when he makes it all the way through, but only occasionally, and at random intervals.

Stafford says there’s a logic to this: The rat doesn’t know whether the rewards have disappeared for good, so he’ll run through the maze again and again, hoping that this time the piece of cheese will be there. The same mechanism operates with us and e-mail. We check constantly because every once in a while we receive positive reinforcement. In the end we’re just rats looking for a piece of cheese.

Disable your distractions

Talk to your boss. Or your staff. Or your girlfriend. Or whoever compels you to constantly check your e-mail. Discuss whether an instant response during work hours is really necessary. In most cases the answer is no, which means that checking e-mail, say, every couple of hours should be fine. “It’s important for managers to have discussions about brain management. It’s not a power discussion. You all have the same goal,” Dr. Hallowell says.

Change the office rules. Microsoft’s Eric Horvitz has a name for the phenomenon of checking e-mail even when we’re not at work: “competitive awareness.” Dr. Hallowell says the only way to overcome it is with an organization-wide change of culture. “You need an agreed-on policy, rather than unwritten heroism.” For instance, ban office e-mails between, say, 8 p.m. and 10 a.m. If you know it’s against the rules to send, there’s no need to stop watching “Lost” to see whether you’ve received anything.

Case Study 3
Subject: Adam Campbell
Problem: In-Basket Case

Dr. Hallowell says that when it comes to technology, we tend to operate in one of two modes. The first, when we’re performing well, he calls “C-state,” C standing for calm, cool, collected. Its opposite is “F-state,” meaning flustered, frazzled, frantic. Not coincidentally, the symptoms of F-state look a lot like those of ADD: difficulty focusing for more than a few seconds; a tendency to have a lot of projects going at once, with trouble completing any of them; a constant search for stimulation; and trouble with time management, including a tendency to procrastinate. “The busier you become, the less sense of time you feel, so that pretty soon there are only two times in your mind: now and not now,” Dr. Hallowell says. “You try desperately to put as much as you can into the pile of not now.”

Many days, Adam might as well have an F stamped on his forehead. Like everyone else, he’s constantly interrupted by e-mail at work — except that when he opens a message, he frequently puts it aside until later. Hence his backlog of 3,200 messages. He’s also unable to cut the cord between work and home. When he and his wife came home from a party one recent weekend, she pointed out that he checked his e-mail before he even took his coat off. Most significantly, despite putting in 12-hour days, he feels as if the bombardment of messages has him constantly overwhelmed.

Obviously, F-state can take its toll at work. But the problems run deeper. Dr. Hallowell says that in a 1970 paper called “The Experience of Living in Cities,” the psychologist Stanley Milgram foreshadowed what many of us are now experiencing. Intrigued by the 1964 murder of a New York City woman named Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed to death as 38 people watched from their apartments and didn’t call the police, Milgram was able to show that the more data we process, the more we’re forced to screen out. It’s why people who live in small towns tend to make eye contact and say hello when they pass each other on the sidewalk, while people who live in cities pass each other blankly. Milgram said people’s “span of sympathy” decreases as the amount of data they have to process increases.

“This is the great danger of mental overload,” Dr. Hallowell says. “You lose your judgment and ability to empathize with other people.” It may be the greatest irony of the age we live in: The more ways we have to connect to one another, the less connected we really are.

Disable your distractions

Empty your inbox. But once you do it, you need to put yourself on a program. Dr. Hallowell’s mantra is the classic “OHIO”: only handle it once. Set aside a few specific times during the day to read e-mail — say, 10 a.m., after lunch, 3:30 p.m. — and when you do, act on the messages right away: respond, delete, forward, file. And allow yourself a few minutes at the end of the workday to zero-out your inbox.

Build the walls back up. Ultimately, the only way to stay in control of message overload, the only way to avoid F-state, is to artificially impose the boundaries that once existed naturally. More than anything, that means avoiding the temptation to check work e-mail from home. “Do the e-mails you receive after you leave the office need to be responded to?” Dr. Hallowell asks Adam. Adam shakes his head. “Then don’t look at them. Tell yourself what you just said: It doesn’t matter.” In the beginning, it will be difficult. But eventually a new pattern will take hold and the fight will have been worth it

© 2007 Rodale Inc. All rights reserved.

]]> After having a conversation with a group of friends, regarding our belief that technology is contributing to “head overload” and “mass distraction”, I received this article via email (yes, yet another in my packed inbox of digital information overload). Don’t get me wrong, I love technology. But at some point technology WILL begin to have a diminishing affect as our ability to process does have a limit. I believe we are closer than we think to finding out what that limit is.

What follows is the forwarded article written by Tom McGrath for Mens Health. Would love to hear your thoughts on it as well.

———-

Crazy at work? It may just be office ADD
How to deal with communication overload and clear your head
By Tom McGrath, Mens Health
Updated: 8:03 a.m. ET Oct 9, 2007

How bad is it for Adam Campbell? This is how bad: Before he can send an e-mail, he has to delete one.

“Arggh,” he grunts, staring at the error message on his computer. Adam has just finished composing an e-mail to his boss, postponing a 3 p.m. conference call.

But Adam’s mailbox is so stuffed with messages that this new missive refuses to go anywhere. His fingers now stomp over the keys as he deletes some old (and useless? let’s hope so!) e-mail. Finally, the message zooms off into cyberspace.

Across the cluttered office, noted psychiatrist Ned Hallowell, M.D., watches with a bemused look. “Adam,” he says calmly, “why don’t you just empty the whole thing out?”

It’s a reasonable enough question, akin to asking a man who complains of headaches why he doesn’t simply remove the railroad spike protruding from his skull. Adam seems a little flustered by it. Well, he starts to explain, I still need to respond to a lot of these e-mails, and, yeah, okay, some of them are, like, 9 months old, but… .

Suddenly Dr. Hallowell is on his feet and moving toward Adam’s computer. He reaches into his shirt pocket for his reading glasses and peers over Adam’s shoulder at the screen. Spotting just how many e-mails Adam has yet to respond to, he chuckles, then sits back down. For a moment it seems that Adam may continue protesting, but slowly a look of defeat washes across his face. “What are you supposed to do,” he asks forlornly, “when you’re down by 3,200 e-mails?”

It’s a rainy afternoon in rural Pennsylvania, and Dr. Hallowell has come to Men’s Health’s editorial offices for a 21st-century Information Overload Intervention. Lord knows, the MH staff — in particular Adam Campbell, features editor — can use it. On a typical day, the two dozen or so people who put together the editorial portion of this magazine send and receive upward of 10,000 e-mails. That’s 10,000 messages ranging from tiny, tinny “thanks” to epic, complex screeds rivaling documents put out by the Vatican. To say nothing of all the other information exchanges that take place on a daily basis: countless landline and cellphone calls, voice-mail and text messages, even honest-to-goodness, face-to-face conversations. It’s a mushroom cloud of messages.

The same is probably true of your workplace. “Our brains field more data than ever before,” says Dr. Hallowell, “and with no acknowledgment of it.” Indeed, though most of us act as if nothing big has changed in our lives, Dr. Hallowell says we’re actually in the midst of a historic shift not seen since Gutenberg fired up the first printing press.

The problem, as Adam Campbell and the rest of the Men’s Health staff would be the first to attest, is that our Gutenberg-era brains may not actually be capable of handling all this Bill Gates–era info. Meanwhile, Dr. Hallowell himself — one of the country’s foremost authorities on attention deficit disorder — says that in his private practice he’s seen a spike in people reporting ADD-like symptoms: difficulty focusing, inability to complete a project, irritability, anxiety. To paraphrase Dean Wormer in “Animal House”: Frazzled, distracted, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.

The good news is that there are ways to regain control of our lives. And there may be no better person to help than Dr. Hallowell. A stocky, affable New Englander with wiry salt-and-pepper hair and bright blue eyes, he has spent the past several years focusing on how the pace of modern life messes us up. He wrote an award-winning book, “CrazyBusy,” and frequently consults with corporations about how they can help their employees. That’s his mission here today: to help three Men’s Health editors — and by extension, you — manage the mass of information we all deal with.

The really good news is that none of the solutions involve tossing out our iPhones, dusting off our Leo Sayer records, and pretending it’s 1974 again. Although maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. As Adam says, “At least in 1974, 125 people weren’t contacting me every day.”

Case Study 1
Subject: Peter Moore
Problem: Brain Interrupted

When Peter Moore landed his first magazine job back in the ’80s, the Internet, e-mail, and fax machines hardly existed. So, of course, the pace of life in the magazine business — and offices generally — was far slower.

But Peter, who as Men’s Health’s editor is essentially COO of the editorial department, isn’t so sure that a faster pace translates to “more productive.” At least not as far as his ability to edit a story goes. Today, this task is constantly interrupted by frequent, frequently urgent e-mails from MH’s hard-charging editor-in-chief, David Zinczenko, and the rest of the staff. Peter appreciates the value of those messages, but admits they’re a mixed blessing. “They sap my concentration,” he says.

Now, conventional wisdom says that handling a few pressing e-mails and phone calls during the day shouldn’t be such a huge deal. After all, do we not have big brains? Are we not multitaskers? The short answer, unfortunately, is no. Study after study shows that our gray matter really can’t handle two complex tasks at once — at least not without slowing us down or screwing us up. It’s why, for instance, someone on the other end of the phone can always tell from your distracted tone that you’re checking e-mail (”e-mail voice,” Dr. Hallowell calls it), and why studies say that talking on a cellphone while driving impairs you as much as having had a couple of drinks.

“Our brains have billions of neurons, each making thousands of connections, and yet the truth is we can really focus on only one thing at a time,” says René Marois, Ph.D., a neuroscientist and an associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University. In a study published last year in the journal Neuron, Marois and his colleagues used fMRI to show that an actual neural bottleneck occurs in our frontal lobes when we attempt to do two tasks at once.

And don’t assume that once you’ve finished responding to an e-mail, you can seamlessly go back to what you were doing before. A study done at Microsoft last year looked at how long it takes people to return to a task when they’re interrupted by an e-mail or instant message. The average: an astonishing 15 minutes. More than a quarter of the subjects didn’t return to the task at hand for 2 hours. “It’s inertia,” says Eric Horvitz, M.D., Ph.D., the principal researcher for Microsoft Research and a coauthor of the study. “We found that people, once interrupted, take the opportunity to do other things, like check more e-mail. Or go to news or sports pages.”

Dr. Hallowell calls this “screensucking,” and he says it’s a turbocharged version of a natural human trait: procrastination. “Technology gives us even more of an excuse not to do tough work,” he says.

What’s more, when people do finally start working again, they don’t reach their earlier level of concentration for 10 additional minutes. Total time that can be lost answering just one e-mail: a half hour, and that’s the best case scenario. “Every e-mail interruption is like a hand grenade being thrown in the middle of your brain,” says Dr. Hallowell.

Disable your distractions

Protect your morning burst. That’s what Dr. Hallowell calls the rush of energy and focus most of us have in the early part of the day, and he says we should be ruthless about shielding it from interruptions. His advice: Do 60 to 90 minutes of work in the morning before you check e-mail or go online. “Protect that time to do stuff before e-mail and other distractions,” he says. “Be rigid: ‘I’m going to do top-quality brain work.’ ”

Monitor your online time. How many hours does Web surfing suck up? If you use Firefox as your Internet browser, go to pageaddict.com and download the software, which gives you a summary of the time spent (wasted?) on each Web site. Or just measure your time with a stopwatch some day. When you see how much time you’re wasting, you’ll be more motivated to stop.

Case Study 2
Subject: Bill Phillips
Problem: Overconnected

As much as modern technology drives us crazy, many of us can’t get enough of it. “I check e-mail hundreds of times a day,” says Bill Phillips, the magazine’s executive editor. It’s like an Information Age version of a nicotine addiction: the constant need to hit Send/Receive or glance at our PDAs in order to find out whether somebody somewhere is trying to tell us (or sell us) something.

Repeatedly refreshing your inbox at work has its own cost, but the bigger problem is the ability to read e-mail anytime, anywhere, which has obliterated the wall between home and office, work and play. “If I weren’t checking e-mail 30 times in an evening, would I be writing a book?” Bill wonders. And this is to say nothing of the toll that e-mail addiction can take on personal relationships. Bill says that although his wife rarely complains, she did balk when he brought his BlackBerry on vacation and sat on the beach, firing messages back to the MH mother ship.

Why are we compelled to check our messages constantly, even though most of what we receive is only junk or more work? Sometimes it’s pure fear: If you’ve taught your supervisor or clients that you respond to e-mail in 5 minutes, even on weekends, you become afraid of not knowing what’s in your inbox. More often, though, what keeps us coming back is the possibility of a thrill: information we need for a project, great news about something, positive feedback from a colleague or superior.

Tom Stafford, Ph.D., a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Sheffield in Britain and coauthor of the book “Mind Hacks,” believes that what’s at work with e-mail addiction is classic psychological behaviorism: operant conditioning 101. Basic psych theory holds that the best way to reinforce behavior is to reward it — but not all the time, only sometimes. If you want a rat to run through a maze, give him a piece of cheese when he makes it all the way through, but only occasionally, and at random intervals.

Stafford says there’s a logic to this: The rat doesn’t know whether the rewards have disappeared for good, so he’ll run through the maze again and again, hoping that this time the piece of cheese will be there. The same mechanism operates with us and e-mail. We check constantly because every once in a while we receive positive reinforcement. In the end we’re just rats looking for a piece of cheese.

Disable your distractions

Talk to your boss. Or your staff. Or your girlfriend. Or whoever compels you to constantly check your e-mail. Discuss whether an instant response during work hours is really necessary. In most cases the answer is no, which means that checking e-mail, say, every couple of hours should be fine. “It’s important for managers to have discussions about brain management. It’s not a power discussion. You all have the same goal,” Dr. Hallowell says.

Change the office rules. Microsoft’s Eric Horvitz has a name for the phenomenon of checking e-mail even when we’re not at work: “competitive awareness.” Dr. Hallowell says the only way to overcome it is with an organization-wide change of culture. “You need an agreed-on policy, rather than unwritten heroism.” For instance, ban office e-mails between, say, 8 p.m. and 10 a.m. If you know it’s against the rules to send, there’s no need to stop watching “Lost” to see whether you’ve received anything.

Case Study 3
Subject: Adam Campbell
Problem: In-Basket Case

Dr. Hallowell says that when it comes to technology, we tend to operate in one of two modes. The first, when we’re performing well, he calls “C-state,” C standing for calm, cool, collected. Its opposite is “F-state,” meaning flustered, frazzled, frantic. Not coincidentally, the symptoms of F-state look a lot like those of ADD: difficulty focusing for more than a few seconds; a tendency to have a lot of projects going at once, with trouble completing any of them; a constant search for stimulation; and trouble with time management, including a tendency to procrastinate. “The busier you become, the less sense of time you feel, so that pretty soon there are only two times in your mind: now and not now,” Dr. Hallowell says. “You try desperately to put as much as you can into the pile of not now.”

Many days, Adam might as well have an F stamped on his forehead. Like everyone else, he’s constantly interrupted by e-mail at work — except that when he opens a message, he frequently puts it aside until later. Hence his backlog of 3,200 messages. He’s also unable to cut the cord between work and home. When he and his wife came home from a party one recent weekend, she pointed out that he checked his e-mail before he even took his coat off. Most significantly, despite putting in 12-hour days, he feels as if the bombardment of messages has him constantly overwhelmed.

Obviously, F-state can take its toll at work. But the problems run deeper. Dr. Hallowell says that in a 1970 paper called “The Experience of Living in Cities,” the psychologist Stanley Milgram foreshadowed what many of us are now experiencing. Intrigued by the 1964 murder of a New York City woman named Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed to death as 38 people watched from their apartments and didn’t call the police, Milgram was able to show that the more data we process, the more we’re forced to screen out. It’s why people who live in small towns tend to make eye contact and say hello when they pass each other on the sidewalk, while people who live in cities pass each other blankly. Milgram said people’s “span of sympathy” decreases as the amount of data they have to process increases.

“This is the great danger of mental overload,” Dr. Hallowell says. “You lose your judgment and ability to empathize with other people.” It may be the greatest irony of the age we live in: The more ways we have to connect to one another, the less connected we really are.

Disable your distractions

Empty your inbox. But once you do it, you need to put yourself on a program. Dr. Hallowell’s mantra is the classic “OHIO”: only handle it once. Set aside a few specific times during the day to read e-mail — say, 10 a.m., after lunch, 3:30 p.m. — and when you do, act on the messages right away: respond, delete, forward, file. And allow yourself a few minutes at the end of the workday to zero-out your inbox.

Build the walls back up. Ultimately, the only way to stay in control of message overload, the only way to avoid F-state, is to artificially impose the boundaries that once existed naturally. More than anything, that means avoiding the temptation to check work e-mail from home. “Do the e-mails you receive after you leave the office need to be responded to?” Dr. Hallowell asks Adam. Adam shakes his head. “Then don’t look at them. Tell yourself what you just said: It doesn’t matter.” In the beginning, it will be difficult. But eventually a new pattern will take hold and the fight will have been worth it

© 2007 Rodale Inc. All rights reserved.

]]> http://corasyndicate.com/blog/crazy-at-work-it-may-just-be-office-add/2007/10/16/feed A Sign in the Desert: Part I http://corasyndicate.com/blog/a-sign-in-the-desert-part-i/2007/08/02 http://corasyndicate.com/blog/a-sign-in-the-desert-part-i/2007/08/02#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2007 16:45:06 +0000 Josh Cole http://corasyndicate.com/blog/?p=9 You’ve got a great product or service. (Uh, huh. That’s right. Believe it or not, quality concept is still important.) You’ve edgecrafted* with the best of them. You’ve got the heart and the drive. It’s time to make it happen.  So, you finally bit the bullet and threw down a small pile of hard earned cash on a sweet, slick new website by a pro designer you love. It’s your time and you’re ready to go.

The anticipation of rocketing down the boulevard in your newly crafted technological sales-generating Maserati is pure electricity. Easy street is around the corner. The engine is purring. You put it in gear and let off the clutch – nothing. Purring like a tiger? Check. Looking totally awesome? Check. Proud owner smiling and waving? Check. Problematically, however, the rocket stays on the launch pad. Houston, we have a problem. Your “Maserati” seems not to be a means of transportation into the lifestyle of the rich and famous after all. What you have is a gorgeous showpiece without a drive-train to turn the axel that spins the wheels that make the machine go forward. It’s great on the eyes all right, but no one’s at the show. Customers are out there. You know it. Your web site is in here, wherever that is. Great products or services are prepped and at the ready. And where are you? Well, my friend, you’re behind the wheel of a beautiful stationary vehicle banging your head because it’s better than tear soaking the Italian leather.

Your web presence and all those shiny, but empty shopping carts stand silent for others to discover and occasionally interact with. “It’s a cool site,” they say. Sometimes someone and even says, “Wow! What a great widget!” Your friends say the cool word way more than normal and it’s started to feel pretty awkward. You dutifully post a new message every once in a while as you diligently monitor for signs of intelligent life. Psst. Hey. You know what? I hate to break it to you this way, but your website sounds pretty much like a, how shall I put, billboard.  You’re the proud owner of a spendy technological sandwich board on a dusty road somewhere in the desert. Bummer, I know, but don’t go getting all depressed on me.  It’s really ok, you did the right thing.

The truth is, it’s not just your website that’s the equivalent of a non-interactive, two-dimensional sign on the road less traveled. Recent studies indicate that 98.6% of all websites participating in a blind survey admit to being more genetically linked to Cyberspace signage than some bustling digital nexus for e-commerce and education.  Having a website is necessary in today’s economy, but it can’t be like the Maserati we talked about if it’s going to benefit your venture. You must get it out of the vast desert, overpopulated with more than too many cool billboards, and into the lifestyle pulse of fans and prospective customers. That is the goal, right? OK. Just checking.

Constructing your sign in the middle of the desert makes it very hard to find. Let’s say it’s like setting up an amazing flower shop in the Sahara then sitting back to wait for all the flower lovers to stumble upon it when they need a bouquet.  Sure, someone might stumble upon it. But there just has to be another way.  And there is.

Wouldn’t it be good to tell people where the shop is?  Or, perhaps better, what about moving it to where customers already are? We could appropriately invite them to your pace and, let’s just get crazy while we’re at it, we’ll get other people and other shop owners to tell them where to find you, as well. It’s radical! Don’t you love it? Then, when they start coming in droves, be prepared to make the experience memorable so they have 10 reasons to come back and bring 20 friends!

Let’s recap.
Step One – Have a killer idea.
Step Two – ID your target fans.
Step Three – Build a website/webshop just for them.
Step Four – Drive customers to your website so they can fall in love! Or
Step Five – Forget about having any visitors to your shop, avoid the hassle of sales, customer service, fulfillment and all that messy junk. Just stick to business as usual in the rusty, dusty desert.

Tired of the desert? Want to know how to drive people to your website?  Keep an eye out here over the coming months as I continue to break down the metaphors and reveal the solutions. That’s it for me. I’m thirsty. Too much desert talk.

]]> You’ve got a great product or service. (Uh, huh. That’s right. Believe it or not, quality concept is still important.) You’ve edgecrafted* with the best of them. You’ve got the heart and the drive. It’s time to make it happen.  So, you finally bit the bullet and threw down a small pile of hard earned cash on a sweet, slick new website by a pro designer you love. It’s your time and you’re ready to go.

The anticipation of rocketing down the boulevard in your newly crafted technological sales-generating Maserati is pure electricity. Easy street is around the corner. The engine is purring. You put it in gear and let off the clutch – nothing. Purring like a tiger? Check. Looking totally awesome? Check. Proud owner smiling and waving? Check. Problematically, however, the rocket stays on the launch pad. Houston, we have a problem. Your “Maserati” seems not to be a means of transportation into the lifestyle of the rich and famous after all. What you have is a gorgeous showpiece without a drive-train to turn the axel that spins the wheels that make the machine go forward. It’s great on the eyes all right, but no one’s at the show. Customers are out there. You know it. Your web site is in here, wherever that is. Great products or services are prepped and at the ready. And where are you? Well, my friend, you’re behind the wheel of a beautiful stationary vehicle banging your head because it’s better than tear soaking the Italian leather.

Your web presence and all those shiny, but empty shopping carts stand silent for others to discover and occasionally interact with. “It’s a cool site,” they say. Sometimes someone and even says, “Wow! What a great widget!” Your friends say the cool word way more than normal and it’s started to feel pretty awkward. You dutifully post a new message every once in a while as you diligently monitor for signs of intelligent life. Psst. Hey. You know what? I hate to break it to you this way, but your website sounds pretty much like a, how shall I put, billboard.  You’re the proud owner of a spendy technological sandwich board on a dusty road somewhere in the desert. Bummer, I know, but don’t go getting all depressed on me.  It’s really ok, you did the right thing.

The truth is, it’s not just your website that’s the equivalent of a non-interactive, two-dimensional sign on the road less traveled. Recent studies indicate that 98.6% of all websites participating in a blind survey admit to being more genetically linked to Cyberspace signage than some bustling digital nexus for e-commerce and education.  Having a website is necessary in today’s economy, but it can’t be like the Maserati we talked about if it’s going to benefit your venture. You must get it out of the vast desert, overpopulated with more than too many cool billboards, and into the lifestyle pulse of fans and prospective customers. That is the goal, right? OK. Just checking.

Constructing your sign in the middle of the desert makes it very hard to find. Let’s say it’s like setting up an amazing flower shop in the Sahara then sitting back to wait for all the flower lovers to stumble upon it when they need a bouquet.  Sure, someone might stumble upon it. But there just has to be another way.  And there is.

Wouldn’t it be good to tell people where the shop is?  Or, perhaps better, what about moving it to where customers already are? We could appropriately invite them to your pace and, let’s just get crazy while we’re at it, we’ll get other people and other shop owners to tell them where to find you, as well. It’s radical! Don’t you love it? Then, when they start coming in droves, be prepared to make the experience memorable so they have 10 reasons to come back and bring 20 friends!

Let’s recap.
Step One – Have a killer idea.
Step Two – ID your target fans.
Step Three – Build a website/webshop just for them.
Step Four – Drive customers to your website so they can fall in love! Or
Step Five – Forget about having any visitors to your shop, avoid the hassle of sales, customer service, fulfillment and all that messy junk. Just stick to business as usual in the rusty, dusty desert.

Tired of the desert? Want to know how to drive people to your website?  Keep an eye out here over the coming months as I continue to break down the metaphors and reveal the solutions. That’s it for me. I’m thirsty. Too much desert talk.

]]> http://corasyndicate.com/blog/a-sign-in-the-desert-part-i/2007/08/02/feed New Cora Syndicate Website! http://corasyndicate.com/blog/new-cora-syndicate-website/2007/07/27 http://corasyndicate.com/blog/new-cora-syndicate-website/2007/07/27#comments Fri, 27 Jul 2007 11:10:20 +0000 Jonathan Kelly http://corasyndicate.com/blog/?p=4 We’ve been heads down creating a better way to showcase who we are, and what we’ve been working on. We hope to hear from you. What do you think of the new site? Questions / Comments? Let us hear from you

]]> We’ve been heads down creating a better way to showcase who we are, and what we’ve been working on. We hope to hear from you. What do you think of the new site? Questions / Comments? Let us hear from you

]]> http://corasyndicate.com/blog/new-cora-syndicate-website/2007/07/27/feed Our Brain Just Got Bigger http://corasyndicate.com/blog/our-brain-just-got-bigger/2007/01/02 http://corasyndicate.com/blog/our-brain-just-got-bigger/2007/01/02#comments Tue, 02 Jan 2007 14:02:00 +0000 Josh Cole http://corasyndicate.com/blog/?p=5 This new year already brings with it some exciting news. We’re happy to announce that we have officially partnered with interactive firm, Brainwave Studios. Cora and Brainwave have merged in order to increase our level of service and expand our core competencies. We, of course, are thrilled about this and have a good feeling you will be as well. More about this news soon in the Cora newsletter.

]]> This new year already brings with it some exciting news. We’re happy to announce that we have officially partnered with interactive firm, Brainwave Studios. Cora and Brainwave have merged in order to increase our level of service and expand our core competencies. We, of course, are thrilled about this and have a good feeling you will be as well. More about this news soon in the Cora newsletter.

]]> http://corasyndicate.com/blog/our-brain-just-got-bigger/2007/01/02/feed And Happy New Years http://corasyndicate.com/blog/and-happy-new-years/2007/01/01 http://corasyndicate.com/blog/and-happy-new-years/2007/01/01#comments Mon, 01 Jan 2007 08:16:19 +0000 Josh Cole http://corasyndicate.com/blog/?p=6 Wow. What a year 2006 proved to be. Can’t wait to see what 2007 brings. It’s already starting out to be an incredible one. The Cora Syndicate family wishes you an incredible new year as well.

]]> Wow. What a year 2006 proved to be. Can’t wait to see what 2007 brings. It’s already starting out to be an incredible one. The Cora Syndicate family wishes you an incredible new year as well.

]]> http://corasyndicate.com/blog/and-happy-new-years/2007/01/01/feed Merry Christmas http://corasyndicate.com/blog/merry-christmas/2006/12/23 http://corasyndicate.com/blog/merry-christmas/2006/12/23#comments Sat, 23 Dec 2006 14:42:47 +0000 Josh Cole http://corasyndicate.com/blog/?p=7 It’s that awesome time of year again. Hope you ALL have a Merry Christmas and a wonderful holiday season. Don’t forget to get those lights up and burnin’.

]]> It’s that awesome time of year again. Hope you ALL have a Merry Christmas and a wonderful holiday season. Don’t forget to get those lights up and burnin’.

]]> http://corasyndicate.com/blog/merry-christmas/2006/12/23/feed