Spare no expense! – Customer Service

The problem with customer service is not a new one. It’s about balancing between serving a lot of people a little, or dropping everything to serve a few people a lot.

Getting a lot of benefit for a lot of people for not so much money isn’t particularly difficult. In the chart on the right, for example, (a) represents the cost of good signage at the airport, or clearly written directions on the prescription bottle or a bit of training for your staff. It pays off. Pay a little bit and you help a lot of people to avoid hassles. The utility per person isn’t huge, but you can help a lot of people at once. [read]

How to Use Sunset Light to Light Portraits

Sunset is arguably the most beautiful time of day for portrait light. But you don’t want to simply take your subject outside and start shooting. Take a few moments to identify “how” to use your light and your portraits will be dreamy.

Here are three ways you can use the light by setting your subject in relationship to the setting sun.

1. Front Light:

Place your subject facing the light. Shoot facing your subject with your back to the light. The light will brightly illuminate your subject, bringing out stunning catchlights. Take note: if the light is too bright for your subjects eyes, simply have them close thier eyes until you are ready to snap the shot – and make that moment count.

Read more: http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-use-sunset-light-to-light-portraits#ixzz0PUNEqJNo

British teen becomes youngest to sail world solo

LONDON (Reuters) – A 17-year-old Briton became the youngest person to sail round the globe single-handed on Thursday after nine months at sea.

Mike Perham suffered knockdowns and damage to his yacht during the 24,000-mile (38,700-km) trip and the teenager from Hertfordshire, southern England, said he was now looking forward to a “good meal and a very good night’s sleep.”

Fewer than 250 people have sailed solo around the globe, but his record is already in jeopardy if a 13-year-old Dutch girl persuades a court to allow her to set sail. [read]

3 Steps To Stop Spammers On Twitter

Really great tip from Matt Singley – Spam on Twitter has been on my mind a lot lately.  It could be the influx of unwanted replies that I talked about earlier, or the very positive actions by the Twitter team yesterday to purge known accounts, or the constant stream of “get more followers today” that I see. No matter, spam on Twitter is only going to get worse before it (hopefully) gets better.  Anywhere people gather electronically, unscrupulous marketers will find a way to put get rich schemes or magic blue pills that promise a lifetime of pleasure information in front of us against our will.  Spam isn’t just for email anymore. We can work as a community to help slow its advance however, and I want to tell you the very simple way I do my part and ask you to do the same with just a couple of easy steps. [read]

Apple enters world’s biggest mobile market: China to get iPhone in October

Major Chinese news portal 163.com is reporting [Google machine translation] that Apple has finally signed a deal with China Unicom to bring the iPhone 3G to mainland China in October. This is huge news for Apple, which is now to enter a market with around 700 million mobile phone users, the biggest in the world (US: around 270 million).

Following months of negotiations between Apple and China Unicom, “industry insiders” are reportedly expecting an official announcement to be made by the country’s second biggest mobile telecommunications company tomorrow in Hong Kong. [read]

How to Be a Great Boss

If you’re in charge of a company or team, small or large, you’ll want to do your best to keep everyone keen, engaged and productive. Being a great boss involves walking a fine line between friendship and leadership – but the rewards are immense: high employee loyalty, improved results, fewer wasted resources and the ability to go on vacation without worrying that everything will fall apart without you.

The top factor in determining workplace satisfaction is the immediate manager. In a study of 60,000 exit interviews, 80% of the employees who quit their jobs did so because of their boss. (from Blame it on ‘The Boss’, BtoB Magazine)

Here are seven ways to build a great relationship with your team and to make sure that your employees stick around. [read]

How Fast is Your Internet Connection?

DSL and other high-speed internet services feel like dial-up more often than they should. According to a new study, the U.S. ranks 28th in terms of fastest broadband speeds behind Japan, Sweden, Holland, and other industrialized nations. Where do you rank?

The admittedly partisan labor union group Communications Workers of America compiled a list of broadband speeds for U.S. states (and its territories). Based on the data, America’s average broadband speeds clock in at about 5 megabits per second, with Delaware registering the fastest stateside speeds, averaging 9.91 mbps. For its part, Puerto Rico had the slowest rates at 1.04 mbps. [read]

5 Copywriting Tips For Any Sized Business

Copywriting, according to Wikipedia is described as “getting across the perfect message, with the perfect words.” When we talk about copywriting it is usually in conjunction with a promotional message; we want to promote a new idea, a person, a business or an opinion. The greatest copywriters understand that people are entirely driven by emotions. We are driven by emotions when we buy products, often triggered by the copy we read.

I’m sure that you have often felt a surge of anger, happiness, or confusion about something you’ve read in the past, whether it was in a newspaper, or on a web page. Good copy is riveting; it ties us emotionally to the material we read. When we read good copy we hardly realize that we are being cleverly manipulated by the words. Often we buy stuff without further thought and after out initial excitement has passed, we find ourselves with yet another possession we never wanted in the first place.

Therefore it is no surprise that the Internet marketing industry rakes in thousands of dollars for many info-marketers. By employing copywriters to write strong sales pages, many marketers make an absolute killing within 24-hours of a new product launch.

If you have a business and want to sell products or services, you need decent copywriting skills. It will make all the difference to your bottom line – your profits. The following tips will help you to become a better copywriter. [read]

Reach Out and Touch the Web With Firefox’s Coming Multitouch Support

Mozilla has revealed it is working on a new set of touchscreen tools for the Firefox browser.

The software maker’s multitouch Firefox project is still in its infancy, but the goal is to eventually offer web developers a way to tap into a new multitouch support structure to create online games and alternative touch-based user interfaces for web apps in Firefox.

At the moment, there are no hard and fast plans regarding exactly when multitouch support, which would be accessible through new APIs, might land in Firefox. The current goal calls for the new tools to arrive in Firefox 3.6, which is due later this year. [read]

Jessica Biel Tops Brad Pitt As Internet’s Most Dangerous Search

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actress Jessica Biel has overtaken Brad Pitt as the most dangerous celebrity to search in cyberspace, according to Internet security company McAfee Inc.

For the third consecutive year, McAfee surveyed which A-list celebrity was the riskiest to track on the Internet after Pitt topped the list last year and Paris Hilton came in first in 2007.

Biel, 27, who shot to fame in the TV show “7th Heaven” and most recently starred in “Easy Virtue,” was deemed the most dangerous, with fans having a one-in-five chance of landing at a website that has tested positive for online threats, such as spyware, adware, spam, phishing, and viruses.

“Cybercriminals are star watchers too — they latch onto popular celebrities to encourage the download of malicious software in disguise,” McAfee’s Jeff Green said in a statement. [read]