Thursday, October 12, 2000
Idea Eighteen -- use your business logo as a watermark for photos. Okay, that is an old one. Eyewire and Corbis and others do this already. But what about YOU? Of course, having a catchy logo is the key. Do successful companies pay more money for their logos or are they successful because they have better logos? I vote for the latter.
Suzanne @ 1:22 PM
Idea Seventeen -- Brainstorming exercises. No, really, I'm serious. You need to practice this! You need these things: recording device (video, audio, digital, analog, whatever) and medium; randomizing agent (random number or letter generator, dice, gaming dice, what have you); trigger. A trigger can be anything. I like books, so I use a book, and use dice to pick a page and a word, then brainstorm on that.
The rules of brainstorming are pretty loose, but the most important one is that there are no bad ideas! If you are brainstorming in a group, or even alone, make sure you just record the ideas as they come. You can sift through them for the gems later, but when you're brainstorming, what seems to be a bad idea can be the trigger for the winner.
Suzanne @ 12:05 PM
Idea Sixteen -- paper and pen or digital, it doesn't matter. Whatever you use, you need to keep an Idea Journal of your own. Offline, online, indexed, stream-of-consciousness, whatever works for you (and make sure it works for YOU), having somewhere to put the great ideas we don't have the time to fully work on right now, that we can refer to when we hit a dry spell or a creative block can make all the difference in the world.
Offshoots of this idea: digital photoalbum of ideas; visual sketchbook of doodle ideas; tape recorder or digital audio files.
Suzanne @ 11:25 AM
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Monday, September 25, 2000
Idea Fifteen -- Workstations with holes for different sorts of recycling, like cans, bottles, fine paper, et cetera. Especially good if those holes connect to a wall unit and the recycling is dealt with by someone else, like a huge laundry chute of recycling!
Suzanne @ 10:30 PM
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Thursday, September 7, 2000
Idea Fourteen -- keep a running list of software applications I have mastered or can use. Not just to show off my growing software and platform independence, but also to remind myself that when I get daunted because I haven't used MySQL, and haven't begun to touch on XML, and really only have only touched on the most functional aspects of Perl, JavaScript and CSS, and and and... that I really have achieved a lot, and have a far broader understanding of this medium than it feels like.
If you regularly get overwhelmed, you can add a "to learn" section and a "got it down pat, dammit" section, and have fun watching the "to learn" ebb and flow while the "got it down, dammit" just grows and grows and grows and grows. Ah. Learning. What else is so rewarding?
Suzanne @ 3:15 AM
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Saturday, September 2, 2000
Idea Thirteen -- This actually comes up all the time on various bulletin boards, and I can't claim credit for it totally. The thing is, bulletin boards have a lot of great ideas and resources posted all the time. But because of time and space constraints, they frequently disappear into space, or they get buried by so many other ideas and resources that the signal-to-noise ratio gets too out of whack, and then the same ideas and resources are repeated endlessly, which gets very tiring for those who know where the resources are.
Following me still?
Well, basically, the idea is that any board that is moderated should ideally have the moderators make a collection of the links posted and put them into a database which would be searchable. New members would be directed to this database when they get their registration name and password. It would be a prominent link on the forums, and/or would be where the search feature on most forums would point -- to an existing thread on the topic, or the appropriate section of links in the collection.
Suzanne @ 6:20 PM
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Thursday, August 31, 2000
Idea Twelve -- Publish series of project management tips and best work practices for web site development. At this time I would specifically be interested in saving and working files. And CD back-ups on every single developer's computer, so that at the end of the day, I could save all my files to project_date and be done with it. Tomorrow, I would save them all to a new folder (project_newdate) and modify the copies only. That way a back-up is part of the system, not an afterthought, the back-ups are precisely labeled, and progress can be measured.
Suzanne @ 11:35 PM
Idea Eleven -- don't start new projects just before old projects are "finished". It's tempting fate, and Fate is a mean ol' cranky bitch and will have the old projects require total revamping. Ugh. Actually, IDEA ELEVEN is for fluid hours for staffing. If I work 16 hours a day for the next 3 days, I get 4 days off, screw the 9-5 theory. When's the last time you had a project take exactly 8 hours a day for 5 days, then take a break for 2, then start again promptly at 9 AM Monday morning. Exactly. It's time, now that we truly can use the web, to move out of offices and back into a more organic work pattern that allows for personal growth, family time, love and fresh air.
Suzanne @ 11:32 PM
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Saturday, August 26, 2000
Idea Ten -- Especially revelent for sites that offer links with commentaries or hidden links, like weblogs, it comes to mind time and time again that installing something like this JavaScript script that collects all the links on a page and lists them in a popUp window that the user can quickly scan and access. Finding a way to sort them alphabetically would be great, too.
Suzanne @ 5:05 PM
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Friday, August 25, 2000
Idea Nine -- This isn't mine. But it's a good one. When you sign up for online newsletters, free downloads, registration for software, et cetera, and click that you don't want mail from them or spam and such, make the e-mail address the name of the newsletter, software, or site @yourdomain.com. Set up a nice redirect alias for yourself, and if you get spam at that name, you have the culprit (read: slime selling your personal details to the highest bidder) right there in the e-mail address. I'm pretty sure this came from the brilliant shining dome of Big Dave, one of the stellar admins at AstoundingWeb.
Suzanne @ 1:02 AM
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