Phone etiquette has changed rapidly over the past several years due to the wide acceptance of email, chat, instant messaging and text messaging into our daily lives. No longer is the phone the best way to handle most types of business communication. There are still people, however, who insist on using the phone for every contact. Generally the worst offenders are those who don’t use computers. Modern day Luddites. Do any of these situations sound familiar?

1. You leave the message “Call me” on the answering machine without mentioning the reason why you are calling of why the recipient should return your call.

Why this is bad: This kind of phone call is impossible to schedule. It could take an hour, or it could take a minute. It also smells of power trip, as you order the recipient to call you back, not for any reason, but because you said so.

2. You insist on communicating highly detailed information, such as project specifications over the phone.

Why this is bad: You won’t take the time to put your ideas down to paper or computer, so now the recipient of the call is your secretary. Hopefully they take notes well for you and don’t miss any details.

3. You call too often.

Why this is bad: Unscheduled phone calls can be disruptive and time consuming. If you call just to touch base, check on progress, or for other trivial matters, you can quickly become a pest unless  you are calling someone who’s sole job is to talk on the phone.

4. You stay on the phone too long.

Why this is bad: Phone conversations take longer and demand more exclusive attention than do other means of communication. If there is a lot of information to impart, the phone is probably not the best means of communicating it, and you are wasting someones valuable time.

5. You don’t schedule your phone calls.

Why this is bad: Scheduling phone calls and deciding on the subject matter prior to the call ensures everyone involved has the time set aside to talk, and is prepared for the topic at hand. Trying to instigate phone conferences off the cuff, and  then playing phone tag to try to get something going is inefficient.

6. You ask for a return call after hours or on weekends.

Why this is bad: Sure, we all work on weekends these days. The lingering benefit of a weekend for some of us, however, is that you can get some work done without interruption.  Give us a short break from your needs and impulses, so we can spend time and do a good job on what you are asking us to do in the first place.

3) Google Maps Doesn’t Work.  It can’t even find the San Francisco International Airport (SFO). How much lamer could it be?

4) Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) filled with broken SERP-hogging features. The theater website, where actual movie times could be accessed is pushed nearly below the fold. All links to showtimes in Google’s feature are broken and useless. Link to the theater points to show times on the wrong continent.

5) Google search doesn’t work anymore. Their push towards popular SERPS and assuming you are misspelling everything leads to useless results, the need to search multiple times and put quotes around everything.  At least Yahoo gives you a link to click that indicates that there is the possibility that you aren’t an idiot and actually want results for the terms you typed in.

Notice of Contract Termination Due to Potential New California Law
Amazon.com Associates Program
Jun 29, 2011

Hello,

For well over a decade, the Amazon Associates Program has worked with thousands of California residents. Unfortunately, a potential new law that may be signed by Governor Brown compels us to terminate this program for California-based participants. It specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers – including but not limited to those referred by California-based marketing affiliates like you – even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state…

And then followed the boot…

Notice of Termination due to New California Law
Amazon.com Associates Program
Jun 29, 2011

Hello,

Unfortunately, Governor Brown has signed into law the bill that we emailed you about earlier today. As a result of this, contracts with all California residents participating in the Amazon Associates Program are terminated effective today, June 29, 2011. Those California residents will no longer receive advertising fees for sales referred to Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned before today will be processed and paid in full in accordance with the regular payment schedule…

Well.. ok. Luckily I don’t make my living from such things. Those people who do were up a creek. But today we’re back in apparently:

Important Update for California Associates
Amazon.com Associates Program
Oct 6, 2011

Hello,

As you may have heard, California Governor Jerry Brown has signed legislation repealing the law that had forced us to terminate our California Associates. We are pleased to invite all California Associates whose accounts were closed due to the prior legislation to re-enroll in the Associates Program…

Why so fickle Jerry and Amazon? Well, upon further research it looks like the reinstatement may be temporary based on a compromise that relieves some retailers of the tax requirement for the time being.

Netflix, however has permanently dumped it’s plans to split it’s business into two: Netflix and Quickster. When I first heard about it I thought “Wow. That seems like a really dumb idea.” I can understand their move to recover costs by charging for both their streaming and disk program separately. In fact I felt a little guilty for the good deal I was getting from them for the past year or so… basically unlimited streaming entertainment for no additional cost to my basic 1 disk service.

Trying to dump their dying disc based business into a new company, however,  seemed doomed to fail. Quickster looked like the anchor that could pull the whole thing, Netflix and all, into Davey Jones Locker. Luckily, Netflix’s CEO has a newly acquired taste for crow, based on the multiple emails of apology I’ve received from him recently.

So, the moral of the story is, no matter how stupid a mistake you make, you can always  make it right.

Delicious.com (formerly del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking site that was one of the first of its kind. It allows  you to save web links, along with tags, a title and description, to your personal bookmarks page. This bookmarks page is public.

The value of social bookmarking sites for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is that you can place links to your own websites on  your bookmark page, and they will show up as backlinks to the search engines, giving you the all-important link authority that search engines use to rank their results.

The problem with this scenario is that for links to be counted as backlinks, the page they appear on needs to be indexed by the search engine in question. And as of this writing, I see NO delicious.com user bookmark pages appearing in the Google index. Nor do I see any of the tag pages, which contain lists of links based on bookmark tags, in the Google index.

What I do see is that 123 bookmarks have been created in the last minute. I just hope it’s not for SEO link-building, because it’s not going to work!

Step One: Pay the Money

Step Two: Realize you need to download and install the Audible Manager audio player in order to listen to your “mp3″

Step Three: Audible Player crashes when you try to install it.

Step Four: Once you get it installed and try to download your audio, your “download link” downloads a file called “admhelper” which is of no help in doing anything whatsoever, as far as I can tell.

Step Five: Chat with support who tells you that it looks like the software is not installed correctly (duh) and furthermore you don’t have an account (which I am logged into). Can they help you set one up?

Step Six: Uninstall Audible Manager, at which point the uninstaller crashes.

Step Seven: Call 1-888-283-5051 and ask for your money back. This is one process that have down pat. Obviously I’m not the first.

The problem is that since the transition there has been an obvious drop in the quality of their offerings. Normally I would need to wade through 50 – 100 horrible photos to find a good one. Now, the good ones are gone. I’m assuming Big Stock needed to cut costs to make this move, and in doing so messed with quality. Now I can’t use what they offer, and I can only assume that other designers are in the same boat.

• Free $100 Adwords coupons for new accounts
• Training to sharpen up your Adwords chops
• Materials to help you market your Adwords services

I can understand the need Google sees for such a service. The degree of difficulty and time required to run a successful Adwords campaign has greatly increased in the last few years.

Some of the requirements for becoming part of Google Engage are:

• You must be a web professionals such as a webmaster, search engine marketer/optimizer, or marketing consultant who wants to help their clients with AdWords.
• You must be able to answer your phone.

Well, I have both of those requirements down cold, so I signed up. The confirmation warned me to wait for a confirmation call from an 800 number, because I would need to complete the phone verification to participate in the program.

A few days later I received a call, and my caller id showed a toll free number (1-800-848-9251).  I usually screen these numbers because they are almost always from telemarketers. Google told me to be waiting for this call though, so I picked it up. No one was on the other end. “Hello. Hello. Hello” was my greeting, but it was answered by silence.

A few minutes later I received the following email:

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in the Google Engage program. Your application unfortunately does not qualify for this program. This program is specifically for web professionals such as webmasters, search engine marketers/optimizers, and marketing consultants who want to help their clients with AdWords.

If you would like free help in setting up an AdWords account, you can call 1-877-509-4292.

If you are interested in learning more about AdWords, please visit these resources:

AdWords Online Classroom

Help center

AdWords blog

Small business center

Best,

Google Engage for Agencies team

I immediately called the phone number listed on the email and spoke to a living human being, something I am unaccustomed to when dealing with Google. He confirmed my eligibility for the program and said he would talk to the team and someone would take care of the problem.

About an hour later I received exactly the same rejection letter again. Whooot!

I searched for the Google 800 number that gave me the silent treatment, and turns out 1) it’s an Adwords number, and 2) other people get the same treatment:

http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-800-848-9251

Here’s to hoping Google gets their phone verification act together. Google Engage looks to be a worthwhile program. I’d like to find out.

Even though the domain name was no longer registered with Enom, Google Checkout charged my credit card $10 to renew the domain when the registration date came around. Google stole my $10, and there is no way to contact them to GET MY MONEY BACK!!!

All I could think to do was post my issue on Google Forums, and guess what? There were many people complaining they were also charged by Google for domains that were no longer registered with Enom. And guess what else? Google has exactly ZERO replies to any of the inquiries. Google’s implied position: THANKS FOR THE FREE MONEY BITCH!!!

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google%20Apps/thread?tid=087388b75155b58f&hl=en
http://www.google.ru/support/forum/p/Google+Apps/thread?tid=05503e2483bd3f20&hl=en
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Apps/thread?tid=791088bd58ad72ed&hl=en

You may notice if you browse Google forums that you will seldom find a question addressed or answered by a Google employee. If you do get an answer (rather than a piling on of “me too” posts) it will likely be by some idiot that knows less than you, but still manages not to answer your question with a condescending attitude.

Please wait while Windows Configures Microsoft Office 2007

I thought I had this one beat, but it turns out that the my previous solution worked only for Outlook, and only until the next reboot. Since then I’ve check many a forum to find a solution for the problem. Many that I’ve seen have included extensive editing of the Windows registry and a complete manual uninstall and reinstall of MS Office 2007.

Ok. I have good news, and bad news. Which do you want to read first? Ok. The good news:

Fortunately, there’s an easy workaround for this problem:

1. Go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12 and find the executable (.exe) files for each application you want to use.

2. Right click on the file and create a desktop shortcut.

3. Click on that to start the application, and you shouldn’t see the annoying “configuring” message again.

The new shortcuts work properly because you have created them within your user account and they have the correct permissions. If you take a look at the permissions ( properties > security ) of the shortcuts the installer created, you will most likely see that they are a bunch of crap.

The bad news is that I haven’t yet found a proper explanation or solution to this problem that works consistently. If you have, please post it here.

1. Open your module for editing and assign it to a new position. Just make something up (trust me, it will work). Of course if you have it showing elsewhere, make a copy and edit that.
   

   create new user position

2. Type this where you want the module to show in your content article, i.e. : {loadposition user1234}

That’s it. Take a break and enjoy your favorite beverage. If it didn’t work, look for one of those more complicated how-to articles.