Skype

OK.. this probably isn't news to a lot of people. But, I'm still finding people who don't know about skype, or tried it a couple of years ago and had trouble with it.

Trust me! This is significantly better than most VoIP offerings I've tried in the past. Skype to phone occassionally stalls but skype to skype is almost always error free.

The only trouble I've had is when my computer decides it needs to do something with my hard drive for an extended period of time. At that point, skype cuts out. But, what would you expect with a telephone that's running off your computer?

To remedy that problem, I'm running most of my VoIP off my PDA. Works great. Only problem with PDA version is that I can't host a conference call.

There are several collaboration tools I've found lately that make developing web sites in a distributed environment a whole lot easier. Being abel to confernence for free using Skype is one of those tools.

Playing on fear.

There's a new product on the market that has a great sales pitch. "Top Marketers' Tests have Proven Over and Over That Professional Headers increase Conversion Rates by 300 per cent!"

Really? How does that sync with another top marketter's claim that taking the banner off can increase conversion rate by 200%

Let's see. If I first get this header creation program and then take the banner off, I could increase my sales by 600%?

But, wait. There's so much nonesense hype in the rest of the sales copy, it makes it very hard to believe any of it.

For example, this program claims to make better banners without having to know how to work PhotoShop or the GIMP. It also claims that you can save money because you won't need to hire a professional designer to create your header image.

Now, while I'm sure the first statement is probably true. The second isn't. In fact, I've been able to do more with PhotoShop than some of the designers I've hired. But, I didn't hire the designer because they could run a graphics program. I hired them because I know 1) they are generally more creative than I am and 2) they can see colors (I'm color blind)

There are two things we can learn from this. First, don't believe every marketing sales pitch you read. Even if the guy isn't lying outright, what worked for him won't necessarily work for you. Second, test everything.

FireFox 2.0

The fact that FireFox 2.0 has been out for a while now is not news. But, the fact that it routinely hangs my computer is.

I've finally got so fed up with it that I just made IE7 my default browser.