The Demise of Letterhead

In the good ol' days (over 5 years ago), the first task of any new business was to print business cards and letterhead.

Suddenly preprinted letterhead became not only a cost, but a work-flow impediment.

Documents created with a computer were much more efficiently handled in the digital world as email attachments. It required extra steps to print hard copies on letterhead, then scan and email.

Instead of using paper pre-printed with logo and name/address/phone, we created files in word processing or spreadsheet formats which already contained this data, then reused these forms as templates for new documents.

Some of us accomplish the same thing by saving headers and footers, then applying them to new documents.

Take it to the next step...
Most companies use many different forms. Some even create new designs on the fly, and so there has emerged a new level of forms management which allows for loading of specific modules or components into documents as required.

Software which offers this new level of functioning is called Lightning Navigator.

Using a simple interface, you pre-load document components such as logos, text or formatting - even entire forms - into the Lightning Navigator setup screen.

Later, when you need these document components, you invoke them by pressing hotkeys you have selected for easy recall.

Need a logo? Press the hotkeys and paste it into your document.

Need boilerplate text? Need name/address/phone? Need how-to-find-us? Need business hours? Need answers to FAQs? Need project information? Need to store passwords? Product keys? Access codes?

All possible. All extremely easy.

Good for techies, too...
Web developers and web-marketers enjoy the ease with which they can store snippets of HTML, Javascript, links or keyword phrases into the versatile Lightning Navigator memory.

Any stored item can be invoked simply by pressing hotkeys. Usually the stored data loads into the clipboard for easy pasting.

You won't even miss your letterhead.

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How to Learn: Laptop or Paper?

I asked my son Matt if he wanted to take a laptop into class for the purpose of taking notes.

One might expect a high-tech college kid to jump at what might be construed as an offer of a new techno-toy.

His surprising answer: "No".

He said that keyboard entry was not fast, easy and flexible enough. (PS - his keyboard skills are plenty fast). Only a small percentage of his classmates use a laptop in class.

"Tablet PC?", I asked?

"Classic example of unperfected technology", said he.

"Even if you ignore handwriting recognition and just save the scribbles as images", I persisted, heedless of the increased cost my line of questioning could lead to.

"Then why not just use paper?" he shrugged.

Educators are trained that better learning results from the involvement of as many senses as possible.

Thus, combining reading (sight) with lectures (hearing) and hands-on experiences (touch) should result in solid learning.

Causing the student to act upon and synthesize the information will result in learning which lasts forever.

As for my own experience, as much as I love technology, I have not been able to effectively use laptops in business meetings.

My keyboard skills are too slow, and the medium is too restrictive to keep up with a freewheeling meeting.

For Matt, too, a laptop can't quite deliver the three dimensional experience of writing with a real pen in hand, scribbling fragments of ideas in bunches cannected by circles and arrows.

No computer can fully replicate the rich experience of flipping through pages in a real paper notebook, each page with its own personality, crinkling in your hand. As we turn our notebook pages, our brains are integrating a multi-layered three dimensional experience.

Useless-looking doodles in the margin can become hooks which help our minds give the information structure and relationship. Sequence of the pages adds more structure, creating a corresponding sequence index in our minds.

No waiting for page loads, no grasping for filenames, no power cords. A real, tactile, immediate, always available, truly portable experience. Bound in a chronological sequence.

Golly! Maybe some things are better undigitized!

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Trust and Business

In our whiz-bang society a word like trust may seem as fuddy-duddy as grandma's doily. But look again.

Trust is an expectation based upon a fundamental human need: safety.

When I say I trust you, I am really saying that I trust that you will behave in a way which I expect, and that way will be in my interest.

In other words, I believe, based upon my experience, that you will not hurt me.

In a business environment trust plays an important role. When we provide goods or services, we trust, based upon our experience, that we will be paid.

If we have no experience, or if that experience is not stellar, we need to rely upon other tools which restore equilibrium to the business relationship. These include:

Payment upon delivery (COD)
Written agreements
Personal guarantees
Bank references
Bonds
Liens
Lawsuits

These things require effort. Effort is a cost to protect the company.

Relationship Between Trust and Cost

One could propose a formula in which trust should be inversely proportional to the cost to protect the company. The less you know or trust the business entity, the more you would need to expend in order to protect the organization..

Consider three points along the trust scale:

Scenario 1: High trust, low cost to protect.
Personal example: Loving marriage with no pre-nuptial agreement.

Scenario 2: Medium trust, medium cost to protect.
International example: Detente. Both sides have powerful tools to defend against the other.

Scenario 3: Low trust, high cost to protect.
International example: War. Absolute opposite of trust.
Closer to home: Lawsuit.

It is in the interest of the business to build trust. As demonstrated above, trust reduces cost.

Trust is a Quality of Life Issue

Trust is also a quality of life issue. Worrying about whether you will be paid detracts from the quality of life. Harmonious business relationships not only cost less but they also allow you to enjoy life and business more.

Business is fundamentally exchange. One party exchanges goods or services in exchange for money from the other party.

Trust is a Form of Currency

Trust is also a currency which is exchanged as the business transactions progress. Each party, through experiencing business transactions, learns more about how the other party will behave, and eventually gains expectations about how the party will behave in the future.

If, based upon previous experience, the parties begin to feel that the other party will act in their interest, and not hurt them, then trust goes up, cost goes down and quality of life goes up.

The Balance of Trust - Finding Equilibrium

Interestingly, trust has a way of equalizing on both sides of the transaction. If both parties were reasonably trustworthy, and if enough time has elapsed to give the parties experience with the other, eventually each side will move toward a similar trust level.

Factors which disturb the trend toward equilibrium include non-performance or errors or actions by one party which adversely affect the other. In these cases there will be an exchange of actions and responses which could ultimately restore a previous status-quo, or improve it, or could also herald an era of a lower mutual trust level.

Even more interesting, people tend to trust others in the amount that they themselves are trustworthy. A shark in the waters of commerce tends to mistrust others, knowing the damage he is willing and capable of doing to others. Equilibrium will occur with this individual as others learn his business ethics and respond accordingly.

Similarly, a "Mother Theresa" might also judge others by her own standards and act accordingly. In the tough world of business, however, this approach can prove to be expensive and dangerous, and will eventually force either a shift toward trust parity or a closing of the doors.

Build Trust to Build Business

Building mutual, balanced trust must be a key philosophy of business.
How can we build mutual trust in our business relationships?

1. Act in a trustworthy, predictable way. Do what you say you will do. Give schedules and hold to them. Don't arbitrarily raise prices. Answer phone calls promptly.

2. Observe trust-related behaviors in others and use those behaviors as a gauge to determine the level of trust you will invest in others. Treat a shark like a shark. Treat a Mother Theresa like a Mother Theresa.

3. Remember that sometimes business transactions can hit rough patches. How you perform when the going gets tough will play a huge role in how much you will be trusted in the future. Performance under fire, successfully and responsibly executed, can be a critical turning point in the development of trust. Anyone can do business when there are no problems. It takes a real champ to turn a bad situation around. Successful turnarounds can be huge trust boosters.

4. Observe your own actions the same way you view the other guy's. Do you communicate that you will always act in the interest of your customer? Developing a sense of how you are seen and what your actions communicate will help you fine tune your game, and in the process, build trust, repeat business and a more enjoyable business life.

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Unexpected Wisdom: The Drunk on North Avenue

I grew up on North Avenue, a 4-lane street cutting East-West across the middle of Chicago. My folks owned a clothing store there and our family lived upstairs. It was 1961 and I was 9 years old.

On each corner was a tavern. Not chic-chic martini bars, not Viagra-triangle cigar bars, but hard-core bastions of liver-pickling alcoholism.

Both bars smelled the same. An unforgettable cloud of cigarette butts and beer ground into vomit-marinated asbestos floor tiles hovered outside the door of each darkened den.

In these bars, working stiffs drank away their families' savings, squatting on backless barstools, hunched over formica bartops with shellacked wooden edges. They came straight from work and stayed until midnight, staggered home to angry wives in cloth dresses, fell into a coma after an exchange of harsh words or hurt silences, then started over again the next day.

Since our store was situated in the middle of the block, we often witnessed an unsteady migration of drunkards as they moved from bar to bar. Some mornings we might find a biohazardous remnant of their journey, which my father would briskly hose off as a very first order of business.

In this unlikely crosscurrent, one day a moment of lucidity and premonition took place. One of the pitiful procession decided to stop and talk to me. He hung on the parking meter and was barely able to avoid falling down.

"Come here boy, I want to tell you something", he said.

I edged closer into unfamiliar territory. Usually we tried to stay away from the drunks and they ignored us in turn. But this guy wanted to talk.

"I don't know everything", he slurred, "I don't. Nobody does. Nobody knows everything and either do I. You don't, I don't, and neither does the President of the United States."

"But I'll tell you something right now," he continued. "I may not know everything, but dammit, I know where to find it if I need it. Thats the key. You gotta know where to find what you need to know. I may not know, but I know how to find out."

Flash forward 43 years, to 2004. I had been in the window and door business for 23 years. I had made a mistake on a building which cost my company thirty thousand dollars. I didn't know that my doors needed a 32" clear opening which was needed to meet handicapped code. I am puzzled. How could I, with all of my experience, have not known this would be required?

Forward 2 more years. I meet an architect who knows the laws pertaining to accessibility very well, probably because she uses a wheelchair herself. I begin to quiz her. I am confused because I don't know which codebook governs, therefore I don't know which rules to follow.

She tells me that my confusion is well-founded and widespread. There are three sets of rules, Federal, State and City, and they say different things. The biggest developers and architects in Chicago are as confused as I am.

Now we come back to the drunk and his point.

I could have done an internet search on the handicapped code and maybe studied the state code at length and felt myself to be informed. But if I didn't know there were two other codes and their interrelationship, I would be, unknowingly, two-thirds in the dark. I needed an informed expert to give me that overall perspective.

I knew that I could troll the internet for an answer, but I could not know how that answer fit the larger picture.

Now that information runs freely, we need a way to place relative values on things which bob up and down in the overflowing info canal. We need meta-information. Information about information. Which information is better than the other? Which supercedes? Which is specific and which is general? Which is more current? Which is obsolete?

The drunk was speaking to you, Google. It's not enough to get 29,662 listings in response to a word search. Does being in the top ten keyword responses equate with being good, well rounded information? Not yet. We are progressing, but we are not there yet.

Some day we too will know where to find what we need to know. Some day we will catch up with the drunk on North Avenue.

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Learn HTML Through Theft & Mutilation

Anyone serious about having a website needs to know something about HTML, the computer code of websites.

HTML is a simple language - although some native speakers would argue that so is Swahili - it is made up of characters from your keyboard. No fancy heiroglyphics.

Browser software, such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, reads the HTML and creates a screen display according to instructions conveyed within "tags" in the HTML. These tags tell the browser how to display text and colored areas, and how to import and display pictures in specified ways to create eye-pleasing web pages.

You can view the HTML code of any web page by right-clicking on a blank area of the web page, then selecting "View Source" or "View Page Source". A new window will open and you will see the HTML code.

You can learn HTML by saving this code to your computer and experimenting with it. Pick a simple-looking page to start with, preferably a home page. Home pages are very often named "index.htm" or "index.html."

With the source code visible on your screen, you can save the web page to your computer by clicking "File/Save As" or "File/Save Page As". When you do this, place it in a new folder. Thus will help keep your learning project organized.

You can tell your browser to read the version of the locally saved file by clicking "File/Open" or "File/Open File" with the browser open, and browsing to the file you just saved. If you have a browser with tabbed viewing, use a new tab for this so you can refer back to the original version hosted on the internet.

When you open the local version, you may notice mising graphics - the pictures may not have saved along with the HTML. If so, go back to the web version. Save each missing graphic individually by right clicking on the graphic and selecting "Save Image As", and save it in the folder you created earlier. Do not change the file name of the picture.

Go back to the browser view of the locally saved web page and refresh the screen by clicking the "Refresh" button or by pressing F5. If all goes well, the missing picture should render. An exception could be if, in the original website folder structure, the images are saved in a subfolder.

If you were advanced, you would create an identical subfolder and save the images there. But since you are a newbie, forget about it and live with what you have.

Theft Complete! Get started...

Now that you have recreated the web-based page locally, you can learn by observing and modifying the HTML. You will see the resulting change on the displayed page.

To do this, you will have the same HTML file open in the browser and also in Notepad. The browser should be pointed to the local HTML file as described above. Then, open Notepad and open the same HTML file in it. At the bottom of the Notepad window, where it says "Files of Type:" Be sure to select "All Files". If you don't do this, you will not even see the HTML file listed in the browse window.

Arrange the browser window and Notepad window so you can see both. I like to keep the browser maximized, and Notepad filling the bottom half of the screen "in front" of it. When I make changes in the Notepad file, I click "File/Save", then click the refresh button on the browser. The Notepad window minimizes by itself and you will have just enough time to see the changes you made modified in the browser display.

Don't worry if you make a mistake. If your change was unfortunate, reopen the Notepad file by clicking the appropriate button at the bottom of your screen, then, in Notepad, click "Edit/Undo" then "File/Save". Refresh the browser and the boo-boo should go away.

I will not be teaching HTML in this article. There are great resources for learning HTML in depth at Poingo Resources.

However, I will give you a few things to start with:

1. All HTML "tags" begin and end with characters known as "angle brackets", which are also used for "greater than" or "less than" in math equations. I can't place them in this article because they might cause your browser to go wacky. I will use { and } in this article instead to represent angle brackets.

2. All HTML files begin with {html} and end with {/html}

3. HTML files have two main portions, "head" and "body". The
"head" portion begins with the tag {head} and ends with the tag {/head}.

4. The head contains a page title and "meta" data which is non-displayed information about the web page itself. The "head" portion of the page is non-essential. You can prove this to yourself:

In the Notepad file, remove the {head} and {/head}tags and everything between them. File/Save Notepad, refresh the browser, and see what happens. The appearance might change if, for example, the head contained a link to a separate style sheet, but the actual content should still be there.

5. The "body" portion begins with the tag {body} and ends with the tag {/body}. It contains your content, so it is quite essential.

6. In addition to the HTML tags described above, there are many other tags which format text, create tables, link to pictures, link to other sites and even open pre-written emails in your own email software.

7. Many tags, like the ones above, have starting and ending tags. For example, if I wanted to bold a portion of text, I would first place a {b} tag before the text,
then follow the bolded text with {/b}.

8. Other tags don't require an ending such as {br}, which gives you a line break, and {p} which starts a new paragraph.

Mutilate Web Page Now!

You now have enough information to be dangerous. Let's put it to use.

Lesson One - Create Obscene Text

In the Notepad file, look for a chunk of recognizable text in the body section. Change the text to something funny, stupid or obscene, because education should be interesting. Click "File/Save" in Notepad and refresh the browser. Your funky text should display. You have now mutilated your first web page. Congratulations!

Lesson Two - Bold Your Obscene Text

In the Notepad file place begin-bold {b} and unbold {/b} tags around some text.
Save the Notepad file and refresh the browser. See how it looks. You have now gone boldly where you have not before.

Lesson Three - Enlarge Your Obscene Text

To make your text really big, try surrounding it with {h1} and {/h1}.
In addition to making your text ridiculously large, this tag
tells search engines that you think this text is REALLY IMPORTANT!!!

Lesson Four - Disappear and Reappear a Picture

As we learned earlier, pictures are separate files. They are invoked by a special tag
which can look like this:
{img src="http://www.my-ftp.com/images/westgate.jpg"}
Find something which looks like this and delete the entire expression, including both brackets. Save Notepad and refresh the browser. Goodbye picture!

Now go back to Notepad and click "Edit/Undo".
Again save Notepad and refresh the browser. Hello again!

Got the hang of it? Steal, mutilate and and learn.

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