Let us message against Philip

When I write an advertisement, I don't want you to tell me that you find it creative. I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product. When Aeschines spoke, they said, "How well he speaks." But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, "Let us march against Philip."

—David Ogilvy

Tech sector ironies of the 2010s

from Phil Nash, London.

Welcome to the new decade: Java is a restricted platform, Google is evil, Apple is a monopoly and Microsoft are the underdogs.

Introducing my free "Twitterglyphics" table

☠⅓☯≠♞+☁♕෴⚐♬♫♪⚾⚒⚙⚛☢

Copy and paste space-saving symbols into your Twitter posts and other tight spots

Social media sites encourage brevity, especially Twitter, with its strict limit of 140 characters and spaces per-post. Many people have simply adopted abbreviations and emoticons from text messaging, but those were developed for speedy replies, not necessarily to fit a word limit.

While Twitter conversations are often fast-paced and held on mobile devices, many posts are thoughtfully crafted. Unicode symbols can shorten the character-count, allowing you to fit more meaning into each message, and when used creatively, they can draw a lot more more attention.

I created this symbol chart because other sites that list such symbols are either too hard to navigate or they list 8 different ☛s, 5 different ✐s but not enough technical characters or other symbols that I sometimes need. I don't post equations or technical data on Twitter, it's just that Ø can mean "nothing" and ≠ can mean "not the same as" and ¶ can denote a paragraph within an article.

My own № 1 symbol is this: … It's an ellipsis that only takes up one character space. I use it to separate sentences or items in a series using only one character-space. (Periods and commas require an additional space after them.)

My software skills map

Simple, graphic approach to explaining what applications I know and how well I know them. 

If you want to be strictly empirical about this, the only thing this chart "proves" is that I know how to render a really crowded slide in Apple's Keynote program and then turn it into a jpeg. 

The real knowledge lies in how to use these tools to turn a buck or edge out a competitor... or do something really extroverted on FourSquare. Note that I always exercise a lot of restraint when doing anything "on the clock" on Wikipedia. It's generally best to let nature take its course there—else the volunteer Hounds of Hell will edit you all the way back to AOL.

UPDATE: The latest edition of Thunder Kitty, or whatever Apple is calling its current operating system (10.8, 2013) does not support Microsoft Office. I now use Apple's Pages word processor and convert the documents into PDF or RTF text files for others to use. I can export something as an Office file, but there are usually formatting irregularities that I can't see on my Mac. 

Applebee's and a Catch-22 of social media marketing

What happened to Applebee's on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit last week has been described with many metaphors: "implosion," "meltdown," "disaster" and others.

I liken it to the Battle of Little Bighorn that cost General Custer his life in 1876. However, Applebee's isn't going to "die," and the company is not a victim of its own hubris like Custer. But the "action" on the Facebook page may resemble the final hour of Custer's life: Thousands of current and former waiters "circling" the normally bland/cheerful corporate page, furiously pumping arrows and spears into every new post the company made in an attempt to explain its actions during the last week of January.

Slate coverage:
When Applebee’s tried to impose an automatic 18 percent tip last week on the bill of Atlanta pastor Alois Bell, she crossed it out, reduced the tip to zero, and added the note, “I give God 10%, why do you get 18?” A waitress posted the receipt online, earning Bell nationwide derision and the server a pink slip for violating Bell’s “right to privacy,” according to Applebee’s. Over the weekend, the restaurant chain suffered an avalanche of criticism. [Note: I neglected to include "avalanche" in my list of metaphors!]