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Critical Skill 6B: 5+1 Ways to a Best-Fit Niche for YOU & the Market

July 17, 2006 by Liz

Finding that Ellusive Niche

Everyone talks about finding their niche, but I haven’t heard much about how to do it. How do you do a niche that fits? Finding a niche is Critical Skill 6 in what I call The 10 Skills Most Critical to Your Future. Once you can find hidden assumptions, you’re on your way to finding hidden niches.

Finding a niche that fits you and the market takes involvement, patience, and self-awareness — you need to know all points of view to get the perfect fit, and nothing less will do.

That best-fit niche is a tiny space where you’ll live, work, and relate to people. You’re going to have to like it there, but so are folks who don’t even know you. How do you find the niche that works for you and attracts an audience? [Read more…]

Net Neutrality 7-17-2006

July 17, 2006 by Liz

Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Net Neutrality and the Flat Tax for Google [via Net Neutrality]

Why is an issue so simple on the surface turning into such a partisan one?

Well, here is the answer. It’s about money not censorship. And its about money that powers activism more than lobbying money. The telecom’s lobbying is one that, like most industries, traditionally plays both sides. The new online media, exemplified by Google, does not.

In truth, there are anti-trust and other legal remedies for anti-competitive discrimination that the market won’t sort out. If censorship was the issue, that could likely generate full bi-partisan support. That is not what is at stake however. What is at stake is that the content and web services business are making a killing in earnings by relying on cheap, available bandwidth that is the same cost to them as it is to your and me. Actually, this isn’t really accurate – it is a lot cheaper for them in bulk than it is for our DSL/Cable access. This doesn’t make the providers very happy. They want those really rich (i.e. Google, Yahoo, etc.) to compensate them proportionate to their total “assets” – in terms of users and usage. Basically, Telecom wants the right to progressively “tax” services like Google. After all, Google can always buy their own pipes and equipment if they don’t want to pay. According to many reports, they already are.

Now this is the irony, these same leftists (by their donations and statements) that would likely crow on and on about “the rich paying their fair share” are lining up to have the Congress forbid Telecom for using anything but a “flat tax” on their services. There are no “income brackets” allowed on the Internet according to Google and John Kerry.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Great Find: How to Create a Positive Home-Work Environment

July 16, 2006 by Liz

Home, Sweet, Home

I found this while researching The Zehnkatzen Times.

Great Find: How-To: Create a Positive Home Work Environment
by Beth Dean

Permalink: http://designorati.com/web-design/2006/how-to-create-a-positive-home-work-environment/

Audience/Topic: All work-at-home folks
Content: Beth Dean offers ten points that all of us would better to remember when we set aside a space at home for working — whether we work at home always or only occasionally. It’s easy to read and offers some new points. To get there, click the title.

Thanks, Beth, for the reminders!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Introducing The Zehnkatzen Times

July 16, 2006 by Liz

SOB Hall of Famer: The Zehnkatzen Times

by Samuel J. Klein

The Zehnkatzen Times is the record of the perambulations of Samuel John Klein, a designer and self-styled pundit based in Portland, Oregon. From this podium he finds and comments on interesting things in graphic design, logo design, web design, map design, life and times in Portland, and the occasional ironic or funny random observation and, every now and again, a somewhat-trenchant political observation. Feel free to stop by and celebrate the process.

Notes from Liz: Sam J. Klein is a graphic designer who has a way with words. As soon as you begin reading The Zehnkatzen Times, you start to get the feeling, “Hey, I think I know this guy.” He understands the writer’s magic of bringing a smile and his own viewpoint to a story. His content includes commentary on blooks, blogs and his ongoing projects some of which are

Designorati — a 360 degree view of the design world
a study of Quark v. In-Design,
The Science Fiction Museum and its blog

He’s into so many things and writes with such a light touch. I can’t help but wonder whether his last name isn’t really Clemens.

Thanks, Sam, for letting me introduce you to the readers of Successful Blog.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Has your SOB Blog Been Introduced to US?
Blog Promotion: May I Introduce You?

Net Neutrality 7-16-2006

July 16, 2006 by Liz

Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Does Patented Chaincast VMR Technology Stomp on Internet Property Rights?

US Patent #6249810 was issued to Chaincast Networks, Inc. for what is called Virtual Multicast Routing or (VMR) Technology. This technology flies in the face of centuries of established property rights and it probably does so because of the newness of the internet and the lack of understanding of how property rights apply to internet bandwidth.

Chaincast technology is used in the distribution of streaming media and is currently most prevalent in the streaming of broadcast radio audio programming on the internet. Some very large radio networks use this technology to “lower their cost of content delivery”. VMR technology is embedded within the unsuspecting users computer when the user is requested to download the VMR hosting service’s “patented media player”.

Once the radio station’s desiring online listener has checked the software provider’s “User License Agreement” checkbox, the media player begins to deliver the audio content. This is not where the story ends. The Chaincast technology takes over and as the name suggests, the radio broadcast is forwarded, using the listener’s bandwidth, to many more online listeners of the radio station. . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Critical Skill 6A: Five Tools for Finding Faulty Assumptions

July 15, 2006 by Liz

What Is the Premise Behind your Thinking?

At the time I was an Executive Editor. The project was simple. Build a binder of about 300 pages. I’d probably built four times that many books already. For a rush job, this one should be a piece of cake.

We made the bookmap. We went through the usual steps. We got the pages. Got the binders. Got everything ready for assembly. That’s when we faced our hidden assumption.

We’d assumed that Binders go together exactly like books do.

They do except in one important way. Books don’t have those tab dividers. Our tiny assumption caused a major, stressful, and immediate problem. The first divider belonged between pages 23 and 24. So? [Read more…]