Monthly Archives: March 2009

Look to the Recession as a Chance To Build Brand Awareness

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I happened onto a site today that got it right – Virgin Mobile has grabbed the bull by the horns and created a site called ‘Screw You Recession‘.

Good move. While everyone else is suffering from bailout fatigue and constant stressing on how much money we don’t have, they’ve worked with that by skewering it in an off-center way, combining a tips website, blog posts, and even a Twitter feed (although so far the most exciting thing is that Britney is/was in Toronto, and someone really enjoys popcorn).

Here’s one of my favorites – a fake gas sign (I think) showing how gas prices really are in our heads.

real gas prices

Another interesting item is on Cooking with Clara, a 93 year old women who shares tips on how she cooked during the last depression. Now with a guest appearance on Good Morning America, and talk of a DVD and cookbook, it’s obvious she’s figured out the formula, too.

Finally, one article to justify spending – according to the “lipstick effect”, when recessions are on, Men and Women buy smaller comfort items instead of big luxury ones – Men get gadgets, Women cosmetics, Whether it’s really true or not, at least now I have an explanation for why I bought that extra USB memory stick I didn’t need…

To Emailers and Spammers – I’m Not Reading You

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As Email Tuesday comes upon us again (someone once said that the best day to email is Tuesday, so now the bulk of my spam arrives then), I thought I’d send out an open letter to spammers and other emailers.

I don’t read you. Really.

Now I’m not talking about male-oriented enhancement, or emails from financially-strapped Nigerian Princes – they will keep sending me spam whether I say anything or not.

I’m talking to the marketers whose subscriptions I’ve signed up to, either in the process of buying something, or for reasons I can’t fathom (and may have nothing to do with me volunteering my email address, if you know what I mean).

The fact is, I get so much, I rarely read them.

Now don’t get me wrong – I don’t delete you, either. If you have a valuable piece of information, or an interesting offer, I’ll keep you. If you’re a ‘name’, I’ll keep you. If I have a personal relationship with you, I’ll keep you. But I’m STILL not reading you.

Try better subject lines. Try interesting content. All of it is good, and will probably get you read by a larger percentage.

(Oh, but don’t go “gimmicky” – I WILL cancel truly offensive or tasteless email subscriptions).

But some of us are on Information Overload – and no amount of cute Subject: lines will work there.

So should you stop?

Of course not. Keep trying with the fancy lines, and the interesting info. In fact, give it 200% – you’ll be rewarded, and even people like me might read them from time to time.

But show a little sympathy. I get hundreds of emails a day, and I’m in no mood for another time-waster.

Make the email count. Don’t just write to sell me something – write to sell me something you truly believe in.

Don’t just give me info anyone can get online – give me something meaty I can use.

And don’t bother with ‘Opening Day Big Marketer Offers’ – I’ll be getting this same offer from a dozen other people, and they will all get deleted.

See the theme? Make the email count, and I’ll read it.

Or go ahead and write the same old, same old. Because this Tuesday I won’t be reading you – and you can guarantee I won’t be blaming myself for skipping over that email.

I’ll be blaming you.

Why Beginner’s Guides for PHP (or Ajax or…) SUCK

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I heard about another “Beginner’s Guide” release today – and every time I hear that phrase I cringe.

Not because beginner guides aren’t useful or good – we all started out with them (and despite the truly insulting title, I find the Dummies line of books to be great introductions, great “beginner’s books”).

It’s because of a small subset of those books – beginner’s books on online programming topics, like PHP, Perl, mySQL, Ajax, Javascript, and so on.

The reason – teaching BEGINNING online programming teaches you just enough to be dangerous to yourself and others!

I can teach you PHP, and I can call it a beginner’s guide – but if I leave out security programming, then I’ve done worse than nothing – I’ve given you just enough details to think you can write safe code – but you can’t, and you will well pay dearly for it.

For example, most beginner’s books talk about getting in form data with a command like this (here in PHP):

$x=$_POST['x'];

Sounds good – but that line holds a huge amount of pain if that’s all the teaching that goes into it:

  • Is the result going to be put onto a web page? Then unless it’s displayed properly, it can open a giant security breach on your website.
  • Perhaps it’s going into your database? Again, without careful filtering, you could have one of those famous ‘injection attacks’ we hear so much about.
  • Or maybe you’ll just make use of it in subsequent code? Fine – as long as you’ll realize that that information can be (and may well be) ANYTHING.

It’s not a minor thing – people online delight in seeing what a form can “take” (I know, I’ve done it too). And there’s some people out there that aren’t just having fun – it’s serious (and illegal) business for them. Crack a site, and there’s a new base of operations for nasty stuff – and YOU pay the price for it.

So to everyone offering “beginner’s guides” for online programming (and you know who you are) – add a solid chapter on security to it. If you don’t, then you’re hurting everyone – by giving beginners a false (and dangerous) sense of accomplishment, and providing the rest of us problems needing to be cleaned up.