Writing, marketing and technology
Someone from Sky just rang me about my subscription. They mispronounced my name and then asked me if I wanted to talk about some special offers on TV packages. I didn’t and suggested that they should take me off their calling list. They said “we need to ask you some security questions before we do [...]
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I was very sad to read on the BBC that Harry Morgan the actor who played Colonel Potter in the TV show MASH has died. For me, the Colonel Potter character was a kind of role model. I have always admired his gentle, avuncular style and the way that he could act firmly and wisely [...]
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A wise man once said, “It ain’t bragging if you done it.” Well, it isn’t advertising if you built it yourself. On that basis, you may have noticed the big advert for Turbine on my blog. I’ve been working on this project for more than a year and it launched a couple of months ago. [...]
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A few years ago, I had a bad experience with OB10 but they’ve been making a lot of effort to improve their service and customers support and I have to say that since my original rant, the whole thing has worked very well. In my original post, I invited OB10 to comment. Their new CEO, [...]
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Yes, another guest post from my Turbine blog. It’s still me, though! When it comes to productivity, a lot of people think a lot of crazy things. Some of these crazy people are managers in big companies. Others are, well, you and me. In many cases these foolish ideas have been comprehensively debunked by research. [...]
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When I say ‘Earl Grey’, you say ‘Yes please’. I’m on my third cup of the morning. Margaret’s Hope first flush Darjeeling, if you want to know. I’ve written about tea before (see: Tools for writing – a nice cup of tea)
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I have finally found the explanation for irrational overconfidence and, perhaps, much of the hype and bombast on the internet: the Dunning-Kruger effect. (Not to be confused with the Müller-Fokker Effect.) The original research says: People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that [...]
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Besides Turbine, where this article first appeared, my other business is Articulate Marketing and we work with some of the world’s biggest companies, including Microsoft, HP and Symantec. The one thing I notice at all these companies is that people have diaries crammed with meetings; one after the other. An early-rising friend of mine in [...]
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This is a guest post written by me from my Turbine blog. Hey, why not? It’s my blog. There are about 200 things on my Turbine to-do list right now. We’ve just launched the staff appraisals feature. The development team is flat out working on the mobile version of the site. I have a guy working [...]
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Go read this great article in the New York Times Magazine by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. He looks at the difference between confidence and competence and ways to evaluate experts. He concludes: In general, however, you should not take assertive and confident people at their own evaluation unless you have independent reason to believe that [...]
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Matthew Stibbe is CEO of Articulate Marketing and Turbine, the easy, online way to deal with office paperwork. He edits Golf Hotel Whiskey and writes the Forbes Aviator column.
Check out my new, free eBook, 30 Days to Better Business Writing, 71 pages of expert tips and advice to make you a better writer. Available on Kindle, paper and free online.