July 28th, 2010
Granted, her writing skills are a bit sketchy but she sure is fun to have hanging around the office. Cuteness goes up to eleven on this one.
About the author: Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
July 15th, 2010
“What people buy and what you sell are not the same things.” This is something I’ve believed as a marketer and copywriter for a very long time.
I was reminded of this recently while reading Cory Doctorow’s criticism of Apple’s newly launched iPad. In essence, he says the iPad fails because it is not a computer.
Well, he’s half right. There’s nowhere that I can see in the box-copy or Apple’s online material that says this device is a computer. That’s not an oversight. And it’s not that the iPad isn’t a computer (it is). It’s just not important.
Most people don’t want to buy computers. They want things to help them do stuff. It’s no different than what we see with cars. Sure there are some who love to tinker and pull things apart and revel in the technical details of how the car operates. Then there’s the other 95 percent who just want something that runs well looks good and gets them where they want to go and are entirely uninterested in the technology making that happen behind the scenes.
Realizing this is what, in my view, fuelled a lot of the deep thinking that went into designing the iPad. Really…what would be the point of a MacBook Air minus a keyboard other than just being a MacBook Air minus a keyboard?
It’s not a coincidence that in 2007 Apple quietly pulled the word “computers” from their corporate name. It’s not just because their product line has outgrown the word…its because the meaning behind the word is not all that relevant to a large segment of the population.
They build and design computers. But what their customers buy are devices that help them do stuff.
About the author: Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
July 1st, 2010
Having a portable database is a really important part of my workflow as a writer. My research hat is always on, but it used to be hard for me to keep my research notes, bookmarks, text and PDF files well-managed and synced over several Macs in the office fleet. I used Evernote for a while but switched to Yojimbo.
Here’s why. Evernote is great until you decide you want to export your data to another database. That’s when problems arise. Even though Evernote talks a good game about being export-friendly, you’re faced with having all of your rich-text file notes being converted to html.
[Update] Apparently there is some kind of workaround to this, but it’s curious that this issue has yet to be addressed fully by the app’s developers.
Bottom line: it’s your data. It is a mistake to take all your hard work that’s gone into filling your knowledge bucket and compromising with it a proprietary system tries hard to lock you in.
About the author: Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
