Is there ever a case for “Regular”?
Would you call your brand regular? I hope not, but apparently Philadelphia Cream Cheese doesn’t mind.
A few nights ago we discovered we were out of cream cheese and since a run to Whole Foods was not in our immediate future, my wife had me go to the local grocery store and pick some up.
After I brought it home, I discovered that even though the label said regular, it was actually an oniony, chivey flavor that no one could eat except me.
I found issue with this on a few levels.
1) On a design level, why hide the flavor and pretty onion pictures on the side of the label?
2) What is regular? Apparently not the flavor. I guess it refers to the low-fat versus non low-fat version? If that is the case, I am pretty sure when Philadelphia started making cream cheese, there was no low-fat version. This means at some point they changed “regular” to refer to calorie content and not flavor.
3) On a bigger level, why would anyone want to make something that is regular? If it is the version that has been around the longest and that is what people know you for, how about “original” instead?
I don’t think I would ever make something and call it regular.
Word Camp Chicago 09
Calling all wordpress fans - Word Camp Chicago has opened up registration. They have some great speakers lined up already and I am looking forward to it.
Are you thinking of going? If so, look me up and say hi.
Don’t Hide The Magic
On weekends we often end up at one of the local childrens museum since the kids love it. As it should be, these places focus on engaging and teaching while keeping the fun intact.
This particular exhibit is a steering mechanism that turns the pole (and everything attached to the pole) whenever the wheel is turned. How does it work? If you are an adult you say “gears”.
If you are a child, you might say “magic”.
On the side of the table there is a plexiglass window that shows how the gears work to turn the pole.
Education: 1
Magic: 0
Are there things we do everyday that appear to be happen magically to our public?
Maybe we should share the magic.
Audio Player Round Up
@BlahGeeTsa asked what audio players were out there and of course I had to respond with my favorite - http://www.macloo.com/examples/audio_player/
If you have ever listened to audio from a Wordpress page you have probably seen it already. It is a great player because it is simple and I find it to be very reliable. One of the cool features is - when set up correctly, starting a second instance of the player will turn off the first instance.
But then, just when I thought I had the perfect player, @ScottyIseri (you know, of “Scotty Got An Office Job” fame) shows up with this bad boy.
I like it alot! Here is the home page.
What are your favorites?
[Here is a page that has the player I was first talking about.
This is just the development site, but most things should work.
Web Strategy: Community, Business, Technology
Here is a post from @jowyang talking about his approach to web strategy. It is a nice visual representation of what needs to be included for a campaign to be successful. He points out that whatever tasks you cannot perform yourself - you need to learn to delegate. Obvious point, but a good reminder.
The Three Shperes Of Web Strategy
Plugin: No Update Nag
One of the things I hate about wordpress is, not unlike adobe reader, it is always out of date. Good for the boys they are cranking out great new versions - but that nagging message that is right in the middle of everything you do on the admin screen drives me crazy.
Until now. Just install this plugin and the update nag will bother you no more.
This is my first officially released plugin and I thought I would start small. Other than the wp calls it is literally one line of code. I have made larger, more complex plugins but was always too lazy to clean them up for public release.
Let me know if you like it.
Twitter Roundup
I have seen a growing number of “Twitter for Business” type posts lately and here is another.
He basically points out most of the things any frequent twitter user would know, but sometimes it is nice to get a well laid out list in front of you.
He also points to a number of other twitter for business articles at the bottom of the page, so you can get your twitter fill all in one setting.
I particularly like the one about using twitter as an ad hoc focus group. Its OK to ask “How am I doing?” once in a while.
http://blog.thelettertwo.com/2008/10/09/my-experience-with-twitter-a-collaboration-of-tips/
Irony and Word Camp Chicago
How ironic is it that my last post 6 months ago was about Brian Gardeners Revolution Themes (no one clicked and got me any money, btw) and just today I met with Brian Gardener?
Is that ironic or just a run-on sentence? Maybe both.
Anyway, he informs us that WordCampChicago is underway and it is going to be a good one.
This happens in July! Can’t wait.
Revolution Theme
I recently found these themes that I think are great.
I will be putting my affiliate link there soon so you can click on it and I get copius amounts of money.
An error occurred in the upload. Please try again later
This was the other wordpress 2.5 issue I had.
This was on a live server and not local. I tried to upload an image and the image crunched ok, but I got this message when it was done. I think it has to do with write permissions but the solution I found was to add this to your .htaccess file.
<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>
That seemed to fix the upload issue but the next issue I had was when I tried to actually insert the image into the post, all I got was a blank screen from the media page.
After a few times of the blank screen I restarted firefox and now everything worked fine.
I guess the first problem affected the http state of the browser or window or something and the restart just cleared it all up.
** According to Google Analytics this is my most popular post ever! So if it was helpful, please leave a comment and tell me how glad you are that I copied someone else’s solution for you to find.
