http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php

Our new bean bag is an Omni from a company called Sumo. The company describes it as a large pillow. It is different from all of the bean bags I had previously seen that are round. This one has the rectangular shape of a pillow. Just a lot larger! Approximately 5’5 x 4’5 feet.

Also, instead of a psudo leather as you find with some bean bags, this is made of ballistic nylon (PVC coated nylon which is super durable but smooth). I thought I wouldn’t like it, but I do quite a bit.

The biggest selling point to me is that the bean bag can be formed into a lot of different shapes. As you can see in the photos, it’s durable and we have it shaped into a sort of chair with armrests. Cozy!

If you’re in the market for a bean bag, I’d recommend it! Ours is a big hit in the office and has found a permanent spot in Tom’s office. They come in a variety of colors and cost $129. We really like it!

http://www.sumolounge.com

Full disclosure: The bean bag was provided free by Sumo.

I would highly recommend this book if you are involved in anything to do with the Internet, and startups. It’s kind of refreshing to know that there are other insane people out there, with similar goals, like me.

The movie is listed on the IMDb as 9.1 stars (out of 10) and one person wrote: “The best way to describe The Godfather is flawless in every way that a movie can be flawed. It exceeds expectations of what should be put into a movie from everyone involved.”

I have now watched The Godfather, and The Godfather II. I didn’t get to the 3rd installment but will try to watch that before too long. Overall, I’d say that the claim that these movies are perfect is correct. A perfectly told story about a mafia family. The family.

I think the reason people don’t really talk about this movie is because it’s so richly complex. There are so many characters in these movies, and they fit into multiple threaded stories. Sometimes I couldn’t tell who was important and who wasn’t. In the end, I realized that each of the individual stories pieced together tell the story of The Godfather, or Don Vito Corleone. It also tells the story of his son, Michael, who becomes the Don when Vito dies.

Why is this movie considered perfect? It’s perfect in that it gives you a very real glimpse into the world of a mob family. The strife that goes on, and the senseless killings. The cinematography is amazing. It’s quite amazing how detailed it all is. The characters are really deep, and the sets are very realistic.

My rating: 4.5

My only complaint about The Godfather is that it required intense concentration because of the wide number of characters introduced. At times, it became difficult to follow. It all comes together towards the end though, when all of the stories begin to tell the story. Michael’s character in particular was quite well developed overall. At the beginning, he doesn’t want to have anything to do with the family. Towards the end of the story, after his father dies, he has become quite the mafia man!

Something I discovered in the Wikipedia is this factoid… According to tradition, no Sicilian can refuse a request on his daughter’s wedding day. As a result, the Godfather, Tom Hagen, the family attorney and consigliere, and Santino, “Sonny”, the Don’s oldest son, are preoccupied with hearing requests from friends and employees. That answers the question of why they were in meetings all during the wedding ceremony. That appeared so strange to me at first.

Overall, it’s recommended but it is a rather dark film, not my usual taste.

Continue Reading About The Godfather:

• Watch the first 6 minutes of The Godfather
• The Godfather – IMDb Entry
• The Godfather – Wikipedia Entry

It’s true purpose is to launch programs. In the example below, you can see how easy it is to launch Firefox. To open up the command utility, just type Alt + Spacebar. Easy as pie!

In 1759, Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote, “The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement.”

Inspiration for this post from the great book “Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This.” Which is no doubt, my favorite book on advertising copywriting. It’s really cheap at Amazon, too. I suggest you buy a copy and share with your friends.

I hired Michael to teach me how to be a better salesperson and learned both sales, and how to run my business better.

As a sales coach, Michael worked with me to develop the right language for my specific sales situations. Many times, Michael even accompanied me on sales calls and would provide me with both encouragement and critiques.

While working with Michael, I saw a 10x return on my investment through the new customers I was landing. Most definitely the best money I have ever spent on consulting.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldgoodman

The book was fabulous.

It’s the story of turning a company inside out and removing management and giving that control to the workers. The book is a narrative story and it is so fast paced you’ll be able to read it in a few days. It will inspire you to overcome obstacles and think about situations completely differently. Semco enables the employees themselves to hire their supervisors, their managers, and even select warehouse locations and make decisions ranging from vendors to uniform colors. They don’t have a layer of management to do this anymore. Since employees as a team can also fire the supervisors they have the incentive to find someone good. They even have open books and everybody sets their own salary (and bonus).

• The Wikipedia Article on Ricardo Semler.
• Read the first 5 pages on Amazon
• Lessons from Semco on Structure, Growth and Change
• Semco web site

If you’re going to read E-Myth then you also have to read Good to Great. On Principal, I completely disagree with some of the ideas E-Myth presents. While it’s handy and you can learn a lot, the basic premise of E-Myth is that people don’t matter and process is the thing that does matter. I disagree with that 100%.

I agree with E-Myth in its description of the typical business (managers, technicians, entrepreneurs). It’s the solution to the problem I disagree with. And that solution is process, process, process. Not just some process, all process and the extensive documentation of process. With E-Myth everything is documented down to the detail and the idea is that once something is documented you can hire anybody to do that job. E-Myth rides on the premise that people are robots and lack creativity to do their jobs.

Good to Great is the exact opposite and is guiding readers in the right direction. It says you should think about who is on the bus first, before you even figure out what you’re going to do in your business. It argues that a good team can do almost anything and we’ve seen that over and over again with businesses that succeed wildly. They just go out there and do awesome stuff again and again.

I see very little process at most of these companies. I can even think of a number of web startups that appear to have no process from the outside, and have eschewed process.

Now let me sidetrack just a moment and say I’ve spent more time with E-Myth than I care to admit. I spent months working with an E-Myth consultant working through their course a few years ago. I found it disgusting how focused it was on process. Everything was packaged up really nicely and the gist was that I could become a success if I just stuck with the multi-year program.

In all reality I think the most you can learn from E-Myth is this simple fact. There are three types of people and you shouldn’t try to do all of them yourself.

1. Entrepreneurs (who are the dreamers, focused on the future)
2. Managers (who are the organizers, focused on how to do things efficiently)
3. Technicians (who are the “do-ers” focused on what’s to be done)

I invite the authors of these books to defend their positions.

Continue reading:

• Jim Collins — Good To Great
• First Who, Then What
• E-Myth Worldwide
• Review of E-Myth

Big lineup of authors
This book was a combination effort by a number of bloggers. They are: Phil Sherry, Andy Budd, Simon Collison, Michael Heilemann, Richard Rutter, David Powers, Chris J. Davis, and John Oxton. The extent of talent wrapped up in this book is stunning. Imagine if one person tried to cover all of the blog engines out there. It would be impossible. This approach works.

Table of Contents

1. The “Web Log”
2. Creating a Local Test Environment for Your Blog
3. Movable Type
4. ExpressionEngine
5. WordPress
6. Textpattern
7. Write Your Own Blog Engine

Who is this book for?
It’s for anybody that hasn’t mastered their particular blog engine and wants to learn more. It includes all of the basics like installing a blog and setting up your testing environment to design and coding ideas. It even touches on some CSS basics. Rather than learning by trial and error, I think if you read this you just might save some time.

I primarily work with WordPress and I found that chapter particularily interesting. I learned a new trick reading this book. Did you know that you can create vastly different layouts in your category archives by simply saving off separate category pages? For example, for the Best category I could create a file named category-18.php into my WordPress theme folder and immediately without any further customization that category could have a different layout. The number that you enter refers to the category id number (found in the WordPress Edit Categories page). That’s pretty cool. Here’s some info on the WordPress Codex about Category Templates if you want to read more.

I’ve heard people say that ExpressionEngine is very nice and so I found it interesting to read about the process of setting it up. I would really love to use it for a project. A similar process was outlined for Movable Type and Textpattern. A couple of times I thought the book got off track however in the end I noticed it was each author putting his own spin and sharing his process for building a great blog.

To conclude
If you haven’t delved into customizing a blog before and you want to save some time — even if you have — get this book. I could have saved hours had I read this book a year or two ago. If only for the great material about WordPress. It does have some portions that are more basic yet really shines when educating about customizing and designing a great blog.

Lacie will not look at it, and somehow diagnosed that mine is operational over the phone (how brilliant) and pointed to a one-year warranty which has just passed. I won’t be buying Lacie again.

I hope to have advertisers for my coffee blog within the month and wanted to be able to serve ads, track statistics, and generally wreak havoc.

I’m doing a good job with that so far.

Overall impression: phpAdsNew is very powerful yet comes with a learning curve. They need a “Wizard” or something fo helping newbies get going. I almost gave up when I couldn’t figure out how to insert banner ads. You can see my results on the sidebar. I threw a picture of a shot of espresso up on the left side on BrainFuel.

One thing: if I were an advertiser I would rather pay to get PageRank juice. That’s what I want and I’m convinced my future banner ad customers will see things the same way.

I have a few thoughts about the introduction of a WYSIWYG editor for WordPress. Firstly, I think it’s great because this brings WordPress more in line with what business users and non-technical bloggers might want. Finally someone can make something bold without having to know any HTML tags. They made a really smart move in that they created an easy way to disable the editor so you can hand code everything. Absolutely cool.

I’ve used this editor on my Superman blog at WordPress.com (a hosted service that you don’t have to upgrade). The cool thing I’ve noticed is that the editor allows for easy insertion of the “More” link in posts. This is something that was often overlooked in WYSIWYG Plugins for WP 1.5. WYSIWYG Plugins have actually been somewhat of hacks if you want my opinion.

As to what I think of the new interface. It’s definately improved. Steve Smith at Ordered List has already gone and updated his Tiger Admin Theme for WP 2.0.

Oh! One more thing: Built in support from the get-go for Akismet spam filtering. That’s awesome!

I’m planning to upgrade Arizona Coffee soon with the latest version of WP and we’ve been talking about upgrading BrainFuel sometime in early 2006.

The dinosaur chase scenes put Jurassic Park to shame. Halfway through the movie I commented to my friends that I thought this movie was redefining movies altogether. There are scenes in which dinosaurs are falling off cliffs and dangling from giant vines and King Kong comes in and beats them up as if they were toys.

Well I won’t go into a lengthy review. I’ll just say this one gets 5 stars and I’ll definitely get the extended edition of this just so I can watch the dinosaur chase scene again and again. It will be worth it.

Some interesting notes:

• You might want to check out the review over at The Uber Geeks.
• King Kong IMDb entry.
• Remember that show called Early Edition about a guy who gets tomorrows newspaper today? Well, Kyle Chandler, who played Gary Hobson is in this movie.
• Shades of Grey review.
• 1933 King Kong Movie Stills

I give it 4 stars out of 5 just for the wit and comedy and the fact that I’ve watched it perhaps 5 times in the last few years and it is always funny.

It’s filmed in a sort of style where it reminds you of other classics like It’s a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 32nd St. Maybe those films and throw in a little bit of the old animated classics like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. That was apparently intentional as they hope the film will become a classic. I’m sure it is too soon to tell whether that will be the case however it has the sort of humor that could last a lifetime. I think what is lacking in this story compared to, say the previously mentioned movies, is a significant moral to the story. This movie pokes fun at Santa and provides some witty scenes showing how boring our lives and daily routine can become. It shows a family dealing with an unexpected turn in life and make the decision that family is more important than everything else. Or at least, that’s my best take on it.

Since “Buddy” (Will Ferrell) has never experienced city life he blunders through almost everything with a lovable curiosity even causing problems for others and himself and realizing some of the sad moments in life. Overall it’s a genuinely funny movie that is designed to be family friendly.

Whoever wrote the screenplay deserves an award. The dialog was very, very good. I have seen so many movies where the dialog felt unnatural. I think films with young actors fall into the trap of poor dialog combined with poor acting far too often. This movie does not. In fact, I was impressed with the actors who played the 4 Pevensie children. They really knew their characters and the dialog fit perfectly.

To give you an example about the dialog. I think the reaction on meeting Mr. Beaver was very good, and the reaction upon meeting Mr. Tumnus was excellent. It made for a film that works realistically even with talking animals.

This film could have been an hour longer. It was very fast paced. I found things moving almost too quickly. Winter moves to summer fast: One minute they’re on frozen ice and the next they’re on a plain with green grass and sunshine. Perhaps in the book that happens as well, its been years since I read it.

I thought the wolves were very realistic and I thought it was impressive how the White Witch creates disappointing moments for her captors. That was very dynamic.

If you’ve seen the 1988 television version you’ll see a lot of similarities. For the television movie they eventually made The Silver Chair and Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader (IMdb). Both were quite good for their time and I hope they remake those as well.

Overall I give it 4 Beaver Units out of five using our highly scientific Beaver Extra Awesome Veritable Expert Rating (BEAVER) system. Here they are in no particular order:

Off site information:

• Review: ”Narnia” finally gets to the big screen
• IMDb entry for this movie
• Mr. Tumnus’ house – how they made it
• The cast

So if you need to order memory for your computers I’d recommend 4 All Memory. They have a lifetime warranty and they apparently mean it. From their web site: Lifetime is defined as the lifetime of the product on the market. Outdated technology is not covered by lifetime warranty if the item is no longer available on the common market as a new product.

I’m having a difficult time deciding whether I like this movie best or The Wrong Trowsers. In The Wrong Trowsers a very cool penguin takes centerstage in an elaborate plot to rob a museum. While that film employs more subtle cues and less spoken word it still has a very, very good story. In this new film there are way more characters than ever before in an Ardman film and so it is just that much more action packed.

The plot is simple: Wallace and Gromit live in a small English town where the annual Giant Vegetable Competition is held. Rabbits have infested the town and Wallace’s company Anti-Pesto is considered the best company to manage the pests in a humane way.

Back at the home Wallace and Gromit keep all of the rabbits in the basement and feed them presumably until after the competition is over.

I won’t go into details but the next bit is where the film really shines. A giant rabbit starts terrorizing the gardens and eating the huge vegetables. There are some wonderful chase scenes and good character development at this point. There is even one scene where the giant rabbit climbs a building ala King Kong.

One more interesting note: throughout the film I was expecting to see a nod to Jimmy Stewarts film Harvey in which a giant invisible rabbit is also the central character. I didn’t see it. Checking the Wikipedia however reveals this (now obvious) tidbit: A large carrot sign advertises “Harvey’s” vegetable shop, a play on the film Harvey.

Overall I give it 4.5 Rabbits. Go see this one folks. Here are the rabbits (with a couple of their friends) and some vegetables:

External Links:

• The article about this film on the Wikipedia.
• IMDb entry.
• More reviews on Google.

Now the first thing to notice is the 44 year timespan it took to create the canal (really a long canal with locks and a lake in the middle). That timespan includes a lot of failures that built up to success in the end. Failure by both the French (yes, the French were involved which I didn’t know) and the Americans.

Some other interesting tidbits:

• Approximately 12,000 ships pass through the canal each year.
• Nicaragua was almost chosen as an alternate route.
• At the height of construction, there were 40,000 workers working on it.
• Yellow Fever was a big problem during the construction and Malaria as well. Yellow Fever was literally eradicated when the Americans removed all standing water.
• For much of the construction period the plan was to build a canal at sea level. Which would have meant building a much deeper canal. Even up until the Americans started construction this was the original plan and Congress even got in on the decision.
• A railway was built and served to transport supplies and excess material back and forth across the canal line.
• Most of the electric motors and generators were built by our very own General Electric and most of the steel materials for the locks were made in the USA.
• The day the canal opened in 1914 was the same day World War I erupted and the event was hardly reported.
• Apparently, the amount of cement was so vast that the workers were instructed to “shake the bag” when it was empty at a reported savings of over $50,000 (and in 1914 that was a lot of dough).

Overall it was a fantastic book. I previously had only a cursory knowledge of the Panama Canal yet never knew the history or the great struggle to build it. Fascinating book and I would recommend it. I’ve also had the privilege of listening to some other books by this author and hope to write up a review soon. He’s a very good author and gives you details that add to the story.

Here’s a link to Amazon with more info. You might also find the article on the Wikipedia to be of interest.

This book gets four Gophers (it’s the Chris Tingom rating system for October). Here they are:

Why four gophers intead of five? Well, in my opinion the book spent too much time focusing on what happened with the French (first half of the book) rather than the Americans (the last half of the book). The American part could have been longer and added more details. But that’s just my opinion. Overall it was an excellent read!!

It’s fabulous and tells the story from the perspective of those inside the towers. The minutes before they were hit, and the 102 minutes following. Every detail is exposed including the thoughts of survivors, their discussions in the tower, the decisions they made, and the radio messages.

I learned a thing or two:

• Explains some stuff about how radio communications between fire and police were barely effective due to the use of dated radios and a vice between departments
• Interesting information about the size of the damage inside the towers as well as structural information I didn’t know like how the fire coating was made and the length of steel beams
• How each tower had more than 100 elevators (and get this 80 elevator maintenance crewmembers!)

I can’t recommend it enough. Especially the audio version.

Related: Amazon link and a NY Times article written by the author (might require login). Apparently the authors work for the New York Times. Here’s an interesting engineering perspective about what caused the towers to fall. At the bottom of that page is a link to a pdf that is pretty cool, too. Another fabulous article. There are a lot of theories about what caused the WTC collapse and I’m not really saying this is how it happened just that the book was really interesting.

You can take multiple screenshots all at once and it can crop them down to any zoom you want (full screen, current application, etc.).

That company is FastQ Communications. From a service standpoint when my DSL ever goes down I can call them up and talk to one of their support staff and get an almost insant idea of what is going on. Often when I’ve called they already know what the problem is. Usually a router has gone down or a third party bandwidth provider is having problems. It’s always fixed quickly.

If you call their support staff and you talk to Doug you’ll be talking to the right guy. More than anyone I’ve talked to he’s able to diagnose technical problems and resolve problems really FAST.

So there is my personal recommendation. I know many of my clients and friends have selected FastQ over the years based on my feedback.

Business books and efficiency books bore me entirely most of the time. I used to like them. Not any more. Usually they are written by business failures who can write. Books about submarine missions or biographies are far more interesting.

Back to the point: Getting Things Done is a personal organizational technique. Hmm, technique is too small of a word. Better is system or plan for keeping things in your life organized.

So my current conclusion is that the book says a lot of important things and rather than just suggesting you should get more organized it actually has things you can do and if you do them it helps keep things organized. The trouble is you have to keep it up and simply starting takes a lot of time. The author says most people need 2 or 3 days just to get everything out of your head and into organized to do systems. That sounds scary but you can begin to implement some of the things the author writes about immediately. Simple little processes that combined are supposed to really help keep you organized.

So I have finished the book. I need to re-read it because I feel like I missed something. It hasn’t transformed my life like everybody says. Something though that I have discovered is that even if I haven’t implemented every technique discussed in the book it inspired me to rethink everything about the way I organize projects. Causing me to look for solutions.

One thing I’ve done is create project jackets for every single project I have going.

(I also created project jackets for almost all of my older closed web site projects from the past 5 years or so but don’t tell anybody. I’ve actually already used the first 100 envelopes! Insane.)

Project jackets look like this:

So if you’re like me you probably just read this and said “project jackets are stupid!”

“I would agree with you entirely” is what I would have said two weeks ago.

Let me tell you something: if you don’t have a system for where to put project related papers then this is a possible solution. I hadn’t notice before, but I didn’t have a good system for organizing project related documents. They’d be in folders, or thrown into my file cabinet, or even just stacked on empty desks. I guess I never notice. Odd how that is, but I’m guessing most people could learn from this rule:

Chris’ Rule: If you have a lot of papers sitting around, think about what categories that stuff might fit into and create envelope jackets for that stuff so you can get it out of sight and out of mind (except when you need it).

Having a new project jacket is wonderful. Now I can carry project stuff with me everywhere and I look organized (clients like that for some reason) and I also feel more organized. I can also just grab a folder and know I have everything related to that project. It makes it easy to look up old notes and papers.

I’ve seen people use project jackets before. Other agencies use them and so do the folks at Kinko’s. I never imagined that I would like them as well.

My project jackets are simply 12″ x 15.5″ catalog envelopes I picked up at OfficeMax and I created a “jacket” template I print and write on. I write the project name, client name, the date the project was opened, finished, and is due. Other information I might add: invoice and check numbers and team members. I also create a project number. Each project follows a consecutive number.

A project is anything that involves more than a few hours or if you will be doing it on a separate day. The project numbers are handy because at the end of the year you can see how many projects you did.

At the very least, you can tell your friends you did X number of projects and they’ll be impressed you even know.

“Wow Chris, that’s really impressive!” they’ll say.

Then I might say: “This concludes our project jacket seminar.

Insert big groan from the audience here.

“There are some books in the back and I’ll be around to greet folks and please clean up your seats as you exit. Thanks so much and remember: Do your part to help prevent forest fires.”

But it wasn’t enough.

Frankly, my PC is twice as fast as the PowerBook. And my Toshiba is older than the PowerBook. I purchased the Toshiba 16 months ago. The PowerBook… not sure, probably 12 months. Where is it slower? Not just big things like Photoshop and large graphics files, but simple things like changing between the tabs in FireFox (it should be instantaneous, but it isn’t).

Let me show you a little graph I made that will show you my productivity decline this week.

Here’s what I liked about using the Mac:
The interface certainly rocks and I found Expose a frequent tool. The tools I use every day are simple and designed the same way so I found them easy to use.

What I didn’t like:
Apple’s Mail program is very nice on the surface, but I have some serious issues with the way it handles default mail accounts. Something I might post on separately. It is nicely designed.
FireFox isn’t as nice on the Mac for some reason.
Apple hasn’t thought about Importing and Exporting enough. For example, the Address Book can only import vCards one at a time. That just won’t cut it. Microsoft Entourage does the same thing. Weird. Being an Outlook user, I found very little advice on how to import my Outlook PST file. So I didn’t even try.

Comparison of applications:
Nothing competes with iCal. Of everything I tried this week, this program wins hands down. On the other hand, FTP is seriously lacking on the Mac side. I kept thinking how nice SmartFTP was and how I’d be done already if I were using it.

Conclusions:
In the end, I really liked it. It gave me an opportunity to find out why people like the Mac platform. I must say that I have a G4 Tower here with only 256MB of RAM and switching between tabs in FireFox was faster than even on the PowerBook. So that is interesting.

So what’s the future: I’ll be using the Mac more now that I’m familiar with it and am planning to get a new mouse just for use on the PowerBook. I’m debating using iCal. I’m planning to also get more RAM for my G4 Tower so that I can experiment with a Mac that has more speed. Because in the end this is all about speed. Speed with which I can do things on the computer and the ability in which I can get my work done fast.

The movie is really good. Without spoiling it, the two uncles spent a considerable amount of time in Africa and fought in a bunch of wars fighting Arabs and probably just about everyone else. They were able to capture a bunch of gold from a sheik and since growing old have lived on a farm in Texas. The film portrays these with a lot of visuals and it reminded me of the movie The Princess Bride. Not sure why, maybe it’s because they’re both stories to an extent.

Everybody thinks they’re really rich and dozens of salesmen call at the ranch. The reason they are rich is unknown to most. The consensus is that they were bank robbers. Nobody knows.

The movie starts out with a shot of these two guys shooting guns into the water at catfish. It pretty much goes from there and has a high quality comedy count. Overall though, it’s a story about a kid growing up, two guys growing old, and family values. Highly recommended.

I watched the DVD version which has a number of extra features, deleted scenes, behind the scenes and interviews.

Interesting tidbits you can learn from the IMDb: the director also wrote the screenplay for The Iron Giant and Haley Joel Osment (who plays Walter) was the actor who portrayed Forrest Gump (the younger Forrest Gump).

It gets (drumroll) five movie moons (an unusual rating mechanism I invented).
Here they are:

Update: Here’s some box office financial info about how Secondhand Lions did.

I just watched a somewhat different movie called Waking Ned Devine. It’s about a guy in Ireland who dies upon seeing his winning lottery ticket. Some of his old friends decide to claim the ticket. When the lottery guy shows up to write the check to Ned he says he’s going to check around to make sure Ned is really “Ned.” This introduces some problems. Since the real Ned is dead, one of the old guys stands in for Ned and there are some funny scenes. The two old guys must try to figure a way to convince the townfolk to agree to the plan.

The story has a bunch of funny twists and to be honest starts out really slow. I almost gave up. Then halfway through it gets good. It would probably be enjoyed by people like my grandpa. As far as content… It’s pretty clean. The worst is a couple shots of two old guys jumping into the ocean without any clothes (from a distance). It’s much tamer than The Gods Must Be Crazy, if you’ve seen that.

It gets 3 movie stars. Here they are:

This concludes the short book review for Monday March 28th. Thank you.

The idea is that you’d create a business where all of your business comes from referrals and also this would make sales a breeze.

Well, the author of that book decided he had more to say and created an eBook supplement for free download. That’s why I’m posting today. That’s all. So go and download the eBook PDF.

The site is pretty cool, too.

For a limited time they have a free eBook about optimizing effeciecy in web projects. It’s called Budget Design. It looks engaging.

You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar: The Sandler Sales Institute’s 7-Step System for Successful Selling
- New!
We can’t recommend this book enough. Get it if you want to be great at sales and want to learn an excellent sales style. "…uses examples of successful and unsuccessful sales to illustrate Sandler’s ideas on turning ordinary salespeople into crack sales reps who can control any situation." I would highly recommend getting a sales coach from Sandler to help you "practice."

Webmonkey article: Search Engine Optimization on Google
Here’s a terrific article about how Google works and what you need to do to achieve higher rankings on Google, Yahoo, and other search engines.

The Tipping Point
The premise of this book is that there are three different types of people. They are connectors, mavens, and salesmen. The connectors are people who collect people. They know people and are able to connect people and ideas and can’t stop telling you about the people they know. A maven is a person who collects information. These are the type of people who know everything about different product lines, they remember every little detail about things and cannot stop telling you about their latest find. The last set of people are the salesmen and they’re the people who have an uncanny ability to sell things. Quite a good read, highly recommended.

The Creative Business Guide to Running A Graphic Design Business
I’ve only read half of this book so far yet it is near the top of my list when it comes to design business advice.

The Business Side of Creativity
A design business guide for creative’s.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing : Violate Them at Your Own Risk
This is a straightforward and insightful book about the twenty two laws of marketing that Al Ries and Jack Trout have personally identified. I’m sure there are more.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand
This book takes a few well known brands and tears them apart revealing the key aspects of their brands, and how they got there.

Brain Surgery for Suits: 56 things every account person should know
This book is for project managers or anyone who works with clients on a frequent basis. Written by Robert Solomon, this book outlines the key things you should know before you get into the consulting services industry.

Pour Your Heart Into It, How Starbucks Built A Company One Cup at a Time
The story from Howard Schultz, Chairman and CEO of Starbucks, of how a coffee giant was born. Learn the fascinating tale and story behind the making of a cultural icon. If you have time, read this review as well for more details about the book.

Jack: Straight from the Gut
An interesting look at the man who ran General Electric for twenty years. He reinvented GE by integrating new and innovative practices.

The E-Myth Revisited
A book that helps to explain how to grow your business. If you are wondering how to take your business from just a single person to an entity with multiple faces, this might be the book for you. Buy it at Amazon.com or read a review here.

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
An easy read. This book highlights some of the more obvious keys to leadership and unlike some other books in this category, it succeeds by continually building upon the other laws.

What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School

Teaches some of the principle keys to business for both seasoned execs and high school grads alike.

Creative Company : How St. Luke’s Became ‘the Ad Agency to End All Ad Agencies’
This is a book every person should read who is in the creative business, whether it be advertising or marketing or technology consulting. This book is especially suited for CEO’s and Principles of design firms who want to grow. Visit St. Lukes on the web at www.stlukes.co.uk and check out the Fast Company article. This one is better.

The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from Ideo, America’s Leading Design Firm
Written by Tom Kelley of IDEO, this book is fantastic for people and companies who are interested in expanding their creative output. Besides showcasing some of the neat products that IDEO has developed, Tom goes in depth to uncover the process IDEO uses to design and build great products. To learn more about the book, visit the books web site at theartofinnovation.com.

The Goal : A Process of Ongoing Improvement
I listened to the Audio-Book version of this novel, which has multiple voices and characters throughout. I can’t imagine reading it… GET THE AUDIO version. It will help you to identify bottlenecks in your business.

Why We Buy
Written by Paco Underhill, read an interview (best sentence from the interview: Underhill: It’s a challenging question. Some of it is letting her know the age-appropriateness of stuff. Letting her know the sales rankings for computer games helps, too. One of the reasons online retailers such as Amazon.com have succeeded is that other retailers have dropped the ball in terms of generating purchase confidence at the point of sale.) and hear audio samples online. More about the book and Read a chat at ABCNews.com. Don’t forget to check out Envirosell.com which is Underhill’s company. Read chapter 1 of the book.

The Corporate Coach
While this book is over eight years old, it is still a good read. It tells the story about how one person turned a retail store around from being in debt, to profitable.