ComHacker.org

by Patricia Mayo

ChaCha is a whole new beast of search. If you thought it was tough getting a regular search engine to spit out what you really need for certain queries - then be prepared for sheer torture with ChaCha.

That, my friends, is what proved “third try is a charm” completely, and utterly, wrong.

I asked ChaCha because I was having a hard time finding what I needed through regular search. Usually I figure that’s because I’m using the wrong words - so maybe the “search pros” at ChaCha could figure it out.

Well, that is - if they can figure out what I’m asking in the annoying 160 character limit without an ability to follow up with the last person who tried but failed.

So I reverted to the tried but true “monkey see, monkey do.” In my fifth and finally successful try, I said “see this? This is what I want, but free.” For that I could’ve used Google’s “sites like this” function, and that’s what I typically do - because ChaCha has always been this way for me.

What am I doing wrong here folks? Why can’t I get what I want out of ChaCha?

(By the way, I really do have a ChaCha t-shirt. Two, in fact. I have a special affection for them too, being they were my first “geek shirts.”)

by Patricia Mayo

I was chatting with my buddy Rob Williams of 170spoons when he said “gotta run, time to catch up on some dinner and RSS.” I mentioned I haven’t bothered with RSS for months. His response was, quite understandably - “WHAT?!”

Photo mashup of images by Daniel Bonoore and Beau de Noir

You’re probably going to call me nuts, but RSS, to me, is quite inefficient. There are far better tools which serve the same perceived purpose. I know, I know - I’ve just thrown you through a complete loop, but allow me to explain… [Read the rest of this entry…]

by Patricia Mayo

The “experts” say you should include pictures in anything you publish online - but they never say what to look for in a picture.

Photo via Fail Blog

They say a picture is worth a thousand words - but very few realize exactly what they are saying with their pictures.

Normally, we aren’t aware of the messages these images are communicating - but that just makes the message even more powerful. Just ask any pro selling through a catalog or direct mail.

The difference between a good image and a bad image is very cut and dry - success, or failure. Period. [Read the rest of this entry…]

by Patricia Mayo

Of course you’re not. What, you - afraid to read a blog post? Pshaw. No way. Couldn’t happen.

Photo by Sophie

Yet if I had titled this “Ambiguity Aversion” and just left it at that, I bet you wouldn’t be reading this right now. That’s because of a hard-wired fact of humanity - we’re fully-trained trained skeptics of anything unfamiliar.

And I’m willing to bet that if I didn’t tell you I’m about to detail how to overcome ambiguity aversion to increase any metric, you probably wouldn’t read beyond this point. But since I just did - well, let’s move on, shall we? [Read the rest of this entry…]