Blogs

June 20, 2008

Bugsy works on keeping my chair warm while T.J. does some blogging and Thunder chases cats away. It's Take Your Dog to Work Day!

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June 12, 2008

We're back from Washington, D.C., where a team of folks from Hammock spent several days covering the NFIB 2008 National Small Business Summit, using our "association community builder" approach to share the event. Video, text and photos can all be viewed at the NFIB Summit website.

The Summit is always a great time for learning about small business issues and sharing a meal and great conversation with folks from NFIB who are scattered all over the country. Putting email addresses and new faces together is always exciting for me. But a definite highlight for me this year was two seconds with Roger Staubach who spoke at the gala reception Tuesday evening. My Daddy is so proud!

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May 12, 2008

I participated in my first wiki during the Super Bowl three years ago. It was basically the score chart page that goes around many offices during the Super Bowl or the Final Four. Everyone purchases a square or two, and if one of your squares lines up with the final score, you win!!! (This particular Super Bowl wiki was all for charity, with the cash going to the winner's favorite charity.) With fewer than 50 people participating, this wiki was small and easy to use.

Compare that to Wikipedia, the behemoth online encyclopedia, which has more than 2.3 million articles in English alone. In that instance, wikis can be rather intimidating. But they don't have to be.

Shifting Careers, the New York Times small business blog, has linked to a fun and informative little video that explains a wiki in a very easy-to-understand format.

Wikis can fill many needs from social networking to education to business collaboration -- one of our favorites around here is smallbusiness.com -- but they don't have to be scary. They can be fun -- and even generous -- if you play your cards right.

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April 29, 2008

When I was growing up, there was a picture of him hanging on our living room wall, right along side other family portraits. His voice could often be heard coming from the den and wafting down the hallway as he sang. I even spent a couple of July Fourth holidays picnicking with him in Luckenbach, Texas. And still to this day, I call him "Uncle Willie."

And when the Texas Monthly celebrating Willie Nelson's 75th birthday showed up in our mail yesterday, I actually got a bit choked up. I'm no designer. I've never shot a photo for a magazine cover, but I know when a good cover hits me like a ton of bricks. And this one certainly did. It's just him. No barcode, no cover blurbs teasing inside stories, no airbrushing. It's just Uncle Willie. Aging and full of history and music and legend.

A striking cover. That's all.

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April 15, 2008

We have an incredible team of graphic designers here at Hammock, Inc., and I take advantage of their creative tendencies every chance I get.

But sometimes, I receive a photo from a client that just needs to be cropped or resized before I can use it, and I don't want to bother the design folks or use up their time on such a simple task. So I'm learning to do some of that on my own.

And right now, those lessons are coming from picnik.com. This web-based software did not require anything to be downloaded to my computer. There was no box to buy and I can use it from any location where I'm connected to the web.

It's simple:

• Upload a picture from your computer, camera or storage device.
• Make your edits.
• Resave.

In a click, I can crop the photo, change the size and even auto-fix the lighting and color. If I wanna get really creative, picnik also allows me to give a cat some googly eyes, turn a tree neon green or pretend my photo was taken with a Polaroid camera.

I first noticed the editing power of picnik.com through flickr.com, but you don't have to be a member of flickr to use it. There is a free version and a premium version (only about two bucks a month if you go that route).

Is there a photo-editing software -- web-based or otherwise -- that you love? Let me know. I'd love to keeping learning.

Many thanks to my lovely model, Augie, for her time. She insisted on only green treats and bottled spring water in her dressing room, but other than that, she was a joy to work with.

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April 3, 2008

Well, it's been one week. One full week since I unplugged the Windows-based machine and jumped head first into using a Mac. There's been no blood or tears, but I did sweat for a couple of days.

All of my colleagues at the "Pie in the Sky" (the Hammock headquarters in Nashville) have been happy and avid Mac users for years. I've heard them talk about the ease of use, the protection from viruses and the great creative uses of the Mac. But I still liked the old comfort that my Windows machine gave me. I knew where documents were filed. I knew how to backspace. And I knew exactly what to do with the control key.

And just a week in, I'm happy to report that I now know (or am at least in the midst of learning) all of those things on the Mac. I've become close friends with command+Q and finder. And I'm truly impressed with how fast Mac wakes up in the morning and is ready for work.

I'm sure about a month from now I'll feel like an old pro, and Megan and Patrick -- who probably cringe every time an IM window from me pops up and begins with "hey, can I ask you one more Mac question" -- will be so glad to have me out of their hair.

Now can someone just tell me where to buy a backspace key?

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March 11, 2008

What a wild and wonderful five days it was at SXSW in Austin. But we're baaaaack!!!

Other than some great Tex-Mex and BBQ, my time at SXSW was highlighted by learning the true power of Twitter, e-commerce, community and internationalization. We even successfully experimented with some live blogging about politics.

We also took lots of pictures along the way (BBQ included).

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March 7, 2008

Starting late Friday afternoon, I'll be adding a few new words to my vocabulary at SXSW.

Always a learning experience, I'm starting SXSW with a panel called "Bankrupt Your Startup in Five Easy Steps" Friday at 5 p.m. I'll be listening in on about a dozen other panels as SXSW runs through Tuesday, but I'll be checking email regularly. Drop me a line.

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December 21, 2007

Did you know that there are 254 counties in Texas? And over the holiday, I'll be driving through almost 20 of them. Luckily, the Hammock offices will be closed until Jan. 2, so I'll have plenty of time to do just that...

But if you need to reach me before Jan. 2 when I return with a belly full of BBQ, homemade tamales and my Gran's caramel candy, simply send an email to nfib@hammock.com or call me on my cell at 512-576-6905. Someone will be checking that nfib@hammock.com email address each day, but if you need an answer to an immediate question, the cell phone is probably your best bet.

Wishing you the happiest and healthiest from the Christmas season!

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December 17, 2007

In early November, I drew the lucky long straw and had the opportunity to spend the day at Dell in Round Rock, Texas, sitting at the table with Michael Dell. It was all part of the award for the 2007 Dell/NFIB Small Business Excellence in Customer Service Award. Oh, no, I didn't win the award...

I was there to write a story for MyBusiness magazine about winner Jim Cox from Franklin, Tenn. Jim's business, Medkinetics, is a web-based software company which allows medical facilities to keep track of procedures, physicians and privileges. Jim's business falls into the software-as-a-service category. (And interestingly enough just today, the Small Business Trends blog has a great explanation of this fast-growing trend.)

As part of winning the award, Jim won a lifetime membership to NFIB, the day with Dell, and $30,000 worth of technology and services from Dell.

As a silent observer, I must say it was pretty cool to see these two entrepreneurs sit at the table together and toss ideas and challenges back and forth. They talked about financing, computers (of course) and how there seems to be more technology in the grocery store than in the doctor's office. I have a hunch that both Michael Dell and Jim Cox will have a hand in changing that one of these days...

Read the full story about Jim's day on the Dell campus.

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Summer Huggins

Managing Editor

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