I just ran across an article called The Right to Read by RMS that is a must read by anyone who owns a TV, VCR, CDs, books or computer. I've long been whining about the DMCA and other legislation (and technology) that nibbles away at the intent of fair use. "The Right to Read" is a short story of a disutopia, a prognosis of what can happen if the trend continues as it has. We've already seen shrink wrapped textbooks with licenses similar to the licenses of software in the last few years, break the shrink wrap and you've agreed to the book's license. This story just points out what could happen if this sort of thing progressed.

Here's my Amazon review of Building Brandwidth by Sergio Zyman and Scott Miller


When writing this book the authors should have followed their own advice, "If you don't build benefits and customer value into your brandwidth, your days are numbered." (pg 12) and "Every detail is either adding value or subtracting it..." (pg 40). If they had I would have loved this book. Instead the authors trumpet old ideas (e.g. Be customer focused not product focused) and don't add their own take on what that means. They don't even offer much in the way of supporting evidence.


Throughout the book I was asking myself, "How? You're the marketing gurus, tell me how your customers did it." They talk about viral marketing, how did the successful companies do it? What are the pitfalls? They talk about the importance of fostering a conversation with your customers. Again, no examples. No "how". The authors make grand statements, but never back them up with evidence of their truth nor examples of how the sucessful used the idea for success.

If you want to find out about being market driven read "The Market Driven Organization" by George S. Day., "Inside the Tornado" or "Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey A. Moore.

But save yourself some money and time, don't bother with this book.

As I said in yesterday's post, I'm really getting into CSS (cascading style sheets). "Style Sheet" is quite a misnomer in that CSS also allows you to perform layout tasks. What's cool about doing layouts with CSS is that you have true separation of your content and formatting.

To get you started here are a few links I've discovered:
A List Apart - Lots of real world info on the differences between browsers
Glish - Good hints and tricks
Bluerobot - Has lots of hints and explanation
Webreference.com - A great step by step tutorial

I'm really getting into CSS. Its both a pain and awsome at the same time. I've redone this page using CSS exclusively. Even the dropshadow on the blog entry is done in CSS (its just a little trick of drawing multiple boxes around the main body). I'm still going to be tweaking it in the near future but this is what I've got so far.

I just got the best spam ever. I think it speaks for itself.
This was caught by SpamCop, my spam control tool, but every week or so I review the held mail as a precaution. Oddly enough, these guys actually sent from their own server and didn't forge anything.
--------------------------------
Subject: Open immediately for smart spam control
From: Travis

Hey!

Better than all other Spam filters -

Only Delivers The Email You Want!

This is the ultimate solution that is guaranteed to stop all spam
without losing any of your important email! This system protects you 100%.

We didn't believe it either until we actually tried it. So you be the judge and see for yourself.



You owe it to yourself to try this program, and forward this email to all of your friends
who hate Spam or as many people as possible.

Get rid of unwanted emails now. {Link removed}



If you want to stop receiving this {Link removed}

Previa Marketing, Inc.
14781 Memorial Dr. / Suite 966
Houston, TX 77079

Conforms to legal requirements of 2003 US Can-Spam Act.