Bread-and-butter pudding and The Filter Bubble: video

21 September 2011

Hey, your own web site shows at the top of search results! Not so fast: Google or Facebook has shown you exactly what you want to see. Rachel talks about the impact of data gathering plus personalization, trends described in Eli Pariser’s ‘The Filter Bubble.

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Facebook for business, marketing, professional development

16 September 2011

Facebook: it’s all about you—yes you—and us too! You probably write or manage content of some sort, like most Contented readers, and that’s certainly a big part of what we do here at Contented. By now, we’re all aware that content includes everything on social media sites and social intranets. So you are probably writing [...]

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Contented places: photo contest, 2011

16 September 2011

Many people told us they loved last year’s Contented places photo competition, so we are running it again this year. Think of a place where you feel (or felt) utterly contented. It might be beautiful or not, at work or at play—surprise us! The contest is not about getting the perfect photograph (although that’s a [...]

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Writing tip: Association apostrophes are optional with plurals

15 September 2011

Sometimes an apostrophe shows association rather than possession: a week’s pay, Christchurch Girls’ High School. Strange to say, in such cases, you always need an apostrophe when the associated word is singular (a summer’s day), but an apostrophe is optional when the associated word is plural (Christchurch Girls’ High School). This is a grammatical oddity [...]

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4 years on: awesome online writing courses for the digital workplace

14 September 2011

Yesterday Alice, Rachel and baby Eden celebrated 4 years of developing and marketing awesome online writing courses for the digital workplace. Right at the start, we had set some stern and serious goals for our new company, Contented. But we also made it a policy to celebrate achievements, and to be sure we were both [...]

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Remembering 9/11: The radio by my bed…

12 September 2011

Two poems written shortly after September 11, 2001. Sometimes poetry helps the writer. Sometimes it helps the reader. Reprinted on the 10th anniversary of that unforgettable day of horror. The radio by my bed The radio by my bed is saying that people are dead is saying the streets are red is filling my heart [...]

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Poems about blogging

10 September 2011

Sometimes my worlds overlap: poetry and writing for the digital workplace. I don’t often blog about poetry, but I do secretly write poems about blogging. A few bloggy poems follow, for the eccentric few who enjoy such things. My father’s blog In my father’s blog are many mansions. A blog is content in a room [...]

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How entrepreneurs read ‘Getting to Plan B’

28 August 2011

Getting to Plan B — Breaking through to a better business model. Sometimes the mere title of a book can be enlightening. Yes! That’s where we’re at, I thought. I feel stuck. So when I saw this on Ed’s desk I grabbed it and asked to borrow it. Somewhat alarmed, my entrepreneur friend agreed after [...]

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Plain English awards: celebrating the communications Cinderella

23 August 2011

Plain English is, by definition, clear to the intended reader. This clarity has a positive impact on efficiency, productivity and customer relations. Famously, plain English also saves money for the organizations with a plain English culture—often hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Given the facts, you’d think every organization in the world would be [...]

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How many domains should you buy?

18 August 2011

A client is developing a major web resource. He bought what seemed the ideal domain for one year, then reconsidered and bought two more domains, again for one year each. Now our client has asked us: Do you think that it would be a good business decision to capture all three of these domain names [...]

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