My 2¢ Worth

elcome to 2006. This is our first issue of the new year. We're only five days into the new year and it's already shaping up to be better than last year.

've got a lot of irons in the fire right now and a couple projects I'm working on, including a redesign of my site Paradigm Web Design.

 had hoped to have it completed and ready to go live by the first of the year, however, other commitments took up a large part of my time. I estimate another weeks work providing nothing else gets in my way.

othing wrong with the site as it is now, so there's no big hurry I guess. I just thought it was time for a change. Have you changed your Web site lately? Old designs do have a tendency to become stale after a while.

eep your visiters coming back with a Web site facelift for 2006. Check out my site and fill out the Client Inquiry Form.

Feature Article

Are You Derailing Your Business with Details?

by: Jeff Baas One Stop Web Support

Details can kill your web business. And I'm not talking about details killing your business from the standpoint of being careless about them. While it's true that being careless can hurt your business, everybody knows that (even if they don't always put it into practice).

The way I'm talking about that details can kill your business is if you focus too much on them.

Say what?

How on earth can focusing too much on details hurt your business?

Ever tried to walk on a railroad track?

When I was a kid, my aunt and uncle had a house right next to a railroad track. My uncle once challenged me to walk on the track without falling off.

Hey, it's not like walking a tightrope. That track was as wide as my feet. Should be no problem. So I started walking it, carefully watching my feet with each step to make sure I stayed on the track. But I couldn't get more than a couple of steps before I'd lose my balance and fall off.

My uncle taught me that the only way to walk that track successfully was to look at a point a ways down the track - not down at my feet. By setting a goal and focusing on it, I could walk on that track as easily as if I was walking right on the ground. It was only when I focused on my feet that I tripped up.

It works that way with business, too. Our natural reaction is to put all our attention into "watching our feet" as we deal with this short-term detail and that. But when we do that, we "fall off the track" of where we wanted to go.

Now, I'm not saying that we should ignore the details of our business as we gaze wistfully toward our vision of the knock-out business we dream of building. You never get anywhere without taking step after step after step to reach your goal. But you never get anywhere, either, if all you look at is the present step.

The point in the distance that you need to focus on is the need your audience has and the solution you have that will fill it. It requires you to understand your audience - who they are and what they need and what concerns stand in the way of them choosing your solution.

It's way too easy for us to focus on details, namely, on the latest traffic building tips or tools, the latest bells and whistles we can add to our site. Details are usually driven by facts, and facts are something we feel we can learn and control. Understanding the people who make up our pool of potential customers is a lot more scary. It requires us to step outside ourselves into the hearts and minds of other people.

Given the choice between dealing with predictable facts and details or dealing with unpredictable human nature, most of us will jump at dealing with facts any time.

But that just gets us stuck staring at our own feet as our feet inexplicably slip off the track. The only way to stay on track is by looking toward your ultimate goal: you helping people solve some problem in return for them repaying you fairly for the time and effort you put into it.

That's really the most simple definition of what business is. The details are not your business. The facts and the tips and the tools are not your business either. They're merely the steps you take to get to that point in the distance. And the more you take that to heart, the more easily you'll stay on the track toward your goal.

**************

Jeff Baas is a long-time student of the steps to success required in a wide variety of disciplines. He's found the same principles lead to success in virtually every field, and failure comes when people try to skip around them. See these principles applied to Internet marketing in the Seven Steps to Starting a Small Business Online in the articles, product reviews and free marketing strategies newsletter at www.onestopwebsupport.com

Form "focus" method

One of the things we have seen used a lot on the Web lately is the Form "focus" method. What's it do? It brings the typing cursor right to the input box that you designate. Google.com is one site that does this, and it is very handy to begin typing immediatly.

To automatically focus your forms, add the following code to your page and manipulate the attributes in red to suit your needs:

<body onload="document.thisform.username.focus()">
<form name="thisform">
<input name="username" type="text">
</form>

* Get these syndicated tip feeds for yourweb site, free. *

Second Article

Static Discharge Causes Flaky Damage

by: Stephen Bucaro Bucaro TecHelp

Some time ago I purchased a motherboard, CPU, and memory from a local computer store. The sales person did me the "favor" of plugging the CPU and memory into the motherboard. I held my breath as this was done with no care whatsoever taken to prevent damage from a possible electrostatic discharge.

A static discharge can damage or destroy integrated circuit electronics. The problem is that you may not see a visible spark. You may not know that a static discharge occurred. And, you are lucky if the static discharge totally destroyed the circuit.

Often a component is only damaged and appears to work. This type of damage can produce occasional or frequent errors. This is what technicians call "flaky" because the failure does not occur reliably enough to be able to track it down.

The technician can’t determine if the errors are caused by software or hardware. All they can do is keep changing things and waiting to see if the problem goes away. This is very time consuming and costly.

The proper way to handle computer circuits is to wear a grounded wrist strap. Any electrical charge that builds up on your body is then immediately conducted to ground. But experienced technicians have tricks for controlling static electricity.

One trick is to leave the circuit board laying on top of an antistatic bag or antistatic foam as much as possible. Another is to leave the computer plugged into the AC outlet with the computers power switch off. This places ground on the computers metal case. Then the technician works with one hand always on a metal part of the case. Any electrical charge that builds up on your body is then immediately conducted to ground the same as with a wrist strap.

The important thing is to take static discharge seriously. Don’t stick yourself or someone else with a flaky computer because you were too lazy to take basic care to protect against static discharge.

**************

Copyright©2002 Bucaro TecHelp.
To learn how to maintain your computer and use it more effectively to design a Web site and make money on the Web visit bucarotechelp.com To subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp Newsletter Send a blank email to bucarotechelp-subscribe@topica.com

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