Do you have a website that saves you time, gives you a chuckle or helps you share information with like-minded people? This month we'll share a few time-saving sites:
The ultimate in luxury, design and fashion may soon be seen in more places than just Miami's Ocean Boulevard or one of Paris' flashy catwalks. Would you believe the elite may soon be gathering in a Burger King or that the hippest outfits might be worn by a Russian army general? In a move to match marketing tactics against McDonalds' new designer uniforms, Burger King recently announced that selected stores would soon feature an 85₤ ($167) Kobe beef burger. It's all part of a move toward consumer mass marketing, with design as part of the core value, as described in Alice Wylie's article "Burger Bling." This kind of prestige marketing has companies focused on updating their image to attract new customers. The importance of visual appeal has even prompted Russia to commission its most famous fashion guru, Yudashkin, to design uniforms for high-ranking officers. Is there really a target market to which these outrageously priced food items appeal? Will these trends be able to survive in an economy headed for a recession? Get all the answers here.
That headline in the Harvard Business Hotlist e-newsletter captured my attention; equally compelling was Bill Taylor's article about the super-successful Zappos. In a nutshell, the company is fanatical about customer service and wants to make sure all its employees are, too. So, after a four-week training program, every new hire gets "The Offer" to quit right then and be paid for the training, plus a $1,000 bonus. The savvy management reasons that the 10 percent or so who take the offer are not committed to Zappos' mission and would not make excellent employees. Hmmm... how many hiring mistakes could you have nipped in the bud early on with such an offer? Read the full article.
File versioning is a technique commonly used by software developers to retain the history of a digital file. This provides the ability to roll back changes to a previous point in history when the software was known to run bug-free; but versioning is not strictly for developers.
Writers can retain drafts of copy. Designers can retain the history of art files. Account folk may keep a record of strategy documents, all with descriptions of what each version contains, without needing to save multiple copies that simply clutter a server.
Knowing that files can be rolled back to any point in history is a good feeling. It can mean the difference between minutes and days when needing to revert a file. How could you use versioning? The folks at lifehacker.com can help get you started.
Note: Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate users now have native support with the new shadow copy feature. For the rest of us and those in need of a shared server-based solution, I recommend Subversion.