My lists of learnings is a little shorter this week, and it was due to a different kind of learning – what some are calling “virtual school” or what I call it with many more words and also has some words that my family is hoping I stop saying so much, especially when it comes to attempts at my kids to have a positive classroom experience at home.

5-115-1 – I was on vacation last week with my family, and thinking I was going to have some extended times to read I brought 5 books. Of those I only cracked open one of them, reading just 115 pages. To make matters worse, I picked up another book at a yard sale where we stopped in to look at a kayak for sale. I also learned a little more about kayaks too.

The Trees Are Nervous Again – First there was the rush on toilet paper. Then as I learned last week there is a rush on beer cans. Now there’s a rush on computer printers as families need them for their kids to do their schoolwork at home. This doesn’t surprise me as I have known many people over the years who didn’t have a printer. Where I last lived in Chicago I think only one other family in our block had one, and I was often asked by neighbors to print files for them.

The Emperor’s New Pajamas – Should you sleep naked? The experts seem to think so.

Money Ball – Fenway Sports Management, the entity that owns the Boston Red Sox, Liverpool Football Club among other sports-related assets, is offering a free online program for people to learn the business of sports. You can sign up for FSM University here. I don’t know if there is a limit on it or if they admit everyone, but in some cases you may be able to earn internship credit. As a Sox and New England sports fan I am intrigued by this.

Define Lifetime – This week I learned of yet another class-action lawsuit, but one that actually makes a lot of sense to me personally. The suit is against satellite radio firm SiriusXM and limitations it puts on its “lifetime” subscription plan. If you have this plan that they no longer offer, you were limited to the number of times you could transfer it to a new radio, such as when you get a new car or if the one you have breaks. Granted you had to pay to transfer each time, but there was a cap they never told people about. I know well about this as I have a lifetime subscription and I have only one more transfer left, and I had to haggle with SiriusXM the last time I went to transfer it as I was also unaware of this limit.

Coming In For A Landing – Do you know what a landing page is? I am sure at least one person reading this is shrugging their shoulders! A landing page is a Web page for a specific purpose, typically lead generation or sales. Rob Hope this week released his book Landing Page Hot Tips. Hope for years has published a Web site and newsletter called One Page Love that is dedicated to landing pages and 1-page Web sites. If you have either of these, or want to learn why you should, you need to get this eBook.

Sign O’ The Modern Times – Several years ago I heard a new design was created for the what is formally called the “International Symbol of Access” or commonly referred to as the handicapped symbol. The familiar blue square with a stick figure sitting upright was redesigned showing the person leaning forward to symbolize motion and mobility. This article talks about the redesign of the logo. However, I have never seen the new symbol in use until just this week, where I noticed it painted on a parking space at a local retail center.

This week I will close with this video of Jerry Lewis singing You’ll Never Walk Alone by Rodgers and Hammerstein. To say this was a staple for me every Labor Day weekend growing up is an understatement. If you don’t know about this song and its meaning with the holiday weekend, contact me. If I get queries about it I may write something about it.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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For last week’s What I Learned, I was so late in getting it out that I didn’t even include my typical (attempt at a) witty opening and closing. Yet it was one of my most read one of this series! Despite this, why did I decide to open and close this week’s as I have since March?

The Power of Music – My friend Floyd Webb is a film producer and director, and his latest work is a short film about the African thumb piano. I had never heard of this instrument before, and was impressed by the amazing sounds such a device can make. Watch this film on Vimeo to see this instrument in action and how one doctor in Chicago is using it as part of holistic healing.

Hawkeyes Down – In the seemingly never-ending saga of cancellations due to the pandemic, The University of Iowa announced it is cutting its swimming and diving program after the 2020-21 season. Iowa’s program is unique as it has been in existence for over 100 years, is where the butterfly stroke was born, and has a state-of-the-art facility that is only a decade old. Where swimming doesn’t bring into a school the money like a football program does, and with cancellations of said football, swim is sadly part of the colleterial damage.

Keep Business Movin’ – Something that is continuing this year, albeit virtually, is Startup Wisconsin, a week of programs and sessions on business and technology, and not just for those involved in start-up businesses. The dates of the event in the Green Bay / Appleton area is November 18 thru 20. If you are interested in participating please fill out this form whether as a speaker, organizer or volunteer.

The Mind Wanders – I decided to add meditation back into the mix of my morning routine, as I haven’t done it in a while. Where I have used apps before, a while back I started subscribing to the Meditation Minis podcast. I decided to start with the oldest in my queue… which went back to December of last year. I guess my mindfulness deficit has been longer than I had thought.

Fox On The Rise – Something that has not been covered much at all lately is the development in southeast Wisconsin on the Foxconn Corporation campus. The company, known for making Apple’s iPhones, was planning to open a large monitor manufacturing facility in Mount Pleasant, not far from where riots have broken out this week in Kenosha. The development was slow and – surprise – politicized – and then we heard nothing most of this year. An article in Bloomberg this week talked about it in – surprise – the context of the presidential election.

So Where Do You See Yourself In 5 Years? – This article on interview questions and answers for anyone applying to be a Scrum Master was an interesting read. Even if you’re not looking for another job, familiarizing yourself with these will be helpful in your internal role, especially if your organization is not 100% agile.

Weird (Al) User Experience – I still get amazed, not to mention frustrated, when I have a hard time navigating a Web site. One item I see often, and implemented poorly often, is the accordion. No, not the instrument, but the ability where you can show a list of titles and by clicking on it or an accompanying icon, the page “expands” and shows content. Thus the analogy to the accordion, which expands while it is played. This article did a great deep-dive on the design style of accordions. Two takeaways I had from it is you must keep your accordion usage consistent within your site, and you should have a design guide for your site to show how they should be used.

No Can Do – When local beer tap rooms were forced to shut down in the spring, they started canning their tasty products and offered them in local stores and even in “beer drive-thru” events. Just when you think there’s a good thing going, there’s now a nationwide shortage of beer cans. I just hope people don’t rush out and buy up beer as they did toilet paper.

As school starts for my kids next week, for me, Summer is gone, though I hardly can say I wasted every day, and I hope you didn’t either.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Most of what I share this week was learned earlier in the week, as the latter part was pre-occupied with why my kiddos’ school system did a last minute change from partial in-school learning to all virtual. I guess the silver lining was that learning was on my mind all week, right?

• Chipotle recently added riced cauliflower to its menu as an option for its burritos and bowls, and I finally tried it. It’s not bad, but not sure if it’s worth the $2 upcharge.
• A few weeks ago I talked about other weekly summary-type posts out there, and one that predates even my first run at this is Five Things on Friday by my friend James Whatley. James shares a lot of great tech, social and cultural things in his unique, energetic style. You can read it on his site or sign-up for this weekly emails.
• Do you know what a favicon is? If you’re on a desktop or laptop computer, look at the browser tab and you will see a small icon there. Why do I bring this up? This week I learned of an online credit card skimming scheme using favicons. Talk about things not being as they appear.
• Remember Google+? Did you even know what it was? It was another short-lived social platform from Google that was shutdown last year. If you had a Google+ account you may want to check out this class action lawsuit about Google+ private user information being leaked public.
• This summer we were originally planning a trip back to Denmark, this time taking the family we didn’t have the last time we went. Had we went we likely would have gone to CopenHill, which I learned about this week from a native Dane. It is a combination biomass generator and recreational facility, including a year-round skiing hill. Anything to avoid seeing the Little Mermaid again.
• Years ago I learned a lot of the success of Redbox was due to the fact people didn’t return DVDs right away, and thus paid extra as the discs just sat there. This happened to me, and I ended up carting them to another city we visited this week. As I had no idea where the nearest kiosk was, I searched on “redbox near me” and the first result was for Google Maps, so it had to be correct, right? Wrong. It took me to a former Walmart store that was closed. I then tried the Redbox mobile app, and quickly learned of its lack of intuitiveness to find a nearby location without first searching for movies. What I eventually found was just across the street from the former Walmart.
• Kathy Fredrickson is a friend and a digital marketing professor at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and realized as coronavirus was altering businesses that said businesses needed digital marketing help. And she had the students that could help them. As the virus continues its impact, she has branded this as SOS for Small Business and is not only continuing it locally but expanding it across the country. Watch this presentation Kathy gave last week on SOS and how the first offering went and helped businesses.
• GIMP is an open source image editor, and a suitable, affordable replacement for Adobe PhotoShop. The more I use it, the more I like it, and I don’t need to subscribe to PhotoShop. One feature I used a lot in PhotoShop, putting a box with a colored border around part of an image is easier to do in GIMP.
• Within a short drive of me are 2 drive-in movie theatres, and the other night I went to one where we watched Open Season, an animated comedy, and Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a comedy animated in a different way. Though I have seen Paul Blart several times, Open Season was new. As I watched it, there was something familiar about the music. As it turns out, Paul Westerberg, the lead singer of The Replacements, composed most of the songs. Open Season came out in 2006 and I am just learning this, but that’s fine with me.

The wisdom of the fool won't set you free.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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While many I know on the US East coast were clearing fallen trees from Hurricane Isaias this week, I tried not to be too guilty of the unseasonably cool weather we had in the Midwest, which perhaps made me more open to things around me.

• My friend Jimmy’s brother Bobby was recently diagnosed with a form of cancer, and now his family is facing a financial uncertainty along this unplanned medical journey. A GoFundMe page was setup for him, and if you are so inclined, please help this family in need.
• After watching the SpaceX Falcon capsule successfully splash down this past weekend, I was reminded of an article I read a while back and re-read this week about how Elon Musk and SpaceX use agile.
• I did some brainstorming on how I may do a guest lecture I have been invited back to give to an Interactive Web Management class at the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh. In the process I recalled a past lecture I gave remotely in 2015 using Personify software. So I looked into Personify again, and learned that literally just a few weeks ago they released a version of their previously PC-only software for the Mac. I am going to evaluate both of their remote presentation apps for options on how I can best present a typically interactive, in-person learning session I have been fortunate to give over the last few years.
• Without getting into any awkward details, the Native deodorant brand is my new favorite.
• My co-working space, World HeadQuarters, announced they are moving to 2 new spaces at the end of the month. I have mentioned this space over time but hadn’t written anything in detail on it, and will do so once they move. The current space, a former ski shop, is very unique but not as functional as what the new spaces will offer.
• My favorite domain name registrar Name.com wrote on their blog about the opt-in security features they offer. As a long-time customer I leverage some of these, and am fortunate I have the choice to do so, unlike other registrars who invoke them without warning, no matter what they say. And yes, the link to Name.com will earn you – and me – a $5 credit if you move your domain names to them like I did over a decade ago.
• Healthcare software firm athenahealth recently rebranded one of its products as athenaIDX. This was nostalgic for me and hundreds others who worked for IDX Systems Corporation back in its heyday. IDX was acquired and went thru corporate selloffs and mergers before athenahealth got the product. The rebranding was extra nostalgic for me as I was involved in the last rebranding of its products that IDX did, as I managed the domain names for the firm, I was one of a few people in the whole organization who knew what the new brands would be before they were announced. I wrote about this a few years back as it was part of the project I didn’t “politically” work on.
• I would have thought the phone system hold music at SiriusXM would have been much better, but alas no. And if you truly want to get the best price from them, you have to commit to canceling, then they will offer it to you.
• I watched the documentary Juice: How Electricity Explains the World this week. It was a well-done presentation about electricity consumption and generation around the world. Even better was that, in my humble opinion, it was relatively objective and had no strong political leanings. And entertaining and educational as well.
• For my last post on book takeaways from The Fight for Four Freedoms I used Temi, the voice to text service I found a few weeks ago. I actually wrote it in a notebook, read it into my iPhone, then uploaded the audio file to Temi. As they don’t charge for your first submission, I saved about $1.50 for the six-minute audio file. Not to forget the likely half-hour I would have spent to initially type it. It still required editing, but the time savings for the initial transcription was well worth it.
• There was a bridge to nowhere, and now there’s stairs to nowhere. Gabriel Lofts are new apartments in a 100+ year old former lodge and furniture store building in Appleton, Wisconsin. The builder said they were going to retain many of the building’s unique features, and one is the above-pictured staircase, though it now leads to nowhere. At the bottom of the stairs at street level is a glass door, so I am curious to how they plan on using this space.

Happy Half-Century Mr. Northwoods!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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The idea of these “What I Learned” posts is certainly not something original, just the content is. I certainly didn’t create this category, and I have seen more and more of these types of posts and emails out there. So before I get into this week’s, I ask – do you find these useful? Feel free to add a comment to this post or contact me. In the meantime, here’s what’s cross my personal dashboard, in some cases literally.

• If IKEA is the crown jewel of the flat-pack, build-yourself furniture market, then I just found the court jester in Monarch Specialties. I finished putting together a new desk for my daughter which, in the end, looked as nice as the pictures of it online, but was an unbearable experience to build. To begin with, the instructions were extremely tiny, even with a magnifying glass combined with my reading glasses. The instructions also took major “leaps” on each page – rather than step-by-step, several steps, some which required an extra person or fancy maneuvering, were combined together. I could go on, and I just may with a not-so-flattering product review.
• The Nielsen/Norman Group is a consultancy on online usability and user experience and is well-known in the Web space. Their recent article on Privacy Policy and Terns of Use pages on Web sites can be summed up in 3 words – they all suck. Note those are my own words, and you can read the article for yourself if you are so inclined. With the increased number of international privacy laws, coupled with people trying to bypass them, those pages likely won’t get any better.
• Though it was a Merriam-Webster word of the day a while back, for some reason flibbertigibbet didn’t resonate with me then, as I read them daily. But it has stuck with me now as it was the title of a recent episode of the news analysis podcast No Agenda.
• Posts of the picture of Dignity,, a large, unique monument in South Dakota stated appearing recently on LinkedIn. However, Dignity was installed several years ago. I wish I had known about it before and on my family’s road trip that way last year we would have taken a different route to see it.
• My friend Nick Rhodes’ photo booth service OutSnapped now offers a virtual component. And not surprisingly to me, it has a great user experience and creates some great pictures – check it out for yourself and try it for free. If you are hosting a virtual event and want something other than the usual Zoom / Brady Bunch grid, check out OutSnapped.
• I recently ventured over to High Cliff State Park here in Wisconsin. The entry booth is no longer staffed and even the automated pay stations are disabled, thus leaving buying a pass online as the only option. But it has to be an annual pass, not a daily pass. But the extra funds go to a good cause, right?
• A local small business that I have used extensively since we moved here, Donaldson's Cleaners, went delivery-only as a result of the virus and closed its 2 retail stores. As I never visited the stores and as an indicator to send me monthly statements with inserts like this announcement in their customer system was not checked, I didn’t find out until I saw the story on a local newspaper’s Web site. That being said, it has had no impact on me, in the quality cleaning of clothes or their service level.
• If you buy a hitch cover for a trailer hitch on your vehicle, don't forget to buy a hitch lock pin, which is most always sold separately.
• When looking for a place to stay for some form of a real vacation this year, I found the Web site for a hotel that had the interesting description above for its non-existent business center.

As I was editing these I was listening to DJ Liquid Todd on SiriusXM’s BPM channel. I had a déjà vu moment as I recall listening to him on WFNX in Boston back when I was in Boston and there was still a WFNX.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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