As you settle down to read what passed by my brain this week, allow yourself the indulgence of some delicious nuts and candies, as well as some informative or at least colorful magazines… all to benefit my kiddos’ Girl Scouts troop!

Save Advertising – Garage door opener maker LiftMaster released a commercial this week with a take from the 80’s movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The particular scene is when Ferris works over Cameron to take his Dad’s car for an ill-fated drive. The ad features Alan Ruck, the actor who played Cameron in the movie. With all of the attention on Millennials and Baby Boomers, it’s nice to see advertisers focus on my generation, Generation X.

What You Can and Can’t Zoom – Zoom has recently released some new features to help you better manage virtual training sessions. Note none of these have anything to do with taking you off mute when you think you are not. Additionally, though I should have guessed it was the case, you can only hold one meeting at a time with a single Zoom account.

Meet the New Radio, Same as the Old Radio – SiriusXM released a new radio receiver that looks a lot like the built-in capabilities for SiriusXM that comes with most new cars. Maybe for those cars that don’t have satellite radio receiving baked in this may be a worthy investment, but unfortunately is in a long line of lacking in innovation from the network.

I Actually Came Up With This One – When the fun turns into work, it’s no longer fun.

Your Web Site Can’t Write Itself… Yet – A worthy read is from the Nielsen Norman Group on auditing the content on your Web site to determine what to write next. For some people who see making even basic edits to Web content an arduous event, this may be overkill. For a more basic approach, this post I wrote 3 years ago on a simple Web content plan may be more suitable.

Cherry on the Learning Sundae – A few weeks ago I mentioned the rebranding of Evolve Solutions Group. This week Evolve launched a series of newsletters with a nice twist, where by referring others to sign up for them, you get Evolve swag. You can see the topics of their newsletters and signup here and note this will help me get a t-shirt as I already earned stickers and the water bottle.

Quantity Not Quality – Google sent me an email this week telling me, "From 10/30/2020, we will not allow new sites to be monetized using AdSense, Ad Manager or AdMob in unsupported languages or where they do not contain content." Note they don’t say the content has to be any good, simply that it has to exist.

A Retail Marriage Made In Wisconsin – This week discount retailer Kohls started selling clothing from Lands’ End. This was first announced in the early pandemic days and clearly didn’t make my radar then, but the site of the lighthouse-branded apparel is a nice addition for the retailer that has struggled like its fellow brick-n-mortar retailers for years.

Recall by Parents for Change – Where most every school district that surrounds the one my kiddos go to started the school year in person, mine did not. It has been frustrating, and as misery loves company, my family has not been alone in it. A group called AASD (Appleton Area School District) Parents for Change has filed to petition to recall 3 school board members. I have learned issues with the school system go beyond simply the pandemic response, and got a lot of insight from a rally last weekend I attended, hearing it first hand from fellow parents, many who are also teachers. I am following closely and will likely get involved if I can.

Ping This – Have you ever been asked to “ping” a Web site or IP address, and after saying you have no idea what the requestor is asking, you are then led down a path to do so? Next time try this Web site instead to perform the ping.

Flattening the Scrum Learning Curve – A key to successful Scrum teams is relationships among the team members. I found this article with helpful questions for a new Scrum Master on a team to ask the Product Owner.

Henry Would Approve – I needed to create a Gantt chart this week, but wanted to make it so I could easily edit it without special tools or complex manual adjustments. I learned this can be easily done in PowerPoint and this article showed how to create such a Gantt chart with the popular presentation tool.

Herbie Rides Again… in my neighborhood?

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

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