Have you ever completed a task on a website and tried to view the updated information, only to find there’s no record of the changes you just made? This happened to me with an airline reservation: after I selected my seats, it said the changes were confirmed. However, when I viewed the itinerary right after […]

Between birthdays and family visiting the city, I’ve had the good fortune of eating at the same amazing Italian restaurant twice in the past ten days. The first time we ate there, our meal included a surprise pre-appetizer snack, plus an after-dinner drink — all at no charge. Obviously, we were surprised and delighted, as […]

In Chicago, the corner of Michigan Avenue and Chicago Avenue attracts an incredible number of tourists. It’s home to the famous old water tower that survived the great fire, with lots of stores and other attractions nearby. And on the southeast corner of the street, there’s a Walgreen’s. It’s a really ugly, old store — […]

When you purchase a subscription or any other service that lasts for a specific period of time, you generally expect that you’ll be able to use or enjoy it for every day during that period. In the case of things like a magazine subscription, it’s widely understood that it will take a few weeks before […]

Whether you’re writing a blog post or a user’s guide or a full-length novel, one way to improve your writing is to eliminate unnecessary words. By getting rid of words like “very” and phrases like “in my opinion”, you help the reader focus on the core of your argument, without the fluff. The same guideline […]

I recently discovered that our CRM system has built-in reports for bounced emails. In other words, the system can automatically tell you which customers and prospects have invalid email addresses in your CRM records. However, there’s no way to do anything with these reports. If you want to avoid sending emails to those people in […]

Let’s say you’re a mobile phone provider. Many of your customers are companies with 10-50 employees. In most cases, one of the owners or managers made the original decision about which phone provider to use, but then assigned the routine task of receiving and paying the bill each month to someone who works in accounting. […]

If you’ve ever worked with the WYSIWYG content editors in programs like WordPress, you may have noticed that funky things happen if you make changes to the HTML version of the content. In other words, if you switch from the live preview over to HTML mode to insert or modify something, portions of your code […]

With Chicago’s cold winters and rather hot summers, there are several months a year when getting to the grocery store can be quite a challenge. During the winter, you learn to look for the warmest days of the week, and go at mid-day when temperatures are more moderate. And during the summer, you seek out […]

Around 2 am on Saturday morning, my wife and I were awakened by a high-pitched chirping noise. It turns out that the batteries in our carbon monoxide detector were running low, and it wanted them replaced immediately. So, I thought I would compare this behavior to how some other products in my house alert you […]