I’ve been reading The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott. (The graduate research continues.) Parts of chapter 12 struck me as very similar to the Cluetrain Manifesto. And my analytical mind enjoyed his analysis – first published in this post – of certain phrases of gobbledygook.
The entire point of the chapter reminded me of a lesson from journalism school: avoid jargon. Don’t use fancy phrases or industry language to make a point. It confuses the reader, and the reader’s eyeballs will glaze over as they lose focus on your writing.
I was amused and happy to read that point – and to see it quantified and graphed.
Quick update from a previous post. Dan e-mailed me to point out something that’s changed from a previous entry where I wrote that Kings would be coming off Hulu in September 2009.
Hulu has changed its plans. Kings will remain online until Sept. 19, 2010. That gives me some more time to get around to watching some of the episodes.
Thanks for the tip, Dan.
A recent death in my wife’s family sent me searching through files of genealogy. That reminded my of an unfinished project with those files. Half of her records are digital scans and the other half are photocopies. Some items are copies of relatives’ files and others are borrowed materials – things people will come inquiring about at some point.
I’ve tracked the items I hold and those I’m looking for in a spreadsheet. It functions like a checklist. When I find a census record, I delete from one spreadsheet and add it to the other. It lets me keep a running list of what I have on each person and what I need to find. It also lets me keep a list of all documents – I can quickly find all the birth records or grave locations that I’ve recorded.
This works, but I’m sure there are other, better ways to track what I have. I recently found this post about journals, logs, and calendars. Question for genealogists out there: what do you use to track the documents you’ve located. I’m not inquiring about different forms of ancestry charts necessarily – just different ways of keeping your “to-find” and “found” lists.
