My new shiny iPad was delivered last Thursday (one day early) and so with five days of working with it, I thought I’d share my experiences and views. Love at first sight. It was heavier than I expected.. but in a good way. It feels solid. Expensive. How could you not love it’s design. Initial […]
Author Archive | Matt Hopkins
Eliminate Prima Donna’s from your Business
Sometimes you get an employee who is smart, creative, passionate and pretty darn good at what they do; but they are also arrogant, obstructive, demoralising and high maintenance. This is the prima donna employee and despite their benefits, they are not worth keeping. I’ve had to deal with many prima donna employees during my career […]
Inbound Marketing – A Book Review
I just finished reading Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. The primary emphasis of this book is to demonstrate how traditional “outbound” marketing methods no longer achieve the results that they once did (if they ever did). Marketing your business in today’s “digital economy” should focus on “inbound” methods – something that I […]
Built to Sell – A Book Review
I just finished reading Built to Sell by John Warrillow and it immediately hits my top 5 list of essential business reading. If you combined the teachings of The E-Myth Revisited (Michael Gerber) with Built to Sell you would have a text book in running small businesses that deliver more value to customers, employees and […]
How to change your Twitter name and keep your followers
In a world where personal branding is increasingly more important, the user name you select for your Twitter account is more essential than ever. What happens if you decide that your Twitter name no longer reflects your brand identity? Changing your Twitter name is a simple task but you need to be careful and ensure […]
Online backup providers – a winner at last
UPDATE: The information in this page is out of date and although I am leaving it here for archive purposes, please do not rely on the advice. Today, I only use Backblaze for Mac and Timemachine backups. I’ve been using online backup services for a couple of years now – both personally and professionally. I […]
My top three favourite (new) gadgets
I like gadgets – always have, always will – and 2009 has been a bumper year for gadgetry in my house. Here’s my top 3 list of gadgets (so far): 1. iPhone. I can’t believe that I put up with Windows Mobile for as long as I did. My new iPhone 3GS is one of […]
My New Personal Organizer Tools – Palm to Web 2.0
I like to think of myself as an organized person. I started using a paper-based DayTimer® back in the late 80’s. I used hand written task lists – meticulously updated on a daily basis. In 1994, I got my first PDA – a Palm Pilot. It was awesome.. and I kept with variations of the […]
Business value – don't hang your hopes on the little stuff
I used to own this great Land Rover Discovery. That car was kept in near perfect condition for the five years that I owned it. If anything needed to be repaired – it was done. The body was mint and was kept that way. It had some small rust spots once on the roof rails […]
New Approach to the CAPTCHA Problem
There is nothing worse than receiving a few hundred automated enquiry form submissions per day generated by spammers using “bots”. At Vertical Leap, until we put up a CAPTCHA on our enquiry forms – this is how many we were getting. Maybe it was because we have the word “Search” in our web site title […]