Logical Expressions Blog

In one of the forums I'm in, there's been a lot of discussion on selecting a shopping cart. One point I made seems obvious, but maybe isn't as obvious as I thought.

The person who was looking into a new cart posted a link to the sales site for the cart she is considering. One thing that jumped out to me immediately was that the Web site had no links to live stores.

In evaluating a shopping cart, I think the first step should be to actually go through the process of buying something from a site using the cart software. When we were selecting a cart, we ruled out a whole LOT of them because after testing, I discovered that I wouldn't want to buy anything using the cart.

If a cart is too big of a pain to use, people will just leave. As the owner of the site, that's the last thing you want. So test a cart yourself before you buy. Even a free cart isn't worth it if no one will buy through it!

Like a lot of people, I have a Google Alert set up on my name. (If you are wondering how to set up an alert, check out this page for more information.)

With an alert, I often know when people are quoting me somewhere on the Internet. For example, I was quoted as the author Happy Hound on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel site in the Animal Megnetism blog. Check it out:

What's In a Name?

I always get a little thrill when I see my name in print. This week I also was interviewed for an article that may run in a major national women's magazine (with a circulation of more than 2 million). If the article truly comes to pass, you can bet I'll be mentioning it here ;-)

This week we added some new articles to our newsletter site.

James wrote one called:

Why Prioritizing is a Waste of Time

...which is based on his years working as the Internet Development Manager in charge of a $100M ecommerce site. Basically he asserts that when it comes to setting priorities, the only thing that matters is what you are going to do next.

I wrote an article called

How to Write When You Feel Like You Can't

...which is based on my years of wrestling with the various permutations of writer's block. The key is to figure out exactly WHAT is keeping you from getting those words on the page.

This week we sent out the first issue of our new Publishize Newsletter. The tagline is "Transform Your Words Into Dollars" and its designed for people who want to make money from their writing.

The first issue has an article titled:

Why Should You (or I) Write a Nonfiction Book?

which answers a question I get a lot. I've now written quite a few books and I have good reasons for doing so. But writing a book is definitely not for everybody.

We also put together the newsletter archive site and pulled in a bunch of relevant articles from some of our other sites. There are articles on Writing, Marketing, Print Publishing (Graphics, Layout and Design) and Internet Publishing (Web sites, Email marketing, Ecommerce, Web Graphics).

Another article I wrote recently is called:

Projects Always Take Longer Than You Think

It didn't go out in an email because it's too long, but it's sort of an extended "non-nerdy musing" (for those who remember my rants from Logical Tips). Anyone who has ever been involved in any type of home improvement project, will probably relate.

On our Pet Tails site, a while ago I wrote an article called:

Soothing the Savage Beast (or Not)

I mentioned that music sort of sends our cats into spaz mode. Play a little rock and roll and they start zooming all over the place.

However, it seems that to cats not all rock and roll is created equal. I have learned that T-Rex seems to promote a particularly spazzy response from the feline team. The song Bang a Gong makes them particuarly odd.

Perhaps they have the teeth of the hydra upon them. Whatever it is, they definitely get weird.