Why do sites ask you to confirm your email address when registering? It makes no sense to me and is an annoying extra step in the registration process.
If I make a typo when entering my email address initially, I am more than likely going to copy and paste the mistake into the confirm field thereby negating any benefits of having this confirmation step.
If the site wants to be sure you are entering your email address correctly, then ensure that the setup involves emailing the account details. No details received? Then you check what email details you entered.
Make signups as painless as possible for potential users - it is criminal to lose people at this point in the proceedings.
Shel Israel (former PR exec turned social media consultant) and Rick Segal (highly respected VC) are coming to Cork next Tuesday.
Rick and Shel, as well as attending the blogger’s dinner that Pat has arranged for them, are also making themselves available to meet entrepreneurs on the afternoon of Tuesday Oct 17th.
If you have a couple of business ideas or a startup you’d like some (free) advice about from two of the world’s leading experts, leave a comment here and I’ll arrange that you get to meet with them.
I downloaded the latest Firefox rc2 this morning. Being based in Ireland I downloaded the English (British) version for my Mac because there is an inbuilt spell checker and I didn’t want all my spelling flagged as incorrect by a US spell checker!
Why is spell checking important in a browser? Well, I write all my blog posts and comments in the browser so having an inbuilt spell checker is, to my mind, invaluable.
However, when I fired it up, it froze on startup! I restarted it and it got going this time. However, it froze twice more, necessitating a force quit and a re-start of the browser. To add insult to injury, the spell checker isn’t available in the English (British) version of Firefox!
I have now downloaded the US version and it appears, so far, to be more stable. Oh, and the spell checker works in this version but it marks colour as a mis-spelling 
Yes, I know I can teach it the spellings but I was hoping to avoid having to do this.
Ed Bott has aa article on ZDNet comparing the licencing terms of Windows XP and the forthcoming retail version of Windows Vista (Microsoft’s upcoming successor for XP).
It turns out that whereas with Windows XP you could re-install the OS on as many different machines as you wished (as long as it was deleted off previous machines - i.e. transferring the OS from one computer to another), with Windows Vista that functionality will only be allowed one time and will likely be enforced using the ironically named Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA). Further, if you fail to validate your OS with WGA, Microsoft cripples your system, no longer allowing you to access most of the computer’s functionality.
Because you never know when you might need to transfer your licence to another machine my advice would be don’t buy Windows Vista. There are plenty of credible alternatives, not the least of which is the Mac!
The business blogging workshop I held in Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) yesterday seemed to go very well. The online feedback was very positive as were a lot of the comments during the course of the day.
The workshop itself was quite challenging to pitch because the attendees spanned communications, marketing, business development and deep tech. Some had been blogging for years, some never read blogs and a couple were in-between!
What I decided to do was let the attendees tell me their reasons for attending the course, and I then structured the workshop on the fly to try to address those needs. This approach, although more difficult than working through a prepared presentation, worked quite well - particularly because I made it a very interactive day for the attendees. We had some great discussions and addressed issues directly relevant to those who were present.
I’ll be interviewing Doug Kaye of The Conversations Network and GigaVox Media this afternoon for a PodLeaders podcast.
Doug has been podcasting since before the term was invented!
As always, if you have any questions you’d like me to put to Doug, feel free to leave them in the comments.
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