My fave five reads from the past week:
- Getting America’s businesses on line — From Google’s blog comes these remarkable figures — 97 percent of Americans use the Internet; more than half of the country’s (mostly small) businesses have no Web presence. Google outlines its commitment to helping U.S. businesses get on the Web for free here. Businesses get a free, easy-to-build site; a free, customized domain name; and hosting for a year.
- While Google obviously has a stake in Web expansion (increased ad revenues, more available search details, improved accuracy), this free, simple approach knocks down real or perceived barriers keeping businesses off-line. (Being on-line but sub-optimized is a story for another day!)
- Five Ways To Uncover A Job Candidate’s Hidden Strengths And Weaknesses — Eric Gaydoshas a great post recommending ways people hiring staff can look beyond a candidate’s cover letter and resume to objectively quantify subjective qualities.
- The tips are simple enough (“Do your homework,” etc.), but the detail is illuminating.
- Mail Call: History Of America’s Military Mail — This Smithsonian Institution site explores the military postal system and why mail has remained such an important resource for soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. The history illustrates the impact of innovations in technology and organization, has allowed the mail to become more diverse and military mail services more reliable.
- When I was deployed in the Air Force, mail call was the highlight of our day, always looking forward to (hopefully) something from home. In those days, letters were exclusively physical items; today they are matched with emails, text and videos. Be advised that if you’d like to write our servicemen and women, you can find a list of organizations that can help here. Please consider it — it will make someone’s day brighter.
- Jargon Madness — Earlier this year, Forbes crafted a bracket, similar to the NCAA hoops tournament, featuring 32 abominable business expressions. Each day, for 32 days, readers got to vote, via Twitter, on one matchup to identify the most annoying example of business jargon.
- It’s too late to vote, but you can trace the winners (in boldface) — and what passes for definitions of these terrible terms — through the run-up to final “victory.” The voters did well by me.
- Roadside Stopper: Can Something Be Too Big For Texas? — The Wall Street Journalprofiles the newest Buc-ee’s convenience store, although “convenience” may not be the term to make you envision a 67,000-square-foot outlet 20 times the size of a 7-Eleven. It features 60 gasoline pumps, 80 soda dispensers and entire aisles devoted to varieties of popcorn and beef jerky. Oh, and 84 toilets.
- I used to drive that stretch of I-35 between Austin and San Antonio. Believe me, I would’ve loved to have refueled at a Buc-ee’s in the mid-1980s. Besides, the store sounds so big that if I’d walked its length, I’d already have been halfway to the Alamo.