Powerpoint Rules?

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

When I think how many Powerpoint presentations I've sat through with text crawling all over the slides, crammed into every corner (I may even have written a few)... they should pass this into law.

Jigsaw IS evil

T. writes about Jigsaw (think of it as a shared Plaxo for sales-folk)

It seems a pretty good idea to me; keep users honest by the points system and you might get a win-win.

I'm sure they'll make a lot of money. In his interview with Guy Kawasaki, CEO Jim Fowler says they'll remove info if

• the information is proven to have been added in violation of the law

• The information is proven to have been added in violation of a non disclosure or employment agreement

and that T&C tell people "don't do anything illegal". Well whoop-de-doo. By creating a points-based market for people entering information, and by letting them turn points into cash, there's considerable incentive for people to break the law - and let's face it, who reads T&C when signing up for new services, particularly if they don't cost money.

OK, you could say that Jigsaw just opens up the market in contact data to all comers, and that makes it fair for everyone. It also provides a very handy way for cold calling and spamming to grow exponentially. I already waste too much of my time fending off cold callers. So Jigsaw is paying subscribers to waste my time. In effect, my firm is funding Jigsaw.

A plausible ethical way of running a similar business would be to email someone when their contact details are put on the system, inviting them to have them erased.

It's a shame Jigsaw aren't based where the Data Protection folks here in England can get at 'em.

Fire axes in their data centre sounds like a satisfying alternative.

Dell pricing

Tom writes on Dell pricing.

Bang on the money. A Dell sales guy told me years ago “we have a lot of margin on anything labelled a business product”, and ever since I’ve tried to get at least 33% off. I think they’ve got wise to that though, and now hiked the margin of their advertised prices even higher!

http://www.PricesWrungFromDell.com anyone?

Don’t get me started on their quoted UK delivery costs either. 50 quid? Dream on. That’s the first thing I get rid of: “I can get a Compaq for 30% less delivered free” usually seems to work