"Practice shows that those who speak the most knowingly and confidently often end up with the assignment to get the job done." William Swanson

Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management: unwritten rule number thirteen...

"Here again, the key is to be a contributor of substance. If you speak up when you are knowledgeable on a particular subject, you will inspire the confidence of your management and you will get assignments that will allow you to demonstrate your worth. However, if you speak up when you are not knowledgeable, you may well sign on for an assignment you can't handle.

This is a great example of how a willingness to volunteer, coupled with a 'no fear' attitude (slight exaggeration, but you know what I mean), got me some great assignments. But beware, there is a hugh downside to volunteering if you are just 'winging' it!"

Excellent counsel. My thanks, again, to William Swanson

YouTube: 10% of all internet traffic, streaming 1.9 billion minutes of video a month. Elise Ackerman does a nice job reviewing the latest Google-YouTube ad model. Read Now playing on YouTube: in-video ads via The Mercury News here. Miguel Helft offers up a solid reading of the news w/video, Google Aims to Make YouTube Profitable with Ads via NYT here.

Kudos: Speaking of Google, kudos to Jess Lee and the Google Maps crew on their formal release of YouTube-style embeddable maps. Bravo! More info here. The smart money is on Google releasing a geoparsing API. Sweet indeed.

Banner Blindness: Usability maven Jakob Nielsen tells it like it is...

"The most prominent result from the new eyetracking studies is not actually new. We simply confirmed for the umpteenth time that banner blindness is real. Users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement, whether or not it's actually an ad."

He tells us the three design elements that are most effective at attracting eyeballs are

1. Plain text
2. Faces
3. Cleavage and other "private" body parts.

Read Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings here.

Jakob's ongoing confirmations serve to prove the wisdom of our earlier best practices counsel to clients. Investing funds in cpm deals is clearly a poor move especially when one is offered the alternative of cpc or cpa investment. The same holds true on the seller side. Banner bucks in all but national placements seldom produce results that lead to renewal.

Buyer beware department: sites that use auto-refresh to ramp up page views. Is one trade pub using this technique to pump up their lackluster stats? My sense is - yes. Sad that folks have to do such things. Watch it out there, things are not always as the seller represents.

Bonus: blogging for cooks - 24 boxes. Scott Meyer offers up Basic Instructions. Thanks to the Blogger crew for both tips.