I ran across an interesting new book over the weekend, called the Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. The premise of the book, is that in our increasing complex world, we need checklists to keep us from making mistakes that can be disastrous or even life threatening. He gives example from surgeons, airline pilots, and skyscraper architects. Each profession requires a checklist or written guides that allow all participants to make sure each step is competed in the right order.

I have always been a big proponent of creating to-do lists. You write down the tasks of the day and check them off as they are completed. Yet a full scale checklist might go a little further. A checklist might list all the steps in a task. It might list the mundane things we take for granted. It might save us from taking shortcuts or forgetting a take-for-granted item.

Have you ever gone on a trip and forgotten your cell-phone charger or electric razor. A travelers checklist can easily alert you to these things before you leave. Do you ever have to give presentations? A presenters checklist can help you remember the little things like laptop connectors and memory sticks that can help you avert disaster in front of hundreds of people.

I think we can come up with some creative checklists that can help us on a daily basis. They will need to be flexible yet all encompassing. They need to have room for additional steps along the way.

I’ve ordered Atul’s book and I look forward to applying it to my daily routine.

My question today: What specialized application would you want to see a checklist for?

There you are, sitting at your desk on a Friday afternoon. All of a sudden a direct message tweet pops up on your Echofon Twitter interface…

DM Employee. You are Fired. Clean Out Your Desk. You Will Be Escorted to the Door at 4pm.

Could this happen? I’m sure it has and will probably become more popular in the future. Heck… you could lay off a whole department with a @company-department tweet.

But one thing I know for sure… you can now quit via Twitter.

CEO Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems did it yesterday.

And he did it with a Haiku…

Financial crisis
Stalled too many customers
CEO no more

While his resignation wasn’t unexpected, quitting by Twitter was a first by a major company CEO. But it isn’t surprising. Jonathan was the first CEO to start a blog.

So now if you want to quit and let the whole company know about it, just send a broadcast tweet. Just be aware… there is NO undo button!

I’ve been blogging for almost five years now. The Blog-O-Sphere has changed radically, but one thing stays constant, and that is good design. I’ve used Wordpress as my blog engine since the beginning and it has evolved into a highly sophisticated platform. Almost every week, someone comes out with a new widget or plug-in and raises the bar another notch.

This week, the bar was raised considerably. Brian Gardner, the founder of StudioPress, has come out with a significant update to his line of professional Wordpress themes. It’s called Genesis, and the concept is simple. Make a structurally sound “parent” template and do most of the design work in “child” templates.

This dual design concept has a lot of advantages. The basic framework has lots of flexibility with 6 different layouts so you can find a look that matches your content. The parent blog engine comes complete with custom widgets for Twitter, featured pages, and a lot more. Once you get your parent site setup you can just add or modify a child theme to get the look and feel that you want.

Going forward, this will make it a lot easier to have a sophisticated blog design that doesn’t require a lot of background coding. Most all of the changes can be accomplished via the framework dashboard. Child templates will also have a control panel for added flexibility.

Currently if you have a complex Wordpress design it can take days to change templates to update your site. With Genesis, all you will need to do is update your child template . The main structure will stay the same.

I have wanted to update Success Begins Today for over a year now, but the changeover has been a somewhat daunting task. I haven’t been able to find a two or three day period to recode everything. With Genesis, I can spend the time on the upgrade and have a site that will be much easier to customize in the future.

If you are an accomplished Wordpress designer and want to develop a custom design with Genesis and use this blog as a showcase, let me know via the contact sheet or by direct message on Twitter (@success2you).

I am taking bids for a killer new look and I think Genesis will be the way to go.

Twitter is a great tool to reach out to your fan base. It is a very quick way to get the news out about your new product or service, or provide helpful tips to your clients. The problem is… you only have 140 characters.

If you want to link to your website and include a URL, you’ll quickly find that many web link’s can fill up almost an entire tweet. You need the link to tell your clients more about your product, but your message and link just don’t fit.

Then there is the problem of having your followers re-tweet your message. If someone wants to re-tweet, they will need additional room in your message for the re-tweet link which can take up to 20 characters.

So… now you find yourself with a quandary. You actually have only 120 characters to work with if you want someone to re-tweet your message and you have this big honking URL that needs to be included in the tweet.

This is where URL shortening services come in. They take your long url and compress it down to a much shorter link. The good new is, this link can be tracked with analytics to measure how effective it is.

For this post, I will cover two popular URL compressors and show you some things to be aware of.

1. Hootsuite: I really like Hootsuite. It offers a great view of Twitter with multiple column views and also allows you to time your tweets to be sent out at different times during the day.

Hootsuite offers a built-in URL shortener called Owl.ly right in the composition bar. It’s quick and easy to shorten your links, include them in your message, and schedule a time to send them out during the day.

Hootsuite includes a stats program right in it’s interface to track your owl.ly links. It graphs out your link traffic and includes a list of your most popular links.

Unfortunately, Owl.ly uses an inclusive redirect which puts a Hootsuite bar across the top of all your linked websites. This can be a good thing, as it has a link for re-tweets, but I find that it distracting to users and hinders someone from linking directly to your website, since the shortened Owl.ly URL is in the address bar.

This causes linked traffic to be directed back through Owl.ly and keeps your link sent website traffic from being picked up by Google and other search engines. This is where bit.ly comes in

2. Bit.ly: Is one of the most popular URL services and offers regular 301 redirects which track properly with Google. Bit.ly’s interface is straightforward and offers the ability to tweet right from the shortener screen.

What I really like about Bit.ly is its stats program. It is more complete than Owl.ly and is simple to read and understand.

Bit.ly shortens URL’s to 14 characters, which is one of the shortest in the industry. Overall bit.ly does what it is supposed to simply and effectively.

Combination: Combining Hootsuite with Bit.ly URL’s allows you to access all the cool features of Hootsuite and it’s scheduling program along with standard 301 redirect URL’s of Bit.ly. It is a little more work, but pasting in Bit.ly URL’s into Hootsuite gives you a powerful combination.

I’ve been using Twitter for about a year now. At first I didn’t understand it at all. What are all these symbols, I wondered, and all the strange messages that were half of a conversation.

As I read up on Twitter I found out about hashtags and @ replies. I discovered that you could send direct messages to your followers. It became clearer, but I still didn’t see the value.

I started following major Twitter users like Mari Smith and Chris Brogan. Their tweets sometimes made sense, but all too often were out of context… I couldn’t tell what was going on.

Then one day, I found a couple of helpful tutorials by Michael Hyatt and Nicole Nicolay on taking Twitter to the next level. Following Nicole’s advice, I installed Hootsuite on my computer and learned how to send out tweets at scheduled times during the day. This allowed me to send tweets while at work, where Twitter is blocked.

Over time I replaced my old cell phone with a new Droid and installed Twidroid. Now I could see my tweets during the day, and was able to tweet back at lunch. Twitter was making more sense now, and then Twitter came out with Twitter lists, which really helped me sort out the noise. Using Hootsuite, I setup different columns for each list and Twitter now was becoming a communication tool.

I discovered that Hootsuite would allow me to see the entire conversation when people would reply to each other. This gave me much greater context. The only problem was I still didn’t see the real value to businesses, bloggers, or average users.

It just seemed like a public chat or online moving quotation stream. There had to be more, I surmised. I ordered a book from Gary Vaynerchuk called Crush It, and found some interesting tidbits on Social Media. It was becoming clearer now.

And that’s when it happened.

Just by accident, I clicked a stray button in Hootsuite and it all came together.

The whole picture poured out before me.

I suddenly knew why businesses and bloggers use Twitter.

This little button held the key!

When I clicked the stats button I could see how many people had responded to my tweets. I could see which keywords were popular. I could see users that had re-tweeted my links.

I suddenly realized that Twitter had sent hundreds of people to articles of interest on my blog. I suddenly realized the incredible power of #Hashtags.

One little errant click and I suddenly understood…

Twitter is a great way to connect my blog posts to users who are interested in them. Powerpoint users can find my Powerpoint posts. Twitter users can find articles that help them and so on.

If you are a Twitter user, install Hootsuite and be sure to use #hashtags in your tweets.

Question: What cool tool have you found for Twitter?

I was at a Toastmasters meeting the other day and one of our long time members was giving a speech about creating the ultimate presentation. His voice was smooth and his words were strong and right to the point. He used pauses and had great gestures. He urged us all to take our speaking skills to the next level.

He kept asking… “Are you willing to do what it takes to succeed.”

Point after point he hammered us with thoughtful questions.

It was a very powerful speech!

There was only one problem.

He was dressed in jeans and a tee shirt.

What he said didn’t match with his presence with the audience.

When I saw him I couldn’t help but think of some of the people that I have interviewed for job positions where I work and the way they would dress for an interview or hands-on test.

I’ve seen tee shirts, tank tops, and flip flops. I’ve seen sweat pants and ripped jeans. It begs the question… don’t you want to put your best foot forward?

While Steve Jobs can get away with a casual look, the rest of us might be well advised to dress for success.

Question: Have you seen any elephants lately?