Buck Lawrimore


Business. Marketing. Current Events. The World. Ideas.

A Beginner’s Guide to Twitter

author Posted by: admin on date Mar 18th, 2009 | filed Filed under: Uncategorized

Millions of people have heard of Twitter but not joined the conversation. Lots of them misunderstand that it is just another way of texting on smartphones. It is much more, and if you are in business, it can help you grow your business, increase brand awareness, and achieve other important goals. Here’s a very simple introduction to how to get started with the Twitter fun.

Go to Twitter.com and sign up for an account. Be careful to choose a name that makes sense - consider your own name or something easily remembered by others. Now you have an empty account, so you need to give it some life. Be sure to upload a photo for your Profile and give serious thought to your one-line bio. This will determine whether hundreds of people will find you interesting enough to follow or not. Once you’ve got all your Profile and Settings taken care of, it’s time to start posting - or as they’re often called, “tweets.”

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New Charlotte Social Networking Site - Charlotte Online - clto.com

author Posted by: admin on date Dec 27th, 2008 | filed Filed under: Uncategorized

We’re proud to announce the launch of Charlotte Online - http://www.clto.com - a social networking site for Twitter users and others in the Charlotte NC area who enjoy social networking.  We are using the new elgg social networking script, which looks plain at first until more people join and post messages. You can have a detailed profile including your Twitter feed. So check it out and join at http://www.clto.com

Change.gov Lets You Tell Obama What You Want

author Posted by: admin on date Nov 7th, 2008 | filed Filed under: Politics/Government

Barack Obama’s transition team has launched a cool website at http://www.change.gov/ that encourages all Americans to tell them online what they want: “It’s Your America: Share Your Ideas

“The story of the campaign and this historic moment has been your story. Share your story and your ideas, and be part of bringing positive lasting change to this country.” Check it out and contribute! This is strong evidence that Obama will use the Internet for a continuing dialogue with Americans unlike anything the world has ever seen. This is democracy in action!

The Dire Consequences Of Immorality

author Posted by: admin on date Oct 24th, 2008 | filed Filed under: Uncategorized

Our entire world is suffering now because of the greed and corruption of Wall Street and financial leaders. They developed elaborate schemes to milk financial gain out of unsuspecting homeowners and others down the financial totem pole. The whole house of cards has come tumbling down.

The world is so constructed that immoral behavior almost always leads to dire consequences. The 10 Commandments are not just legends in stone. They are clues to how the world actually operates. If you violate any of them, people get hurt, and the perpetrator suffers. These commandments are like steel levers. You pull them on one end, and they swing on the other. Sometimes the consequences take years to manifest. But every act of immorality sets in motion an incredible chain of consequences, consequences, consequences.

If you’re ever tempted to make an immoral act, thinking that no one is watching and that no one will be hurt, think again. Some One is always watching. The steel levers of consequences always move. Lots of people including you will be hurt.

Fortunately there is a loving God who loves us unconditionally and forgives us when we confess our wrongs. But don’t forget - He is the one who created the commandments, and the world, and the way it works, with consequences for everything.

How To Get Rid Of Cold Symptoms

author Posted by: admin on date Oct 9th, 2008 | filed Filed under: Health
Whenever I have symptoms of a cold, especially with drainage that catches in my throat, I take Guaifenesin, available at any CVS as “Chest Congestion Relief.” Guaifenesin is harmless - you can take it every day - and in fact I take it every night because it keeps me from waking myself up coughing.
At night I take the “DM” (dextromethorphan) version, which is also a cough suppressant but tends to make me drowsy. Read on…

What’s Wrong With America: Complexity

author Posted by: admin on date Sep 29th, 2008 | filed Filed under: Politics/Government

America is in dire straits right now. The economy is in chaos. Gasoline is in short supply. Unemployment is on the rise. How could our advanced country be in such a mess?

The answer I believe is that the country and its economy have become too complex for unskilled Congressmen - or presidents for that matter - to effectively manage this giant system. American government is far more complex than any corporation. Yet look at the skilled, experienced managers running GE, IBM and other top corporations.

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Hijacked by Hackers - Do Wordpress Themes Have Holes?

author Posted by: admin on date Sep 2nd, 2008 | filed Filed under: Internet

We’ve moved our blog from one web host to another because of a malicious hacking that occurred on Labor Day. Every page on every website we had on that hosting company was hacked with an advertisement for Viagra, placed at the bottom of the page and technically not visible. However it caused each page to load slowly and we assume the intent was to steal our visitors. It is taking us many hours to purge the bad Viagra code from our pages, and we’re still not done.

We host other websites with this company, one of the web’s largest hosts, and none of them have been hacked. So we have to assume that the point of entry was our Wordpress blog, or perhaps the Studio Press theme we were using. Research online indicates that themes can be one of the biggest “hacker holes” on websites because they are not all vetted for tight security. By contrast the themes offered on wordpress.org, including this one, are supposedly checked out to be OK.

So the moral of the story is, if you have a  Wordpress blog or are thinking about it, don’t host it on a control panel or account shared with other websites, and be very careful about the themes you choose - stick with those on the Wordpress site to be safe.

Twitter - Top 10 Reasons Why It’s Hot

author Posted by: admin on date Aug 31st, 2008 | filed Filed under: Internet, Marketing

Twitter is hot. No doubt about it. When CNN anchors give their Twitter address so you can follow them online, it has reached the high-level mainstream. Here are 10 top reasons why Twitter is hot:

  1. It’s free. Anyone can enjoy it at no cost.
  2. It’s easy. Anyone can sign up for their own account at twitter.com and be posting tweets in minutes.
  3. It’s fun. You can follow other people - friends and strangers, nadas and gurus, to see what they’re saying and if you don’t like what someone is posting, with a click, you don’t follow them any more.
  4. It’s new. Early adopters and social media lovers get a kick out of twitter because it’s new. Lots of people don’t even know what Twitter is all about and think it sounds silly.
  5. It sounds silly. Yep somehow this puts it in the same category as Google and Yahoo. Names which start out sound silly seem to capture the public imagination and catch on faster. In time they become respected and admired if they’re good at what they do.
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Marketing In A Complex World - A 21st Century View

author Posted by: admin on date Aug 30th, 2008 | filed Filed under: Marketing

Marketing evolved mostly in the second half of the 20th Century as an outgrowth of the efforts of large corporations to increase their sales in an organized manner. Although the Internet has had a profound effect on the practice of marketing, it is still as much art as it is science in actual practice. There is no always reliable method for any given business or organization to increase sales, in part because there are so many variables in the dynamic marketplace that cannot be controlled, such as competition, the economy, mass media and other complex systems.

In recent years a new paradigm for understanding complex systems and their dynamics has emerged known as Complexity science, or just complexity for short. I created a simple introduction to “Complexity Made Simple” at http://www.lciweb.com/Complexity.

In this framework, an organization is a complex adaptive system (CAS) seeking to survive and thrive like a living organism in an ecosystem (marketplace). Its ability to survive and thrive depends largely on its abilities to adapt to the constantly changing environment. Thus the role of marketing is to enable the organization to monitor, understand and adapt to the changing environment most effectively. That rarely happens.

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The Power Of Intention - Does It Work?

author Posted by: admin on date Aug 26th, 2008 | filed Filed under: Life Skills

I have long been fascinated with the power of intention. It was made popular by “The Secret” a couple of years ago but I have also read Wayne Dwyer’s “The Power of Intention” and also the book called “The Intention Experiment.”

I was reminded of this today when I went to the grocery store for a quick pick-up in the pouring rain. As I pulled into the parking lot, I thought, “I really want a parking place next to the building.” I started to ask God to find me a parking place, then instantly thought that was inappropriate, so I asked the Universe instead. (That’s what a lot of people who practice Intention do.) And lo and behold, within seconds an SUV began backing out of a parking space right next to the building - the only thing closer was a handicapped space.

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