This is a really, really interesting article:

Fifth of U.S. TV viewers watching online: survey

“This is the first study to show there are a significant amount of people watching primetime shows online who are not watching some portion of those shows on television,” Amanda Welsh, head of research for IMMI, said in a statement.

I wondered when we would begin seeing this trend. This is just another case of the consumer now having the tools to control the transaction. I wonder how many of the networks hold onto their old ways as this plays out?

I’ve been mulling this over for a while and after a meeting yesterday with a client I figured that I’d write about this topic. I’ve been building and operating websites since 1996. I’ve seen just about everything from shoddy code, bad implementations, oversold capabilities and more. I’ve also seen a lot of great work from my peers.

But, there is one thing out there that I really feel is unethical and that is when web designers subscribe their clients to services and don’t give the clients access to them. Another thing I loathe is when a web design firm does domain registration for a client and “takes care of it” for them - more on that in a minute.

I’m seeing more and more situations where someone will sign up for some kind of a Google account - like Analytics - and not give the client access. Note to those out there - make sure you do this yourself and give the web designer the code and/or access to the account. Even better, in cases where an employee who is managing your site may leave - have them sign up under a generic account and get the username/password.

The other one that really gets me is this domain thing. I have see clients held hostage because when they decide they want to leave a web design firm for another - the former will hold their domain hostage as leverage. Note to self - always buy your own domain names. If a web firm buys a domain on your behalf - there’s a very good chance that you don’t really own it. And, that can be bad if the relationship sours - especially if it’s yourcompanyname.com.

I’ve been having a number of conversations recently about how and what to write for websites. The best advise that I can give is keep it short and sweet - don’t take your content too seriously. Now, that doesn’t mean that your content isn’t important. But, what it does mean is that less is more.

Here’s some great information from one of experts on the subject - Jacob Nielsen

• A collection of articles on writing for the web
• Writing Style for Print vs. Web - this one is really interesting. The last sentence says it all.

If you’re smart, you’ll write accordingly: make your content actionable and focused on user needs.

The only thing I’d add would be … well not really anything. That’s pretty good.

Last Saturday night I did something pretty cool - I became a fire-walker. Yeah - that kind of fire-walking…

Through the coaching of David Fabricius I was able to take the leap and walk over a 10 foot bed of coals. No burns - didn’t even hurt. It was an amazing experience and a great way to look at dealing with and overcoming your fears.

Prior to fire-walking - David gave an excellent presentation on “Breakthrough, Balance and Bliss.” There were some amazing topic covered and some great insight that I took away from the evening. One really interesting thing that I did take away was his quote about working 8-14 hours a day as the norm.

Working an extra 2-6 hours per day will do nothing to solve the real problems you’re avoiding in your life - either personally or professionally.

That’s so true. Think about it.

Here’s a really cool tool that I just learned about - quintura.com. It’s a search engine that also displays a keyword cloud right next to the results. This is a gret tool for digging into your keywords and finding new keywords and phrases to use on your site.

Here’s an interesting article I ran across this morning:

10 Reasons You’re Not Getting Your Work Done

Are you having trouble getting all your work done? Is there a project you can’t seem to find time to finish, or something you haven’t been able to get started? If it doesn’t seem you’ll ever be able to cross everything off your “to do” list at work, see if any of the following are keeping you from getting your job done.

1. You have too many distractions.
A recent survey by the research firm NFI Research found that 66 percent of senior executives and managers say e-mail is one of the biggest distractions in the workplace, followed by the crisis of the day and personal interruptions. According to the bosses surveyed, other workplace distractions include unexpected meetings, phone calls, Web surfing, socializing, instant messages and noise.

This is a pretty spot-on list. American workers are at an all time high in productivity. But, we’re all too busy to really get things done.