The invention of paper did wonders for mankind’s organizational skills. With the invention of papyrus, a thousand things became possible for the Egyptians: hieroglyphic shopping lists (goats, bread, and charcoal eyeliner), ‘Things-to-Avoid’ lists (asps, crocodiles, and King Tut on a bad day) and even ‘Things-to-Be-Buried-With’ lists (gold, wives, and servants for the afterlife).

Thanks to the modern digital age, our old pen-and-paper ways have become a thing of the past. Technology has made everything quicker, simpler and more streamlined. From smartphones to iPads, software to apps, we humans have upgraded our antiquated Post-It and notepad ways and upgraded to digital solutions like Metrofax online faxing services google calendar. Here are some of the best digital evolutions that surpass pen-and-paper solutions.

Post-It Notes

The Old Way: 30 yellow sticky notes with scribbled reminders stuck to your wall…not to mention the additional 20 fallen sticky notes on the floor.

The Digital Way: StickyNote

Take those sticky notes from your physical desktop and put them on your virtual one. StickyNote lets you create 3D virtual stickies, perfect for quick notes or information you want to keep easily accessible. You can also attach files or links and send your stickies in emails. Attach a note to one particular window or give your notes expiration dates to prevent clutter.

Filing Cabinet

The Old Way: Messy files crammed in a cabinet that you really, truly, honestly plan to alphabetize. One of these days.

The Digital Way: Evernote

Here’s the perfect digital way to store all your information. Type notes directly into Evernote or clip web pages to save for later. Take a picture of your handwritten notes or a boardroom whiteboard. Evernote can search through any text – even the handwritten text from your pictures.

Leave a voice memo or snap a photo of your confirmation numbers and boarding information. Then sort all your saved info for easy searching and categorization, so you can take your digital filing cabinet anywhere you go.

The Bulletin Board

The Old Way: You’ve got too many clippings – wine labels, upcoming movies, delivery takeout menus – and not enough thumb tacks.

The Digital Way: Springpad

Like Evernote, Springpad provides a way to sort through your information, only Springpad acts like an active organizer for all the things you’re interested in. Save a movie you want to see and Springpad will let you add it to your Netflix queue, buy it on Amazon, see its page on IMBD or buy movie tickets.

Add a favorite wine or a brand you’d like to try and you can see nearby prices, based on the web and your location. Search for a recipe and instantly add the ingredients to your Springpad shopping list.

The Calendar

The Old Way: You need one calendar. You receive four calendars for Christmas. You use none.

The Digital Way: Google Calendar

It’s hard to beat Google’s calendar offering. It’s easy to use, it lets you send emailed or text reminders and it syncs with something you use every day: your email. Easily share your calendar with your family so you and your spouse are always on the same page – or so you always know about your teen’s upcoming practices or rehearsals.

To-Do List

The Old Way: A never-ending list of scattered chores, errands, tasks and obligations…and you keep having to add “Find To-Do List” to the list.

The Digital Way: Zadachi

Zadachi lets you categorize your obligations with three easy time lines: incomplete, complete and overdue. Separate your tasks by folders or labels; for example, you can organize your list by type (chores, errands, work tasks) or by grouping (home, work, school etc.).

Got a whole list of tasks associated with one project? No problem: Zadachi lets you group tasks by project, so you can see how close you are to completion. Best of all, this app lets your phone do some of the work for you.

If one of your to-do items is ‘call Jill’, Zadachi searches your contacts for people named Jill. If you’ve got something like ‘find an office supply store’ on your list, you can use Yelp to find a local store via Zadachi.

Faxing

The Old Way: Cover sheets, faxes gone missing and frustrating machines that seem to be eternally out of toner.

The Digital Way: Metrofax

Why do businesses still ask you to fax things? Does anyone even have a fax machine anymore? Well, with Metrofax, all you need is an email account and internet access. Just email your document to your intended fax number (with Metrofax’s @ extension) and you’re all set.

Bills

The Old Way: A bill box stuffed with bills you can’t remember if you’ve paid…until the late payment charge comes in.

The Digital Way: Mint.com

This multi-award winning application is widely regarded as the best financial app out there. Mint.com lets you access all of your accounts (both bank and loan) so you’ve got all your financial information in one place – no more trying to remember multiple login information.

Mint automatically updates and categorizes your spending history so you can see exactly what you’ve spent on things like fast food, clothes, coffee shop purchases or gas. Budgeting is a snap, since Mint averages your spending habits and breaks down how much you spend on each category. Easily track your spending and see how much you’ve got left in your budget – or how much you’ve gone over.

Digitized Productivity

It’s incredible how far we’ve come since the days of the hieroglyphics. The way technology’s moving, we’ll soon have an app for even menial tasks like organizing your underwear drawer. It’s too bad the digital age didn’t come sooner. Adam could’ve text Eve about that apple.

Image Sources:

1. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_sOwqhSLXo4g/TSJIXIfPygI/AAAAAAAAAcI/PfuF3DWerk8/s1600/to+do+list.jpg
2. http://www.flickr.com/photos/r-butler/5363022308/
3. http://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279251361/
4. http://www.flickr.com/photos/24oranges/2814122833/
5. http://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/5309672184/
6. http://www.flickr.com/photos/koalazymonkey/3596829214/
7. http://www.flickr.com/photos/reallynuts/3429125430/
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Crowdsourcing, which involves a community of anonymous people completing a given task, has become an attractive labor model. Everyone’s seeking it out, from solopreneurs needing transcriptions to Fortune 500 companies looking for answers to complex scientific problems. Here are 50 ways to crowdsource just about everything you can think of.

Accommodation

Image: Antony J Shepherd/Flickr

1. While hotels offer predictable accommodations and quality, sometimes you need something different. Like an entire oceanview flat, or an ultrabudget basement room in the heart of a city’s university area. Sites like AirBnB and VRBO let you search rooms, apartments and houses listed for (nightly) rent by their owners. When you book through the site, the owner gets everything but the small cut taken by the booking site. Ideally, you get the kind of different vacation or business travel accommodations that you’re looking for.

Advertising

2. With its network of video producers, copywriters, graphic designers, and other kinds of artists, GeniusRocket crowdsources custom advertising for your organization. It takes care of the nitty-gritty aspects of dealing with herds of people while keeping everything proprietary. You provide direction on the end result, they guarantee the rest. They are perhaps the next evolution of the ad agency: the ad curator.

3. GiantHydra is another ad agency curator that uses the “heads” of its hydra to create customer, crowdsourced ad and marketing solutions. Like GeniusRocket, it vets everyone involved in projects, then fishes together the right team for the campaign. The client company’s Creative Director oversees progress. At the end of each “mass collaboration” project, the team, rather than the winner, is rewarded.

Zooppa is another site that crowdsources the creation of complete ad campaigns. IdeaBounty is more of a branding-focused crowdsourcing site.

Algorithms

4. TunedIT specializes in crowdsourcing data mining and data-driven algorithms. They pose both industrial and scientific challenges, with student contests to boot. The best algorithm wins the payout.

Brainstorming

Image: /Flickr

5. In his book “The Smart Swarm,” author Peter Miller relays the fact that the most effective kind of swarm involves smart people who specialize in a variety of tasks. Atizo, a crowdsourced brainstorming site, harnesses this idea. From naming a unique company to marketing ideas to product concepts, this Swiss site lets you collect hundreds of ideas from people across disciplines. Its innovative payment system is based on points, which brainstormers can accrue in a variety of ways.

6. If you want to focus on the kinds of fresh ideas that young people provide, Brainrack is an idea and solution site with an army of students brainstorming behind it. Prize money gets divvied up between the best 15 ideas. Kluster is another brainstorming site to check out.

7. There’s also a DIY option in this space. If you want ideas for new products or services, or even how you conduct business, take an example from Dell. The computer giant’s IdeaStorm website lets consumers submit their ideas for new Dell products and services, as well as anything else that strikes users’ fancies. Dell doesn’t define the topics, leaving its users creative space. Of the 15,000 or so ideas it has received to date, the company has used more than 400. If you’re a smaller operation, you can do something similar through a Twitter list or a Facebook group (or your fan page) devoted to the topic.

Broadway Plays

8. Ken Davenport is producing the musical Godspell this year exclusively with crowdsourced funding. One share of the musical costs $100, and investors have to buy a minimum of ten shares. This entry ticket pales in comparison to the usual Broadway investor minimum of $25,000. Godspell needs a total budget of $5 million, relatively meager compared to other plays. Davenport, who had to pass a finance exam in order to sell the shares of his play in the first place, runs a site called The People of Godspell to continue the effort.

Business Innovation

9. Innovation Exchange, like many crowdsourcers, runs contests that award winners with a cash prize. They focus on the business side of innovation, such as products, services, and processes. Companies submit problems to the site, then facilitators pull together teams from diverse backgrounds to tackle them. Challenges range from marketing ideas and ad campaigns to better packaging and transport. (Though the site doesn’t advertise its challenges as being technical, some of the challenges do require a technical background.)

Cancer Treatment

10. Cancer Commons’ goal is to provide patients with the best cancer treatment possible through crowdsourced information. Doctors, scientists and patients contribute to the effort by sharing treatment results (based on the tumor’s genomic subtype) and using that knowledge to figure out how to best treat the next person. The website also aims to outsmart the shortfalls of Big Pharma’s randomized clinical trials by gathering volumes of specific information.

Collectibles

11. These guys have quite the niche. Colnect is a crowdsourced collectibles catalogue on which collectors display hundreds of thousands of stamps, coasters, phone cards, and other things they’d gathered. Call it the crowdsourced anti-print catalogue. Users have both wish lists and swap lists, so people in this little industry can fine-tune their collections.

Data Entry and Digitizing

12. Microtask crowdsources your data entry and digitizing of handwritten forms to a mixture of people and machines. Instead of being able to select their assignments, human Microtaskers work through a queue of seconds-long tasks for as long as they’re available to do them. This is what the New York Times calls an “online assembly line.” Companies use these information factory workers full-time; Microtask’s software facilitates the process and guarantees results.

Donations

Image: eperales/Flickr

13. “If you don’t give back nobody will like you” is Crowdrise’s motto. While certain politicians and beloved-by-investor corporations continually prove this statement wrong, there’s something to it, and Crowdrise knows that. Basically, you create a profile, put up your cause (or join someone else’s), message via existing social media sources, and network. Eventually, unless everyone still hates you, you’ll get the money you need.

Finding a Mortgage

14. You know those automated mortgage comparison sites? SmartHippo isn’t too different, except that it’s powered by a human community, which gives you a more personal touch—and potentially more accurate information—during your mortgage hunt.

Forecasting and Data Prediction

15. If you have reams of data and want trained eyes to tell you more about it, hit up the statistical analysis crowdsourcer Kaggle. There, teams of data scientists can predict everything from the speed of freeway traffic at a certain time of day to the ratio of people who will default on their bank loans. The team with the best data prediction model wins your prize.

Graphic Design

16. Your website design, logos, business cards, pamphlets, and more can all be crowdsourced now. 99Designs is a contest site where you submit your concept and let a pool of more than 100,000 designers compete for your prize. At the end, you get the design and the copyright. ReDesignMe is another website to check out in this space.

CrowdSpring is a similar website that specializes in small business graphic design. It also offers a host of writing services, from opinion articles to company naming. It also operates on a prize-based model. Squadhelp is another site that crowdsources web design and marketing, also with a focus on small businesses.

17. Minted is more of a niche crowdsourcer. It only crowdsources paper designs, especially cards, announcements, wedding invites, and other kinds of stationary. Their open design competitions are, unlike many other crowdsourcing sites, democratic: Users vote the best designs to the top.

Ideas

Image: kinmortal/Flickr

18. Tapping your Twitter followers will help you gain real-time input on your products, services, and anything else you need to know. Depending on how much feedback you want, and how detailed you want it to be, you may want to offer an incentive such as a prize. You can also join or create Twitter lists for ongoing collaboration and discussion. Using Twitter doesn’t require an intermediary, it’s fast, and it harnesses people you’re already familiar with.

19. Facebook is another way of doing just that. Through a private group or by using your fan page, you can collect rapid-fire feedback for your company. As with Twitter, offering a prize will often get you more responses. You can also use the site for ongoing collaboration.

Innovation (B2B)

20. Some big corporations have set up proprietary networks to crowdsource their innovation. For example, P&G Connect + Develop, Procter & Gamble’s invite-only open innovation website, lets companies work with the consumer products giant on its innovation. Only select companies can participate, and ideas aren’t visible to everyone. While P&G has the heft and leverage to pull off this kind of proprietary network, if you’re a small business owner, you can also crowdsource innovation through private groups on Facebook.

Investing

21. EquitySplash says it’s “crowdsourcing Wall Street” by letting users invest in a fund (their ownership is proportional to their investment), then having them buy and trade individual picks via a proprietary platform. The outcome of each trade gets spread around the fund. It sounds fun, unless you’re the one making all the bad trades.

22. Through StockTwits, you can network with a huge community of traders around the world, riding their coattails, adding to the info pool, or being a revered lead-dog trader yourself. It doesn’t just run through Twitter, either—you can get tools, widgets, data feeds, and more off their website.

Lawn Mowing

Image: Giovanni Guisi/Flickr

23. Who said you couldn’t crowdsource cutting grass? Put in an order on Lawn Mowing Online, and someone from your area will come over and cut your grass the next day, for $19 and up. Anyone with a lawnmower, digital camera and computer can compete for a gig on this site. As a result, moonlighters and professionals are available at a moment’s notice, all from one central website.

Loans

24. If the bank won’t lend you money, or if you’re looking to make a better interest rate than the measly one banks are currently offer, peer-to-peer lenders like Prosper offer alternatives. Find real people to lend to or from. With more than 1 million users and $227 million lended, Prosper is money.

Marketing Research

25. If you need to build and organize a client database, run marketing surveys, or even just sort your existing information, the dutiful Clickworkers will hand it over with characteristic German efficiency. They also crowdsource things like writing instruction manuals and glossaries.

Mobile Testing

26. If you’re developing anything on a mobile platform, Mob4Hire can basically crowdsource the entire development process you, using a swarm of more than 45,000 testers on more than 300 carriers around the world. They give you feedback in every stage of the development cycle, helping you bring your product to market quickly and efficiently.

Music

Image: Cerebro Humano/Flickr

27. When millions of users share their playlists, streaming individual songs to other users who want to listen to them real-time, you have one massive crowdsourced music system. That system’s name is Spotify, and its technology lets users listen to just about any song they want to—with the exception of a few with licensing issues, like Oasis in the UK—on demand and for free.

28. If you want to crowdsource your music making, MusikPitch lets you tap the swarm for custom songs, compositions, jingles, background music—you name it. is the first site for crowdsourcing custom songs and music compositions. You name the kind of music you want and what you’re willing to pay, then sic the crowd on the task. The winner gets your prize.

Patent Research

29. Patent validation can be a horribly time-consuming pain, and Article One Partners has the panacea. Their network of more than one million patent researchers digs up patents and any research around them on command, saving time and migraines. Article One lets you communicate with your researchers to make sure you get the precise results you need. As with many crowdsourcing sites, the best or most extensive research, as determined by you, wins your monetary prize.

Philanthropy

30. You have the means. You have an idea of the societal problem you want to address. But you’re not sure how to put your funds or available grants to best use. Enter Philoptima, which crowdsources the design and implementation of nonprofit programs for people who have money, but need good solutions. Whoever finds the winning solution gets the cash prize.

Photography

Image: Fabian Reus/Flickr

31. In the traditional stock photo industry, photographers would license their images to established companies, like Getty Images, and receive fees whenever someone bought those photos. As a result, photographers could establish a passive income stream–say, $50 every time someone bought a photo. iStockPhoto disrupted this system by letting amateur photographers, generally more concerned with getting their names out than making money, sell their photos for $1 a pop. Legions of amateurs filled the site with cheap and, with numbers on their side, many high-quality photos. This changed the stock photo industry forever. Getty ended up buying it.

32. Yahoo-owned Flickr hosts hundreds of thousands of users who display their photography on the site. Many of these users let you use the photo for free—with credit—via specific Creative Commons licenses. All you have to do is find the picture and credit it appropriately. Many such Flickr users have excellent photographs, meaning that companies seeking to crowdsource that function have good prospects here.

Preventing Poverty

33. Yes, even the act of preventing downward mobility has been crowdsourced. The Modest Needs foundation has people with serious financial emergencies write about their issues online. Readers then donate whatever amount of money they can afford until the person’s “modest need” is met. The organization performs due diligence on the people in need, making the website legit and free of scammers.

Project Management

34. Smartsheet is a project collaboration tool with integrated crowdsourced labor. You use their software to collaborate with your remote team on the project, and plug in labor wherever in the process you need it. The software has HR, IT, marketing, and product management features integrated, kind of a one-stop shop for both collaboration and labor.

Protests and Causes

Image: Dave Watts/Flickr

35. Got cause? CrowdVoice can help. By tracking protests around the world, it gives you a central place to find cutting-edge information about your cause and what people are doing about it. CrowdVoice collates news, video, and social media information, so it saves you time and effort in finding the crucial updates you need.

Publicity

36. Help a Reporter Out (HARO) matches up experts and businesspeople with reporters to create a symbiotic source/PR relationship. You scan your daily HAROs and see if there’s something you can comment on; reporter publishes or airs a story with your commentary in it. Bingo—instant PR, without the legwork.

Quality Assurance (QA)

37. uTest offers on-demand, crowdsourced mobile, web, gaming, and desktop application testing. They offer usability, functional and load testing, by nearly 38,000 testers in more than 170 countries. They offer custom quotes in advance, too, so you know exactly what you’re getting into.

Scientific or Technical Problems

38. Familiar with RNA sequencing, chemical derivatives, or GUIs? Then you might be the kind of user that InnoCentive seeks out to solve companies’ pressing technical problems. Geared at braniacs, and offering handsome prizes for the winning idea, InnoCentive lets companies tap a global community of more than 200,000 users to solve the problems they can’t figure out internally. Those users, in turn, attempt to tackle the problem for a prize. Companies select their winners—and gain a whole bunch of alternative solutions from non-winners in the process.

39. Like InnoCentive, Idea Connection taps the brains of engineers, scientists and other tech-oriented people to solve difficult problems. Unlike InnoCentive, however, Idea Connection is facilitated, and keeps much of its information confidential. Companies come to the service with their challenges, and Idea Connection acts as a middleman, seeking out input from users via collaborative intranets. Companies can customize how much input they get and how much they pay; Idea Connection takes care of the rest. With that level of service, one wonder about the size of the cut that Idea Connection takes vis-à-vis other crowdsourcing helpers.

40. There are more companies in this space. Consultant Nine Sigma also provides a high level of service, helping companies customize the kinds of structures they need to support open innovation, as well as facilitating open innovation processes. Hypios is another company that provides a platform to outsource your R&D.

Tedious Tasks

Image: Theodore Lee/Flickr

41. If your business involves QAing software or content, or perhaps transcribing, finding things online, tagging, or any of the other miscellaneous tasks that come up in your business, there are a couple places that can help out.

42. Mechanical Turk, powered by Amazon.com, lets you splice up your task into minute pieces, enabling you to crowdsource those slices of the project to hundreds of people at the same time. As a result, you’ll get your entire project done faster, because loads of Mechanical Turk providers finish their own slices in the time span you allot. You can get a project that would have taken days done in hours or even minutes this way.

43. CrowdFlower, formerly known as Dolores Labs, is a similar service. It harnesses its millions of users to take on parsed sections of bigger projects, many of the same nature as Mechanical Turk’s. Indeed, CrowdFlower sources people through Mechanical Turk (and several other places). They can also help with custom projects for small businesses, as well as enterprise-level crowdsourcing projects.

Translation

44. Starting at 5 cents per word, you can have your content translated by a crowd of 1,200 translators around the world on MyGengo. The Japanese company offers translation in 11 languages. The site’s simple, intuitive interface and pay model make human translation almost as easy as plugging something into a machine translator—but with more accuracy, of course.

Transportation

45. Zipcar is pretty well-known as an easy way to rent a car by the hour, but there are other services that make sense. Car2Go is Austin’s answer to Zipcar; RelayRides takes the community aspect one step further by letting you rent from independent car owners, by the hour or by the day. They’re only in Boston and San Francisco so far, but will hopefully spread to new cities soon.

Video

46. Poptent crowdsources commercials, virals, how-tos and all of the other video needs today’s companies have. Basically a social network for people who make videos, Poptent gathers assignments by mostly Fortune 500 hundred companies, lists them on its site, and Poptent members create videos with the given content and creative brief. After users finish the assignments, the company picks their favorite and pays.

47. Tongal’s tagline is “where the best ideas meet the best filmmakers,” and that pretty much sums up the collaborative videomaking contest website. If you want an ad, you put up your project and prize, and let the masses compete. Users can also be paid based on the number of times people download their videos, so all is not lost, even if a user loses a contest.

Waste Disposal

Image: University of Scranton/Flickr

48. If you have something you want to get rid of, chances are someone in TerraCycle’s crowd is willing to do it for you. They specialize in both recyclables and “upcyclables,” things that you don’t want, but someone else can use. eCycler is another crowdsourcer that focuses solely on recyclables; Freecycle, on the other hand, is the ideal place to dispose of and pick up things to upcycle.

Writing

49. If you need a press release in an hour, content on the quick, translation, or proofreading/editing, Serv.io has officially parsed the single human being formerly known as the writer into an anonymous online crowd of college students, stay-at-home parents, unemployed people, and anyone else seeking a quick job fix. It’s quick, because Serv.io guarantees a 24-hour turnaround time; the proofreaders and other service providers are sourced through sister site CloudCrowd.com. They attract these users in part through quick assignments and guaranteed next-day pay. Sadly, Serv.io automates the personal communication that generally makes writers more effective to a client, and it doesn’t let you use the same writer twice.

50. LetterRep.com takes an interesting slant on niche writing. For $25, you can get a letter—any letter—written in 24 hours. We’re talking letters of acceptance, resignation, hypothecation, rejection, and anything else you can dream up. In a nod to the former glory days of copyright, LetterRep pays writers again if existing letters get purchased more than once.

This year, Girl Scouts is rolling out a pilot program that will try to increase profits by doing the unthinkable: cutting its cookie offerings to a slim six. Don’t worry if your mouth waters for Thin Mints, Samoas, Tagalongs, Trefoils, Do-Si-Dos, or Lemon Chalet Cremes. Those flavors survived the girls’ axe. Other flavors like Dulce de Leche and Thank U Berry Much weren’t so lucky.

“For decades, councils were left with large inventories for cookies outside the most popular five or six,” said Amanda Hamaker, manager of product sales. “Councils saw this pilot as a way to experiment with their consumers to see if they could sell the same number of cookies with fewer varieties.”

Girl Scout membership has fallen in recent years, mostly because “Facebook has replaced the campfire,” according to writer Derek Thompson.

By the way, if you’re feeling the need for Thin Mints but can’t find any pint-sized saleswomen nearby, try out the Girl Scouts’ new Cookie Locator app.

By this time, most people realize that PowerPoint is a scourge — on our ability to communicate effectively, be remotely impressive or keep an audience awake.

If you haven’t received that memo, your PowerPoint presentation probably stinks. It’s loaded with data in small type, it goes on forever and you believe words that swoosh onto the screen are a substitute for being an interesting presenter.

Sorry to be so blunt, but over the last decade, I’ve worked with executives from the C-level down and 99% of those people use PowerPoint miserably.

The perfect analogy here is the costume wearing the character. Have you ever seen a kid wearing a thoroughly impressive scary costume? Although they remain shy, hiding behind their friends and barely speaking, they have a belief that their costume is making them scary.

Have you ever seen a suit wear a person? Great suit, fabulous accessories, perfect hair – but the person says little of substance and has less personality to back it up. It’s the same with PowerPoint – we believe that IT is the presentation, not us.

PowerPoint is a lot like email – a perfectly good tool, which should save us time and make our lives easier – but has become a monster. What are we doing wrong and how do we fix it?

There’s a lot of room to cover in this subject, but let’s start with four basic rules.

1. NEVER read your slides! – If you have to sit through one more person reading their slides out loud, believing that constitutes a presentation, aren’t you going to scream? Guess what? Most of your audience has probably completed the 4th grade. We can read! So give us something new – add to the bullet points with engaging stories, tell us the outcome of the study, remind us why this information is important, and who or what it may impact. Your part of the speech should NOT be on the slide. We don’t want to see the script, we want to see the performance.

2. Use pictures to illustrate points – one of the best slides I’ve ever seen was simply a photo of a pile of sawdust, with more sawdust falling from above to increase the pile. Todd Sattersten, www.toddsattersten.com, was discussing a rather complicated concept of writing, creating content, managing output, and using extra ideas in a way that could be marketed. No bullet points or statistics, yet I have clear recall of the concept, his 5-6 points, and his recommendations. All because his analogy and picture were so striking. Pictures really are worth a thousand words. In a study out of UCLA, it was found that after three days of bullet points on a PowerPoint slide, people only had 10 percent retention while visuals enjoyed 50 percent retention.

3. 10/24 – This ratio means that you should never have more than 10 words per slide, never smaller than 24-point type. Ok, start shouting all of you in data-driven industries. People really get nasty over this ratio, “I have important data to cover! My leadership expects me to show them all the numbers!” Yes, you are right. Your data is very important. But tiny type numbs the brain, and the correct place for data is in a handout. Your slides should be clean, simple, and be a backdrop to YOU. This point is the lead-in to rule #4…

4. You are the presentation, not the PowerPoint – The point of standing up in front of people is to let them know that YOU are the expert. You know your material and you are the one telling the story. If your technology should fail – or as one executive found when trying to enter the Pentagon, “Your laptop is not allowed inside, Sir.” – you can still present without the visual cues. Numbers and statistics tell a story. So tell the story showing a simple bell curve rather than cluttering the graph with numbers and tiny type. I repeat, PowerPoint is your backdrop – you are the show.

When considering how to create the greatest impact, first try using devices such as storytelling, music or pictures. Then, only if you really need it, should you consider PowerPoint. There is far more impact in surprise, expertise and good ideas than there is in another predictable presentation. And one more thing – leave the lights up. It’s more important the audience see your face than every detail of your slide. Besides, you don’t want to give them an invitation to nap.

Karen Hough is the Founder and CEO of ImprovEdge and the Author of “The Improvisation Edge: Secrets to Building Trust and Radical Collaboration at Work” published by Berrett-Koehler, www.ImprovEdge.com/book. She speaks internationally and writes on negotiation, leadership, sales, and presenting with impact, and is the recipient of the Athena Award for outstanding woman-owned business.

Odds are, your answer to this question is yes. The real question is “do you tweet well“? Do you engage your followers, find new leads and clients using Twitter, and have a solid reputation on the medium?

That second question is harder to say yes to. But Brian Searl, who won the Fairfield Small Business Challenge’s Twitter contest by earning the most Twitter followers in three weeks, has figured out how to harness Twitter like a champ. Searl gained about 4,000 Twitter followers during the Small Business Challenge, for a grand total of 9,000 followers. That gives his company, Insider Perks, a handy leg up on the competition. I caught up with Searl to find out how he did it.

What strategy did you use to win the Twitter challenge?

A lot of people in the contest assumed we used some kind of automated software tool, and we actually didn’t. When the Twitter challenge started, I only followed 300-400 people on my Twitter account, people I wanted to see headlines from and retweeted constantly. I didn’t have a large base that I followed to begin with. I had about 4,000-5,000 when it was all finished.

I had created about 8-10 lists extensive Twitter lists attached to my own account for the public to use. For example, a hotel list that had 500 hotel twitter handles in it. Those lists are still active on my account. They cover hotels, restaurants, cruise lines, travel bloggers, etc. For the contest, I just went through those lists and followed everybody that I didn’t follow already. That amounted to probably about 5,000 people.

Doing that is actually where most of my followers came from. The ones that weren’t following me followed me back. It’s a lot more simple than most people think it is.

Beyond that, I took the approach of following people outside of my industry. For example, I followed some people related to small business, some people related to the finance industry who may end up writing about budget travel. I normally wouldn’t have followed those people, but I guess I was lucky and they followed me back.

I tend to have a good reputation on Twitter, so I think they’ll help me out with what I’m doing, plus that fact that I have about 9,000 followers. Many people base their follow decisions off the number of followers you already have, as an indication of trust. Already having 5,000 followers before the contest started helped me win, in my estimation.

How powerful do you think Twitter has been in growing your business?

Honestly, that’s a toss-up, because I’m a small business, so I don’t have access to all those huge metric analyzers that a lot of big businesses use. Some of those services are upwards of $1,000 per month, and we don’t do that kind of tracking for budgetary reasons.

The main results I’ve seen from Twitter have come on an individual, case-by-case basis. Sure, if I tweet out a link, I’m going to get 100-200 hits on my website. But the biggest benefits for me have been the connections and relationships I’ve made. For example, we’re going to expand into cruise coverage in 2011. That’s something that never would have happened without Twitter, because the partner I’m doing that with, I met through Twitter. That’s just one example. I could name 10-15 of those specific examples that have happened because of Twitter, because of social media in general.

What advice can you give other entrepreneurs who want to expand their small businesses through Twitter?

Just be engaging. Especially in the travel industry, you see so many hotels that decide to just have a brand presence on Twitter, and then they never tweet anything. Or all they do is set up a bot to announce their latest deals, and they don’t engage their customers, they don’t talk.

The other end of the spectrum are those who engage, but only talk about problems or customer service. There are brands that set up Twitter accounts, and you never realize who’s tweeting. They don’t tell you the names of the people who are tweeting in their bios, so they come across as just a faceless brand that is trying to sell something. Some big brands like that have a lot of followers because everyone knows who they are, but you just can’t tell who’s tweeting, and they don’t engage or anything.

My biggest point is just engage. Talk to your people, jump into a conversation about your business. In my industry, for example, if you see that somebody is planning a vacation somewhere, ask them how you can help. I know that sounds oversimplified, but really, it’s social. If you can’t be social, there’s no point in being there.

These ten business board games will hone your strategic skills, sharpen your negotiating abilities and, in some cases, even make you a better pillager. Play hard, and watch your efforts pay off during work hours.

10. Ca$h n’ Gun$

The only game on our list in which you actually have to stay alive, Ca$h n’ Gun$ starts off with a bang as each player gets an orange foam gun to “shoot” the others. The game basically boils down to players shooting each other over money at every turn. Every time you get shot, you’re wounded; three wounds kills you. If you duck like a coward, you don’t get wounded, but you forsake the round. At the end, whoever is alive and has the most money wins.

9. Million Dollar Challenge

This game, divided into two levels, is a fun way to learn basic to intermediate trading skills. As you try to win by making a cool mil trading stocks, commodities, indexes and more, you also learn concepts and vocabulary you can use in real life, including which indicators you need to follow, when to exit a market, and more. It’s like a friendlier, less risky version of the real market, as well as an excellent educational tool.

8. Ticket to Ride

Connect US cities with lucrative rail routes while stopping your competitors from finishing theirs. Cards let you either build a route, gain a train car, or tell you where you can create new routes. The game lets you build secret routes that your competitors don’t see until the very end. Long routes and secret routes gain you points, while unfinished ones are losers. This strategy game is great for families.

7. Cashflow 101

This board game, in which you invest and save your way out of the rat race and into the ownership class, is as much motivational tool as entertainment. You begin with a balance sheet and a predesignated job, income and debt. Roll the die, land on spaces that let you pull cards for investment opportunities or make you pay up for incidentals, and work up your wealth so that you can get out of the “rat race”–essentially a never-ending circle on one side of the board game–and onto a new track, where you start making the big bucks. Cashflow is a great teaching and inspiration tool for anyone wanting to get out of the real-life rat race.

6. Hotels

Use your money to buy land and build 3D hotels, and win this game by making your competitors go bankrupt. As you move around the board, certain squares let you purchase land if adjacent property is empty. Other squares let you build hotels on that land. With additional money, you can buy entrances and add facilities to your hotel. When players land on your hotel, they have to pay you to stay there–or else put their own properties up for auction in order to afford it. The last person standing wins the game.

5. Agricola

Be a little farmer who makes it big in this agri-centered game. Move around the board with your wife (that is, your farmer’s spouse) to make your house bigger, have kids, maintaim the farm, harvest, etc. Action cards tell you what you can do, while occupation and minor improvement cards give you expansion options. You decide when to use your options. May the best farmer-strategist win.

4. Puerto Rico

About 50 years after Colombus, Puerto Rico experienced its first economic boom. Be in the thick of it as a settler cultivating and selling five different kinds of crops. During every round, you choose a different player role, each with distinct benefits and drawbacks. Deciding when to store, sell, and ship your wares to Europe; employing colonizers, and constructing buildings in San Juan are all strategic choices that could make or break you in Puerto Rico. The game can end in three different ways, adding additional excitement towards the end.

3. Monopoly

Monopoly is the classic board game for capitalists (or those who just want to see how it works–it was initially derived from a socialist game in 1913). Snap up as many squares of land, utilities and railroads as you can, then suck other players dry by building houses and hotels on them. Windfalls and setbacks include two kinds of taxes, the Community Chest, Chance cards, Free Parking and, of course, jail. The game is so popular that producer Hasbro hosts national and worldwide Monopoly tournaments. Winners take home the entire Monopoly bank of $20,580.

2. Steam: Rails to Riches

Being an imaginary railroad tycoon makes for a darned good business game. You don’t only construct railroads in Steam, you make the towns around you better and figure out the most profitable goods to carry in your trains. The game even takes terrain into account. S/he who builds the most efficient railroad wins. Sophistication and an artful game board make this a fulfilling train game for adults.

1. Settlers of Catan

You’re a settler on the island of Catan in this popular and captivating game. Your job is to grow your colony by buying resource-filled land, then gain victory points by building settlements, cities, roads and armies with your materials. You can also trade resource cards with other players to maximize your points. Resource robbers, which let you temporarily stop other players from using their resources, are among the several other variables that will engross you in this game.

These guidelines are important in many industries, where hidden fees run rampant and everyone tries to sell you on an idea rather than specific products or savings. If you evaluate your company or service based on these ideas, you could become more effective and make yourself even more helpful to both potential and current customers.

Clear Explanations

Many companies make the mistake of assuming that everyone knows all about them. Unless you are Apple or Nike, that assumption can be crippling.

If you are going to sell something or offer a product, take the time to accurately and thoroughly explain it. Don’t just say “We offer several great pet leashes.” Instead, you can provide relevant information:

• Tell future buyers that you offer six different types of pet leashes for $10, $12, $15, $18, $20 and $25.
• They differ based on length, material, print and whether they have a reinforced handle.
• They benefit the customer because the new strong-weave technology keeps your pet from chewing and destroying the leash, making your leashes last longer and saving you money.

Make it clear and well-organized, providing plenty of information. This can help someone who is browsing through your Web site to make an informed decision. The best information is informative, helpful and accurate. If you make any claims, support them on your site.

Customers want to know what they are getting into before they sign up or make a purchase, and they will not simply take your word for it without proof.

Transparency

Be just as open with potential customers as you are with current clients. If you operate your company with integrity, this should be fairly easy. Members-only access to forums, exclusive products and helpful tools could be a great incentive to sign up or purchase.

However, members-only access to prices, listings, product reviews and policies could seem shady. Customers may feel you’re hiding something. If you offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, for example, clients can see you have nothing to hide, and they can actually experience the service or product without risk. If your company is transparent, they won’t have to worry about being locked into something different from what they expected. What they see is what they get. If you have a list of prices for services or product features, make it easily accessible.

Even if it’s unintentional, a confusing or limited Web site can convey to potential customers that you’re hiding something or that your product is low-quality. Consider if your site is just as easy to navigate for the Web-savvy businesswoman as it is for the elderly man who just learned how to use e-mail.

It isn’t always feasible or appropriate to gear your site toward every possible customer demographic, especially if you sell a niche product or a specific service. However, looking at your approach through the eyes of several demographics will help give a bigger picture of who might be looking at the site and who could even become a customer.

These methods can help you examine your company’s strategy for effectiveness and integrity. If you truly want to inform and persuade a potential client, you have to show them your product, prove it to them, and offer something more. A company should help the potential customer make informed decisions and give them the tools to do so – all while providing a service or product that will clearly benefit the customer.

Hannah Daniel enjoys providing an affordable dental insurance alternative to small businesses and individuals and helping them save money on dental care. She manages a dental blog backed by 1Dental.com.

It’s that time of year again. To celebrate the feedfest–and unofficial holiday season kickoff–that is Thanksgiving, we’ve compiled a list of 25 Thanksgiving quotes. Take them to the table with you this year:

1. “Got no checkbooks, got no banks. Still I’d like to express my thanks.” –Irving Berlin

2. “There is no sincerer love than the love of food.” –George Bernard Shaw

3. “Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things.” –Horace

4. “I love Thanksgiving turkey … it’s the only time in Los Angeles that you see natural breasts.” –Arnold Schwarzenegger

5. “I would rather be able to appreciate things I cannot have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.” —Elbert Hubbard

6. “Gratitude consists of being more aware of what you have, than what you don’t.” –-Unknown

7. “We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.” –Cynthia Ozick

8. “I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.” –Jon Stewart

9. “If you count all your assets, you always show a profit.” –Robert Quillen

10. “What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.” –Albert Pine

11. “What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?” –Erma Bombeck

12. “Thanksgiving is so called because we are all so thankful that it only comes once a year.” –P. J. O’Rourke

13. “You know that just before that first Thanksgiving dinner there was one wise, old Native American woman saying, “Don’t feed them. If you feed them, they’ll never leave.” –Dylan Brody

14. “It wasn’t easy telling my family
that I’m gay. I made my carefully worded announcement at Thanksgiving. It was very Norman Rockwell. I said, “Mom, would you please pass the gravy to a homosexual?” She passed it to my father. A terrible scene followed.” –Bob Smith

15. “Thanksgiving, when the Indians said, “Well, this has been fun, but we know you have a long voyage back to England”. –Jay Leno

16. “Thanksgiving is the day when you turn to another family member and say, “How long has Mom been drinking like this?” My Mom, after six Bloody Marys looks at the turkey and goes, “Here, kitty, kitty.” –David Letterman

17. “You can tell you ate too much for Thanksgiving when you have to let your bathrobe out.” –Jay Leno

18. “Thanksgiving is an emotional time. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.” –Johnny Carson

19. May your stuffing be tasty
May your turkey plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
have nary a lump.
May your yams be delicious
and your pies take the prize,
and may your Thanksgiving dinner
stay off your thighs!
–Unknown

20. “Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
—Melody Beattie

21. “Turkey: A large bird whose flesh, when eaten on certain religious anniversaries
has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude.” – Ambrose Bierce

22. “Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.” –William Faulkner

23. “An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.” Irv Kupcine

24. “Thanksgiving was never meant to be shut up in a single day.” –Robert Caspar Lintner

25. “Thanksgiving like contentment is a learned attribute. The person who hasn’t learned to be content…lives with the delusion he deserves more or something better.” –Robert Flatt

Happy Thanksgiving!

Gild, a new kind of job search and recruitment tool, aims to smooth the process. Besides matching you up with jobs that fit, Gild lets you certify your skills, showcase your skills through competitions, and see where you rank among peers in your profession. Unlike traditional job search websites, Gild also lets you see where you are in a company’s application process.

It benefits companies, too. By reviewing job seekers’ skill ratings and certifications, companies can find the best potential employees more quickly.

CEO Sheeroy Desai calls Gild “social gaming meets career advancement.” We caught up with Sheeroy to learn more about how Gild works, the benefits of testing, and the role that games play in landing a job.

BP: What industries and nationalities comprise most of your user base?

Everything we do today, across the board, is focused on what we call the information technology space. Clearly, a lot of technology companies are our clients. We also have clients like United Health Group that aren’t technology companies, but do recruit a lot of technology talent as customers.

In terms of nationality and geography, our largest user base is India. That’s where we started our beta and did initial targeting. As such, about 80% of the population is from India. We did have a global launch last month, so now we’re seeing people from other parts of the world such as the United States, Philippines and the U.K. Our goal is to make Gild a global property.

BP: Are there any particular contests or tests that have had the greatest user response?

That’s a really interesting question. When we were building Gild up, we decided we were going to have different types of contests for the competitions. One of the contests was going to be the hardcore coding competitions. We thought that alone would be too limiting and people said they wanted something more light-hearted, so we also decided to do competitions that are really topical (Ed.: like Riddles and Inventions That Changed the World).

The main point at that time was to find the competition that would draw the most audience and so everyone would want to participate. The hardcore coding competitions are the ones that draw in the crowd. So that’s pretty much about our user base.

BP: Are some companies accepting Gild test scores in place of doing their own testing now?

The exams we’ve created are definitely accepted by some companies as a standard. An example of that would be Oracle across the JPAC region, which is Asia Pacific. If you want to get hired by Oracle, you have to do a test. We actually run and host those tests on our servers.

Similarly, if in India you get hired by SAP, or if you get hired by HP, you go through a testing process that has our tests. There are certainly organizations in parts of the world that are standardized on our assessments.

BP: Are there talented programmers who just don’t test well or are bad test takers? Or does that not really apply to the technology field?

When we think about who’s taking our skills test, they want to a job as a programmer and received a programming certification. What we are doing is putting coding on a challenging level. Each question is composed of some piece of code that you have to define or a piece of code with something wrong in it and you have to figure out what’s wrong or how would you improve it.

A lot of folks are thinking back to a testing days, back to the SAT days, it’s really not like that. These are questions designed to replicate the consequence you face in your job and the problems you have to solve when you’re working. From that standpoint, we don’t see that people don’t test well. It’s mostly about if you’re good at your job, then you should be able to do this stuff.

BP: As far as formatting your tests, it looks like they are timed and you have to do them all in one go. So you can’t do one section and save your test for another day?

Correct. That’s really from a standpoint of two things. One is the fact that you really have to do the test all at once is because we think that’s evening the playing field. Everyone should have to take the test under the same conditions.

The time thing is important because obviously the two people that get all the questions right, but if someone is able to do it in half the time than they better. So the timing is a way to distinguish who’s really better than the rest of the crowd.

BP: Can you tell me more about Gild’s gaming component?

The most prominent place you can find it is under Competition (Ed.: Gild’s Competition page). It gives users the ability to take an online competition for a prize. We’ve given out iPads, iPod touches, cameras, we’ve given a trip to Vegas. That’s where the gaming element is most obvious.

But gaming is built into everything. We take your test and tell you how you compared to everyone else in your city, your country, and around the world. You apply for a job and we tell you how you’re ranking compared to everyone based on the requirements and everyone that’s applied. We say OK, 50 people have applied for this job and you’re ranking number 3. Here are some things you can do to improve your rank. Gaming is built into everything, but most obviously in competitions.

BP: The whole concept of using gaming and gaming mechanics to allow these workers to apply for work is interesting. Could you talk more about that?

I think this is one of the things that really is critical to Gild’s success. What we’ve seen today which is you can take things like managing a career or finances and even your health. These are very important things. But you don’t see people going on the Internet and engaging in those tools a whole lot.

Our viewpoint is that it’s not our fault it’s not interesting. We really wanted to bring those gaming mechanics into those important tools. If you look at things like Facebook, they are all playing games. So we thought what if you bring some of the gaming to a very important topic like your career?

That’s what we’ve been trying to develop and we keep building on the concept and we see that a lot. I’d say about 20 or 25% of our audience are very fanatical users. They keep coming back on a regular basis and engage in an online community. You can see that behavior where they get upset if they score low and they don’t win a prize. They say “how can I win a prize next time?” So we think those elements are important, because it’s human nature.

BP: What’s your vision for Gild’s expansion?

We really want professionals to take control of their careers. If you look at the world today, and the technologies that we have, we see how far the Internet has advanced. Yet people seem very helpless when it comes to managing and looking at managing careers.

It’s amazing how even the most qualified person has trouble finding a job. It’s a very paralyzing thing and a humbling experience. And a big a part of it is because of all these tests are just geared for employers. When you go to apply to a job on Monster.com or Career Builder, you have no control over your resume and who’s going to get access to it. As a result, there are really qualified people using these limited avenues.

Our whole intent around Gild is we want to create a place where people and professionals can take control of their careers. They are the ones who are in the driver seat. We want the people who are really good to be able to make themselves more marketable. We want it to be a condition of a company choosing them.

From that standpoint, as a global standard, we want our initial focus to be on the technology space. We want technology professionals from around the world to build a community here. We want them to use Gild to not just learn more about themselves, but help them get better jobs. Once they have jobs, we want them to use Gild to help them go back to their employers and negotiate a better salary for themselves based on how they are doing. That’s our vision.

Official bio: Sheeroy Desai joined PAC Labs as the Chief Executive Officer in July 2007. He brings more than 20 years of experience in technology and technology services markets. Sheeroy was the second employee at Sapient Corporation, and began his career in technology as an early member at the Cambridge Technology Group — the predecessor firm to Cambridge Technology Partners — which was later acquired by Novell. Sheeroy graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987 with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and a minor in Economics.

Mind hacks. Ever since Tom Stafford and Matt Webb introduced us to the hidden logic of our upstairs system in their 2004 neuroscience tome, these simple tricks have taken the blogosphere by storm.

Nowadays, there’s a hack for everything, from your sex life to your kitchen stove. We compiled the Web’s 50 best mind (and life, and career, and…you get the point) hacks. These self-improvement gleanings are bound to make you a better, well, everything:

Work and Career

Five rules for keeping your inbox empty. If you have hundreds of unread emails like I do, these tips will keep your inbox (and brain) clutter-free.

How to control your workday before it controls you.

Make your to-do list fun by turning it into one big game.

Here’s a nifty system for keeping your desk clean and tidy.

Boring, but valuable: How to automatically back up your hard drive.

This is the ultimate procrastination hack.

10 things to do right now to cultivate a superior leadership year.

Your Finances

9 methods for mastering your money.

How to find out exactly what your job is worth…then ask for that raise.

Want to know how to save money? Stop wasting it on these 18 things.

How to go from $25/hour to $75/hour in 2 weeks.

Portfolio management made easy.

Life Skills

Common regrets that dying people have–and how to avoid those regrets in your own life.

These three words will solve 99% of your problems.

The secret to infinite energy in life.

10 ways to earn others’ respect.

How to be funny.

63 ways to build self-confidence.

42 practical ways to improve yourself.

One simple thing you can do to be brilliant.

How not to hurry.

What is happiness? And what do you have to do to attain it?

How to control negative self-talk.

How to create daily habits as consistent as brushing your teeth.

Want to be happy? Avoid buying into these ten myths.

How to improve your patience.

Lacking enthusiasm? Here’s how you can genuinely become enthusiastic.

How to flourish.

7 skills to become super smart.

Fitness and Health

How to gain weight and build muscle.

The ultimate how to get lean guide.

How to get a good night’s sleep (and what to avoid).

8 tips for eating healthy on a budget.

Family and Relationship

How to decide when to end a long-term relationship.

How to get over a broken heart.

20 principles for a happy marriage.

If you want to be a good parent, remember that discipline is not a four-letter word.

5 tips for motivating your kids to organize.

All kinds of hacks for the parents of newborn babies.

7 ways of resolving conflict easily and effortlessly.

Home Hacks

Fixing up your home? Here’s how to avoid devaluing it with your great ideas.

Theft-proof your house by knowing the 21 things burglars won’t tell you.

Household cleaning hacks that save you money.

5 things to always keep in your car to save money and frustration.

Find many more home hacks here.

Other Useful Hacks

How to build your tribe.

How to read 70+ books in a year.

How to generate ideas when you’re drawing a blank.

How to write a speech in five minutes.

How to raise funds for a cause.