• Get a rough idea in your head of the key points that you want to make.
• Write down a few headings that map out the rough structure.
• Start writing and write as if you were talking to someone.
• Don’t bother about correcting spelling mistakes or grammar at this stage. Just keep writing and let it flow. One of the biggest inhibitors to writing is trying to get every sentence perfect before moving on to the next one.
• A good tip for helping your writing flow is to turn off the spelling/grammar checker in the editor. It’s too distracting. You can go back and spell/grammar check the entire document when you’ve done the first draft.
• Don’t worry too much about grammar rules. I’m not suggesting that you should ignore grammar completely but many of the rules that were drummed into us at school, such as not starting sentences with and, also etc., can be safely ignored if the sentence sounds right.
• Use simple words where you can. Using a more complicated equivalent word if there is one won’t make you sound literary. You will sound pompous and it will just turn the readers off.
• Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Long sentences and paragraphs make reading more difficult. Remember the people reading your article are probably pushed for time and won’t read something that looks as if it’s going to take time and effort to digest.
• When you’ve written a first draft then go back, read and correct any mistakes. Reword anything that you’re not happy with.
• Don’t over-polish the document. When you’re reasonable happy with it, publish it. You won’t get extra brownie points by spending hours polishing it.

Remember you’re not at school where maybe you were put off writing by overzealous English Language teachers. No one is going to mark your writing.

Oh, and as an afterthought, if you do get the odd pedant commenting about typos or some obscure grammatical mistake, ignore them. If they’re more interested in looking for mistakes rather than considering the content of your article they don’t deserve a reply.

Yes we’re now in that part of the year

So is the Apprentice an educational programme teaching us how business should be done in the 21^st century or is it simply another gimmicky reality TV programme?

Leaving aside the fact that many of the “contestants” are just wannabee media celebrities. Let’s consider the business methodology that Lord S espouses during his weekly “board room” (well actually a studio in West London) interrogations.

The process is simple (I call this the market trader business model).

1. Get a product for the lowest possible cost.

2. Market the product – in other words push it the faces of as many people as possible.

3. Sell as many units as possible at the highest possible margin.

4. Result is profit (or not in some cases!)

The big emphasis of course is on Steps 2 and 3 – marketing and selling.

Now this simple business model has worked for centuries. It’s the model of the street market trader and it has served Lord S well. Lord S is extremely good at selling. He’s made a fortune from it. But actually, apart from a pile of cash, what has he achieved?

Amstrad was never a success. It wasn’t innovative like, for example Apple. It sold boxes using the business model described above. In 50 years time no one will remember Amstrad, or even Lord S, but we will look back on Microsoft, Apple, Google etc. in the same way that we look back on Ford or Marconi today. These companies have had a significant impact on the world.

The Apprentice, particularly Lord S, tries to force budding entrepreneurs into the straight jacket of the market trader business model. It may make them rich but it will not turn them into the future Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. For that we need people who can think for themselves, “outside the box”. People who will take risks. People who are happy to fail occasionally without hearing Lord S tell them “you’re fired”.

The UK does not just need more people who can make money. It needs people who can change the world.

Day 10 provided a brochure-style site based on the WordPress platform with a custom-designed theme.

Visit the Pamper Me Spoil me website.

You’ve written the email message and just as you hit the the Send button you spot a spelling mistake

How many times has this happened to you? Or perhaps even worse. You’ve sent the message and then 30 seconds later started to regret something you wrote. Again it’s too late.

But there is a way round this. I use it on my Outlook email set up and it’s saved my bacon a number of times.

With Outlook you can set up rules to apply to a message depending on conditions that you specify. I have simply set up a rule that says if any message sent has normal priority, delay it for 2 minutes. If the message has high priority then send it straight away.

When I send a message it sits in my Outbox for 2 minutes unless I specifically allocate it high priority, in which case it’s sent immediately. This means that when I spot that spelling mistake after I’ve hit the Send button, I can go to the Outbox, retrieve the message and edit it.

Set up the rule as follows in Outlook (I’m using Outlook 2003 but other versions are similar).

• In the Tools drop-down click Rules and Alerts.
• In the window that opens up click New Rule.
• Another window opens and in that one check Start from a blank rule.
• From here just follow the Wizard and set up the rule.

That’s all there is to it. If you’ve never used rules in Outlook before, try setting up other rules. For example, you can set up rules to filter incoming mail where you can set up a rule such that incoming mail from a specific person is moved into a specific folder. You can set up as many rules as you like.

High end suppliers - To attract high end clients you need to look and act like a high end supplier.

Websites – Why is a website like a celebrity? Because, like a celebrity, it needs frequent updates, make-overs, and reinvention to stay attractive and popular.

Car insurance - We complain that today’s car insurance premiums are going through the roof. But if you look a today’s cars’ performance, an ordinary hatchback has got the same kind of performance as a super-car of 50 years ago. And 50 years ago the insurance premium of that same super-car would have been considered to be through the roof.

The Internet – Today, I can go on the Internet, order my groceries and a little while later a van will pull outside and deliver my order. 50 or so years ago you could pick up the telephone give the local shop an order and a boy on a bike would cycle round and deliver it. Progress?

IT Support – I used to provide IT support to home users. People would baulk at paying £70 to get their computer back up in running order. But nobody bats an eyelid when a plumber comes round and charges £70 before he’s even got a spanner out of his bag. I should have been a plumber!

Solicitors – Solicitors are even worse. They charge by the minute and the clock starts ticking as soon as you lay a hand on the phone. But many things, that people automatically turn to solicitors for, can be done themselves. I’ve successfully done two divorces myself and successfully sued people through the small clams court myself. All the information you need is on the Internet. Don’t give these people your business if you can help it. They hide behind a cloud of legal fog and play on people’s fears. Still, maybe I should have been a solicitor!

Call around a few web development companies, give them an idea of what you’re looking for and ask them for a price. I have done exactly that when I got my assistant to research my competitors’ pricing and she got various answers ranging from “(sharp intake of breath) it depends what you want” to “how long is a piece of string?”.

The only company that impressed her was one that was able to answer straight away with a price and then follow up with a few alternative options with prices.

There is absolutely no reason why web developers can’t give prices up front. There is no black magic in web development. You’re not asking these people to invent a cure for cancer. It’s a pretty straightforward process and there is no excuse for not being able to price things up front.

Not doing so is simply lazy and will turn away most potential clients before they get through the door.

If you come across a web developer with this kind of approach just walk away.

Whilst I believe that this is a very serious issue, my view on this with regards to ISP’s, is simple. ISP’s perform a role very similar to that of a post office. That is to simply deliver content, whatever that may be and created by whoever, to end consumers. A post office does not open mail to check and censor the material inside the envelope. Neither should an ISP check and censor content.

For content that is illegal, such as child pornography, it is the responsibility of the police to pursue and stop the perveyors. For content that is legal, it is the responsibility of parents to decide whether or not it is suitable for their children.

It seems to me that the IPS’s are being used as a scapegoat whilst parents and police shirk their responsibilities.

1. Decide what you want your website to do for you

2. Who is the site aimed at? Try to imagine the type of visitor to the site. For example, women over 40.

3. How will those visitors find the site? Usually it will be through search engines. But increasingly people are getting to websites via social networking sites.

4. Do you want to sell products directly from the site? If your answer is yes don’t go rushing straight into a full blown eCommerce site. eCommerce sites are expensive and online retailing requires significant offline effort and changes to business processes which need careful planning. If your aim is to retail online, start small. You can do this with a few PayPal buttons on a fairly simple site and then work up to a larger site from there.

5. Don’t be lured into flashy graphics or wacky designs by your web designer. The website must look professional and be in keeping with your business but, at the end of the day, it is there to promote your business, not to demonstrate your web designer’s capabilities.

6. Keep it simple. This is about, what I call, the four W’s – visitors to the website wants to find out:

• What you do.
• Where you do it – the area in which you operate.
• Who do you do it to – your typical customer base.
• Why should the visitor let you do it to him – some proof that you can deliver.

7. Expect to update the site. If you want your website to by successful expect to have to put effort into keeping it updated with fresh content. Make sure from the start that you invest in a website design that can be easily updated.

8. Consider having a blog instead of a straight website. If you’re in a business (such as consultancy, accountancy, law or similar) where you need to provide updated information to your client base frequently, consider having a blog rather than a straight website. Blogs are much easier to update and they have the added bonus that search engines tend to prefer blogs.

9. Avoid do-it-yourself sites. They may look attractive when you see the ads on the TV. But in reality building one of these sites takes much more effort that the few simple clicks the adverts show.

10. Get a site that is search engine friendly. By search engine friendly, I mean that the site has been built so that it won’t by ignored by search engines. However, don’t let your web developer mislead you into thinking it means that search engine friendly will guarantee that the site will get to the top of Google, or indeed on the first page of Google. To do that you may need to invest in search engine optimization which, done properly, can cost a significant amount of money.

That question was posed recently in a Daily Telegraph article where Boris Johnson tried to offer his own explanation. Boris’ theory is that people in the UK don’t like people who succeed. Ergo nobody tries to succeed.

Sorry Boris but I think you’ve got that back to front. In the UK, we don’t tolerate failure. To succeed in the way the people mentioned above have succeeded you have to be prepared to stick your neck out and fail many times and still keep trying until you succeed. Fail in the UK and you’re damned. The banks don’t want to know, potential investors will avoid you.

This is illustrated in graphic detail in the Apprentice TV programme where the losing team is sent to the café of doom whilst the winners are sent on some expensive junket. And then, finally, the candidate whose been fired is seen slinking off dragging suitcase (do they really have 12 weeks worth of clothes in there) and driving away in a humble taxi. The final winner of course gets to ride away in Lord S’ Roller.

Until attitudes in the UK change, innovative, wacky, off-the-wall people who can make a step change to the way people’s lives will continue to be cast aside, or go elsewhere – to the US for example.

Tim’s core argument is that the motive behind this type of legislation is control – control of the Internet. In this Tim is spot on the mark.

The Internet potentially puts huge amounts of power into the hands of ordinary people. Power to access information that have previously only been available to an elite few. Power to communicate potentially with anyone in the world.

From the governments’ view point they can see how the internet has played a crucial roll in the recent Arab Spring resulting in the overthrow of several Arab regimes. They are afraid that the same could happen at home. If you think it couldn’t then think again.

Last years riots were “coordinated” largely using Blackberry Messenger. Coordination is actually a misnomer since the rioters were largely kids on the rampage. But just think what could have been achieved if large groups of people decided to get together and stage properly coordinated protests throughout the country.

Twelve years ago, the fuel protests brought the country to a few days away from paralysis. Email played a large part in coordination those protests. This could happen again because people now are becoming more disaffected as austerity cuts bite deeper. Governments know this and want control now.

As for the media moguls, a few powerful individuals have traditionally had control of their respective sectors for years – music, newspapers, book publishing, TV, movies. They’ve controlled the content, controlled whose work can and cannot be published. They have become extremely wealthy in the process. As also have a few of the lucky artists whose work has been published.

But the internet now threatens those people – the media moguls and well knows artists. Many lesser known artists, many of whom are just as good as the elite few, can now self publish and bypass these gatekeepers. The media moguls kick back under the guise of “copyright infringement”, “illegal downloads” etc. They’re desperately trying to hang onto control.

So this is the situation we have at the moment. An unholy alliance between governments that want to gain control of the internet and media moguls who want to hang onto the control that they have traditionally had over their industries.

It is up to all of us to resist unless we’re happy for the government to pry more and more into our private lives. Or we’re happy to see the likes of Simon Cowell or Rupert Murdoch become even richer.