1. Show your product within the first 60 seconds
2. The best products take less than five minutes to demo
3. Leave people wanting more
4. Talk about what you’ve done, not what you’re going to do
5. Understand your competitive landscape–current and historical
6. Short answers are best
7. PowerPoint bullet slides are death
8. How to use this new device called the phone
9. How to handle questions you don’t know the answer to
10. Always confirm the time of your meeting/call, & always be 15 minutes early

Read more about each suggestion: How To Demo Your Startup

ReadWriteWeb presents 4+ Ways to Quickly Create Excellent Presentations Online in which they offer an annotated list of free Web-based presentation software - 7 in all including…

Link: 4+ Ways to Quickly Create Excellent Presentations Online

1. information
2. simple
3. connection

Read his post for more on what he meant by each: What Do YOU Think People Want From Your Site

Should you use WordPress or Drupal for your next project—this is a common and fair question to ask. I have been using both content management systems, and both have their pro’s and cons. Planning for your project’s needs is critical in determining which CMS be sufficient.

Both content management systems are a pleasure to work with, but each one is better suited for certain demands. Overall, both WordPress and Drupal offer an amazing experience, but which one is right for you?

Link: WordPress and Drupal Compared—The Pro’s and Cons of Each CMS

This blog you’re looking at is WordPress. For a simple site, such as small business or a portfolio, WordPress will meet your needs and more. If you want to build a community and have the resources to maintain it over time, it’s worth looking into Drupal. And both of them are free!

Before you develop or redesign your site, I highly recommend this easy-to-read book. It will help you visualize your site from the visitors’ point of view.

Everything I’ve done with my blog design is intentional. I’m not saying that my blog design is perfect, and I certainly have other things I’d like to do in the future, but I wanted to share with you some thoughts about blog design, starting with my blog, but then showing some design ideas from other sites as well. Why should blog design matter? Because you want your blog to serve the purpose you’ve built it to serve.

Link: Make Your Blog Design Work For You

For the last three months I have been hard at work learning SEO by optimizing a local small business website. The business is called Giggly Wiggly Preschool and is located in the Seattle suburb Issaquah, Washington. This Issaquah Preschool was the preschool I attended many years ago, so I am happy I was given the chance to give back to it. Optimizing for local search is a great way to learn SEO because there is less competition and it is easier to maintain a small and focused scope. It has been a slow process but has taught me a lot. The following is a checklist of all the tasks that have been necessary for me to generate great results. My hope is that this list can be used by inexperienced SEOs who are looking to learn the trade. (As a bonus, I have included checkboxes so you can print this and complete it in your spare time.)

Link: The Beginner’s Checklist for Small Business SEO

…how does a web-worker today find a better web hosting provider?

Link: Finding a New Web Site Host

As web designers, we’ve grown pretty good at understanding how to create a modern, semantic, accessible website using XHTML and CSS. We understand what makes a good website, and how to make it happen.

When it comes time to design emails though, do all the same rules apply? Are there things we should be doing specifically for email that don’t make sense on a website? In this article we’ll discuss the technical, design and information elements that make up a successful HTML email.

Link: 2008 Email Design Guidelines

Lately I’ve been sprucing up my collection of software applications, and spending time with some good online tutorials on my favorites. Many of these tutorials are free, and in this post, I’ll round up several that I’ve found worth paying attention to.

Tutorials for:

• Editing images
• Using Unix
• Open Office applications
• Microsoft Office applications
• And more…

Link: Free Tutorial Sites for Honing Your App Skills