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Transparency: Benefits and Best Practices

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Matthew Kammerer

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November 17th, 2009

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Blog, User Experience, Visual Design

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When you visit a website of a business do you ever wonder who is behind that business? Being transparent online and in business has a plethora of benefits. Users gain trust and have the ability to see the human side of the business. The effects are incredible, from increasing sales to finding like minded clients.

Showing that your business is human can easily make you a stronger company. The benefits go two ways though. Not only is it great for your company but it is also beneficial for the user in may ways. In this post I will detail many examples of transparency around the web. As we go through each example I will explain why it is positive, how they have done it, and what it creates to benefit the user experience.

Build Internet

Sam and Zach of Build Internet lay it on the line. As soon as you open Build Internet’s homepage you see the two fellows behind the website greeting you. Click on their photo and be taken to the about page. This page has a larger version of their photo and ways to contact them on a personal level through twitter. This creates a personal connection between the viewer and the owners of the website.

Comcast Cares

Talk about a marketing and customer service visionary. Comcast’s early adoption of twitter has been followed by many corporations. The difference that is still clear? Having a human face attached. Twitter is a personal social marketing tool. Therefore, when a company hops on board, why should they not also be personal?

Freelance Folder

Freelance Folder has found an awesome use for their footer. Down there at the bottom of the page they give the bio of the four main authors of the blog. This puts us in touch with the voices of what readers see day in and day out in a new way.

Twitter Blog

Vimeo

Vimeo brings us a very fun and creative About page. It actually inspires me to take a fun photo with the UXB crew and update our own about page. However, the fun photo of the staff brings a level of fun that people may not perceive when thinking of Vimeo. This presentation gives us a feeling that Vimeo folks enjoy what they do and have a life outside of their product.

Smashing Magazine

The new Smashing Magazine design is hot… but I digress. I included SM here because of the addition of their illustration in the footer. These folks are the mysterious men and women behind SM. When clicking on the footer cartoon we are taken to the about page which educates us on who these folks are and what they do. This brings a level of transparency that the previous design did not have.

This is Aarons Life

Oh, hi there Aaron! In TIAL’s footer we meet Aaron face to face. This could almost be described as a face to face meeting but presented online. Neat idea for any freelancer or blogger looking to create a strong personal brand that has their face attached to business.

Mutant Labs

Mutant Labs is similar in Vimeo in their approach. Instead of a group shot doing something fun they also took on a degree of silliness. Great to get people inspired to take on Mutant Labs as their web developer. It shows a since of creativity right from the start. This in turn can easily increase sales.

Level 9 Design

So, I can’t quite tell if Stan is really an employee of the business or not. If he is, more power to him! Regardless, Level 9 Design brings a great personal sense of humor to their front page. This can be risky but for perspective clients with like minds it could draw in those who can’t quite decide. Bringing in like minded customers can make the process smoother and more successful.

Maurivan Luiz

Landing on Maurivan Luiz I want to hire him. This User Experience Designer has taken personal exposure to a new level. Showcasing himself with a cut out smile can be taken to a deeper level when considering the philosophy behind user experience.

Hashrocket

Hashrocket showcases it’s employees on the home page. This introduces you as a prospective client to some folks that may be working with you on your next project. Following the employees is a link to all of the rocketeers. But Hashrocket goes deeper than this, providing a Flickr feed, broadcasting their book club meetups online, and even sharing their company via a vimeo account. You can virtually become a part of their team without them ever knowing. Ok, enough with the creepy stuff. Really, the transparency in this business makes it feel personal and easy to trust.

Jaredigital

Jared’s creativity flows from the page the moment you open it. But wait… Vince from Shamwow? This is an awesome example of using popular culture to connect a visitor to you instantly.

Clearleft

Clearleft has a great about page. It starts with a story of who formed it and when. Then as your eyes move across the page you meet the staff. One of my favorite examples of an about page.

Carsonified

Carsonified’s bio pages for the team members are fun and helpful. Not only do we get a taste of the personal side of the employees but we are also able to easily contact them through email or twitter.

Trends & You

Now that you’ve seen some great examples of transparency on blogs, twitter, and business’ websites we get an idea of where we could perfect our own transparency. For starters, personal freelancer’s thrive on self promotion. It makes sense for these websites to showcase a photo of themselves. Additionally, there are benefits from being open with your audience about yourself in bios, on blogs, and on your company profile page.

In closing I’d like to leave you with a few questions. What transparency practices did you enjoy most? What other examples do you have? How do you see your transparency changing after this?

Further Reading

• Building Trust with Transparency
• 5 Ways to Make Your Business More Transparent
• Transparency Is The Future Of Business
• 47 Simple Ways to Build Trust in Your Website or Blog

Important: You should back up your existing iPhoto Library folder before using the rebuild feature. A backup allows you to restore the iPhoto Library if anything unexpected happens during the rebuild that prevents the library from rebuilding correctly.

Before performing a rebuild, you should install any iPhoto updates by using Software Update. If a software update resolves your issue, then you don’t need to rebuild. It’s also a good idea to search Apple’s Support Page for your specific iPhoto symptom before doing a rebuild, just in case there is a more specific article or relevant solution.

To rebuild the iPhoto library:

1. Quit iPhoto if it is open.
2. Hold down the Command and Option keys on the keyboard.
3. Open iPhoto.
4. Keep the keys held down until you are prompted to rebuild the library.
5. A dialog will appear with rebuild options. Select the options you want to use.
6. Click Rebuild to begin the rebuild process. This may take a few minutes to complete.
   

Use these guidelines to determine which options to choose in the rebuild dialog:

• Select the option(s) to rebuild thumbnails only if the thumbnails appear to be an issue (gray, blank, missing or mismatched).
• Select the option to recover orphaned photos if photos appear to be missing from the iPhoto library. iPhoto will examine the library folder for any photos that are not currently being displayed in Albums or Events in the iPhoto source list.
• In iPhoto ‘08 and later, select the option to examine and repair iPhoto Library file permissions if it appears that you cannot edit certain photos or if the iPhoto library will not open. See “iPhoto 6 can’t open due to permissions alert” for more information.
• In iPhoto ‘08, select the option to “Rebuild the iPhoto Library database” if iPhoto unexpectedly quits when opened or does not get past loading photos.
• In iPhoto ‘09, select the option to “rebuild the iPhoto Library Database from automatic backup” if iPhoto unexpectedly quits when opened or does not get past loading photos. This option is similar to the option to “Rebuild the iPhoto Library database” in iPhoto ‘08, except that it has the added ability to regenerate a database from an automatically backed up library database. Also, after rebuilding your library database using this option, your original database files can be found in the “Before Restore” folder inside the library package.

Note: Any “recovered” photos may not appear in their original album in the source list. However, they should appear in the newly created “Recovered Photos” album in the source list.

This is HUGE!!

The study of musical instruments (’organology’ – no, really) is the study of the human condition. Every culture is defined by its own distinctive set of trills, whistles, parps, honks and beats, and every corner of the world has evolved its own location-specific indigenous instrument to renew a sense of cultural identity through noisy self-expression. And instruments evolve – never more so than now, in the midst of a technological revolution that has opened up entirely new ways to make music. So settle back and compose yourself as we look at ten new instruments that look set to accompany us into the world of tomorrow.

1. Eigenharp

(Images via: Eigenlabs and engadget)

In development for 8 years with funding of over £10m / $16.5m, the Eigenharp is a slow-crafted technological marvel. 120 keys (each one tilting to give a flexible tone), percussion buttons, built-in sound management capabilities including recording, playback and looping, and a potentially limitless range of noises thanks to running on uploaded digitally sampled sounds. It is played via keyboard, tap-pad and mouthpiece – and the result is an instrument that sounds like a band.

2. Electric Violin

(Images via: Wired and Riverstring)

Similarly digitally enhanced are the electric violins, a family of new hybrid instruments that are sufficiently well-established to become a mainstay of the modern music scene. Thanks to electrical pickups inside or outside the instrument’s body, the violin’s vibrations are run through electronic processing and transformed into any sound under the sun – most effectively, the noise of an electric guitar. Witness the magic of Ed Alleyne-Johnson performing on the streets of Chester, England.

3. Tenori-On

(Image via: Yamaha)

No, this isn’t the first good-to-go version of Minesweeper: this baby is for making beautiful music with.  The 16 x 16 grid of LED lights on the Tenori-On responds to touch and to real-time looped programming, creating soaring, rippling compositions that mesmerise beginners and experts alike (Peter Gabriel is a fan). If you want a hands-on demonstration of its power, try Andre Michelle’s ToneMatrix, an online AudioTool-powered simulation.

4. Samchillian

(Images via: Eitan Shefer)

Musical instrument or chest expander? You’d be forgiven for asking – but the Samchillian is a new, ergonomic-minded take on the keyed instrument, with each key representing a relative, not fixed, note. As the musician plays, the function of each part of the instrument is constantly changing, allowing a full range of musical expression (provided the player has a really good memory, of course).

5. BeatBearing

(Images via: BeatBearing)

And moving further into the realm of instruments that look like anything but – we have the BeatBearing. Instead of generating noise itself, the BB triggers the timing of preselected types of percussion – simply drop a steel ball-bearing in the right slot to get the beat you want, when you want. The inventor isn’t interested in manufacturing his design: instead, he has published the plans on DIY-tech online magazine MakeZine to encourage people to build their own - and with more than 1 million views of the Youtube demo (below) at the start of this year,  we reckon there will be plenty of takers.

6. Hapi Drum

(Images via: Wikimedia Commons/OrangeHat)

At least the Hapi looks like what it is (well, kinda) – a steel drum with a hole in the base that allows the player to control the amount of noise emerging, using their lap. Since each key (or “tongue”) is part of the main body of the instrument, each note is accompanied by a subtle resonant harmony from other musically compatible notes. Time for a demonstration, methinks…

7. Electroencephalophone

(Images via: Glogger/Wikimedia Commons)

At first sight, you’re looking at a lady trying to listen to her iPod underwater, and a collection of buff young people stood up in a hot-tub. In fact in both pictures depict music-making, via an electroencephalophone – a device that converts brainwaves into sound (and therefore a quintephone). The lady is psychotherapist Ariel Garten participating in a concert performance – and the “hot-tub” trio are an electroencephalophonist and two assistants accompanying on electrocardiophones.

8. Hydraulophone

(Images via: wearcam)

Now to the merry, messy world of the hydraulophones. Water flows out holes in the instrument, and the player uses his fingers to block or divert each stream, triggering internal mechanisms – discs, shafts or valves – that produce sound. In other words, it works like a woodwind instrument, except the wind is replaced by water (which doesn’t directly create the sound).

9. Drawdio

(Images via: Jay Silver via Wired)

Daring you to not burst out laughing when it gets underway is the Drawdio, a homespun theramin. There are a number of ways to make one (cheaply and easily), but the working principle remains the same in all models – it runs a current through the graphite deposited from the end of your pencil, and translates it through a synthesizer to create a noise like a kazoo in a gale.

10. Ocarina

(Images via: Smule)

But for breadth of lateral thinking, hats off to Smule, the inventors of the Ocarina iPhone application. Using the phone’s built-in movement sensors and touch screen, your phone becomes either a wholly keyed instrument…or a kind of flute, by detecting the passage of your blown breath and translating it into intensity of sound. Once you’ve finished your piece, upload it to the Ocarina online community and listen to the work of others. A virtual instrument that automatically shares its output online – can you get more contemporary than that?

Last month, American Booksellers Association published an open letter to the Justice Department, asking Justice to investigate Wal-Mart, Target, and Amazon after they lowered prices of best-selling books to under $10. The threat, the ABA says, is dire: “If left unchecked, these predatory pricing policies will devastate not only the book industry, but our collective ability to maintain a society where the widest range of ideas are always made available to the public, and will allow the few remaining mega booksellers to raise prices to consumers unchecked.”

Got that? Lower prices will lead to higher prices, and cheap books threaten to reduce the range of ideas in circulation. And don’t just take the ABA’s word for it. They also quote John Grisham’s agent and the owner of a book store, who both agree that cheap books are a horrible no-good very bad thing. So bad, in fact, that the Department of Justice must get involved, to shield the public from the scourge of affordable reading. (Just for the record, the ABA is also foursquare against ebooks being sold more cheaply than paper books, and thinks maybe Justice should look into that too.)

There may have been some Golden Age of Lobbying, where this kind of hysteria would have had led to public alarm. By now, though, the form is so debauched there’s probably a Word macro for describing competition as a Looming Threat To The Republic. (or The Children, or Civilization Itself. Depends on your audience.)

It’s not surprising that the ABA would write stuff like this — it’s their job to make self-interested claims. What is surprising is that there are members of the urban cognoscenti who still believe these arguments, arguments that made some sense twenty years ago, but have long since stopped doing so.

* * *

Twenty years ago, when we had Barnes and Noble but no Amazon, there was all kinds of literature, from 2600 to Love & Rockets, from Heather Has Two Mommies to Duplex Planet, that survived mainly in the independent ecosystem, but whose host bookstores also needed to sell enough Stephen King or M. Scott Peck to stay open. Fifteen years ago, when use of the web was still a minority pursuit, online bookselling changed this game, but hadn’t yet ended it. Even ten years ago, when more than half of U.S. adults had already become internet users, there were still many book lovers not online. Though the value of bookstores in supporting variety had shrunk, it was still there.

Those days are over. Internet use is as widespread as cable TV, and an internet user in rural Utah has access to more books than a citizen of Greenwich Village had before the web. Millions more books. Like record stores and video rental places, physical bookstores simply can’t compete for breadth of offering and, also like the social changes around music and moving images, the internet is strengthening rather than weakening the ability of niches and sub-cultures to see themselves reflected in long-form writing.

The internet also moderates the competitive threat, because the competition is only a click away. Amazon lists millions of books, but so does eBay, and publishers like O’Reilly or McGraw-Hill or Alyson can sell directly to the reader. If you had to choose between buying books only offline or only online, the choice that maximizes the number of ideas in circulation is unambiguously clear. Even if all but a dozen online booksellers were to vanish, there would still be more places to buy books on the web than there are bookstores in the average American city today.

* * *

Despite the spectacular breadth of available books created by online book sellers, many lovers of bookstores echo the ABA’s “Access to literature is at stake!” argument. In my experience, people make this argument for one of three reasons.

This first is that some people simply dislike change. For this group, the conviction that the world is getting worse merely attaches to whatever seems to be changing. These people will be complaining about kids today and their baggy pants and their online bookstores ’til the day they die.

A second group genuinely believes it’s still the 1990s somewhere. They imagine that the only outlets for books between Midtown and the Mission are Wal-Mart and Barnes and Noble, that few people in Nebraska or Arkansas have ever heard of Amazon, that countless avid readers have money for books but don’t own a computer. This group believes, in other words, that book buying is a widespread activity while internet access is for elites, the opposite of the actual case.

A third group, though, is making the ‘access to literature’ argument without much real commitment to its truth or falsehood, because they aren’t actually worried about access to literature, they are worried about bookstores in and of themselves. This is a form of Burkean conservatism, in which the value built up over centuries in the existence of bookstores should be preserved, even though their previous function as the principal link between writers and readers is being displaced.

This sort of commitment to bookstores is a normative argument, an argument about how things ought to be. It is also an argument that might succeed, as long as it re-imagines what bookstores are for and how they are supported, rather than merely hoping that if enough nice people seem really concerned, the flow of time will reverse.

* * *

The local bookstore creates all kinds of value for its community, whether its hosting community bulletin boards, putting rocking chairs in the kids section, hosting book readings, or putting benches out in front of the store. Local writers, harried parents, couples on dates, all get value from a store’s existence as a inviting physical location, value separate from its existence as a transactional warehouse for books.

The store doesn’t get paid for this value. It gets paid for selling books. That ecosystem works — when it works — as long as the people sitting in those rocking chairs buy enough books, on average, to cover the added cost of having the chairs in the first place. The blows to that model have been coming for some time, from big box retailers stocking best sellers to online sales (especially second-hand sales) to the spread of ebooks to, now, price wars.

Online bookselling improves on many of the core functions of a bookstore, not just price and breadth of available books, but ways of searching for books, and of getting recommendations and context. On the other hand, the functions least readily replicated on the internet — providing real space in a physical location occupied by living, breathing people — have always been treated as side effects, value created by the stores and captured by the community, but not priced directly into the transactions.

If the money from selling books falls below a certain threshold, the stores will cut back on something — hours, staff, rocking chairs — and their overall value will fall, meaning marginally fewer patrons and sales, threatening still more cutbacks. There may be a future in which they offer less value and make less money in some new and stable equilibrium, but beneath a certain threshold, the only remaining equilibrium is Everything Must Go. Given the margins for local bookstores, many of them are near that threshold today.

All of this makes it clear what local bookstores will have to do if the profits or revenues of the core transaction fall too far: collect revenue for the side-effects.

The most famous version of this is bookstore-as-coffeeshop, where the revenues from coffee subsidize the lingering over books and vice-versa, but other ways of generating revenue are possible. Reservable space for book clubs, writers rooms, or study carrels; membership with buy-back options for a second-hand book market run out of the same space; certain shopping hours reserved for members or donors; use of volunteer labor, like a food coop; sponsorships from the people or businesses in the neighborhood most interested in the social value of the store and most interested in being known as local machers.

The core idea is to appeal to that small subset of customers who think of bookstores as their “third place”, alongside home and work. These people care about the store’s existence in physical (and therefore social) space; the goal would be to generate enough revenue from them to make the difference between red and black ink, and to make the new bargain not just acceptable but desirable for all parties. A small collection of patron saints who helped keep a local bookstore open could be cheaply smothered in appreciation by the culture they help support.

* * *

Treating the old side-effects as the new core value would in many cases require non-profit status. This would push small stores who tried it towards the NPR model, with a mix of endowment, sponsorship, and donations, a choice that might be anathema to the current owners. However, the history of businesses that traffic in physical delivery of media has been grim these last few years. (This is the story of your local record store, RIP.)

Any change from a commercial to a cooperative model of support would also probably have to be accompanied by a renegotiation of commercial leases. Street level commerce seems to be undergoing some of the same changes urban warehouses and lofts went through in the 1960s and waterfront property went through in the 1990s, where the muscular old jobs of making, storing, and transporting goods receded, leaving those spaces open for colonization as dwellings.

In the current case, the spread of electronic commerce for everything from music to groceries is part of the increase in empty store fronts on shopping streets, leaving a series of Citi branches, ATT outlets, and Starbucks that repeat at regular intervals, like scenery in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Even when the current recession ends, it’s hard to imagine vibrant re-population of most of the empty commercial spaces, and it’s easy to imagine scenarios in which commercial districts suffer more: consolidation among pharmacy chains, an uptick in electronic banking, the end of our love affair with frozen yogurt, any of these could keep many street level spaces empty, whatever happens to the larger economy.

If commercial space does follow the warehouse-and-loft pattern, then we’ll need to find ways to re-purpose those spaces. Unlike lofts, however, street level living has never been a big draw, but turning those spaces into mixed commercial-and-communal use may offer a viable alternative.

This also comes with the standard disclaimer that it may not work. The gap between the money needed to stave off foreclosure and the money available from local beneficiaries may not match up in any configuration. Vehement declarations of support for local bookstores may turn out be mere snobbishness masquerading as commitment. The transition of revenue from “transactional warehouse” to “social hub” may be too fitful to create the needed continuity. Landlords may prefer to hold empty spaces at nominally high rents than re-price. And so on.

All of which is to say that trying to save local bookstores from otherwise predictably fatal competition by turning some customers into members, patrons, or donors is an observably crazy idea. However, if the sober-minded alternative is waiting for the Justice Department to anoint the American Booksellers Association as a kind of OPEC for ink, even crazy ideas may be worth a try.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Sid Savara of Analysis Driven Personal Development.

In my life I’ve gone through periods of intense, driven productivity – months where everything fell into place, and my goals almost seemed to accomplish themselves. At the other extreme, there have been times in my life where I was completely overwhelmed, burdened by my different projects and responsibilities – and frustrated because so many of them not only challenged me, but didn’t matter to me. There were days when I asked myself how did I end up here? How did I end up working on all these things that aren’t who I am, and that don’t represent where I am going?

Some of our projects are extremely important to us, some matter a little – and some simply don’t matter to us at all. In this guide I’d like to discuss how to define and focus on what truly matters – and then discuss some strategies for making time for them.

Breaking It Down
Here are a few question to help you focus on what truly matters – and cut from your life items that don’t.

1. What does my life look like ten years from now? I love projecting into the future and imagining my life: mentally time traveling to picture where I want to be. The power of this exercise is even more apparent when you consider that you are the product of where you came from. Think of your favorite memories, people and events from your past and you’ll see things that have shaped you into the person you are today. Similarly, looking ten years down the road and imagining what I want helps me focus my energies today to make it happen tomorrow. If my future daydream is filled with thoughts of spending time with my family and celebrating with friends – then that tells me I need to focus on maintaining those relationships today.

What is my purpose? Leo has previously discussed his life’s purpose and tips for finding your own life’s mission. If you have determined your life’s mission, that provides a foundation for where you should be spending your time – along with the activities, and ends, you should be focusing on. This is sometimes difficult because we may believe our life’s purpose is not in line with a “practical career” – but I disagree. There is no contradiction in using a “practical career” to pull yourself out of debt so you can be free for adventure, or perhaps to send your children to college. The disconnect occurs however, when your “practical career” is padding your bank account with money which means little to you – and you wish you were out living your true purpose instead.

What excites me? Sometimes we are scared to admit to ourselves what we really want to do, and who we really want to be because it’s not popular, or because it’s not as secure as the job we have. Deep down however, we know what excites us. We know what gets our heart pumping, and what gets us excited to jump out of bed in the morning.

What can I let slide? There are never enough hours in the day to do everything, absolutely everything, that I have some interest in doing. There is, however, enough time in the day to do everything that I am truly interested in, and that truly matters. Find what you can let slide -and then let it.

Do the consequences have meaning Every task and project has outcomes and consequences – but consequences don’t matter in and of themselves. What matters is how much those consequences mean to us. Sometimes we fight, claw and struggle towards down a path because other people want us to have the rewards at the end, or because the ends sound impressive – but if they don’t have meaning to us, then we will not be satisfied with the accomplishment. In other cases we may have initially pursued a goal, but our interests and purpose changed. If something doesn’t mean anything to you, then regardless of how important it is to others, how impressive it may be or how important it may have been in the past, it may be time to let it go.

Making Time
You may already know what truly matters in your life – but are finding it difficult to make time for it, and to focus on it. Here are some tips to help you make time for what truly matters:

1. Do it first. In Zen To Done Leo suggests picking your 3 Most Important Tasks (MITs) and doing them first thing in the morning. Similarly, once you find what truly matters, try to take care of it first before spending time on tasks that matter less to you. Some people have experienced significant increases in productivity when writing, working out, or meditating early in the morning. I personally believe in paying myself first with my time, and live it every day. I work on my personal goals first thing in the morning, before I do anything else. This way every day begins positively and in line with my future.
2. Schedule it in. I’m very busy, and so is m family. My parents and I want to make time for each other however, so I literally schedule dinner in on my Google Calendar. I treat that appointment with the same seriousness as anything else in my life. It’s a commitment to my future and what truly matters.
3. Treat it as an emergency. My life is booked back to back with work, appointments and various commitments – but when I had to go into surgery for appendicitis, none of the little boxes in my task list got checked off that day. Instead, my routine came to a halt as I dealt with my medical emergency. If you’re having trouble letting things slide, or aren’t sure where you can make time, then consider treating your life mission as an emergency. Clear important, but unnecessary items off your schedule for a day – and let them go. Every day that you spend on tasks that don’t matter is a day you can never recover – and that, to me, is an emergency.

What Truly Matters, Matters
We all know deep down there are different things that drive us – hobbies that excite us, passions that we wish we had more time to explore, people we wish could spend more time with. I believe that identifying, focusing on, and spending time on what matters to us, is not simply a thought exercise.

Focusing on what truly matters, truly matters.

Find out what drives and truly matters to Sid Savara at his blog, Analysis Driven Personal Development. Sign up for his email newsletter and get a free copy of The Little Book Of Big Motivational Quotes.

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If you liked this guide, please bookmark it on Delicious or @zen_habits me.

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