• Intro
  
• Interview: Hal Alpiar - Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?
  
• The Office Corner
  
• Free Stuff
  
• Grammar Question of the Month: That vs. Which
  
• Tech Tips: Claudia Slate
  
• Tech Corner
  
• Writing Corner
  
• Trivia
  
• Word of the Month: Take back
  
• Recommendations
  

Am I excited! For you! First I got one of the Internet's finest programmers, Will Bontrager, to agree to a three-part interview. And now one of the biggest names in entrepreneurship: author, speaker, and consultant Hal Alpiar gave me a three-part interview. You may have your own business, or you may at some time 1) want to improve your skills as an employee, or 2) want to work toward starting your own business. Stay tuned to see what qualities Alpiar considers necessary to become a successful entrepreneur.

* Eagle eye Peggie (Katsuey) Brown http://www.katsueydesignworks.com/ was the grand prize winner of the Amazon.com Easter Egg for February. What's an Easter Egg? For my purposes, it's a surprise you find somewhere in the text of Communication Expressway, and usually leads to winning a prize. First to find the Easter Egg and contact me wins a gift certificate from Amazon.com.

* Anne Doherty of Sydney, Australia won the sleek business card holder donated by Reena Kazmann of Eco-Artware Earth Friendly Designs. Kazmann's URL: [LINK NO LONGER VALID]

* THE MARCH WINNER of Janet Attard's "The Home Office and Small Business Answer Book" is James Williams of Perris, California. Congratulations, James!

Want a chance to win the book? Go to http://www.ossweb.com/freebook.html If you don't win one month, try again. And again.

* An earlier winner of Attard's book, Steve Uzick, says, "This book is going to be a valuable asset in my resource library....I hope to avoid some major pitfalls beginners have starting their e-commerce business. This book is a "guide book" that will get you off to a good start and will guide you as you progress. It asks the type of questions one would have, and then gives you practical answers. Pretty neat! Thank you again for sending this book to me."

* Our next survey revolves around popup windows (and popunders and pop-around -the-screen pages. Do you use them on your site? If you don't have a site, and you encounter them when surfing the Web, do they convince you to buy something or subscribe, or do they irritate you? http://www.ossweb.com/survey4.html

PART 1 OF 3 - DEFINING AN ENTREPRENEUR

Q. Some of my readers work full-time as employees, and are considering opening their own small online businesses. What do they need to look at, in terms of their characteristics, that will help them know if they're suited to start such a venture?

A. First of all, entrepreneurs are made, not born. Second, contrary to popular opinion, entrepreneurs are NOT used car salesmen or carnival barkers; they are responsible, reliable, dedicated businesspeople who constantly think like, and about, customers.

They are REASONABLE risk-takers. Entrepreneurs have a burning desire to see their ideas succeed, but they don't bet the farm. They see opportunities and act on them (vs. study and research them to death).

Entrepreneurs don't stop at creating ideas; they are innovative enough to recognize that ideas are worth nothing if they can't be totally thought out and followed-through with.

[Example: An entrepreneur who thinks about the idea of adding a blue button to a product or service is also prepared to explain:

• What the button should be made of and why.
• What exact shade of blue and why.
• Where it should be manufactured and why.
• How long it will take to have an adequate supply and what that amount should be and why.
• What it will cost to research and develop and refine and manufacture and deliver and store and integrate... and why..
• How it will be researched and developed, and refined and manufactured and delivered and stored and integrated.
• How it can be best integrated, who will be responsible..
• What the competition is doing and will do about it.
• What the market will bear, where customers will come from and how they will respond.
• How and when and why and so on.]

Innovation. Thinking that makes ideas happen. Entrepreneurs think things through though, paradoxically, they don't often plan too far ahead. They'd rather steer a ship through a storm than engineer a train down a track.

Many entrepreneurs (I would guess the majority) start out as full-time employees, who become bored or frustrated with the 9-5 routine, and/or who are not encouraged or motivated or appreciated by their bosses. They often see their employers as being invested in maintaining the status quo.

Frequently, they are people who have figured out a better or more productive or more profitable or more realistic way to do what they're doing. They have a vision.

In other words, entrepreneurship is often the product of a negative employment experience...something like "necessity is the mother of invention." But entrepreneurship is also very often the product of a person's environment... common childhood characteristics include having had a lemonade stand, or having traded comic books or dolls or video games for task work or for other items, or having had an influential adult friend or relative who ran or runs his or her own business, or having worked a wide variety of parttime jobs after school and summers and weekends.

The bottom line is that having a "do it" attitude, being industrious, being life and career experience and experiment driven, being inquisitive about how and why things and systems work, being achievement-motivated (but generally being bored or unchallenged by standard educational fare or the pursuit of good grades!) can usually be identified as major indicators of many successful entrepreneurs.

CREDIT: Originator of the terms, Corporate Entrepreneurship(tm), Educational Entrepreneurship(tm), and Doctorpreneurs(tm), Hal Alpiar taught college courses and ran hundreds of training workshops with corporate executives, teachers and physicians. Today, Author / Consultant / Entrepreneur and CEO of BUSINESSWORKS Management & Marketing Specialists, Alpiar consults with corporations and speaks at events like the International Internet Marketing Conference.

1. Just want to make sure that you know about The Gregg Reference Manual, Ninth Edition, by William Sabin. Next to a dictionary, this spiral bound book is a "must" for every office. Cost: about US$32.

2. There's a new style guide out: "The Web Content Style Guide" by Gerry McGovern, Rob Norton, and Catherine O'Dowd." It's directed toward online writers, editors, and managers. Broken into Writing for the Web and Designing for the Web, it's destined for greatness. Cost: about US$19.

There are excellent writing tips, and they've made pronouncements on things we all wonder about. Like when to capitalize "web," what to call a page on the Web, and whether or not to hyphenate "e-mail." I suspect it'll be controversial, but that it will become a mainstay, grow, and be updated at least annually.

In our last issue, I mentioned a fantastic tutorial on creating effective headlines at Arconics http://www.arconics.com/elearning/index.html. Catherine O'Dowd is a consultant with this extraordinary company.

FREE BOOK! Subscribers are eligible to sign up to win a free copy of "The Home Office and Small Business Answer Book: Solutions to the Most Frequently Asked Questions About Starting and Running Home Offices and Small Businesses" by Janet Attard. Sign up once a month at www.ossweb.com/freebook.html - Winners announced here! We usually have other gifts, as well, for second- and third-place winners.

FREE DICTIONARY! Webgrammar offers all site visitors the chance to win a free Webster's dictionary, monthly. Sign up! www.webgrammar.com/contest.html

Q. I get confused over when to use "which" and when to use "that." Help!

A. Generally, use "which" to introduce nonrestrictive (nonessential) clauses. Separate a nonessential clause from the rest of the sentence by commas.

Example: The book, which my sister wrote, is called, "Goodbye God, I'm Going To Bodie."

Tip: The book and its title are more important than its author. When using "which" in this kind of sentence, think "by the way," or "incidentally." It will help you understand that the words inside the commas are not vital to the meaning of the sentence.

Generally, use "that" to introduce restrictive (essential) clauses. When you use essential clauses, don't separate them from the rest of the sentence by using commas.

Example: The book that my sister wrote is called, "Goodbye God, I'm Going To Bodie."

Tip: You want everyone to know about the book that your sister wrote. It's not the book alone that's important, but the book that your sister wrote.

Here are two excellent sites to help you in more depth
http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/notorious/that.htm
http://www.andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/t.html

Subject: Recovering Microsoft Office files

Free things to try: If you don't already own a piece of commercial software for recovering Office files, you may find one of these five tricks helpful.

1. Any file type Try opening the file by holding down the [Shift] key and double-clicking the file in Explorer. This will keep automatic VB code from running, as well as other automatic commands that may be preventing the program from opening.

2. Microsoft Word If you can open the file, but the contents are garbled, try using the Show/Hide button to reveal formatting. Then, starting from the beginning of the document, highlight all of the text except any extra paragraph markers at the bottom of the document. Copy the text and paste it into a new document. If that doesn't work, you may still be able to copy and paste the document in segments to rebuild it in a new file.

3. Excel If a small Excel file with only one sheet is the problem, try opening the file from Word. In the Open dialog box, select All Files in file types and try opening it directly or try using the Recover Text From Any File option also found under file types.

4. PowerPoint PowerPoint files tend to corrupt quite easily and are often not readily recovered without commercial software. Every once in a while you can use the Insert-Slides option in a new blank PowerPoint file and import the slides from the corrupt presentation.

5. Access Your best bet for recovering a corrupt Access database is to perform a repair and compact on the database. Failing that, you can attempt to import the objects into a new Access file.

Claudia Slate
Dakota Technics
clslate@dakotatechnics.com
www.dakotatechnics.com

1. HOW MODEMS WORK
Most of the world still uses a standard modem to connect to the Internet. Learn how they're able to transmit so much data over a normal voice connection.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/modem.htm

2. FILEXT - THE FILE EXTENSION SOURCE
Learn more about those odd file extensions!
http://filext.com/

1. COMFORTING SUB-HEADING IN 20 MARCH 2002 ARIZONA REPUBLIC: "Death of fans sitting in stands rare."

This was in reference to a teenager who died after being hit by a puck at an NHL game. How many can wait to go to a game after learning that there have only been three reported puck-related deaths since 1979? It goes on to compare Baseball's Hall of Fame records: at least five spectator deaths (people struck by batted or thrown balls).

2. Another book recommendation: Nick Usborne's Net Words: Creating High-Impact Online Copy. It's full of valuable information for those with Web sites. Net Words makes a strong case for a revolutionary new approach to copywriting tailored to the unique demands of a powerful new medium, the World Wide Web. Cost: about US$14.

3. Anne Wayman is the new moderator for Freelance Writing at about.com. http://freelancewrite.about.com/  It's full of good writing resources.

1. OXYMORON LIST
I've got a friend who introduces me as her live oxymoron – in that as an environmentalist, I live a pretty simple life in a house made of straw without running water and grow a good bit of my own food, yet I love and am addicted somewhat to computers and email and run a virtual business.

I found this site a bit of fun and your readers might also:
http://www.oxymoronlist.com/
Claudia Slate - Dakota Technics
www.dakotatechnics.com

2. FONETIKS, THE ONLINE LANGUAGE LABORATORY
This is an archive of human speech sounds. Find how to pronounce in English (American, British, Canadian, Scottish, Australian, Irish, and Welsh), Indonesian, Japanese (Romanji), Spanish, French, French Canadian, German, Swiss German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Thai.
http://www.fonetiks.org/

3. ALLCONFERENCES.NET
A directory focusing on conferences, conventions, trade shows, exhibits, workshops, events and business meetings. It helps users looking for specific information on conference or event information. It also helps meeting planners by offering online registrations and payment processing.
http://www.conferences-calendar.com/

4. JUGGLE WORDS WITH JANET
Janet's Wordplay and Puzzle - Janet Muggeridge
http://www.jy-muggeridge.freeserve.co.uk/

5. BRAIN EXPLORER
Learn about the brain in relation to depression, mania, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, migraines, epilepsy, sleep disorders, multiple sclerosis and strokes. Lundbeck Institute.
http://www.brainexplorer.org/

In the last edition of Communication Expressway, some subscribers took issue with my calling "plethora" an ugly word. When I began reading "The Forsyte Saga," I found such words as "aegis," "exigencies," and aggrieved." Plus, I'm an avid Patrick O'Brian fan, and his books resonate with words that were cutting edge in the early 1800s. I've been shortsighted, take back my narrow-minded statement, and pronounce "plethora" restored to full wordship.

1. ABYZ
Global News Links to Newspapers, News Media, and News Sources
http://www.abyznewslinks.com/

2. AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEM COMMAND CENTER
(ATCSCC) manages flow of air traffic within the continental United States. It gives general airport status conditions; it's not flight-specific. Click on your favorite airport to check the status. It also gives links to major airlines.
http://www.fly.faa.gov/flyFAA/index.html

3. MAP TECH
View Maps, Charts, and Photos free. Add Maps to Your Site
http://www.maptech.com/index.cfm

4. U.S. POSTAL SERVICE ZIP+4 Code Look-up
http://www.usps.com/ncsc/lookups/lookup_zip+4.html

5. JOIN ADVENTIVE'S I-CUSTOMER LIST, MODERATED BY JUDY
http://www.adventive.com/join.html
Lots of other excellent discussion lists, as well

ARCHIVES FOR ALL COMMUNICATION EXPRESSWAY ISSUES
http://www.ossweb.com/ezine-archive-index.html

Questions, comments, recommendations?
Contact Judy Vorfeld at www.ossweb.com.contact.html

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go to http://www.ossweb.com/ezine.html