Have a Happy Tortellini Day

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Now, normally I’d be here talking about content audits or social media or some such. But not today. Why? Because it’s Tortellini Day and because one of the topics I write about all the time is food.

Happy Tortellini Day! To celebrate, I present just one of the many possible origin stories for this pasta-rific treat.

Lucrezia Borgia – yes, THAT Lucrezia Borgia – was travelling and stopped for the night at an inn in the small town of Castelfranco Emilia. The innkeeper was so captivated by Lucrezia that he couldn’t resist the urge later that night to peek at her through the keyhole. There were only a few candles lighting in the room so all he could see was her navel, and that, only just.

Now this might not seem a lot to you but not a lot happens in Castelfranco Emilia and a new navel was no doubt a noteworthy event. Anyway, the sight of Lucrezia’s navel sent him into ecstasy and he rushed to the kitchen and created tortellini in its image.

Or, it might have been intended to mimic the shape of a turtle – intended to echo the architecture of the area where many 17th-century buildings allude to the turtle motif.

But you know, turtle are fine in their way but they are no Lucrezia Borgia. So, I know which story I’m sticking with.

Want to see more of my food content? Head on over to Fabulous Foodie.

Book Indexing: A Real Thing Done By a Real Person

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A warning in advance – this is longer than my usual posts and the reason is, I get a LOT of questions about indexing. Hopefully this addresses most of them.

example of a book index

Any time I tell people I am an indexer, eyebrows are raised and/or knitted, questions are asked and heads are shaken. It is an unknown job to most people. To those who do know about it – such as the man I sat next to on my way to Rome a few year back – we can approach the status of myth (“I knew indexers were out there. I’ve just never seen one. I though you all were like unicorns.“)

Nope, we are real. We are not many in number but we are out there. And as a public service, I thought I’d answer some of the questions I frequently get about indexing. Continue reading “Book Indexing: A Real Thing Done By a Real Person” →

What a Content Audit Is, What It Isn’t and Why You Need One

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A recent client meeting trip into London got me thinking about content audits again – what they can do for a business or organisation, why they happen and why ‘audits’ and ‘inventories’ are NOT the same.

Content Audit

And as the topic keeps coming up, I thought it might be helpful to get it all down here. Continue reading “What a Content Audit Is, What It Isn’t and Why You Need One” →

Are You Managing Your Digital Landscape

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I recently nodded my way through an article about ‘digital estate sprawl’ because I’ve definitely seen a lot of it the last few years; especially as the phrase ‘digital transformation’ becomes more and more misunderstood as ‘just make it digital.’ And it’s not just in large organisations where you can see how and why it happens so easily.

Any size company can find itself with a digital footprint that has expanded more … organically than strategically. It’s an issue Imogen Hitchcock at Beaumont addresses in ‘Why websites are like gardens – a new approach to building website content‘ – but applied to an entire digital landscape instead of just one site.

And it’s not only the number of websites that creates the overgrowth. Continue reading “Are You Managing Your Digital Landscape” →

Searching Out Stock Photos

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Does the cost of stock photography sometimes leave you reeling? Join the club! I’ve been shopping for and using stock photos for over 25 years and the price tag can leave me speechless on occasion.

While cost is very often what sends people hunting for free or cheaper sources of stock photography, there’s another reason that becomes bigger as time goes on — lack of choice. Have you noticed the same pics showing up on multiple paid sites? Me too. There’s a particular coffee cup, for example, following me from 123RF to Dreamstime, Bigstock to Canstock, Shutterstock to Deposit and back again.

So I go hunting for something that doesn’t look like the same picture everyone else is using on their content about the same topics. And even if I don’t see them everywhere, shots on the major sites can be perfectly fine but … predictable. Technically good, of course, but safe, cookie cutter … boring.

Not surprising then that we attempt to escape high cost, repetitiveness and blandness by Googling phrases like “free stock photos” or “hi-res free photos.”

Only then we find out how bad some of the “free stock photo” offerings are. Well, maybe not so shocking if you subscribe to the “you get what you pay for ” school of thought. But even taking that into account, some of them are breathtakingly bad. Luckily there are increasingly good places to find high quality, absolutely free stock photos.

All the sites below offer free high-resolution photos under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license which means:

  • you can copy, adapt or distribute the images for either commercial or personal use without requiring creator consent.
  • you can’t claim ownership or resell them as is.

No purchase, permission, or attribution* required. Continue reading “Searching Out Stock Photos” →