Bad news writ worse

I don’t know which is worse: the current state of the economy, or the dire news stories that keep everyone on the brink of nausea.

Can you even remember a time when reporters didn’t spout words like toxic assets, credit crunch, retail shakeout, housing bust, holiday slump, investment scandal, recession, depression. It’s like an obsession, which makes it harder for everyone to sort through the drama to determine the facts.

There’s more than enough bad news to go around these days, but it seems today’s journalistic smash-up—mixing straight news with emotionally charged language—only contributes to the nation’s unease. And it creates the potential to become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

It’s enough to make me wonder how much of our downward spiral can be attributed to doom-and-gloom reporting. What we need instead is perspective.

Consider this: A BusinessWeek story, “Retail Reckoning,” warns about a big shakeout for retailers because there “are just too many stores.” “Rampant discounting may yet save this year’s Christmas shopping season from utter disaster, but retailers are still expecting the slowest holiday sales since the 1990-91 recession…and what comes after Christmas is likely to be even more frightening.”

This story ran in the magazine’s December 10 issue—in 2001.

So…déjà vu all over again. And that’s reason enough to remain hopeful, despite the hysteria. Everything goes in cycles, which means there are ups and downs. Right now, we may be in a deep trough, but things will come around again. They always do. It’s just a matter of time.

Animal passion

It takes a strong stomach to read or watch the news these days. My brother says the value of his 401(k) has fallen so much, it’s now a 201(k). As depressing as the economy has been, there’s one easy way to fight the blues. Think “pet.” Researchers have found that pet ownership has positive physical and mental health benefits—to which I say, “Duh.”

If you don’t have a pet of your own, or even if you do, these sites will put a smile on your face:

• The Mean Kitty Channel on YouTube...starting with The Mean Kitty Song.
• Stuff on My Cat...scroll down for cute pics and then follow the links.
• Snowball the cockatoo dances up a storm on YouTube.
• Penguin Swing isn't really pet related, but it is about animals and it does make me laugh. This game is one of the best time-wasters ever.

So take a break from all the gloom and doom and have yourself some fun. It doesn't cost a cent...and the stress-relief is priceless.

Tiny URLs are HUGE

First impressions are as important on the Web as in life. If the way to your site is through a long or complicated URL, you may lose visitors even before they get to the "skip this intro" screen.

Solution: TinyURL.com. Just plug in your uber-URL, and the result is something short, sweet, and to the point. Your tiny URL won't break in email postings and never expires. Best of all, it's free.

A recent example:

• From this: https://event-manager.compete-at.com/Manager/event/home.do?clubcntxt=delcorrc&eventcntxt=Tyler10KTrailRun
• To this: http://tinyurl.com/tyler09

Pretty sweet, huh?

Monkey around

What is it about monkeys that lend themselves to becoming fun Web tools? Is it the "it's so easy even a monkey could do it" rationale, or are monkeys so tied to the concept of play that anything they're linked with will be considered fun? I don't know why major companies are using monkeys to attract people to their sites, but I'm having a great time playing around with them.

• Send some Monk-e-mail courtesy of CareerBuilder.com. You can choose your own chimp (and its wardrobe), use the text-to-speech function, or record your own voice. It's hard to get tired of this one.
• On a more serious note is SurveyMonkey, which gives you a powerful tool for gathering feedback and creates professional-looking surveys.
• And then there's SurveyMonkey's cousin, MailChimp, for email marketing.

It might look kind of silly using monkey tools when you're part of a large, established business. For the rest of us, we're having a blast.