I planned on delivering to you a “fall primer” buying guide for sometime, but I’ve realized that this is not going to happen. In a last-ditch effort to find something that sparks my attention for a new wardrobe season, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s just nothing new. This pains me deeply, as fall is my absolute favorite time to buy clothes.

Digging through all my favorite stores and websites, I clearly see how the fashion industry is trying to survive this recession: they’ve laid-off their designers. There were plenty of interesting pieces I saw coming down the runway earlier this year for fall 2009, but these do not seem to have translated to the fall collections offered up to us in the masses.

What I see are recycled designs from the past few seasons. Sure there maybe a slight color change here or a little ruffle added there, but by far these are the exact same fashions we’ve seen over the last few years. There is nothing original or interesting and certainly nothing you’d want to splurge your hard earned money on.

This year, my advice is this: sit this one out. Don’t pay top price for recycled designs, when they’re probably already in your closet. Stock up on the basic staples that will get you through the next several seasons and use what you’ve already got. Shorten some of those skirts and dresses (above the knee length), add accessories to update with the colors of the season and round it out with some new shoes if they catch your eye.

Shop the outlets and other discount stores, sales and wait it out until next year. It’s not worth depleting your precious account balance for old designs. You’ll find me at the outlets. Let us cross our fingers that we’ll have some better choices next year.

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Before I proceed, let me define the symptoms of Acute PowerPoint Poisoning.

• The text of some laborious Congressional bill pales in comparison to the information contained on your slides (i.e., if you need paragraph delineations on any one slide, you have too much information).
• If the graphs or charts on your slides cause people to grimace and squint as they’re trying to decipher their meaning.
• You end up just reading off the slides because you could not possibly provide as much in-depth information verbally.
• Not one member of your audience is looking at you. They are looking solely at your slides.
• You cannot possibly finish this presentation in the time alloted.

When my boss expressed her disdain for this type of information overload I understood what she meant, as both Jon and I have always agreed that when dealing with information processing and design, less is more.

There is only so much information our brains can process at any one point. If you overload an audience with vast quantities of information, what you will ultimately find is not that you look smarter or more informed, but that your message has been totally lost.

The Law of Parsimony
What this all boils down to is what I will call the Law of Parsimony. If you want to get a message across visually or verbally, keeping it simple works best. You want people to digest the information you provide and the visual design standing behind it as a whole package.

It you overload any one audience with a library’s worth of information backed by a jam-packed set of design heavy slides, chances are that the message will not be conveyed as you intended.

Keep it simple, keep it clean. Allow the information you use to support the personal appeal of your presentation. Bear in mind the Law of Parsimony and you will never risk an untimely death by acute PowerPoint poisoning.

When survey results like these are released, it is typical to focus on the negative. Yes, we know people are not hired or fired because they post obnoxious and inappropriate photos or comments. We’ve discussed the repercussions of this type of behavior before.

There is, however, a positive side. Namely, that your social media page can help get you hired. It shows your personality and fills in the gaps left by a resume or an interview.

Use of social networking sites can also increase odds of getting hired, with employers citing a good feel for the candidate’s personality, a profile that supports their qualifications and a candidate who showed creativity as reasons for deciding to hire someone based on their online postings.

Keep posting, don’t let these numbers scare you. If you use common sense while being yourself, your Facebook or Twitter pages just might help you take the next step!

I absolutely hate July. If we could just skip the entire thing I would be very relieved. July is so difficult for me because it was the month a few years ago when a stroke virtually took away my mother. It’s even hard for me to write this now without feeling myself tense up. I was still a very young adult when this happened. Jon and I were newlyweds and I was about to start graduate school. I’ve had to live with the pain everyday since, but July always becomes almost unbearable.

Still, life goes on and I can’t just lock myself away like a hermit for 30+ days. The world keeps on demanding, so I have to keep going. At times, we all have to carry on when our worlds are crumbling or just with something small that doesn’t feel any less surmountable. We all have to work through the pain.

How do I function through this? Honestly, sometimes I have no idea. If only there were some magic pill that could make it all better. What I do know is pain makes us who we are as people. It defines our characters like nothing else. Pain inherently makes us human and it allows people to connect to us in a way that no other emotion can come even close.

Some would advise you here to just bury the pain, pretend like it’s not there – pain is not professional. I say use the pain. Turn it into passion when you pitch. Use the those strong emotions to show how much you care about the people you’re talking to and business for which you’re presenting. Use it to connect on a personal level that’s more than just business.

In the end I think that’s all we can do. Try to use the pain for something positive. In my experience no matter what we do it’s still there. No matter how much we try to deny or bury it, it’s still there. I’d rather have that pain expressed on my terms instead of coming out in some unintended way that can have negative consequences.

I’m very glad it’s now August and quickly moving into September. I feel better than I did a few weeks ago, but I next year awful July will come again. All I can do is deal with it the best I can and try to convert the most horrible emotions I’ve ever experienced into something I hope would make my mother proud.

Late last night, news broke that Facebook was launching “Facebook Lite.” No one knows exactly what it is, but signs point to an unpleasant week for Twitter. This could mean a service that now offers the features we love about Twitter, like real-time updates coupled with Facebook’s dependability and strength (i.e.,Twitter + Facebook.)

If Facebook does this right, Twitter may be dead in the water. Facebook has the financial resources and technical superiority to challenge Twitter and they mean business. Twitter doesn’t appear to have the money to fight this assault, faces a seemingly endless stream of bad press and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better.

Is it too soon to call Twitter’s swan song? Possibly. Maybe we’ll know tomorrow or even within the next few hours.

We’ll leave you with this little nugget from The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien:

As of yesterday, Facebook has taken a serious step in its efforts to be internet champion. According to TechCrunch, they purchased a service called “FriendFeed.” A significant acquisition because of FriendFeed’s superior real-time news feed, which reminds us of another prominent little website (*cough* Twitter). Further, FriendFeed, like Twitter allows you to “follow” without having to confirm a “friendship.” This is bad news for Twitter, which is constantly hampered with seemingly endless security and capacity issues and has yet to figure out how to turn a profit.

Folks, the bottom line here is to continue to tinker with social media, use it wisely, but keep an eye to the future. Everything is still very new and it’s going to be a while before we see how things shake out. A social media “king” has yet to be crowned like Microsoft for software or Google for search. Don’t feel like you have to jump on and spend endless hours on every new service that pops up. Our advice is to keep abreast of the landscape, use the sites you like and do what works best for you and your business.

As our worlds become more interconnected, it’s more likely you’re going to get yourself in hot water if you shoot your mouth off online. Mashable recommends using your privacy settings, but I don’t think it goes far enough. Yes, use your privacy settings, separate your life but seriously reconsider posting anything you wouldn’t want on the front page of the newspaper. That way you’ve got all your bases covered and will not have to worry that something could come back and bite you in the backside.

Related: How to manage your image new media style.

Your mission has been commendable as in Facebook’s younger days it was purely a friends and social gathering site. The internet lacked a way to connect professionally and needed a place to go where you look your best that wasn’t clouded with tons of ridiculous applications.

To date this opening has virtually been fulfilled by LinkedIn. However, it has been slow to keep up when compared to other social media services and is likely to suffer for it.

Our Beefs:

• Technical laziness:
  Login at a premium. Until recently, as it seems LinkedIn has just quietly been updated, you not only had to login every time you visit the site, but were pestered to upgrade to their “premium” service. These have not been issues for some time with other modern social networking sites. Did they finally figure out that only pain comes when you try to put the cat back in the bag and ask it to pay for the service?

  
  Anemic app directory. Their Application Directory only has 10 apps. If there are more, we haven’t been able to find them. Plus, their Wordpress app is unpredictable when it comes to working with self-hosted blogs. LinkedIn’s currently policy only allows certain developers to add applications, with permission, of course. While we understand they don’t want all the noise open development brings, their tight controls have also constrained progress. Is there no happy-medium?

• Lack of socialization. Also, quietly changed as of late, you can now comment on status updates. Again, LinkedIn comes in far behind other sites. As it’s late to the game, people have already have other established places where they socialize (ahem Facebook). LinkedIn has long functioned mostly as a business directory, akin to sitting in a library. Lots of information, but not much in the way of interaction.  They’re making an effort, but trail their competitors like Facebook, where everyone’s mother, grandmother, co-workers and bosses all seem to be. You can now make lists there to separate your worlds and have it all in one place with real time updates. Where is stodgy LinkedIn going to fit in this scenario? Only time will tell, but it could have something to do with Rupert Murdoch.

A Dark Horse Approaches
Enter the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Not exactly the most progressive and open-to-new-ideas kind of place, or so we thought. As with all newspapers these days, WSJ needs more revenue sources to remain relevant in a post-print era. Reported by TechCrunch, WSJ wants a piece of the professional social networking pie now solely dominated by Linkedin. They are putting their money where their mouth is and have hired outside guns to develop what will be called “WSJ Connect.”

Regardless of whether this venture is successful is beside the point. LinkedIn, even with the current updates, has become stagnant and if they don’t get moving someone is going to come along and be the Google to their Yahoo. There’s a lot of motivation out there to capitalize on the world’s hunger to connect at a professional level. Newspaper organizations remain community hubs and they absolutely have to find new revenue streams. Social networking done right could be their savior. Facebook has moved beyond the domain of bored college kids to entire families/networks. LinkedIn has functioned well because of the desire to keep personal and professional worlds separate. However, as work and leisure worlds collide and Facebook continues to improve, LinkedIn is going to be in trouble.

For the most part, LinkedIn is not a place where people go to be social and it’s getting lapped by its competitors. Once another site figures out how to let people be social and professional – LinkedIn will be doomed.

Bottom line: the writing’s on the wall, or rather the “Facebook Wall?”

This is not so surprising to us. In our experience using Twitter, it’s mostly comprised of alpha geeks, journalists, people of note, bloggers and businesses looking for, well, more business. The key links here are business and information sharing. Neither of those things would be interesting to teenagers.

Teens want to connect with their friends, share photos, videos and amusing links. They’re not going to be so interested in the latest breaking news or coupons. Barring the 2008 elections—were you really interested in Iran or 20 percent off when you were 17 and mommy and daddy paid for everything?

In our view, we don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon or at least the concept of it. However, Twitter has got to figure out ways to:

1. make money
2. integrate with more established social networks like Facebook if it really has a sustainable future.

We see the social networking sites of the future integrating entire social networks (personal and professional – Facebook & LinkedIn), newswires and ways to share large quantities of information while connecting people in unprecedented ways (Twitter), pulled together with more traditional e-communications (email & instant chat).

The first site to harness all these characteristics into one user-friendly working model will, in our opinion, win the internet.