Name your pitch
The bottom line, however, is that writing tips is a lot like serving meals to Goldilocks. Some tips are going to be too hot and some are going to be too cold. All I can say is that I think it's worth reading through some tips that don't apply to you in order to find the ones that are just right. And also, you never know when a tip you just glanced over and filed away might suddenly become useful.

Let me try to sum all of this up by telling a story. When I was in fourth grade, I was the captain of a softball team at our school in San Martin, CA. The rules for our league were that a team's pitcher would pitch to his or her own team, rather than to the other team. As the pitcher for our team, I tried to throw the ball where each of my teammates would have the best chance of hitting it. I would ask them to hold out the bat to show me where they would like me to throw the ball. This actually worked remarkably well, and I got so good at it that all the people on my team hit the ball almost every time they were at bat.

I'd like to ask the same thing of all of you. Where would you like me to throw the ball so you can hit it? In other words, what kind of tips can I write that would most help you to make a home run in your own organization, or at least make it to first base? My goal here isn't to answer specific questions, for there's already a Domino guru out there who does that and does it very well. My goal is to get a feel for what kind of tips you'd most like to see. Given that, here are the questions I'd like to ask you:

• What kind of tips do you most enjoy receiving?

• What was the best DominoPower tip you've ever received?

• What was the worst DominoPower tip you've ever received?

• If you don't yet subscribe to the DominoPower tips, why not?

• Have you ever thought of unsubscribing from the tips? Why or why not?

• Are the tips too difficult, too easy, or just right?

• Have you encouraged others to subscribe to our tips, and if so, what did you say to encourage them?

Your comments can help shape the direction and content of future tips. Please send your feedback to me at dvelasco@dominopower.com.

What I'd like to do for the rest of this article is to share with you five of my favorite tips from the 50 I've written so far. I'm not saying that these are my best tips, necessarily, since as I discussed earlier, a good tip is a very subjective thing. But these are the tips that jumped out at me for some reason or other when I was reviewing all the tips I've written.

Tip #1: Making your R5 bookmark bar icons larger and more colorful
Published: June 16, 2000

I liked this tip because it was something simple that people could do right away and that they could see the effects of every time they used Notes and Domino in the future. Often, I think, a tip is valuable not just because of the information that it contains but also for the ease with which it can be implemented.