I was just flicking back through some old photos on my phone and noticed a couple of headlines I’ve snapped that are too good not to share. The first is from earlier this year, when anchorman Richard Keys left his job at Sky Sports. It’s short, to the point, and absolutely nails the story:

But it’s the second that I’m more impressed with. Cast your mind back to last autumn and one of the year’s rare good news stories.

Now, imagine you’re a sub-editor at The Sun. How are you going to lead on the story? Would it occur to you to take the name of a band, then carefully change a word here and there to result in a headline of wit and beauty?

No, me neither. You might sometimes question the quality of tabloid journalism, but you can’t deny the intelligence of their headlines.

(Read about some other great tabloid headlines that I’ve spotted.)

That’s why I love this flowchart from Jessica Hische. She’s pretty much nailed the decision-making process I go through when considering whether I should give up my time for free.

If you’re a fellow freelancer, read it and laugh, cry or chuckle in that cynical way that only world-weary freelancers can. If you’re a potential client, take a look too – maybe it’ll give you an insight into what life working freelance is like. Or maybe it’ll just give you a laugh. Either’s good.

Large version here. Hat tip to the always-amazing swissmiss.

(Image from Newsbie Pix under a Creative Commons Attribution licence.)

We’re really pleased with how it’s turned out, but like all the best websites, that’s not to say it’s finished, of course.

If you browse it at the moment (and please do check the site out), you’ll see that the breadth of information is huge, but the depth is, well, still to come in some areas.

We’re working hard to put that right – and if you know a bit about IT, you might be able to help us and the small businesses that use the site. So get in touch and I’ll explain more.

There truly are some shockers out there. And that’s probably why the good ones stick in your head.

I stumbled upon one just the other day. The sign up form for WordPress.com really is a thing of beauty. It’s clear, straightforward, and only asks you to type in four bits of information.

What’s more, it includes this delightfully playful text that sums up just what we all really think about agreeing to terms and conditions:

“Legal flotsam: I have read and agree to the fascinating terms of service”

I wonder how they got that one past the legal team. Nice work, WordPress.

The IT Donut will be the fourth in a family of websites. You might already have seen the Marketing, Law and Start-Up Donuts. Its aim will be to demystify every aspect of business technology.

Expect heaps of advice about choosing, using and generally not getting totally frustrated with IT in your business.

I’ve taken on the role of editor (the next few months are looking to be very busy), but thankfully there’s a whole team of great people from BHP Information Solutions working hard on the site too. And because you can’t substitute for first-hand knowledge and experience, we’re on the hunt for experts who know all about IT at the sharp end of business.

You see, when businesses use IT, there’s an ideal world, and there’s what actually happens. The two often differ quite considerably.

The IT Donut isn’t going to live in the plain sailing, smooth running and largely theoretical ideal world. It will acknowledge the situations and challenges businesses face every day with their IT.

Although the team behind the website is packed with experience (I’ve been writing about small businesses and IT for years now), we need people who’ve been there and done it to help us cover every area. These IT experts are the people who’ll really bring the site to life.

So if you know a bit about IT in business, I want to hear from you. You might be an expert in web hosting, networking or accounting software. Or you might be a business that’s experimented with cloud computing, open source software – or gained some other knowledge that you’d like to share.

Whatever your expertise, give me a shout. It’s your chance to be involved in one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever worked on – and to get some great PR while you’re at it.

In fact, their whole website is pretty decent, and they understand how to use Twitter too.

Anyway, towards the end of the evening I did the usual um-and-er over dessert thing, until spotting the cheesecake on the menu. Had it just been “chocolate cheesecake”, I might have declined. But “milky double bubble chocolate cheesecake”? How could I say no?

That’s the power of good copywriting.

I like it when restaurants take the time to get their branding right. It implies a similar amount of effort has gone in to the food.

I had a meal in a Reading eaterie a couple of weeks ago. The bill turned up with this witty “with condiments” card, which perfectly fit the modern, relaxed feel of the place, and made me chuckle.

As it turned out the food was excellent, but if it hadn’t been, at least the clever copywriting would’ve gone some way to making up for it.

I have a bit of a thing for train journeys. Back in 2006 I travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok on the Trans-Siberian railway. The journey takes around a week if you do it non-stop, but I spent about a month covering the 10,000-or-so kilometres. Although the romance of the rails might be all but dead in the UK, it certainly lives on in Russia.

It was one of the best journeys I can imagine. I shared a compartment (and vodka) with a bunch of Russian wrestlers, made friends with a cider-drinking man called Vladimir who helped me buy a new camera, then discovered the greatest lake in the world before arriving in Vladivostok, a wonderful city perched on the edge of the Pacific.

However, despite having some amazing stuff to see, the Russian government seems to have next to no interest in promoting the country as a tourist destination. The visa application alone is enough to put most people off, so it’s good that Google Russia has stepped up with its amazing online tour of the railway.

What they basically seem to have done is to stick a camera out the window for the entire journey, chopped the film down into manageable chunks, then wired the whole thing up to a map with highlights marked. It means you can jump between points on the journey, get additional information, and generally experience the bits of the trip you’re most interested in, from your desktop.

Now this is never going to be as good as doing it for real (trust me on this one), but the lack of flashy graphics and tourist board-supplied hype does make it a great way to get a taste for one of the greatest train journeys in the world. Go take a look for yourself.

(There are also a bunch of photos from my trip on Flickr, but be warned – I never got round to typing in descriptions of each photo!)

It seems not everyone agrees with me. Rather like Marmite or Manchester United, Twitter’s one of those things people love or hate. They get it or they don’t.

Well, in an effort to introduce you to the world of Twitter (and convert any sceptics out there), here are six reasons I think it’s great. It’s not just people saying what they had for lunch, you know.

• It’s a great source of information. People on Twitter are a friendly bunch all-round really. There’s always someone who’ll answer your questions, whether you want help buying a laptop, or advice on the best place to go for lunch.
• There’s interesting stuff to read. Where I used to turn first to Google Reader for my fix of interesting articles, I can now be pretty sure of finding handpicked gems in the stream of tweets from people I follow.
• It gives me an outlet when I’m working by myself. Working from home gets a bit lonely sometimes, but at least I can partake in some online banter with fellow tweeters if things get too boring. Think of it as an online watercooler.
• It’s good for networking. For me, LinkedIn seems too formal and Facebook is too much about people I already know. But with Twitter it’s easy to find people working in my profession, so I can share ideas, offer (and receive) advice – and maybe even pick up the odd client.
• You hear about news first on Twitter. All the major news outlets use Twitter now (here’s The Guardian and BBC News), but you’re more likely to pick up on breaking news as it spreads like wildfire through the system. The Hudson River plane crash is a great example.
• Occasionally you get free stuff. If it’s material gains you want, plenty of companies run promotions and giveaways on Twitter. I’ve blagged a free case of beer and a CD so far. It’s not quite the conveyor belt from The Generation Game, but there are opportunities out there.

I could go on, but if you’ve not been convinced by those points, there’s no hope for you anyway. Don’t use Twitter? Go on, sign up and give it a go. You can follow me for a start.

We do it when we read through an email before sending it, when we put the finishing touches to a new business proposal or when we dash off a press release. (You probably don’t do it when writing the weekly shopping list, but that’s ok.)

Editing isn’t easy

It’s not easy to edit your own text. Because you wrote it, you’re less likely to spot mistakes. Trust me – I once wrote a blog post promoting an event which got a the date of the event totally wrong. I wrote “14 November” instead of “14 January”. And I didn’t realise until a reader pointed it out.

That happened because I was in a rush. I wanted to get the information out there as soon as possible. Want to avoid this sort of embarrassing mistake? I’ve put together a few tips for you:

• Find peace and quiet. I can write in a busy café just fine. I often find listening to music helps me get words onto the page. Yet when it comes to editing, only silence will do. Get to a quiet place. It really helps.

• Give yourself some time. If you bowl straight in to edit a piece the moment you finish writing it, you’re asking for trouble. You’re likely to read what you think you wrote rather than what’s actually on the page. If you have the luxury, give it a day or two. Even an hour will help.

• Use a checklist. If I’m editing a batch of articles, I put together a list of things to check in each one. This helps me focus on the things that matter and forces me to approach the edits in a structured way. My checklists tend to concentrate on what the client needs rather than things I’d look for anyway. For instance, I might include making sure I’ve kept inside a strict word count and only used US English.

• Do it (at least) twice. One check is never enough to catch everything. I read through my pieces twice – first to check everything makes sense, I haven’t used extra words and the tone is right, and then to actually proofread, check for bad grammar, spelling and so on.

• Read it out loud. Yes, you’ll look silly. And yes, it really does work. This forces you to articulate every syllable of your writing. You’ll pick up on missing words straight away and be able to immediately tell whether the piece flows. Best to find an empty room though, lest your colleagues think you’ve finally lost it.

• Print it out. It’s harder to edit stuff on screen. I’m not sure exactly why – I think it’s something to do with looking at a backlit display – but printing work out makes it easier to find mistakes. I print what I’ve written (double-sided, at the lowest quality), use a red pen to make changes, then input them into my computer. It can help to learn some proofreading symbols (PDF link).

• Know your weaknesses. We all have our own writing weaknesses. For some unknown reason, my fingers automatically type “customer” whenever I write a word starting “cus…”. Tune in to the kind of mistakes you make and you’ll be more likely to spot them.

To sum up: if you want to do a really professional editing job, find a quiet place, then start talking to yourself while ticking items off a checklist and printing out reams of paper. Ok?