I wonder why big brands can’t seem to figure out responsive web layouts. I’m sure there must be a reason, since they definitely have the talent and resources, but what it is absolutely loses me…

What made me decide to finally write this post was the new Twitter profile layout. I just opted in to the new layout, it looks great, definitely an improvement. But why not make it responsive? In this particular case it’s not like there are tons of information to accommodate, nor is the site’s structure to complex…

They’ve actually have thrown some responsive in there, when you take your screen under 1220px columns start to narrow, and under 1055px the right column’s content even moves below the left column, but that’s it, at 1010px you even start losing the “edit profile” buttons, when there is actually plenty of space for it! At 775px you start losing your tweets and below that… you don’t want to go below that! :S

I know Twitter, and other websites who don’t seem to be able to figure out responsive layout completely, have plenty of aps for iPads, iPhones and every conceivable device, but still, was it that hard to make my profile look presentable when I divide my screen between two websties?

Advisors are important, not only for startups, but for life. We simply cannot know everything about anything, so at some point, if we want to make wise decisions in areas outside our expertise, we are going to need someone to give us advice. Who we chose as our advisors is key, as our decisions will be partly influenced by their judgment.

It is important therefore to really understand who is (or can be) our advisor and who isn’t (and will never be).

This might sound like nothing new to you, but I’ve seen several people fall into this mistake recently; a sales person ISN’T your advisor! Even if their business card says “financial advisor” or anything along those lines, they guy at the bank isn’t your advisor, you need to be able to tell the difference, he is a salesman, he doesn’t work for you, he works for the bank.

So how do we tell if someone’s advice is honest? Well, we can’t, but we can at least set the circumstances to make it more likely that it is. I believe it basically comes down to this: in order for advice to be valuable the outcome for the person giving the advice must be the same whether you take the advice or not. And when I say outcome I’m referring to anything from salary to a promotions, recognition or simple personal satisfaction.

Let’s think about the “financial advisor” at the bank for a minute. He probably gets periodical instruction from his superiors who tells him what products (savings accounts, credit cards, stock investments) they need to sell the most. He will then pitch those products to his clients trying to sell as many as he can in order to show his superiors how good he is at his job, maybe even get promoted eventually. His pitch is a sales pitch, not advice. You choosing to sign up for a new credit card actually has an impact on his performance at work.

On the other hand if your uncle, cousin, colleague or college teacher advises you to sign up for a new credit card you can consider their advice as honest, since they won’t benefit from your decision, and if they are any good at finances it might even be good advice.

So just keep in mind who the person works for next time you consider taking advice from someone and if your decision regarding that matter will have any impact on them or not.

A few months ago I came up with the idea of taking half a year off to travel with my girlfriend. I have recently sold my company and she is about to finish school, so it seemed like the perfect time to plan something like this.

We started discussing possible destinations, length of our stay in each location, etc. We then started calculating travel expenses, flights, hotels, diets, etc. and yep, it quickly become a very expensive project!

Looking for alternatives to bring our project’s cost down I was introduced to home swapping. I had heard about home swapping before, but for some reason had never consider it.

I did some research on-line and quickly signed up to LoveHomeSwap.

It’s been roughly a month since I signed up and published my apartment and so far I’m loving the concept of home swapping and the LHS platform. I must say I haven’t completed any swaps yet, but there is a very active community on the site and I’ve received over 20 swap requests so far.

A cool thing about LHS (maybe other platforms offer it too. I don’t know) is their swap points program. Let’s face it, it’s actually kind of hard to find someone who lives were you want to go who wants to visit were you live, you both want to travel on the same dates and you both like each other’s houses… What LHS offers (on top of regular swaps) is the possibility to offer you house for someone to stay while you won’t be there for whatever reason (maybe a business trip) and earn points which you can then use to stay at someone else’s place under the same circumstances. This doesn’t only take away the “dates” variable but also the “location”, since I don’t necessarily have to travel to the places were people who stay at my apartment come from.

I have recently agreed to a few swaps under this points program hoping to gain a good amount of points that we can then spend during our trip. First swap will come in early May, so, if anything goes wrong, or better than expected, you’ll hear about it soon!