I’ve started a new site called Expat American. The idea behind the site is to provide advice, tips, news, and helpful information to Americans living abroad.
There are many blogs written by expats, of course, but most focus on the blogger’s personal experiences and opinions. There are other sites that try to provide information, but they seem to focus on buying real estate abroad and many look like they were designed in 1995 by people with no design sense. In other words, they’re ugly. They also try to give information that will interest all English-speaking expats, which broadens the readership at the expense of being of interest to a specific group. As an American expat, I have no interest in British, Irish, Canadian, or Australian laws and regulations. They don’t affect me and I don’t want to spend time chasing that information or writing about it.
I’ve got a long way to go before my vision for the site is fulfilled. One of the first challenges is just finding sources of information on changing tax laws and regulation which will interest expat Americans. I’d also like to have a variety of voices on the site. I’m working on it.
Please take a look at the site and tell me what you think! Expat American.
If you use Gmail and access other email accounts through your Gmail account, you probably know that Gmail checks the other accounts based on how often they get email. So if you don’t get a lot of email through the other accounts, they might only get checked once an hour. That can be annoying. You know that someone has sent you an email, to one of those other accounts, and to get it you have to manually go into the settings and force Gmail to check the account.
There’s no way — yet — to get Gmail to check those accounts, but this little tip will let you check them much faster. Go into Labs (in your Settings) and enable “Refresh POP accounts.” Then click Save Changes and go back to your Inbox. You’ll see a “Refresh” link to the right of the “More actions” button at the top of the list of your emails.
Now, all you need to do is click on that link and Gmail will check your other email accounts.
A couple times this week, I’ve come across issues with bi- words. The first time, it was “bi-monthly.” Now, is that twice a month or every two months? The second time, it was “bi-weekly.” Is that twice a week, or every two weeks? I’m just not sure.
You see the problem, right?
This is a great example of the Curse of Knowledge, which I often summarize as “just because you know what you’re talking about doesn’t mean anybody else does.” You simply can’t use these words to say what you want to say, clearly and with no confusion, unless your audience already knows exactly what you’re referring to. Best to avoid them.
All of which seems so obvious to me that I feel I must be insulting your intelligence. Yet I come across things like this all the time — and am probably guilty of doing it too. It’s so easy for us to forget that other people might have no idea what we’re talking about.
Just launched the new carlthoren.com. For the past year, I had my site up on Apple’s MobileMe, which was easy to set up, but expensive and inflexible. For this new site, I used WordPress, which I love, in conjunction with the easy-to-use and modify Atahualpa theme. I highly recommend this theme: It’s the only one I’ve come across which provides a control panel with hundreds of design and site options that take care of the CSS for you. And if you do need to add some custom code, it’s usually obvious what you need to do. It’s a free theme that can pretty much do everything. Amazing.
Part of this new carlthoren.com is having a blog, which I hope to update with random thoughts, observations, and updates for anyone who might find them interesting. Nobody’s really that interested in other people’s opinions and ideas… yet it’s nice to have a forum for sharing your own, all the same.