Why @guykawasaki must think I'm an idiot.

Last week I made a bit of an idiot of myself when I sent a link of a new background image to Guy Kawasaki. Guy is someone I admire for his simple and easy to understand marketing and business ideas.

So how did I make an idiot out of myself? It went like this.

Tuesday April 07. Looking at Guy’s Twitter page and see it has a big black space on the right hand side. I decide to resize the background image, put it on my server and send him a link to it.

Me: DM guykawasaki: Resized your background image http://bit.ly/yj8hK

Guy is in Spain but I get a DM back.

Guy: DM Thanks. Is there something wrong with my current one? It's 1280 now.

Me: DM guykawasaki: For some reason 2048X1707 seems to be the perfect size. Yours had lots of black on one side instead of filling the background.

Guy: DM I get the fail whale when I try to upload the new one! I'll try when I get back to CA. Thanks again!

Me: DM guykawasaki: Bum! I will sort that and resend you the link. Have a good flight.

What?! I checked the background image out and it’s over 800k. I'm thinking great, I look like an idiot now. Damn Fireworks.

So I resize it and send this;

Me: DM guykawasaki: Its was too big. Here you go http://bit.ly/4dAZXe Been interesting trying to find the right size. Im on a 15" MacBookPro.

Because he probably gets heap of DM's I resend the link to him on Wednesday 08 April.

Me: D guykawasaki: Trust you had a good flight. Here’s the link to the resized and tested bg http://bit.ly/4dAZXe

Thursday April 09. I can still see black on his background but I decide to be persistent because he hasn't been on Twitter personally today so has probably got lots of messages.

Me: DM guykawasaki: Hi Guy. I can still see lots of black on your bg. No fail whale with this one http://bit.ly/4dAZXe

I hear back from Guy.

Guy: DM I can't figure out how to save as anything but .htm. Can you email to guy@alltop.com? Thanks!

Guy: DM I think I just did it. Pls check. Thanks!

I check his page and yay no black. Fire off an email to him;

Hi Guy,
Looks great.
Well done. Thank you.
Glenn

End of the background image saga. So, what have I learnt from this?

• Get it right the first time. If you are going to do something for someone test it before you send it to them.
• Guy Kawasaki is a nice guy. He tried, answered and even used the image.
• Twitter backgrounds are a black art. With so many different screen sizes out there finding the perfect background size is harder than I thought.
• Be politely persistent. Following up and keeping in contact does work.
• Spell check. Check the spelling of my Tweets so messages make sense.
  

Lastly, I hope Guy doesn’t think I'm an idiot and if he does at least I can't see the black anymore.