What's The Diff?

The things Quicken Loans team members care about and want to share with the world

CaringBridge.com: a site to support

Friday, November 30, 2007

CaringBridge.com

I’m a huge fan of social networking with sites like Facebook and MySpace. It allows me to keep in touch with and share with my friends and family. We’ve even embraced it as a company with our Yahoo! Answers profile, the blog and multiple profiles on those sites.

But I’ve never seen a site with more of a conscience than Caring Bridge.
Caring Bridge is a social web service that connects family and friends during
critical illnesses, treatment or recovery.

I was introduced to it by a very good friend of mine whose
family member was dealing with cancer. Her name is Joyce. By just providing my
e-mail, I was able to log-on to Joyce’s page and get updates from her journal
or leave a note of encouragement in the guestbook. You can also share photos or
links. Caring Bridge is a great way to keep in touch with a large amount of
people, because when you are sick, you may not feel up to phone calls or
visitors.

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Quicken Loans IT team in the kitchen for a good cause

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Quicken Loans IT team raises big bucks for charity. by whatsthediffblog, on Flickr

The kind hearts & culinary minds of one of our IT teams has filled the bellies of Quicken Loans team members with a massive bake sale.

Scrumptious brownies, cookies, muffins, cupcakes, fudge and even whole cakes and pies were available for purchase (as if Thanksgiving wasn’t enough to put me in a food coma). For the heartier appetite, they even served hot dogs and chili dogs. Not hungry? You can’t pass up a 50/50 raffle and a raffle for Pistons tickets. They thought of everything.

The money raised is going to help less fortunate families the teams have adopted by fulfilling their holiday wish lists by providing food, clothes, toys and basic essentials. Overall, the Lakewood team here at Quicken Loans raised $1,650 from their bake sale alone to help these families out this holiday season.

And a warning to your sweet tooth, stomach and wallet – it’s been promised there will be more generous teams of gourmet chefs providing tantalizing treats next week to ensure a happy holiday for some additional adopted families. Stay tuned….yum!

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Support our troops over the holidays

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Say thank-you to the troops in Iraq with www.LetsSayThanks.com

This holiday season, Xerox is doing something that will change the holidays for the troops over in Iraq. When you visit this Web site, www.LetsSayThanks.com, you can choose a thank you card, then select the message you want the card to include, or you can create your own personal message, and Xerox will print out the card and send it to a soldier in Iraq. This is a totally free service and it only takes a few seconds to do.

Whether you are for or against the war, the reality is our soldiers are in Iraq, away from their families and loved ones for one of the most memory making holidays of the year. They need to know we support them as they continue to dedicate themselves unselfishly to make this world a better place. 2 minutes of your day today is all it will take to help create a warm holiday memory for a soldier this year. Click here to send your warm wishes.

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Inspiration in the office: Quicken Loans LaTonya Baldwin and Detroit’s Color Online

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

LaTonya Baldwin, Quicken Loans team member, runs Color Online, a community group dedicated to empowering and educating young women and children in Detroit

Not only does Quicken Loans have a mini-celebrity with her own Free Press article, we’ve got an incredible, inspirational woman who spends her precious free time running a literature group called Color Online.

LaTonya, a Vendor Analyst here at Quicken Loans, started the group in 2005 which is committed to the “promotion, empowerment and political awakening of young women.” She heads an online community for book discussion and a message board for the young women to share their own writing.

Color Online has a library at Alternatives For Girls, a non-profit organization in Southwest Detroit which has been serving homeless and high risk girls and young women since 1987. They’ll even mail books to girls who don’t have the means to make it to the library. LaTonya collects returnables here at our offices to make sure the library stays stocked. She’s also started a Wish List on Amazon so that supporters can know the types of books the library needs. They also welcome gift cards and tickets to local events.

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Kent Hodgson probably stole your idea with “The Huski”

Monday, November 26, 2007

Good-bye to the King of All Search?

By Mark Messing

When I was in the 6th grade, I remember going to a library session where everyone in the class was taught how to effectively use search engines. They had a list of about 20 at the time.  And while the preference was still Google, it was far less of a landslide. In fact, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and a site called Mamma Search all shared equal usage from various children in the session. I remember the librarian telling us why she had put together the session that everyone in the school would eventually take.

"This is going to be the future of research," she proclaimed.

When I was in 9th grade a fellow student came to class with the first iPod I had ever seen. He explained how he had spent $400 on it, and how it was going to be the future of music.
"I can’t believe you haven’t heard of these yet," he told me, "Some day they are going to be smaller, and hold more songs.  If you ever get the chance, you should buy their stock."

Last night, I read an article about Kent Hodgson. He is a 22 year-old inventor.

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Goodbye to the King of All Search

Friday, November 23, 2007

Good-bye to the King of All Search?

By Clayton Closson

The king has left the building.

Brian Doelle, Quicken Loans most highest defender of all things search, has decided to move on to new adventures. Trust me when I say this – HE WILL BE MISSED!

Brian pretty much built today’s Quicken Loans search programs (both organic and paid) from the ground up and man did he do it well. When he joined Quicken Loans, you couldn’t find us in search engine results anywhere. Our site did terribly in organic search and our paid program was a fraction of what it is today. That ain’t how it is today. We do search well at Quicken Loans and Brian is to thank for that.

He’s one of the best marketers I’ve ever met. Part artist, part number cruncher, part writer, part strategist, Brian does it all. He taught me EVERYTHING I know about search engine optimization. I mean everything.

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Happy Thanksgiving from Quicken Loans DIFF blog!

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Happy Thanksgiving from the Quicken Loans DIFF blog!

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Getting positive with Greg Bowens

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Get positive with Greg Bowens and Quicken LoansI’ve know Greg Bowens for more than 25 years. We went to Cass Tech together in downtown Detroit and I worked with Greg for a short time when he was the press secretary for former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer. Oh, how I long for the days of such high caliber leadership in Detroit. Archer was one of the good ones.  Trust me on that.

Anyway, no sense in crying over past mayors. Let’s deal with today.

That is exactly what Greg does in his blog "get positive with me" (the pic of the windmills is from his blog – keep reading and you’ll understand what it’s all about).

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Cranium – building success one Craniac at a time

Monday, November 19, 2007

Cranium and Quicken Loans have something in commonI was lucky last week to get a chance to hear Richard Tait, CEO of Cranium, give a keynote luncheon address at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s 3rd Annual Summit in Las Vegas.

Tait is a great speaker and has really put together (with the help of others) a great company.  It’s all about the culture (check out Cranium’s blog).  I can appreciate that working for Quicken Loans.  In fact, watching his presentation I realized there are some very close similarities between Cranium and Quicken Loans.

Both companies owe their huge business successes to the same thing – strong corporate cultures that breed innovation.

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You’re getting your videos from Hulu?

Friday, November 16, 2007

You are getting your videos from Hulu?

by Mark Messing

Think back to the show “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” I am of course assuming you have seen the show. If you haven’t, allow me to give you a quick description. People video taped themselves falling off of things, running into things, getting stuck in things, or standing next to their babies who did cute stuff. Then, Bob Saget would throw his voice into the video, as if the original wasn’t already solid gold material.

When you think about it, this show taught America two things:

1) It is cheaper for TV studios to give away an entire series worth of prize money to Joe-Schmo public for real time video than it is for them to pay Tim Allen for one episode of Tool Time. (Hence, The reality TV show seed was planted…sorta)

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Thursday, May 17, 2012