I don’t know if it’s effective or not, but I sat through the entire thing.
Admittingly, I was waiting for some poor unsuspecting soul to sling the bag across the tarmac…

Infographic by- Shanghai Web Designers

Yes, I know. It’s almost 50 minutes long, but you really, really need to watch this. Listen to it as you work this morning.

So much good stuff and it’ll open your eyes to how we annoy the living daylights out of customers.

Spotted @ Trader Joe’s In Cary.

I *almost* did this last year, but allowed myself to get talked out of it. This year, however, is going to be different.

A lot of people tell me I’m going to lose business. Honestly, the leads I’ve gotten from the Yellow Pages have ended up being low-to-no budget, so I feel that it’s running at a loss for me right now.

And then I think, “when was the last time I picked up a phone book?”

Further Reading:

• Small Biz Marketing: More Bad News for Yellow Pages
• Yellow Pages Usage Stats Are Likely Wrong

And then, this link made the rounds last month:

• http://www.yellowpagesoptout.com/

Today I ended a self-imposed 30 day exile from Social Media. At first, it was hard to keep away from Facebook & Twitter and I won’t lie and say that it got any easier as time went by. However, I did learn a few important lessons.

• I rely on social media for information
  I really felt out of the loop. I still had my feeds that I checked up on in Google Reader, but it wasn’t the same. I have a lot in common with the people that I follow, so I get a lot of important  information from them that I wouldn’t normally see otherwise.
• I missed the interaction
  Working from a home office isolates you quite a bit. Sometimes, those status updates are subtle reminders that there are other people out there that aren’t sending you emails wondering where their updates are.
• I was crazy productive
  I took a lot of pictures, blogged a lot more, and got a lot of work done. I think a lot of my creative-whatever gets slowly poured out 140 characters at the time. I was able to put a lot of that energy into personal creative projects.
• I had more personal time
  Instead of walking around checking Twitter constantly, I was more present with my family.

Social Media takes up a lot of time, but I think the payoff is worth it. I used the time off to streamline my workflow so I would be more efficient when it came time to participate in the online world again. I also greatly reduced the number of people I was following (from 930+ down to 290-some) so I could cut down on the noise to signal ratio and make it easier to hear the voices that were important.

This last culling of the following was the hardest step. I started with the larger, national-type people and eventually had to drop some local people as well. That killed me. I believe in the importance of “Local”, but I also realize that I can’t put my energy into *everyone* that considers themselves that without considering what messages they are putting out there.

All in all, I’m glad I took a month off and I think the changes I’ve made will pay off immediately.

ReadWriteWeb points out that it’s Android’s 3rd birthday today and celebrates with a brief recap of the history of the platform.

I’ve had a Droid X as my main phone for a little over a month now. Having never used a iPhone, I’m not really qualified to give you a good comparison between the two, but I can tell you that I love my Droid on Verizon. I actually feel lost without it. But, that may be more of a personal personality quirk (addiction *cough*) than anything else.

I only have a few complaints:

• Apps can crash the phone. This is not cool.
• Battery life leaves a bit to be desired.
• My thumbs aren’t long enough to reach the other side of the screen (which is massive, btw)

I attended a Mobile marketing event sponsored by the Star News today. At one point the presenter asked everyone what mobile phone they were carrying.

The results?

• 2 iPhones
• Several Droids
• A whole slew of Blackberries

It’s anecdotal, but why the skewed results? I think the audience needs to be taken into account; most of the attendees were business people and Blackberry is still #1 with enterprise users.

All the rage is over iPhone & Droid, but Blackberry is still #1 – for now.

Paul Rand Retrospective from Jeremy Cox on Vimeo.

(video found via Jack Nack on Adobe)

With all the fuss over the new Gap logo this past week, I thought it would be a good idea to point everyone to the master, Paul Rand.

Rand designed logos for IBM, ABC, UPS, NEXT Computers, Westinghouse and a whole slew of others that I’m sure you’ll recognize.

(Yes, I think the Gap logo is ugly and it’s a shame that they paid a obscene amount of money for it.)

Grover takes on the Old Spice Guy and wins.