Inside the Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

Firefox Theme Productivity Tip: Littlefox

I've never played around much with Firefox browser themes, but I found one that's actually useful: Littlefox. As I'm one to experiment with lots of buttons and toolbars, the clutter's usually unbearable. Littlefox shrinks all of that so that each button and toolbar takes up the least amount of vertical space while still being readable. If your eyes aren't completely shot, this will minimize scrolling and allow for easier screenshotting if you're one to do that for presentations.

If you have any other favorite Firefox themes or add-ons, be sure to share them in the comments.

Video Q&A - Jabbits - The New Frontier?

Matt Candrian of Jabbits recently wrote a comment about his new video Q&A service, and it's worth mentioning the site in a post so everyone can catch it.

Personally, it's not for me. I've used Yahoo Answers and other Q&A sites partially for their speed - I can post quickly and relatively quickly find out if anyone has an answer, and video slows down the process. It's much quicker to post text, and for others to respond with text. Of course, that ease means some people will post useless responses since they're not taking the time, but I'd much rather quickly scan text than sit through others' home movies.

I'm not the earliest adopter when it comes to video though. Maybe I'll be the last text blogger after everyone has moved to audio or video (though I see podcast creation and video blogging as media outlets that won't move beyond early adopters). Video Q&A may well work for certain types of questions.

Here's the other question: why use Jabbits and not YouTube? I know Jabbits is designed for Q&A and will reach a more targeted audience, but video responses are common on other video sites.

Two Outlook Add-ons I'd Love to See

Whenever I add contacts to Outlook or update them, there are two fields I commonly add myself:

* Date met: This provides some context for how long I've known them, and that alone can often trigger an association with a job or event.

* Related people: This is much more interesting. If I know Dan because of Mark, and Dan also works with Julie, then I'll often put those names in, especially if it's someone starting off as a loose connection. It helps form associations, and it helps me to keep in touch (e.g., so I remember to cc both of them on an email, or I can be courteous to ask one about the other).

If Microsoft, or perhaps LinkedIn or Plaxo, built an add-on especially for the second idea, it would be a great way to help me keep my contacts in order, especially if I could just click another person's name to open their contact info. It's essentially letting me build my own social networks in Outlook. LinkedIn could presumably do some interesting things with this, such as telling me right off the bat that I'm connected to a person through all these various other people.

Before posting this, I tried creating forms and messing with the Outlook template, but once I got to the step where I'd have to change registry files to apply the changes to every contact, I decided against it. I'll leave it to one of the others I mentioned.

Expanding EZPass

Idea of the day:

Why not expand E-Z Pass (or toll tags, or whatever automated system you might have to pass through highway tolls quickly by paying automatically from a device inside your car) to shopping malls?

They shouldn't be confined to the highways, and large parking garages where visitors return sporadically and pay as they go (malls, casinos, and the like) would be perfect spots.

Branching into Family Trees

Courtesy of TechCrunch, Geni.com is one of my new online obsessions. It allows you to create family trees and collaborate with other family members.

It's hardly perfect. For instance, it's slow, and you can't put that a couple wasn't married (the closest you can do is "divorced"), so it needs some fine tuning. I also haven't toyed much with advanced features; I'm wondering how well it prints and shares offline. It's the most addictive site I've found online since Yahoo Answers and Moola, and far more meaningful than the first and useful than the latter.

A Service I'd Pay For

I'd pay the price of an average magazine subscription just to be able to change all my magazine addresses in one shot. There are currently about 8-10 I read regularly and a few others I often leaf through, and as I'm preparing to move, changing each of these one by one is a tedious headache.

Approval_matrix_dogsterThere used to be a service offered by the US Postal Service called OneSwitch through a partner where they'd do exactly that - change most of your subscriptions, and then try to get you to renew them for years in advance at a decent rate. It's why I'm locked in with New York Mag through 2009 (and, as of now, I'm happy to stay with them for the decade). That service is no more, but I'd love to see someone pull this off. I, for one, would even pay for the convenience.

(As an aside, some magazine sites ask you to enter your subscriber number on the magazine label. Yet some magazines often come in plastic wrap bundled with something else, and the plastic gets buried in the trash long before I'd think to save it. There is much room for improvement in the subscription renewal world. Another pet peeve: subscriber numbers that are impossible to decipher, like NY Mag's, which asks you to enter a 9-digit #, but the exact 9 digits are sandwiched within a string of about 16 of them, and it takes some guess work to figure out which 9 it wants. Now you can see why I'm willing to pay so I never have to do this again.)

(One other note: kudos to Time for doing it right - I've been changing my address while writing this post. When I logged in to Business 2.0, not having the magazine handy, it not only found my address on file without any guesswork on my part, but it also offered to change my subscriptions to Entertainment Weekly and Fortune - a time saver, even though I would have just let USPS forward those. Conde Nast wasn't quite as kind in allowing me to switch both Wired and The New Yorker at once; despite repeated efforts, Wired couldn't even find my info on file.)

Googling Elections

I haven't had a chance to try this yet, but Google just release a Google Earth plugin for US election info. From their release:

Today Google Earth celebrates the election season with the launch of the 2006 Google Earth Election Guide.

Conceived by Google Earth engineers who found it difficult to find aggregated election information online about races country-wide, the 2006 Google Earth Election Guide serves as an easily accessible resource for users to find information about candidates, voter registration, and campaign financing for the November 7th elections.

The 2006 Google Earth Election Guide includes clickable place marks for all 435 Congressional districts.

I'd rather see this as a mashup for Google Maps than Google Earth, since the former's much quicker to load and access, but this is still a great way to plot useful information and allow John Q. to get more involved with this democracy stuff we hear so much about.

Google Gadgets to Go

Google Gadgets now allows anyone to add them to any page, not just your Google personalized homepage. Here's a sample; try it out for yourself and get the code for your blog, MySpace page, or whatever site you have. More info at TechCrunch.

Coming Soon: The $100 Hot Dog

Okay, the $100 dog's not here yet, but the salmon dog is, and the $25 dog, according to a USA Today article (thanks for the link, Dr. Adelglass). Give it time - someone will make a $100 hot dog as a great PR stunt, like the $1,000 omelette. A few will eat it, but many more will flock to whoever serves it just to say to their friends, "You know this places sells hot dogs for $100?" (At least Norma's, which sells the $1,000 omelette, backs up the rest of the menu by serving the best breakfast anywhere in Manhattan - you get what you pay for there).

An aside: the article also mentions Mandler's, which was featured in a Search Insider article in March. 360i moved a bit further from Mandler's, but I still try to make it back every so often. Ronnie & Gil, keep the grill hot for me.

A Sip of Ben & Jerry's

Ben & Jerry's took over a historic bank (and now theater) in Union Square for two weeks to promote its new milkshake flavors, with tasting stations and some nooks to sit and enjoy them. (Click the photos for a closer look.)

At first I thought the bank-theater was now a Ben & Jerry's - no such luck. It would have been an odd venue for retail, but it was perfect for a grand debut.

As for the milkshakes, which come in 8oz bottles and which I gather will be in grocery stores soon, they're 330 calories, and generally hit the spot. The Chocolate Fudge Brownie and Chunky Monkey (now in smooth form) were a treat, though the Cherry Garcia was medicinal. As the song lyrics go, two out of three ain't bad.