This morning, in between the Tour de France coverage and catching up on The Tudors (via Netflix Watch It Now on my TiVo HD), I stumbled across two two very interesting and interconnected blogs that play into my love of all things paper.

Yes, although I live most of my life digitally (suffice it to say that files don’t really exist until they’re tucked safely away on my computer), I do keep a few constant companions of the analog variety.  One is my small Moleskine notebook, which I normally carry on me at all times and in which I record to-do items, random notes, and really anything else that occurs to me as the day progresses.  And while I do carry my iPhone everywhere and could technically use it for all of these functions, I find that sometimes the temptation to fiddle is something from which I should separate myself.

My other constant companion is a larger Moleskine notebook, in which I write meeting notes, project plans, musings and other notes.  I find that meetings tend to go much better when the only thing obstructing the view across the table is a somewhat unassuming notebook.

But back to the afore-mentioned posts …

First, a post by Ms. Caffeinated Venom herself, explores the idea of both blogging/recording/opining more as well as the need for decent paper products for purchase close at hand, especially while on the go.  As always, Ms. CV puts a nice point on the idea that oftentimes the situations that put you in need are not the ones most conducive to fulfilling those needs … or something like that …

The second led me to Johnny Long’s blog.  Long, of “Google Hacking” fame, is in the midst of a new blog project.  Like many writers, Long records his thoughts on paper.  But unlike any other blogger of whom I know, Long does not transcribe his writings into bits and bytes, at least not in the traditional way.  Instead, Long posts pictures of his handwritten pieces and posts them to his blog.  An incredibly interesting idea that, I have to say, I’m jealous I didn’t think of first.

Product placement in film and television is nothing new. From the Bond Car to sodas, watches and other trinkets, we’ve grown used to seeing brand names along side or favorite characters.

One Tuesday morning, NBC announced the renewal of one of my favorite series on television, Chuck. What struck me about the announcement was not so much the break with network television’s long standing tradition of canceling shows I love, but the forthrightness of the announced partnership with Subway.

“This innovative partnership is a perfect example of the effectiveness of the NBC Infront,” said NBC Entertainment Co-Chairman Ben Silverman. “By involving Subway early in the process, we were able to bring a quality show like Chuck back to NBC for next season. Everybody wins — NBC, Subway, and the loyal fans who so enthusiastically lobbied for Chuck’s renewal.”

[via Televisionary]

We’ve seen this before, most notably in my mind with the partnership between ABC and Nokia in the production of the first season of Alias or the Family Friendly Programming Forum and the series Gilmore Girls.

Many will point to these partnerships as the first nail in the coffin of free expression and true creativity. But in a time when every budget is being squeezed and the proliferation of “reality” based programming is worse than a pack of rabid tribbles, its reassuring to see that there remains some way to keep quality scripted television on the air. Witness NBC’s decision last year to reduce its production schedule from 21 to 16 hours of original programming, with the remaining hours – all in weekly prime time – filled with Jay Leno.

By securing it own source of outside funding, Chuck ensures that we can spend at least one more season with the super spy boy genius. And I for one am looking forward to seeing what other “mad skillz” the INTERSECT 2.0 has downloaded into our guy. If he has to work at Subway instead of Best Buy … I mean the “Buy More” … then that’s fine with me.

Be sure to check out a schedule of upcoming programming over on Caffeinated Venom.

Introduction

To say that I’m not a fan of blog posts that extoll the virtues of the Google-plex of online apps would be a it of an understatement. As a citizen of Corporate America, my work-bound digital life revolves around the ever-present MS Outlook, making many of the GMail-centric blog posts interesting yet somewhat less than useful.

On the work side, I’ve set up a method that helps me categorize emails into 4 main contexts: @Action, @Waiting, @Read, and @Reference. A combination of colored flags and search folders helps me keep organized and on top of what needs to be done. I’ve written before about this system in quite a bit of detail, so I won’t go into much more here except to say that as my email volume grows, things seem to be holding up pretty well.

One thing I should point out is that the flags help me keep up with the emails while the more traditional task list helps me keep up with the actions that arise from those emails. This keeps me from having to re-read and re-re-read flagged emails and lets me follow a more traditional model of “get the email, record the action, flag the email, file the email, do the action, unflag the email … repeat as necessary…”

The thing I like about this system is that its straightforward – all my email gets dumped into one archive folder. The search folders pick out emails with certain colored flags. Rather than having to move emails between folder, when I flag something as complete the email disappears from the search folder list but stays in the archive; I don’t have to move the email from one folder to another when I’m done with it.

For my personal email I have been using a combination of GMail and Apple’s Mail.app (on both my MacBook Pro and my iPhone). Over the past few months I’ve been moving more and more of my paper-based life to digital – I get email notices when my online statements are ready, I pay bills online, certain calendar events send me reminder emails (mostly related to paying bills)etc. As this has happened I’ve found myself wanting a bit more granularity in my ability to flag emails than Mail.app’s single message flag offers.

Enter GMail’s Superstars, which let you give different colored stars (aka flags) to emails. Around for quite some time, I had largely ignored Superstars because they didn’t work well with Mail.app (every colored star translated to the same message flag in Mail.app). But this past weekend I decided to see whether I could set up a system in GMail that approximated my setup in Outlook.

Dancing with the SuperStars

The first thing I did was reorder GMail’s SuperStars to match my flags in Outlook: red (action), blue (waiting), yellow (read), green (reference), orange and purple (both unused). This lets me click through GMail’s stars in the same order I can click through Outlook’s flags, which means that I don’t have to remember which system is which. The rest of the “stars” I took out of use.

Saved Searches

Google labs also offers a “widget” for Saved Searches. After you enable the function in the “Settings / Labs” section, a box appears on your left hand sidebar that lets you store frequently used searches. The proper syntax for these searches is “has: red-star” or “has: blue-star.” Click on the link and a search results page comes up with all the messages containing the desired star.

Multiple Inboxes

Here’s where things start to get interesting. Recently Google Labs introduced a feature that lets you split the regular GMail window into multiple email boxes. The beauty of this is that each additional email box is essentially the result of a search. As you can see from the picture below, I’ve set up 4 different mailboxes , each with its own context.

The result, shown below, is one view with multiple areas of information. New mail is processed in the inbox, starred appropriately, and filed away in the “All Mail” archive. The extra mailboxes on the right organize emails that need something done to them. When I’m done with the email, I clear the star and it disappears from this view.

Wrapping Up

I’m not sure whether I’ll be using the system for very long – the truth of the matter is that I don’t have nearly as many personal emails that require some sort of action. I could probably survive with only one message flag marking emails after the action gets transferred to my task list. But I’ve promised that I’ll try this system for at least a week. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

A few years ago Malcolm Gladwell, famed author of Blink, The Tipping Point and the recently released Outliers, gave a talk at the TED conference about a revolution in product development that started with Pepsi Cola but first took hold in the spaghetti sauce industry. Gladwell tells the story of Howard Moskowitz, a psychophysicist who is predominantly responsible for the proliferation of sauces in the spaghetti aisle of your local grocery store.

I won’t go in to all the details (I highly recommend watching the video linked above) of how Moskowitz came to the conclusion that what we really need is 36 different varieties of spaghetti sauce, nor about zesty pickles or even Pepsi. Later in the talk, Gladwell recounts, this time about Grey Poupon:

[What we should give people is] A better mustard! A more expensive mustard! A mustard of more sophistication and culture and meaning. And Howard looked to that and said, that’s wrong! Mustard does not exist on a hierarchy. Mustard exists, just like tomato sauce, on a horizontal plane. There is no good mustard, or bad mustard. There is no perfect mustard, or imperfect mustard. There are only different kinds of mustards that suit different kinds of people.

Moskowitz’s point, of course, is that no one product is right for everyone. The converse – not everyone is right for a particular product – is also true. There is no “good, better, best, ” just “better for me.”

As humans it might be hard to admit that not everyone loves this thing that we’ve spent days and years slaving over, this thing into which we’ve poured our hearts and souls, this thing about which we want to shout from the rooftops. But as marketers perhaps the better part of valor would be for us to remember that prioritization of our messages and try to talk to the people we should be talking to.

Because in the end, if someone doesn’t like your particular type of spaghetti sauce, you can always make another one that they may like better.

A few days ago the wife and I headed out to the Discoveryworld Science Center for the second Guitars for Vets benefit. My friend Kris and his band was playing the benefit. Check out the picture below.

John Gruber, one of my top three favorite technology bloggers (Merlin Mann and Andy Ihnatko complete the set), recently linked to a story by Matt Haughey. Haughey, of MetaFilter fame, gives a view of social media marketing that’s somewhat different than most.

Haughey chronicles his search for a birthday gift for his daughter, along the way describing what is to most the Holy Grail of social media marketing. His quest begins with an article about the First Family’s recent swing set acquisition, is followed by recommendations by a select group of “trusted advisors,” and ends with a purchase, an installation, and the undying gratitude of his little girl.

Haughey’s point is that no amount of social media marketing, no tactic, no gimmick, nor any other “strategy” can replace a truly first rate product being promoted by happy customers.

No matter the product, service, industry, or customer, the learning is clear: first make a great product that your customers want and need and then focus your efforts on positioning and promoting it properly.

Dry Cleaners Offer Free Services For Unemployed

Difficult times have been known to bring communities together as people lean on one another for support. In this recession, there’s no shortage of communities around the country that have rallied around a struggling neighbor, or reached out a helping hand to those around them.

And still the investment bankers busy themselves with bickering over power struggles …

After nearly two months without a single flake falling for the sky, the heavens parted and poured forth a pent up anger typically reserved for gangster movies and scorned women. But rather than staying inside and avoiding conditions that were fit for neither man nor beast, this afternoon the wife and I ventured forth in search of fabric.

Just around the corner from our house is an arts and crafts store named Ben Franklin. Upon arriving in the fabric department, we were greeted by a sign announcing that not only was photography banned in the store, simply possessing a camera phone was verboten. Not limited to the fabric department, the signs were littered throughout the store.

I was incredibly tempted to a) take a picture of the sign with my phone and b) take my business somewhere else. Unfortunately, neither of those things happened (my wife, who was in charge of the excursion, gave me her patented “stop screwing around and behave yourself” look). So instead I’ve decided to direct my impotent rage into the interwebs, where they’ll do very little other than make me feel a bit better.

It doesn’t take much looking to find meme after meme decrying those who seek to ban photography. I try very hard to stay out of these discussions, as I generally think its better to take pictures where and when no one will be insulted.

But there was something about this particular instance that bothered me. True, I had no real desire to take pictures in this crafts store, but the fact that I lacked intention did not stop me from being annoyed at the preclusion.

[No Photography, These Animals Are Highly Sensitive, originally uploaded by Thomas Hawk.]