Inside Out, Upside Down | marketing - digital media - business - life

The backdrop of the MSN homepage is now completely convoluted with the images of the ” I’m a PC campaign. I find it really distracting and rather annoying from a user perspective, not exactally what I think the campaign creators were tying to achieve. I’m not sure what to think of the campaign, am I a PC? I use a PC at work, but I don’t know if the angle of hitting head on the “stereotype” of a PC user is actually adressing the real reason why the Apple commercials have been so successful, in fact I think it’s missing the mark in some respect. Rather than addressing the stereotype of a user, what if Microsoft addressed the stereotype of the windows user experience…. After all, that’s what Apple is going after with it’s ads. Instead of showing us all what a PC user looks like, why not show us why a PC user is a PC user. Demonstate how we save time and it makes our lives easier to use a PC - that’s the message that I think we are missing in the I’m a PC campain. I love my Mac, but there are business tools on windows that I love as well that make my life better from a business efficiency standpoint and that’s the stuff we don’t hear enough about from Microsoft thy should be infused in the campaign. It’s not that I am a PC, it’s why I’m PC that matters to people.

What could be better than being stuck in the airport and being able to play PacMan? I was thrilled to find out that I could download PacMan for the iPod but quickly was disappointed to find out that I can’t get it for my iPhone. I’m hoping with the release of the new G3 iPhone this summer that I will be able to download games on the iPhone. Not that I actually play video games (I generally don’t) but I do travel a lot which means that there are lots of hours in airports and sitting on runways so games on the iPhone as a backup to kill the time is a must have for me.

As social media marketing rolls into full force, the real estate industry while usually one step behind is catching on and more and more real estate agents are starting blogs and implementing web marketing strategies. This has posed a great opportunity for technology companies, entrepreneurs and individuals to position themselves to “help” real estate agents break into the social media and blogging arenas. Thousands of vendors have cropped up with “all in one” services promoting blog templates, hosting and search engine optimization.

Looking for a “quick fix” and a one stop marketing solution, Read more »

I’m scheduled to take the LSAT’s in June and while it seemed like a long way off, the date is looming close very quickly. I had thought I would be able to put in at least 3 hours of studying a night after working and putting Ben to bed, but after generally a 9 hour day and then spending time playing, feeding, bathing and putting Ben to bed I am just about spent. I’ve taken a couple different pre-tests online and I’m scoring just above average, which is enough to get into most law schools but not high enough to get into the law schools I really want to get into. I was taken by surprise that the LSAT’s really have no content to study for or formulas to memorize, which leaves my super Read more »

I came across a new pen that is promising to change the world. Lifescribe has just recently started shipping their first ever pen that has writing to audio and memory. I’m intrigued by the thought that this somehow helps you learn better and gain in-site into your notes. Reading the blog on the company website it seems that a lot of people are raving about how much more they got from their writings by using this new pen.

The guys (and gals) over at Lifescribe have done a good job marketing their product and generating buzz in a low key social media environment and seem to have some good momentum behind them. I’m interested to see once it’s been in production of it’s going to fade into novelty status or if it really does live up to the hype.

So my husband would tell you that we are hands down, a Mac household. Since he owns a software company (Semanteme, Inc.) that is solely focused on creating applications for the Mac and iPhone, that leaves us pretty much with a huge spend at the Apple store and more than 5 different Mac’s (Powerbooks, Macbooks, Dual Core Desktops etc. at any one time to work on at home. Now turn left. I work at Microsoft and since 2002 my real estate business required the use of Windows in order to run proprietary real estate software that just wouldn’t work on the Mac. Therefore, I’ve always had a PC laptop running whatever the newest version of Windows was (currently XP because it doesn’t have the gusto for Vista) and I’ve run both Windows XP and Mac OSX on my Powerbook since the emergence of the Intel chip on the Mac. So while my husband gets to live in his own happy bliss Read more »

So AT&T is launching a new browser based on Firefox called Pogo that will focus on 3D content delivery from the browser startup screen. This is a move to try and endear their broadband clients to their services since most customers these days apparently don’t remember who their internet service provider is.

My first question is how detailed have they been in identifying their customer base and is this really what customers want? If they are going after the Gen Y demographics then I think that that the 3D browser experience might make sense but it’s not a totally new concept so how much excitement will it really generate? If they are hoping this will be a “catch all” for their entire customer base to get excited about, I’m not so sure. Other companies have already launched 3D content “browsers” such as Apple’s “coverflow” feature and Windows Vista Flip3D and while it’s thought of Read more »