I found a new blog that I like. A lot. Creating Passionate Users. My favorite post so far is:

Your Brain on Multitasking. Kathy Sierra writes:

If you want to get more done, be mindful.
If you want to have more time, be mindful.
Mindful means one thing at a time.

The post is great. The blog? Okay, a little geeky and tech, but I like it. Check it out.

Check out Money Magazine’s just-released list of top places in the country to live – Columbia/Ellicott City is #4. We knew we liked it here.

Thanks to Buffy for the pointer!

Guide to Vertical Marketing is quite the find. For each industry spotlighted, they offer a case study of how one marketer succeeded in reaching that vertical market as well as an overview of trends, projections and challenges facing the industry. And to help you better reach your target audience, each Vertical Insight also includes tables that list the top publications, websites trade shows and events. It’s pretty groovy. Check it out!

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?, a brand new book by Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg (along with Lisa Davis) just went on sale. I plan to get a copy this week – and Michele Miller’s Wonderbranding says (and she’s always right!) that this is a must read.

Michele writes:

“Plain and simple, it’s all about persuading customers to do business with you when they ignore marketing. And this team of authors does a heck of a job. Read an excerpt from the book here.
In the book, you’ll learn:

• How the customer’s buying process works in a cross-channel, new media-driven marketplace
• Why customers respond differently today than they used to
• How to use the Web to generate persuasive momentum across multiple channels
• How the various touch-points within a business affect each other
• How to guide prospects through the buying process at every customer touch-points
• How personality traits influence customer behavior online and offline
• How to anticipate the different angles from which customers approach your business
• How to identify and provide meaningful answers to your customers’ questions at each stage of their buying process
• How to begin implementing Persuasion Architecture™ techniques for your business

…You can also read reviews from folks like Seth Godin, Jeffrey Gitomer and Roy H. Williams…”

So I’m all over it!

Companies That Use Combative Advertising May End Up with a Black Eye

John Zhang has a message for Cingular Wireless and Verizon Wireless or, for that matter, any company that uses its ads to attack a competitor. Instead of luring away your competitor’s customers, you may just be hurting yourself. Zhang, a Wharton marketing professor, has found that combative ads — the sort of comparative spots that beer makers, particularly Anheuser-Busch and Miller, are famed for — may backfire. Instead of pulling consumers to an advertiser, they may just make people indifferent to all offerings in a product category. “Combative advertising, a characteristic of mature markets, is defined as advertising that shifts consumer preferences toward the advertising firm but does not expand the category demand,” Zhang says in his research paper titled, “A Theory of Combative Advertising.”

Remember Harry Potter had a cloak that made him invisible? Impossible. Or not? Listen to this NPR story…

From the Wireless Report: JD Power and Associates recently surveyed over 18,000 cellphone users. The results? Most users just want to be able to make a phonecall rather than taking pictures, playing games, or text messaging. Less than 20 percent play games or take pictures.

Imagine an entire blog dedicated to email overload. Sound boring and repetitive to me. But it’s not! Itzy Sabo writes useful and practical information on the subject. My favorite post of late is:

How to turn a smart person into an idiot, in one easy
step

I’ve talked about the effects of overload on the quality of work, and
here are some great quotes that seem to agree:

Idiotic Workload
“You can turn a smart person into an idiot just by
overworking him”

Prof. Peter Capelli, The Wharton School, University of
Pennsylvania [via Fortune]

And there’s more.

Read more here.

According to a new Frost & Sullivan report, as discussed in We’re Running Out of IP Addresses, we have about four to seven years before there are no more IP addresses left.

Evidently, the trend in dining is to purchase wine by the glass. Read Paying the price to avoid the bottle…