Hello?

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.

Email Overload

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.

Need an IP address?

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.

By the glass.

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

Gamers.

I have been involved in the gaming business since the late 80's. Much has changed. A closer look at gaming trends. This article, based on an AP-AOL Survey discusses attitudes about gaming by various demographic groups. Interesting stuff!

Get Human.

Get Human

Don’t you hate it when you call a company and you are forced to spend what seems like an eternity on the phone with their phone system? Even Citicard now has TV commercials announcing that you can speak with a “live” customer service person.

Get Human can save you a lot of time and frustration. It provides tips on ways to bypass the phone systems of many major companies so that you can quickly reach a human being. This website is a great resource that definitely belongs in your Bookmark file.

Thanks to my virtual assistant (the best ever :) for this post!

Prometa.

ACTOR WHO DIED OF OVERDOSE STARS IN ADDICTION TREATMENT ADS

I find this fascinating. The foundation run by Chris Farley's family gave permission for his photo to be used for this new addiciton treatment protocol's ads. His brother is even the voice-over.

Google Finance.

Yes (yawn, yawn) another Google product -- Google Finance. As annoying as it might be, the fact is that they keep doing it right. So check it out.

It is in Beta stage at this point (which Google product is NOT in Beta?)

You can search with a company name, stock symbol or even with a general term. I searched for "advertising agency" and it showed 175 results and listed the biggies right there.

I tried Applebee's (my Dad's favorite!) and found:

Market Data
News
Company Facts (revenue, profit, etc.)
Site links: News Releases, Financial Information, Corporate History/Profile, Products/Services, Employment Opportunities
Company Financials Quarterly and Annual Income Statement
Balance Sheet
Competitors
Analyst Estimates
SEC Filings
Major Holders
Discussion Group
Options
Research Reports
Events
Comparison Charts
Company Summary
Management Info
Blog Posts (wow!)

It's well-organized and has real depth. This is a great place to start for getting consolidated information on companies.

Great job, Google. Again.

Science search.

We know a lot of search engines, as I'm sure you'd imagine! So when someone sends me something new, it's very exciting. A world renowned medical writer sent me this:

Scirus is the most comprehensive science-specific search engine on the Internet. Driven by the latest search engine technology, Scirus searches over 250 million science-specific Web pages, enabling you to quickly:

• Pinpoint scientific, scholarly, technical and medical data on the Web.
• Find the latest reports, peer-reviewed articles, patents, pre prints and journals that other search engines miss.
• Offer unique functionalities designed for scientists and researchers.

Definitely worth a look. Very cool.

Marketing to women.

I've long followed WonderBranding at terrific blog by Michele Miller about Marketing to Women. And I have been reading Andrea Learned for ages. It's an interest of mine and, with some large clients that have very female target audiences, it's important to keep up. This morning (awfully early on a Sunday, I might add!) I followed a link from WonderBranding to Holly Buchanan's How to Shatter Stereotypes and Understand What She Really Wants. Great stuff here. Read back a bit to some editorial about research findings discussing women online. I love when people challenge the conclusions of a study in the media. So often, the data are barely the basis of the publicity....

Global warming.

Following two recent studies on changes to Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, NASA is touting a survey that it says confirms “climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in Earth’s largest storehouses of ice and snow.”

“If the trends we’re seeing continue and climate warming continues as predicted, the polar ice sheets could change dramatically. The Greenland ice sheet could be facing an irreversible decline by the end of the century,” says the lead author Jay Zwally.

The full article is worth a read.

The unbanked....

More than 10 million U.S. consumers do not use a bank. I find that shocking. Scarborough just released a report about these unbanked folks and their use of credit cards. Almost 1/4 of them do use credit cards, it seems. One might ask how they pay for the charges...with cash? Money orders?

African American Buying Power Soaring

In today's Adweek, it is reported that the economic power of African American consumers will grow to $1 trillion by 2010. Read the article here.

Happy birthday.

This article from the Center for Media Research reports on the new Media Audit - which tells us that the number of men and women age 50 and over has increased from 44.6 million to 51.1 million in the past five years. AND that 10,000 people a day turn 50. Read the article for some other interesting tidbits....

Criminals.

I had to share this one. Study Claims Unattractive People More Likely to Commit Crime.

Boomers in the news.

Craig, Andrew and I are all Baby Boomers. Some might call us Generation Jones-ers, but we're definitially at the tail end of the Boomers. Of course, I am the youngest of the three (sorry, boys)....

So reading this article made me feel ancient! I mean, really! Lift chairs go mainstream, in time for Boomers.

But this speaks to an interesting marketing phenomenon that we've been seeing and, in my opinion, is going to explode. Making aging look better.

Women Are Smarter

You know the song -

It ain't me
It's the people that say
Men are leading the women astray
But I say, it's the women today
Smarter than the man in every way

Well, I came across an article that reinforces this. (Sorry, guys)

It says that all around the U.S., educational statistics show huge academic gap between boys and girls. Boys are falling behind girls as early as elementary school. Even as they get older, they're losing out in academic skills compared to females. Girls outnumber boys on school honor rolls.

Years ago, there were stats that showed that girls were not succeeding in school because science and math were not being encouraged for girls. So what can be done to help the boys? I mean, really, all those smart girls are going to need some smart boys to date!

EAPs

A Canadian study of Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) shows some not particularly suprising results. But doesn't it seem wrong that this is tracked? I thought all this stuff was private....

"Employees in their thirties were the most likely to access EAP formarital-relationship issues. In fact almost one-quarter ofthem access counselling services to resolve relationship issues."
The report also showed that 22 per cent of men who accessed EAP services did so to specifically explore issues related to their personal relationships.

Surprisingly, only 17 per cent of women who accessed EAP services did so for the same problem. This means, that despite the traditional stereotyping, men are willing to express concerns and to work at resolving serious relationship issues. [Or it means that women feel more threatened in the workplace and don't feel safe discussing these issues with EAP.] The report also uncovered the fact that more supervisors and managers(20% of them) accessed EAP for marital/relationship discord than other employees (18% of them). [does this surprise you? not me!]

Specifically:
- Male supervisors and managers under 40 years of age, with fewer years of service, access EAP for relationship problems more often than the average employee (39% versus 24% of average employees).
- Female supervisors and managers between 30 and 49 years of age, working full-time and with fewer years of service, access EAP for relationship problems more often than the average employee (31% versus 24% of average employees).

Newspapers live on...

Media Consumption Study Reveals Newspapers More Engaging Than TV, Radio, Web -- with all the worry I hear about the decline of the newspaper, this study brings up an interesting point...we spend uninterupted time with the newspaper. What other medium can you say that about?

Study: Playing Certain Games Reduce Pain

This article in Gamasutra discusses a study by researchers at Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia showing that certain types of video games, namely sports and fighting titles, can do a lot to distract players from feeling pain. The study, called Effects of Video Game Play Types on Pain Threshold and Tolerance, will be presented at the 2006 Undergraduate Research Day in Charleston, West Virginia.