Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing5 Ways To Make An Email Newsletter Your Best Sales Tool

http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2011/11/29/5-ways-to-make-an-email-newsletter-your-best-sales-tool/

So…why did I leave the iOS world for Android????

I have gotten a lot of feedback from people wondering why I would have gone to Android instead of sticking with the iPhone.  First, I’d like to start by saying I really, really liked my iPhone.  Certain things were just intuitive (to me at least) and once I was able to Jailbreak, I got the kind of power that I really wanted/needed.  However, with the end of my iPhone contract (I mistakenly thought it was over in October when it actually ended in July), I was looking for the next iPhone to switch to.  Internally I said if the iPhone 4S was not an LTE phone, I was going to skip the iPhone and my heart sank when I discovered that 4G/LTE was at least a year away.  This indicated to me that Apple chose to play it safe, or wasn’t ready for 4G.  In retrospect maybe this was because of Steve’s ailing health.  But as a consumer, I was unwilling to settle for a “half measure” for a year and then pay a premium to upgrade to 4G when the new iPhone 5 comes out next fall.  Instead, due to some scrounging, I was able to secure my new Droid Bionic for exactly $0.01 through Amazon Wireless/Verizon.  No matter what I think of Android, that price allows very little buyers remorse.  Besides, this is a chance to “kick the tires” on the Android platform for the next two years.  Adding diversity to my mobile background is a very good thing and the Android platform has grown to parity with iOS over the last year.  About the only thing I’ll truly miss is the grandfathered unlimited data plan I had on iPhone and AT&T (but given Sprint’s hasty retreat on that, I’m not optimistic that it will last for much longer on AT &T anyways.)  My first order of business is to get a superior mail client because I was addicted to push mail on my iPhone.  Maybe rooting on Android will come first (Tried k-9 mail but apparently it doesn’t work with Exchange 2010?)  Anyways, it’ll be good to see how things break down over the next tow years.  I’m sure we’ll see a few more Siri videos and snapshots before the majority of people ignore it, but with regards to iOS, more of the same was not what I was looking for for the next two years.  I hope folks who make the iPhone such a big seller are happy for the next year.  I suspect I will be.

First post from Droid Bionic

Just a quick post from my new phone. Wondering about rooting it now

Waiting for G0dot

So I updated my iOS devices to iOS 4.2.1 in anticipation of a quick untethered jailbreak being available. Lesson learned: wait for the jb before upgrading. Apparently the new jailbreak was a bit harder than everyone anticipated. I’m hearing dec 24 as a drop date but we’ll see. Really missing miwi as I cannot get to iTunes store on iPad from work. Also can’t blog from work wifi either. Hmmm. Hoping for a verizon iPhone next year with LTE/4G. Maybe it won’t be messed up too (but again we’ll see

Social Media in Hotel Industry

Here’s the link (I know I’m being cheap
http://Http://www.mashable.com/2010/10/18/hotel-industry-social-mediamashable.com/2010/10/18/hotel-industry-social-media

Where did the month go? :)

Wow. It’s been a month since I got back from my 3 week tour across the northeast. The iPad continues to amaze me! Yesterday I picked up the iPad camera connector and with the jailbreak I can access USB keys as well as SD cards. I don’t think I’ll need to hook up an external hard drive but it’s doable. Also I can hook up a USB keyboard making typing a lot easier. Wonder about getting a Bluetooth or mighty mouse that will give the iPad a mouse cursor. I found a way to start watching Mad Men. Five episodes in and it’s a little depressing but interesting overall (www.madmenepisodes.com I think). Still wondering about a better iPad case too. And I got a printing app called printcentral and a viewer called goodreader. Who knew I’d actually Pay for apps (#1 cheapo here it’s all good

Vacation photos (whoops missed MS and AL)

Here are Mississippi and Alabama

Vacation photos part deux

Here’s the rest of the state signs. New Jersey was hard to find.

Vacation photos (AZ to NC)

State signs part I

Geeky Vacation

Wow!  Three weeks away and it was a lot of fun!  Most of my adventures are on my Facebook page, but I thought I’d post a little about some of the tech that we used on the trip:

• iPhone – Best. Device. Ever.  We used iPhone maps extensively to provide location and direction.  So much so, in fact, that we hardly used the paper maps and only fell back to use Google directions (printed out in advance) whenever we lost data connection or needed a larger view (Google maps on the iPhone with way points or linking to saved maps would have been even better!)  Add to this, I have jailbroken the device and added MiWi which gave us internet access on the our other Wi-Fi enabled devices.  I was able to update Facebook throughout the trip with pictures, video and tweets (much to my wife’s irritation from time-to-time
• iPad – I bought it just before the trip.  Very entertaining with seek-a-word and Mahjong.  I actually watched a NetFlix feature (part of one any ways) on the iPad with Netflix tethered to the internet via the iPhone (Yeah, that’s how I roll  When in the hotel, I took advantage of the free WiFi, but I didn’t read nearly as much as I planned.  My wife and daughter both read some Jane Austin material though.
• Laptop – Eldest daughter purchased a laptop with Bluray capability and integrated SD card reader.  She used both during the trip (we brought a few Bluray only features on the trip.)
• Integrated DVD player – We’ve had this for a few years; however, we needed to split the audio from the Bluray laptop for two kids to hear so we piped the audio from the Laptop to the integrated DVD input and the kids used the infrared headsets to listen to the audio while watching the laptop in their laps.  Pretty geeky hack but it seemed to work pretty well.  The audio was available on an FM channel but we only listed to DVD audio through the stereo a few times.
• Thumb drive – Essential because we had a second laptop (my son’s MacBookPro) and we wanted to back up our digital photos so the thumb drive made that possible.  Also, we needed print boarding passes, scholarship applications and even Empire State Building passes and the thumb drive was needed to print PDFs on the hotel’s lobby printer.  The MacBookPro has integrated PDF printing but I downloaded PDFCreator for the Bluray laptop.

Overall, the trip was definitely a tech “win.”  There were a few hiccups and not everything performed as well as planned or expected, but on balance we had a great trip tech wise.

From a tech perspective, it was a