Snow Leopard: Big Deal?

Yes. big deal. Although Apple’s 10.5 is now 10.6, don’t let that incremental number suggest an incremental tweak.

Characteristic to its name, Snow Leopard leaps OS X into a speedier, most reliable, space-crunching operating system. This 64-bit system is built to be highly efficient in the use of memory – multiple applications in use simultaneously will function much cleaner and far faster than any other operating system. That’s not a tweak – that’s a big claim. For business users, OS X now integrates with corporate systems using Microsoft Exchange. Reviews abound on the new features, including a great write-up from Engadget. They all suggest Leopard users upgrade, and urge Tiger users to leap – guess that includes me.

Tags: Interactive, MAC OS X, snow leopard, Technology

Make your mail more intelligent.

Have you noticed the funny way the barcode on your direct mail piece is now appearing – it no longer sits on a baseline? Well, that is called the Intelligent Mail barcode, it is a new Postal Service code that is used to sort and track flats and letters. This code combines the data of the existing PLANET Code and POSTNET barcodes, as well as other data, into a single barcode. It expands the ability to track each mailpiece and provides customers with greater visibility in the mail.

Your mailing panel goes from 7-8 lines down to 4 – minimizing the space used on your mailpiece. No more having to leave the top HALF of your letter design blank. But, it also has many other benefits, to name a few: provides mailers with more digits for their use, allowing for unique id of up to a billion mailpieces per mailing; has a greater overall capacity than existing barcodes and still qualifies for automation prices. Learn more.

Tags: barcode, design, Direct Mail, Intelligent Mail barcode, letters, mailing panel, planet code, postal service

Localvores, family farms and the Top Chef Master

By now, all of us Top Chef addicts (the Bravo TV series) know that Rick Bayless of Topolobampo and Frontera Grill fame is the new Top Chef Master. By beating out the worthy competition, Bayless won $100,000 for the Frontera Farmer Foundation, which supports small, sustainable farms in the Midwest. Started by Bayless and his partner and wife Deann, the Foundation provides modest capital grants which can leapfrog a small farm to profitability. Doing so adds to the vitality and viabilty of the local food scene, but there’s a greater good. As he so aptly put on the Foundation’s website: “Great food, like all art, enhances and reflects a community’s vitality, growth and solidarity. Yet history bears witness that great cuisines spring only from healthy local agriculture.” Everyone who champions sustainability owes Rick Bayless a “Bravo” – not just for winning what looked like a pretty intense competition–but for bringing network attention to this worthy cause.

Tags: Bravo TV, family farms, Frontera Farmer Foundation, Frontera Grill, localvores, Rick Bayless, Top Chef Master, Topolobampo

The carbon footprint in your wine

Newsweek reports that if you’re a New Yorker, you leave a much smaller carbon footprint drinking a French wine shipped by sea over the Atlantic (2.93 pounds of carbon per bottle) than you would drinking a Napa vintage that was air shipped or trucked in (7.05 pounds per bottle). Interesting factoid, and a good reminder that the method of transportation matters as much as the distance when calculating carbon. Shipping by sea generates less than half the emissions associated with planes and tractor-trailers.  Of course, this is not a problem when you drink locally-made beverages. Here in Chicago, we love our beer. CBDers have chimed in with our favorite Chi-town brews:  Goose Island’s 312 and Matilda , Half Acre and Two Brothers. Though not a beer, my personal favorites are the amazingly delicious organic liqueurs made by Koval, a boutique distillery in the heart of the city. Chime in with your local favorites.

Tags: carbon footprints, Energy, environment, environmental, Goose Island, Green, Half Acre, Koval distillery, Two Brothers, wine

Marketing Toolbox: social media has jumped the shark

2009 marked the turning point for the acceptance of social media into the marketing mix. While many of my colleagues would argue that social media jumped the shark some time ago, I would agree with their enthusiasm as a consumer but not from a marketing usage perspective.

Just two years ago only 20% of marketers were engaged with social media as a marketing tool. It is now 66% according to a new study of marketing usage by Association of National Advertisers (ANA), BtoB Magazine and ‘mktg’. In particular, social networks are the largest contributor in the category:

• Facebook – 74%
• YouTube – 65%
• Twitter – 63%
• LinkedIn – 60%

While this is an astounding leap for social media, business people talk about their willingness to “try” social media, but their lack of confidence or knowledge to implement a social media strategy on behalf of their company or client. Fear of failure is also an underlying de-motivator. (We can help with that. Call us).

Do we need another web browser?

It was just a few months ago that Google debuted their much ballyhooed Chrome web browser yet it hasn’t taken off and we’ve all pretty much forgotten about it. We seem to be happy with IE, or Firefox for PC use, and Safari and Firefox for Mac use.

The original web browser inventor, Marc Andreessen, has a different opinion and it comes with a better concept than just another web browser offering. Its called RockMelt.  So what will it do that the others already don’t?

Continue reading

Tags: andreessen, browser, chrome, firefox, rockmelt