Click the image to view a hilarious viral clip from Apple where a muppet-like creature named Limer with an iPhone 4.0 taped to his hand calls customer service. He’s seeking help with the new video conference feature (a front and a rear facing camera on the new iPhones, don’tcha know) and was very happy with is experience.

The subtitle for this should be “Magazines fight harder to gain subscribers” because that’s exactly what it seems RealSimple is doing. I’ve been a longtime fan of this magazine and website – www.realsimple.com. I have to admit, although I’m a techno-freak, I still love magazines. And I really love well designed magazines like RealSimple. (No, I swear they’re not paying me for this.) It’s a nice size, slightly squared as opposed to 8 1/2 x 11 and looks like a coffee table book. I have held on to my issues over the years instead of ripping out the articles that I’m interested in because they are not just packed with great info but are beautiful too. That being said, I rarely subscribe to anything, and usually get magazine subscriptions as gifts from my mom who knows how much I love them. When I moved, I got an offer to “try” RealSimple for two issues and of course I said yes and sent in my little postcard.

Was I shocked when in the mail today I got a thank you letter from them, along with a really cool magnet for my fridge that lists how long several different types of veggies can last in the crisper bin. Gotta love it! It reminds me of what Amazon did very early on for their first purchasers. If you bought a book from Amazon.com in their first year (which of course, I did) they sent out a thank you at Christmas time with a mouse pad. And not just some stupid mouse pad with AMAZON emblazoned on it, but a really cool quote, “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.” Mark Twain. It’s been years, but I’ll never forget that thank you, and have really been fairly faithful to amazon ever since. It helps that they usually have decent prices and are responsive in their shipping.
Kudos to you, RealSimple marketing folk. This might be the first magazine that I subscribe to!

I’m about to chow down on my meatball sandwich hot pocket when I see it: the url printed on the heating sleeve. Really? Is this what we’ve come to as a society? I wonder what url I’ll put on my headstone …

I digress. So of course I had to fire up my computer and check out http://www.eatfreely.org, a fully fictional website dedicated to the love of eating things while on the go. It’s just a tad over the top, with lots of streaming video and flash. Who is really looking at this site, and do they really want to buy a hat with eatfreely.org emblazoned on it? Is anyone really that into hot pockets? Please, leave a comment and prove me wrong!

Wanna scare the crap outta yourself? Enter your name in www.webmii.com.

I cannot believe the remnants of stuff about me that this engine sniffed up from around the web. Almost everything was correct – my work in tv/film, listings of the condo I sold, info entered in classmates.com more than 10 years ago … FRIGHTENING.

People, the stuff you put into your facebook and social media pages truly never goes away. I feel for the younger generation who have hundreds of photos of themselves in front of beer bongs (or worse) on their facebook pages. Ten years from now as you seek jobs, you’re future employers will find this stuff and judge you for it.

Thank god most of my early work online was on private message boards, and super-geeky private SIG systems – not archived anywhere other than on my own personal network or the network of a friend who ran SIGS (we’re talking early 80’s here for me, at least). There’s a lot of very unhappy poetry that, thank goodness, slipped into the darkness of hard drives that are no longer readable and not out there for my kids to judge me on later.

But seriously – learn a lesson here – do not PUT that info online. Tell your friends not to post or tag photos of you on that pole at the local strip house. Someday, you may want to be Miss America.

These will never hit the paper, but beloved Dilbert author Scott Adams posted a few comics on the leaked iPhone storyline. Gotta love it! View his the comics full size and his post HERE.

Gizmodo reports today that they came across a prototype of the next version of the iPhone in a bar – okay, you may think, this is most likely not real. However, they go through the phone inside and out and it’s all official Apple parts (hard to replicate, I’d say).

Check it out for yourself – it’s very interesting! Read all about it and see tons more photos here: http://m.gizmodo.com/site?sid=gizmodoip&pid=JuicerHub&targetUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fgizmodo.com%2F5520164%2F%3Fop%3Dpost%26refId%3D5520164

Ah, this is just still bothering me. I really don’t get how this passed through all the legal and creative minds.

Really, apple? This was the best you could come up with? Steve, you have lost a little bit of your edge here.

Get more info on the iPad HERE.

I hadn’t heard of TalkShoe until my fave podcasters, the Manic Mommies, used this technology for their weekly podcast to do their first call in show, and I had to investigate. The description from the application developer’s site states it far better than I could:
“TalkShoe is a service that enables anyone to easily create, join, or listen to Live Interactive Discussions, Conversations, Podcasts and Audioblogs.” Additionally, TalkShoe has an open API so that others can easily integrate its features into their own solutions.

So if you’ve got something to say, and you’d rather say it than type it – this is the tool for you.

This tool crosses over many interests that I rant about on this blog – marketing, technology, and iPhone apps. Okay, technically it’s not an app but if you steer your iPhone web browser to http://iphone.talkshoe.com/, you’ll view a customized web page made specifically for using this service on your Apple gadget.

The uses of this service are many – you can schedule a call and have up to 250 people together at once (and you can even use your Facebook, MySpace, Meebo to post info to your friends and schedule a call directly with your friend list) or you could use this software and service to record and post your own podcast. Very tempting … luckily I don’t have any extra time in my day to do this. If you plan on pod-casting on a regular basis, there’s even a way to monetize your podcast by building a subscriber base and marketing to them with Blubrry, and the Talk Shoe Cashprogram.

Aside from using this tool to promote yourself and your services from your blog or web page, you can also use it to do research and collect information. Browse the listing of shows live, and you’ll see hundreds of entries on everything from metaphysical therapy to women who do too much to a show that takes it’s political stance from Logan’s Run.

As a podcast addict, I’m loving TalkShoe – it’s a great way for me to search for new content. And maybe at some point in the future when my littlest is out of diapers, I’ll be using this service to speak to y’all instead of type.

You know I love the web for freebie offers, can’t resist! Here’s another great marketing drive for Starbucks, buy a cup of coffee tomorrow morning (July 21st) and get a pastry for free. Print this coupon off their site, and bring it with you for free bakery goodness!