“CopySend is a must have application that provides the perfect fit with the iPhone’s new copy and paste features. Using CopySend you can copy and paste between your mac and iPhone (or iPod Touch) seamlessly…”

One of the loooong awaited features on the iPhone was copy and paste. Every single update to the iPhone OS (prior to 3.0) lead to blog posts and reviews groaning once more again that they still haven’t added the copy and paste feature. Now that it is released it is leading to some interesting innovations, one such being CopySend.

Main Features:
- take a photo through the program and send it directly to your mac
- copy and paste content quickly between your iPhone and mac (round trip)
- simple

Full disclosure, this is one of the companies that I am working with (and I designed the graphics and interface), but this app is so simple and useful. Hats off to Allan at Thinking Code Software!
Main feature

I signed up the online service of LogMeIn over a year ago when my wife and I were traveling overseas for a month. What I was able to do with it was leave a computer running at home with all my files and take my laptop so if I needed anything from my main computer I could access it.  Worked great, I used it a few times so it made it worth it.

I don’t use the service anymore and I saw a charge on my visa last month (how observant) for LogMeIn and thought, “Why haven’t I cancelled that service yet?” So I went into the website and logged into my account and looked for the “cancel my service” button. And looked. And looked. And then I remembered why I hadn’t cancelled my service yet. I had tried to cancel just after I got back (in the midst of the busyness of being back) but couldn’t find it and told myself that I would do it another day.

NOW OVER A YEAR LATER I’m back at it, trying to cancel my service.

So, in frustration, with no instructions on the website how to do it and no obvious “ways out” I called customer service. Sat through 15 minutes of, “Your call is important to us, please stay on the line and a… blah, blah.” Only to be affirmed that I was right, I couldn’t cancel the service myself, I spent another 10-15 minutes online with the representitive as he went through cancelling my account and submitting a refund request for the last charge to my VISA. I then asked for my call to be transferred to a manager to chat through this inconvenient service.

Now to their credit both representative and manager were the nicest, respectful, and apologetic people I’ve received on the customer service end and should be commended for that. My only gripe with the experience was not being offered back months of non use (on the goodwill side of things) and that they don’t allow an easy way to discontinue without having to sacrifice 30 minutes of your time to do so. That personal loss of time makes me not want to sign up with them again. If web services are “easy in” then they should be “easy out”. Or at least give solid instructions on how to get out instead of having to try to figure it out, get frustrated and call customer support and wonder if it is a sales call, a technical support call, or a billing call.

I’ve used iStockphoto.com for I think 9 years now. They started as a sharing community with no charge. Then I remember downloads costing $0.25 for the highest resolution image (they only came in one size then). Nice and cheap still. Now today as I went to buy more credits for some of the homepage images (I’m creating the “crowd” from individual shots that I’ve picked) and the least amount of credits you can buys is 12 and then 26. Basically it ends up being $2/per credit. The xsmall images are a credit each (which are only good for small pictures on the web). Seems a bit pricey now. So had to get resourceful instead of using a credit for the grapes cluster I thought, “I bet if I do a google images search I could find a generic one that will work for me” also did this for the plate to put the salmon dish on.

My point. With raising the prices on iStockphoto.com they attract more serious photographers therefore there are more professional and higher end images. So better quality, good for us consumers. But with raising the prices on the consumer end I am thinking of how to be more resourceful and spend less credits. If they were a $1 per download I may have bought a few more pictures for my graphics without even thinking, and may have spent almost the same amount. Or maybe they rig up a tiered pricing system that prices lower for generic shots and higher for the more popular ones.

The same is going with iPhone apps right? If an app is only $0.99 then I am apt to download it without much thinking although the quality of the app may be exceptional or poor. Not much personal loss.

From an economy/tax example…

In 1916 the US government had a tax rate of 7% on incomes over $300,000 which produced about $80 million (1,296 returns filed)
In 1921 the US government had a tax rate of 77% on incomes over $300,000 which produced about $85 million (246 returns filed)

All the price raise did was increase tax evasion and avoidance.

Apple did a very smart thing by allowing $0.99 song downloads and $9.99 (varying) album downloads. What this did was stopped my resourceful evasive mind from thinking how else I could get the music to going with the simple, convenient and relatively cheap method. In fact I’ve bought albums again that I couldn’t find the CD for.

Convenience + low price point + wide reach = profit

…sorry for stating the obvious.

There is the simple philosophy in usuability, “If something is hard to use I just don’t use it as much.”

Well since starting to use this app I find that I am using it… alot! This iPhone app, CheckIt, from the company Thinking Code, is simple enough for “to do dumps” for quick access and yet I find it still also has the depth of some of the higher paid apps in it’s category. You can do multiple project task managements and organize things into thing needed to be dome today, week, and see which things are overdue. It seems to be as simple as you need it to be or as comprehensive (yet simple) as you need it to be.

If something is easy to use (like CheckIt) I will use it all the time…

I wasn’t really sure what else to title this but I was very inspired by a blog post by Mitch Joel over at Six Pixels of Separation. Check it out there for full post.

The thought that generated from it was from the theme of Social Networking being a strong form of entertainment, instead of sitting mindlessly drooling in front of the TV.

I like that.

There is the thought that the internet is causing us to avoid real human contact all the while building our lives online and therefore breeding antisocialism. While in part this is true (there’s nothing like a face-to-face coffee time) yet the usual turning-on-the-TV-and-turning-off-the-brain as our main form of entertainment is quite a bit more “king” in antisocial. We ARE connecting more, we ARE sharing ideas more, and we ARE sharing our lives more… and this is taking on our form of entertainment.

In this case…

Peer Into A Soul

Am I missing something? I find this campaign creating a “disturbed” feeling for the brand… not endearment or attraction.

When using the concept “soul” I expected something deep and moving, you know, something to do with humanity. So you can imagine that after seeing the first commercial with the guy with the mask and then going to the website (because that is all the commercial gave) that I felt a complete disconnect, slight outrage, and generally a feeling of being ripped off.

I’m not sure, I’m still processing this one…

Well, I had still some blogging platform issues and thought that I had solved them. So, in the end, I recreated my template and fired up good ol Wordpress again.

Good side now especially on the eve of returning to the country Malta (Marketing From The Med?) is a great Wordpress app for the iPhone with which I’m currently writing from.

And, also on the brink of releasing episode 5 of the Marketing From The Cottage Podcast - Authenticity in Marketing. Stay tuned.

I came across today’s blog post at Mitch Joel’s Blog, “Six Pixels of Separation “. The post is titled, “Don’t Forget Your Website “. This is definitely worth the read (which is usually the case with any of Mitch Joel’s blog posts or podcasts).

It is absolutely essential to design your website from the vantage-point of your website visitors, clients, and potential clients. That takes simply taking in feedback on what your website viewers are coming to your website for most - and put that info in a very clear way to get to. Or simply putting yourself in their shoes as you visit your own website.

When people come to your website they should be able to answer within a few seconds, “Where am I?” and, “What can I do here?”

I know that there is considerably more involved but these are a quick and simple reminders that can change your viewers experience.