Derek Scruggs

Don’t look at these. (Courtesy of the always-distracting Linky & Dinky)

Seth’s got a pebble in his shoe about drop-down boxes for choosing your state and country in e-commerce applications. I can see his point, but there is a solution. On all modern browsers, typing the first character of the state/country your looking for takes you to the first one option that matches that character. So whenever I see one of these, I type the letter c, then hit the down-arrow one time because I live in Colorado, not California (which comes first in the alphabet).

I know.  He said “This is not a post about how stupid this is,” but I couldn’t help it. I’m a big believer in using shortcuts whenever possible. Computers have tons of them that most people never know about. It’s not their fault, of course, but I try to help them whenever I get a chance.

Here’s a good trick – unplug your mouse for a while and try to navigate without it. Use the alt key to activate menus, and alt-tab to navigate between applications. Notice and learn the shortcut suggestions next to commonly used menu options. After an hour you’ll be a master. I did this out of necessity about 10 years ago – my mouse broke and it was a few days before I could get a new one.

It may sound a little cold, but marriage is a project, just like everything else on your to-do list. So why not use Getting Things Done as Marriage Counseling? I actually use some Getting Things Done (aff.) techniques with my marriage, notably having reminders and to-do items related to being a good husband – remembering birthdays and anniversaries, setting goals for our marriage, remembering to do household chores etc.

Hat tip: 43 Folders

I’ve long admired Marketing Sherpa’s dedication to bringing good information to marketers, particularly corporate marketers, who generally don’t have access to the leading edge stuff promulgated by hyper-focused niche entrepreneurs.

And since I’m a big fan of split testing, I especially like to see products that help you figure out how, what and when to test. So I was glad to see them launch the Landing Page Handbook [aff.]. It’s got a ton of information (185 pages) and covers everything from copy to design to multimedia to eye-tracking heatmaps.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Unless you live in Saudi Arabia, where the religious police make the Church Lady look like Timothy Leary.

Weird. Today I got an invitation from an Orkut member to join his circle of friend. Orku has completely fallen off my radar – I haven’t logged in for several months. But I recently read a couple of interesting factoids about Orkut:

1. It’s popular in Brazil, which accounts for an amazing 63% of users(!)
2. It’s attracting a weird circle of hate mongers (also in Brazil – maybe it has to do with all those Nazis who fled there after WWII)

Interestingly, the invitiation I received was from a member who puports to be from Iran. I declined the invitation because he didn’t explain why we should be “friends” or how he he found me. But in the process, I discovered that I have 81 messages in my inbox, many of them from some spammer wanting me to join his BMW community. At times the online world can be very surreal.

So anyway, after a quick look around, I see no reason to put Orkut back on my radar.

People (okay, guys) of a certain age may remember Space Invaders. Relive it with Notepad Invaders.

Hat tip: PigPog

I stumbled accros MarketingSalaries.com today (courtesy of Rick Bruner). It’s a useful site if you’re wondering about your value in the marketing jobs market.

But the real cool thing is the funky Flash thumbnail thingies they have on the salary calculator form. It’s very subtle.

I didn’t notice at first but then I couldn’t stop looking at it.

I’m not sure whether to be impressed or feel sorry for the “ball.”

Responding to Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons’ post of the same title as this one:

I don’t have a problem with the commercial, but it seems to me you’re wasting your breath trying to explain it. It was – what? – 30 seconds long? Like a joke, you either get it or you don’t. Trying to explain it to people who didn’t get it/like it will just lead them to dig in their heels further.

Marketing is about posititioning. The best ads don’t appeal to everybody. The best ones appeal very much to a specific segment and often piss off the rest. Even the cool Apple iPod ads don’t appeal to my mom & dad. A lot of advertisers think they have to appeal to everyone, which makes them either 1) boring and watered down or 2) “popular,” but not moving the sales meter.

Remember those popular Taco Bell chiuaua commercials? They had no impact on sales. Franchisees complained and, after a while, corporate parent Yum Brands finally got it and started focusing more on advertising what they actually sell, not winning Cleo awards.