I Love Weather Forecasts in Google Calendar!

I don't know how I never noticed this before in Google Calendar. But yesterday I noticed little weather icons integrated seamlessly in my week view for about 3-4 days out. When I click on the icon, a little window pops up with the local forecast details (above).

I know this seems simple, but I've found this quite useful and now I don't need my weather email alerts or my Firefox add-on that I've relied on previously since I'm in my Google Calendar all the time. And now I can cut these other 2 out to minimize information overload! Who doesn't like that?

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Why Online Grocery Shopping Doesn't Take Off

I've been using Safeway.com for the past several months and now I know why online grocery shopping is still an extremely small percent of total e-commerce revenue and 90-95% of Internet users have never bought groceries online.

In fact, I worked for a major online grocery client about 4 years ago and it's fair to say the market share and the user experience have not changed very much...quite disappointing!

Online grocers tout the benefits of:

• Convenience - saved shopping lists, home delivery
• Larger product assortment - in theory, they can stock some things your local store may not carry
  

When Webvan flamed out with its hub and spoke distribution model years ago, it seemed like it would open doors for Safeway and Peapod, among others, to take over.

Sure, online sales have grown, but it still equals the sales of a handful of its 1700+ offline stores. However, my recent experiences, compared to 3 years ago, have shown little progress in its multi-channel shopping experience.

Unlike other e-commerce sectors, Safeway.com is dealing with some unique challenges:

1. Pickers Because Safeway "pickers" are actually fulfilling your online order from local store inventories (unlike Webvan who had centralized warehouses), you're beholden to what that local store has in stock at the time before your delivery window. Safeway.com does not have adequate inventory management systems to ensure what you ordered will be available at time of fulfillment. Some brick and mortar stores have overcome this similar issue with "order online and pickup in-store" capability that shows stock availability. (One of my favorite examples was Circuit City. --- R.I.P.)

2. Perishables. We customers are very picky with groceries, especially meats and produce. Webvan had pretty good quality and Safeway is more spotty. Their pickers don't scrutinize produce as much as you would. But look at it from their perspective. Despite their best intentions, if a picker selects nothing for your order, you're p.o.'ed. If he selects something below par, you're upset. But sending something lets them recognize revenue; sending nothing doesn't.

But selling perishables online also means inventory can vary a lot and advanced ordering fulfilled by a local store makes order management quite difficult operationally.

3. In-person Home Delivery and Receipt. Unlike receiving a non-perishable item from Amazon.com, you do need to be present when Safeway.com arrives. For Safeway, this means they must deliver what they have in stock at that time. There is no telling the customer it's on back order and will be there the next day or week.

4. All or Nothing. With online grocery, there's kinda an all or nothing outcome, especially if you are relying on Safeway.com for all your household's weekly needs. And you don't know what you will get or not get until the driver arrives at your door with your order! On one of our recent orders, all the meats we ordered (a week's worth) were not available! So we ended up having to go to our other preferred grocery store during the work week in order to prepare dinners for the week, thus defeating the purpose and convenience of online ordering and home delivery to begin with. Recipes can be screwed last minute if you were counting on a key ingredient!

Overall, the concept is great, but the inventory issue does suck. Here are some of my recent substitutions or mistakes Safeway made:

• Cinnamon raisin bagels, instead of plain bagels
• Blackberries, instead of blueberries
• Yogurt, single single serving sizes got replaced by the economy size. How am i supposed to bring that to work?
• Moldy garlic
  

And then we had some delivery issues:

• 2 yogurt containers arrived broken and open. We got charged for them anyways
• Gin bottle from another order cracked and spilled on my order. No reconciliation or discount code for next order. The driver tried to wipe it off all our food products but you can only do so much with a wet cereal box!
  

As well as customer service problems:

• A discount promo code they mailed me didn't work online. After submitting an online customer support form, it took them 2 days to reply with a form letter telling us to try the code again. Clearly, I had abandoned my cart 2 days ago and got my grocery needs met elsewhere! Surprisingly, they didn't even offer me a new discount code to encourage me to try them again!

In the past 3 months, I've probably had 6 deliveries and NOT ONCE did my order get filled 100%.

I keep hearing Safeway commercials that claim: Get what you want, when you want it. That's our promise. Isn't that false advertising?

One kudo: Despite having unfilled orders every time, my Safeway.com driver is always very nice and friendly. I tried tipping him initially a few times but he says it's against company policy and gives me a warm smile. Don't shoot the messenger...er, delivery man...for inventory issues.

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Musings from AdWeek's Social Media Strategies Conference

How come I always end up indoors for conferences on the most beautiful days of the year in San Francisco? Today was no different for AdWeek's Social Media Strategies conference at Fort Mason.

A well attended crowd of brand advertisers, agencies, and Silicon Valley techies.

My personal highlight of the conference was sitting about 20 feet away for a keynote from one of my favorite entertainers from the 80's turned social media maven, MC Hammer (a.k.a. @mchammer). Here's what I enjoyed from Hammertime:

1. Social media is to Hollywood like Napster was to music. Hammer felt entertainment companies and labels were doomed and are too slow to adapt.
2. Social media is about being at the center of your brand. He was referring to the importance of listening and joining in conversations to give people a more holistic perspective of who you are, which led to this comment:
3. "I'm more than just about parachute pants!" Enough said.
   
4. You can't wait until disaster strikes before you decide to setup a Twitter account. That will be too late and you'd be tweeting to 2 followers!
5. Not a fan of ghost Twitterers for brands. You can't outsource this to Asia.
6. He felt MySpace still had a place in the world as a music destination and wanted to see better filters for music discovery. Wasn't a fan of the deals they have cut with labels.
   
7. "I look at Facebook and I see a diamond mine." He was suggesting he could do something to monetize a site that has 250-300 million users
   
8. If you're a 9 year old living in the 'hood, walk to the Oakland Coliseum to increase your odds of finding something to sell 50,000 fans. Ok, this last one was a great childhood story Hammer shared that you had to be there to fully appreciate! But it was related to the opportunity one has when you aggregate large audiences, like Facebook
   

Then Gap Inc and AKQA presented a great example of an integrated social media campaign "Born to Fit" that promoted their totally redesign jeans. They showed some cool stuff they did on Facebook, a StyleMixer iPhone app, and a contest on Polyvore. It was interesting they said driving sales was not the goal and they measured the campaign success along these criteria:

1. Actual user behavior (e.g., traffic, clicks)
2. # of fans/followers
3. Consumer comments
4. An in-depth ComScore study
5. Buzzmetrics data
6. Press coverage
   

All of those are great metrics other brands should be using. Frustrates me when clients try to measure social media like direct response and assumes everyone is at the bottom of the funnel. So, I give Gap a lot of credit for this.

Then a bunch of my peers from the digital marketing industry talked about the usual stuff I always hear at conferences and debate internally as well. Things like who owns social media in a client's company. How does one measure social media? How can brands get started? What works for smaller brands? Yada yada yada...

There was also a basic "how to" lesson on leveraging Twitter that didn't teach me anything I didn't know, but was delivered by a very entertaining duo who are supposedly the real people behind @bettydraper and @roger_Sterling from my favorite show Mad Men. They also talked about "prom king brands," which are naturally cool brands that can easily get followers and fans in social media. Like the NBA or Ashton Kutcher. But other brands have to work at it and give people a reason to follow them. I agree. There is almost no excuse for prom king brands to not be involved in social media! The last thing that I took takeaway from their preso was to start following @shitmydadsays. Awesome! See for yourself.

Ok, maybe they taught me 2 things after all.

Gotta crash after a long day...

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Cash for Clunkers Trickle Down Effect

Much has been discussed in the past few weeks on the unexpected success of the government's Cash for Clunkers program and the recent $2 billion extension.

No doubt automotive manufacturers, dealers and all the working class people on the assembly line in middle America got a major boost financially from this program. President Obama's administration had conjectured that this program would in turn stimulate all those people to increase consumption that will help lift us out of this recession.

But there are some interesting, unexpected beneficiaries of this program as well.

Sodium silicate providers. Who? What? For car dealers to receive government reimbursement for "clunker" trade-ins, they must agree to "kill" the old cars using a method the government recommends: Drain the engine of oil and replace it with two quarts of a sodium-silicate solution.

Scrapyards. Once "killed," guess where those cars went? The first installment of the program funded the demolition of about 250,000 cars. Good times for Sanford and Son!

Satellite radio. Even folks at Sirius XM who reported a $157 million quarterly loss last week are looking to benefit from the program. How? They had cut deals with many of the automotive OEMs before the downturn to pre-install new vehicles with the satellite radios.

Who may not be too happy about the success of the program? Auto repair shops who won't get to service those "clunkers." But, hey, they had a good run for the past 2 years as penny-pinching consumers deferred new car purchases to keep their current ones a little longer.

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Better to work for Microsoft (Bing) or GM?

For the past 2 weeks, there have been 2 major business news events.

1. Microsoft/Yahoo! search partnership. Unless you've been living in a cave, you've heard about this so I won't go into it here.

2. The government's Cash for Clunkers program is working so well that it's already burned through its original $1 billion funding in first week! Almost every automotive manufacturer is claiming July is their best sales month for the past year.

So, what could these 2 events possibly have in common?
Well, I am posing this question -- Would you rather be working for Microsoft battling Google or working for GM to turn the company around?

Both are similar challenges in my mind. You have to convince consumers to switch from their current preferences to your low market share brand.


Comscore states Bing is making some progress. Its search share went from 8.0% to 8.4% from May to June. I guess that's progress. But Google holds nearly 70% share. The bad news is most consumers still can't tell the difference and many use Google out of habit. It will indeed take something dramatic like the Yahoo! deal to move the needle for Microsoft. But they're just buying share. The marketing and engineering group at Microsoft still faces an uphill challenge shifting consumer perception...and behavior.



Now, let's look at GM. Its US market share has dropped like a rock in water for the past 2 decades (18.9% in July). Last year it lost its #1 global leader, by volume, title to Toyota. Years of making boring cars and having too many brands or makes (in my opinion) led to its bankruptcy filing recently. Now that it has exited in just over a month, it has much to do to rebuild consumer confidence in the auto manufacturer. While Microsoft faces 1 formidable foe, GM faces many Japanese, Korean, American, and German competitors. Perhaps its return to leasing with partner GMAC and the $2 billion extension of the Cash for Clunkers program will help stimulate sales.

Right now, I applaud the men and women who are working for either company and wish them luck in the battle that lies ahead...

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Be prepared to fork over extra $50K to Facebook for contests or custom tabs

More signs of Facebook trying to monetize its popular site this past week...

1. Contests on Facebook - I am trying to setup a contest on a client's Facebook Page. Even though it's being hosted on a different server, FB considers it on their site since it occurs within the Page environment. A contest like this requires a Letter of Indemnification for FB. And to pay for their lawyers' time, FB requires a $50K media commitment and setting up a direct sales account with a rep. That's quite a billing rate for those FB lawyers! Even if they spend 10 hours to review and process the LOI, that's $5,000/hr! Impressive!

The more shocking thing is when we asked for a copy of this new policy at FB:

our legal team actually doesn’t have a public policy for the spend requirement for running contests/sweeps on Pages. It’s an internal policy, which apparently is very common for these types of circumstances.

"Common for these types of circumstances?" What?!? This is unchartered territory here for social media marketing. Sounds like lawyer BS if you ask me.


2. iFrames on a custom tab - One of our iCrossing developers was looking for an iFrame application to build a custom tab on Page. We asked FB about it.

We do indeed have a Facebook Iframe application that we make available to our direct advertising partners that have a current campaign in place.

You know what that means. $50K minimum media spend and setting up a direct sales account. Cha-ching for FB again!

Of course, this is not documented anywhere either.

It all feels a little shady if you ask me. For anything interesting you want to do on Facebook, you need a media commitment it seems. No wonder why advertisers are hesitant to invest in social media! Facebook even makes it tough for agency partners to help our clients invest on Facebook with all this craziness.

In the words of Jerry Maguire -- Facebook, "help me, help you!"

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A Few Interesting Offline Observations Today

Despite working online and spending way too much time on a computer and on the Internet, I still do enjoy reading offline publications. As I've mentioned in the past, I'm an avid WSJ print edition reader. And Thursdays is my favorite because it's the tech edition, featuring Walt Mossberg. Today, as I was reading his Mossberg Mailbox, something caught my eye.



Walt was directing a reader to one of his old product reviews and listed the URL. In the past, he's included the full URL and because the way his site is structured, it's often a very long path with lots of /'s. But to my surprise today, he listed a short URL using bit.ly. While bit.ly is often discussed in reference to Twitter, I have never seen it in print before! Often times, authors are promoting their websites and want people to not only to go to their site but also to do some brand awareness building from just the impression in the publication. But using a URL shortener would obviously defeat that purpose and readers can't click through from a print document to see your actual URL. I guess if you're as famous as Walt Mossberg, you don't need to promote yourself any further =)

As long as I'm talking about print publications, I was also skimming my latest issue of OMMA today and laughed when I saw this ridiculous job title!



If you work for Nielsen Online, the digital arm of Nielsen, why do you need Digital in your department name? Isn't that implied if you're in the online division? No disrespect to Pete Blackshaw here. But come on? Nielsen Online Digital Strategic Services? No one, not even someone in the copywriter group, read that and thought it was redundant???

I know Intel was getting trashed today by "arm chair branding geeks" for its announced product line name changes. And they have a very complex problem, given what they sell, and as a former brand strategist, I don't think there is one "correct" answer. But this Nielsen thing seems like a no-brainer.

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5 Interesting Things I Learned about Twitter at SMX Advanced

Reflecting back on my Seattle trip early this week to attend SMX Advanced, the Twitter session and the amount of questions and discussions about Twitter overall stood out in my mind.

Even though I live and drink the social media Kool Aid daily, I learned a few things about Twitter that I thought I'd share in this post (in no particular order).

1. Twitter will ban your account for various reasons. One audience member claimed this could happen if you tweet a lot more links rather than real conversation messages. Or if you follow a lot of people in a short time period. Apparently, all of this makes Twitter think you're likely a Twitter spammer.
2. Several attendees had questions about how do you separate personal and business accounts if you have a very visible and successful Twitter company account managed by someone who could leave the company any day...and all that equity on Twitter goes out the door with him/her. For example, if Tony Hsieh left Zappos or if Frank left Comcast, what would happen to those accounts and their loyal followers? What should companies do to "protect" such a scenario? Interesting situation to think about...
   
3. Not all URL shorteners are created equal. Beware of those that don't do 301 redirects. Danny Sullivan wrote a great guide based on his in-depth evaluation of URL shorteners. His top suggestion? Bit.ly. Mine too.
   
4. On the subject of URL shorteners, I'm starting to think twice about clicking on a shortened URL from people I don't really know or trust since one has no idea where that link takes you. I might end up getting my computer hijacked!
   
5. Learned about Easytweets, a good tool for brands to manage multiple accounts at once, monitor mentions of your brand or other keywords continuously, and get alerts via SMS or email. I added them to my list of client recommendations for a good Twitter management tool.
   

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Proving the Value of Forum Engagement - SMX Advanced

Today I attended SMX Advanced in Seattle, which had surprisingly nice weather. This was definitely a more digitally savvy group than other conferences I've attended recently, but I guess that's why they call it "advanced."

I had the privilege of speaking on a panel on "Proving Social Media's Value" and was joined by Ben Straley of Meteor Solutions, Tarla Cummings of Location3 Media, and Tony Adam from Yahoo! Chris Sherman from Search Engine Land moderated.

Ben's company helps clients track the "pass along" effect from online campaigns. Whether it's a retweet, email forward, or IM forward, he made the case that looking at traditional site traffic referral site logs undervalues the WOM effect. He showed some great data with the group and how niche sites (based on referral traffic) can some times spread the word better than the perceived high traffic sites.

I then presented a way to measure forum engagement, based on allocating a revenue value for promoters and detractors, a concept based on Net Promoter. The key takeaway was that public forums offer companies a way to improve their brand perception (if done right) and win over detractors. And I presented some simple math to calculate the incremental revenue lift from doing so. I won't do into it to much here, just check out my presentation below instead.

Proving Social Media's Value (Forum ROI model) - SMX Advanced

View more OpenOffice presentations from Edmund Wong.

Tarla, a fellow online agency representative, shared a case study for a hotel client of a marketing campaign they designed, managed, and measured from start to finish. They pushed out promo codes over, Twitter, Facebook, and SMS, among the usual online marketing tactics. She tracked the usual conversion metrics and also the # of fans/followers acquired, email sign-ups, and retweets. So while the campaign broke even in terms of revenue vs. marketing spend, she argued there was future value in the opt-in fans, followers, and mobile contacts.

Tony, who made it clear that he's not from the Search side of the business, talked about how hard it was for him to convince Yahoo! execs internally to invest more in social media. He shared tips on how to do that, such as showing competitive examples.

Side note: The free lunch that was provided for conference attendees was awesome! Kudos to Third Door Media and others who planned that part of the conference! =)

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Pharma companies match "assurance" programs from auto companies

First, the auto companies were offering special assurances that if you got laid off, you wouldn't have to worry about your auto loan payment and could return the car. Kudos to Hyundai for its ground-breaking Hyundai Assurance program. Obviously, this was designed to stop the steep decline in new auto sales since last year.



But, last week, Pfizer upped the ante with their MAINTAIN program that lets recently unemployed and uninsured Americans continue to take more than 70 of their drugs for free for up to 12 months!

Eligibility requirements of the new program include:

• Loss of employment since January 1, 2009
• Prescribed and taking a Pfizer medicine for at least 3 months prior to becoming unemployed and enrolling in the program
• Lack of prescription drug coverage
• Can attest to financial hardship

This even includes blockbusters Viagra and Lipitor! Yes, Viagra -- so, if you're depressed because you lost your job, I'm sure you can think of some way to lift your spirits. =)

Big pharma gets kicked around a lot and with all the talk in Washington about health care reform, this is a very innovative and impressive move by Pfizer. You guys rock!

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Where is Twitter on the Hype Cycle?

I love the Hype Cycle curve developed by Gartner. It kinda reminds me of Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm in the sense that many companies, especially tech, never manage to go mainstream...in other words, they fail to cross the chasm.

This hype cycle is related because some technologies, like Twitter, are over-hyped and fail to go mainstream and, more importantly, make $$$!



Source: Webguild

Where will Twitter end up?
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How the Unglamorous Operations Department Can Impact a Company's Business Strategy

Since Apple acquired P.A. Semiconductor last year, there has been huge speculation about Apple getting back into the semiconductor business. And recently there have been Apple job postings looking for experienced semiconductor engineers.

Is this deja vu from the early 1990's Apple-IBM-Motorola PowerPC alliance? Back then, I believe it was more about building a competitive alternative to the Wintel monopoly. But since Apple hopped in bed with Intel a few years ago -- surprising many -- why would it get back into making its own chips themselves now?

It's even more surprising when most tech companies today have dissolved the vertical integration strategy, choosing to outsource this operations capability.

This is more about Apple and the super secretive Steve Jobs and his concerns about subcontractors or contract manufacturers leaking news of future products. Is Steve paranoid?

Maybe not. In fact, just a few days ago, news broke that Dell is looking into developing an Android-based netbook. Was the rumor leaked by a blogger? Were confidential documents stolen and disclosed publicly? No.

A small Bellevue, WA, company called Bsquare, in a press release Wednesday, announced it had developed a way to use Adobe video software on Dell netbooks running Google’s Android platform. I'd link to it but Bsquare subsequently announced it was “issued in error” as did a spokesperson for Dell. You can bet someone got torn a new one at Bsquare on Wednesday!

So, as you can see, even operations strategy like this can impact a company’s business strategy…especially in the highly competitive, sometimes hit-driven, tech industry!

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Auto manufacturers need to embrace social media more than ever

With Chrysler going into Chapter 11, it's not news that auto sales are suffering. Dealers are competing for ever fewer car buyers.

Despite the economic downturn, auto companies still need to invest in marketing, and online marketing has shown better ROI than offline.

Selling cars is image-driven, like fashion and apparel. And not like buying functional, less emotional products like a printer. That's because the car you drive offers self-expressive benefits.

I love Lexus. Will that change in this economy? Probably not. At most it may defer my purchase if I was in-market now or make me a little more price sensitive. But if a brand has done its job, an emotional connection has been built that is hard to undo. The problem is that few auto brands have invested in that emotional hook. And when they have it, they should spend more time protecting it because we all know it costs more to acquire a new customer than to retain one.

So here are some ideas for all you auto dealers and manufacturers:

1. Consumers are seeking deals and many dealers are offering them. So do everything you can (outside of traditional offline and online advertising) to get the word out. Push offers through Twitter, blogger outreach, and deal/money-saving sites.

2. Consumers are holding on to their current cars longer and spending money instead on maintaining them, so proactively monitor and engage in forums and Twitter to offer tips and maybe deals in your Service Department. (I know that won't sell cars today, but you will surprise and delight consumers and you can bet they'll tell their friends --- word of mouth in action!)

3. On a related note, while you're monitoring online conversations, also focus on complaints about your brand. Set aside your "sell, sell, sell" mentality and focus on customer service. If a customer complains online, due to the power of Google and permanent archiving nature of the Web, the number of people who read that thread will grow each day. If a car owner is complaining on Twitter or a forum, jump in and offer to help right away!

4. Financing is tough now. If you have a good financing deal, push it out through Twitter, outreach, and money-saving sites. And if you have a useful financing calculator (or any useful widget for that matter!) on your site, distribute it on the Web, right there next to those deals to show how affordable buying your car actually is.

5. Car owners are a fanatic bunch and represent a very large online community. And few OEMs have successful communities. Take VW. VW Vortex is not affiliated with VW. Go participate in conversations in OUR spaces. Don't expect us to come to your website all the time (frankly, I don't remember the last time I went to an OEM site after my initial car purchase research). Find useful (not salesy) ways to participate since those sites have already collected the eyeballs!

6. And please, please do not continue to build one-off, short-term "profiles" on the major social media spaces, such as a 3-month Facebook page only to support a new model launch. You know who you are!

Not all of this may translate entirely to immediate sales, but an auto manufacturer finally has a chance to establish better direct consumer relationships, which traditionally were between dealer and consumer, and would build more brand advocates when the economy turns around.

End Note: Granted, for some consumers, car ownership is less about image. Hyundai’s Assurance program speaks to the trend of practicality and fiscal responsibility. But this practicality and less image-driven mentality does not mean you can't use social media to create an emotional hook. It is honesty and usefulness that garners trust and that becomes the hook.

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BART going 2.0 on us!

I spend a lot of my time at work trying to convince clients to invest more online, especially in social media. These are smart marketers at big brands. And many are so gun shy to just pull the trigger and DO SOMETHING!

I find it ironic then that BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) has been more progressive than some of these clients.


(Photo courtesy of SF Weekly)

They were already running a great near-real-time email-based BART advisory alert service that often reported delays to its schedule. But then I noticed an ad on a BART train telling people to follow them on Twitter (twitter.com/sfbart). They not only push out delays in the system, but they are responding to user feedback and issues, promoting local events and how BART can get you there, and proactively engaging in the community in useful ways (e.g., this tweet from last week when big RSA conference was in town: "Welcome to all the folks taking BART to RSA! Let us know if you have questions and we'll try to answer. #rsac"). They are even giving away $25 BART gift cards for favorite tweets about BART. Best of all, the tweets feel very personable, not just what you'd read on their "dry" website.

But they're doing more than just Twitter. They have RSS feeds. They've also opened up their schedule and real-time data to third-party developers. This recent news release about their "Developer App Center" summarizes some of the other cool stuff they have cooking in mobile space. They did a mobile survey and appear to actually be listening and responding!

It makes business sense why they're reaching out to developers and customers. California and many municipalities are facing budget cuts so they have to rely on the collective wisdom of the community, given their limited resources.

Overall, I am very impressed by this new face for BART. Keep it up, guys!

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Making excuses for one's smartphone typos

Back in the late 90's, I remember thinking how clever it was of Hotmail (pre-Microsoft acquisition) to develop a "viral marketing" vehicle by putting default email footers that said "sent from my free hotmail account" on every outbound email a user sent. Pure genius, even if they weren't the first to come up with that idea.

A few years later, RIM used the same strategy with the Blackberry. Those who sent emails from these handhelds had default "Sent from my wireless Blackberry handheld" in every email. Unlike Hotmail, Blackberry users could actually edit or delete this email footer from their handheld. I did because it annoyed me.

Then came the iPhone, who did the same thing. Funny twist here is that because Apple and the iPhone were deemed as cool, most people I know didn't delete it. Friends who emailed me from their iPhone the first few weeks after launch loved getting replies from me and others who noticed their new email footer and wrote back "Dude, you got an iPhone? Awesome!" They knew the rest of us were jealous and they enjoyed the bragging rights!

But lately, I've been noticing how people have edited these default messages and started having fun with them. Most were excuses about their inability to craft proper emails from them. Thought I'd share a few I've received:

Sent from a slightly malfunctioning iPhone.

Sent from rapid typo device

Please excuse any Blackberry typos.

Please excuse any misspellings from my iPhone.

Sorry for tpyos from my chubby fingers typing on my Blackberry Pearl


That last one is funny because there's a typo in the actual message.

Do you have any funny smartphone email footers to share?

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