Ali Bytes: Bullet-sized strategies for modern living

Last year my one resolution was to wear more dresses. Weird yes but I’m a big believer in specific, non-generic and personal resolutions. I love wearing dresses but never did so there you have it. This year I have three. (Oh I also think the fewer the better.) What are yours?

1. Send hand-written birthday cards on time.
2. Get over things that I can’t control more quickly.
3. Pursue interesting ways to challenge myself. First step: I start a stand up comedy class in February.

As you prepare for the last day of the year, arm yourself with these amusing new years facts (taken from various sources so I can’t promise they’re true).

1. The famous Times Square ball was first dropped in 1907. It was made of iron and wood, weighed 700 pounds, was 5 feet in diameter and was lit using 100 25-watt incandescent bulbs.
2. This year, marking its 100th anniversary, the ball was “made green” using 9,576 energy-efficient light bulbs that, according to the AP news story, use about the same amount of electricity as 10 toasters.
3. The tradition of making New Year’s resolutions apparently dates back to the Babylonians when (so “they” say) the most popular resolution was to return borrowed farm equipment.
4. A popular symbol of the New Year is a ring which represents “coming full circle” and good luck at the close of the year’s cycle. The Dutch are said to eat donuts on New Year’s Day for this reason.
5. The song that is played in the background when the clock strikes midnight is “Auld Lang Syne,” which was first published in 1796 and literally means “old long ago.”
6. The traditional Rose Bowl was originally titled the “Tournament East-West football game” and played on January 1, 1902. Another football game wasn’t played again until 1916 when Washington State University beat Brown University in the first annual “Rose Bowl.”

It’s that time of year: time to unload some of your “extra” money onto do-good causes so you can get the year end tax credit (and of course feel good about your contribution). These are 5 organizations (of many!) I think are doing some interesting work. Check them out and let me know if you have others that I should be paying attention to.

1. One Laptop Per Child: “…Sees children in even the most remote regions of the globe being given the opportunity to tap into their own potential, to be exposed to a whole world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive and saner world community.”
2. Technoserve: “Helps entrepreneurial men and women in poor rural areas of the developing world to build businesses that create income, opportunity and economic growth for their families, their communities and their countries.”
3. First Book: A mission to “…give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books.”
4. City At Peace: “Using the performing arts as a vehicle, City at Peace is developing the next generation of engaged community leaders.”
5. Modest Needs: “Right here, right now, you can INSTANTLY change the life of a low-income family.”

Happy 10th birth-month to the blog. While I would like to pretend that I consciously planned to be 10 years behind the ball, I can’t say that I did. As a recent NPR story put it: “There are more than 100 million blogs and 100,000 new blogs are created daily…most are read by only the writer and his mother.” A July Wall Street Journal article aptly called blogs “intellectual ’skin contact.’”

Regardless of whether this post is just for my mom, in the spirit of words and tools made popular by the Internet, I have come up with what I think is a list of words that will become increasingly relevant (though certainly not new) to online marketing in 2008.

1. Identity: Everything online from social media networking to blogging to engagement tools seems to be about expression of ones self. George Simpson just wrote a great post on this need for expression.
2. Social: It seems that the more time people are forced to spend online for their job or life management, the more we see the human desire to connect with others evident in online tools and platforms.
3. Balance: Privacy and personalization. Online “friends” and offline friends. These are just two ways balance is increasingly a top priority. Leslie Morgan Steiner’s blog On Balance started last year is evidence that this idea is not just popular amongst working moms anymore.
4. Transparency: Every new website launched only increases our free access to information. As users, we want to know who is speaking to us, why and that we’re getting accurate information.
5. Immediacy: Blogger Jack Aaronson agrees, “Relevance has long been a buzzword in e-mail marketing, but you’ll see immediacy become a stronger idea in the coming year.”
6. Synchronization: This is also along the same lines as integration. We are all involved with a million things – online and offline – so I think we’re going to see a lot more synching and integration of campaigns and tools. Google homepage is a good example and the fact that we’re both drawing users to a organization site but also reaching out to them in their space in “Facebook land.”
7. Influence: No longer are we looking to reach everyone. The goal is now to get to those people that actually help shape beliefs and behavior of those around them.