With the holiday season in full swing, I wanted to take some time and review the top 5 “Holiday Apps” this year. These apps are all for the iPhone, but I am sure with a little searching you can find similar apps for your smartphone.

This list is in no order of importance:

1. A Story a Day Advent Calendar
This app is great for those who love the traditional advent calendars around this time of year. With this app, each day brings a new holiday story by authors like Charles Dickens. Just like your traditional advent calendar, you must open each day (with a click) to view the fun inside. In addition to the calendar function, there is also great Christmas music playing while the app is running. The app knows the current date so all future days are blocked to prevent peeking.
This app carries a price tag of $1.99.

2. Festive Holiday Baking

Festive Holiday Baking App

Need a quick recipe for your holiday party? This is the app for you. With a few dozen recipes that can all be made with 8 ingredients or less, this app can help take the hassle out of your holiday baking. Some recipes include “Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies” and “Pistachio and Cherry Mexican Wedding Cakes”. All recipes also include pictures and step by step instructions.
You can download this app for $.99

3. Mobile Menorah
This simple little app is perfect for someone celebrating Hanukkah “On The Go”. The app has candles for each of Hanukkah’s nights, and you can light each candle. The app knows what day it is and will add a candle to the Menorah when necessary. After you light a candle, it will be lit when you come back the next day.
Get it now for only $.99

4. Holiday Bells

Holiday Bells

Love the idea of holiday caroling but can’t carry a tune? The HolidayBells app may help. This musical app lets you play sleigh bells by shaking your smartphone and create melodies by tapping hand bells that are pre-tuned to specific notes. Holiday Bells uses real recorded bell sounds, not synthesized, so the bells sound realistic.

Pick this app up for $.99

5. Christmas With Weezer
This app comes loaded with 9 of your favorite Christmas songs performed by the band Weezer. Unfortunately, to hear them it is not as easy as clicking an MP3. This is a game app that is set up similar to Guitar Hero. The music is playing while you tap to the beat of bright-colored presents that are flying out of a cartoon moon and across a snow-covered town. Players help recreate the alternative band’s versions of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful”, “First Noel”, “Hark The Herald Angel Sings”, “O Holy Night”, “Silent Night”, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, and Additional Weezer Tracks like: “Pork And Beans”, “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived”. The app comes from the makers of the popular “Tap Tap Revenge” games.
Price is a little steep at $4.99

And finally, a completely unrelated app that I stumbled across recently… For you textaholics out there. Have you ever been texting or emailing while walking down the street and had an unfortunate encounter with another person, a tree, a wall, a step, etc, etc… This app is simple, but great. It puts to use the video camera feature of your iPhone and displays a small video window in your texting screen. So as long as you have your phone pointed in the right direction, you can always see what is coming!! Get it now – It is FREE for a limited time from the iTunes store – click here

Email N Walk

Despite the tough economic times and the numerous hardships that have plagued most of us (in one way or another) throughout 2009, the holiday season is a time for us to give back and spread joy to the world. This is especially needed for our troops who will be stationed overseas this holiday season. Xerox Corp. is setting the pace this year with their sponsoring of the Let’s Say Thanks mission.

According to the cause’s website, Let’s Say Thanks is “on a mission to provide a way for individuals across the country to recognize U.S. troops stationed overseas. By submitting a message through LetsSayThanks.com you have the opportunity to send a free personalized postcard greeting to deployed servicemen and women.”

Get Involved, It’s Easy!

Go to the website and click on View All Designs.  Pick your favorite design (which were created and submitted by students across America), and then add your message.  When you are completed, your postcard will then be processed and printed on the Xerox iGen3^® Digital Production Press and mailed to soldiers overseas by the Give2TheTroops military support organization.

They also provide you with an embeddable widget that you can share on your favorite social network, blog or website, to help spread the word!

There’s no doubt that the Internet has changed the ways of marketing. But have the ways of marketing changed for the Internet? Not the basics, that’s for sure. One of the first things you learn about marketing is the marketing mix, or the 4 P’s.

1^st P – Product

2^nd P – Price

3^rd P – Placement

4^th P – Promotion

We can implement all of these when marketing on the Internet – but at this point our plates aren’t full and going back for seconds won’t suffice. In basic marketing classes, students are taught the 4 P’s of basic marketing.  But what happens when they hit the real world – are these 4 P’s all they need to understand and execute? It appears the marketing mix needs a makeover.

photo by stamina

5^th P – Purpose

The Internet has given us the ability to create value for our customers by tweeting, blogging, interacting, etc. The goal is defining this purpose and how to continue providing quality to customers.  Let’s say you own a flower shop. The purpose of your marketing strategy could be to teach customers how to arrange them or how to plant them. As mentioned above, you can then deliver these instructional value pieces through your blog, your Twitter account and/or direct mail pieces.

Giving customers a purpose in your product or service makes them want to come back to you. There are going to be other florists in your area. But if you’re shop is providing memorable value to the customer, they’ll inevitably come back to you.

6^th P – People

Without people, your product won’t have a purpose or be priced, placed or promoted on the Internet. More importantly, to get there you need good people that understand the importance of utilizing various channels to achieve success.

People affect multiple aspects of your Internet marketing strategy. If you don’t have good sales people, your product won’t sell. Your product won’t be placed or promoted efficiently if you don’t have the right marketing team or a well-trained customer service staff.  A purpose won’t even be considered if your people don’t understand the importance. Ultimately, if your company isn’t made of good people, great people won’t come back as customers!

‘People’ can also refer to those in your network. Having a large group of people in your network, both online and off, allows you to reach a vast audience. But, you also need to carefully select those in your network to ensure quality.  Slowly but surely, it will build itself. Networking also establishes connections with people who may provide useful services that you’ll possibly need down the road – or connections that will come to you when they’re in need.

How do you find good people to hire and good people to reach out to? Try the next P:

7^th P – Participation

Participation is especially important when integrating marketing strategies and the Internet simply because there are so many ways to participate. This medium has created so many options for us, involving all aspects of marketing. We can sell, we can promote, we can find people/customers, etc.

For one, online participation enables you to interact with new, existing and potential customers while simultaneously creating value and purpose for them. It also creates interaction with those that are talking about your company and the surrounding industry. You can also meet new people and expand your network. Essentially, by combining your P’s together – such as product, price, people, promotion – you can find new ways to utilize participation.

What do you think?

Are these P’s appropriate? What other P’s would you add to the mix?

If you are like me and prefer to spend your time doing more important things rather than waiting for your print job to finish, then check out these three budget monochrome (black and white) printers that are all under $300. They all print at speeds greater than 25 pages per minute, so if you have the same “NEED FOR SPEED” that I do, check them out.

Brother HL-5370DW Monochrome Wireless Laser Printer – $249:

2 Sided Printing: Yes (auto)

Brother HL-5370DW Laser Printer

The HL-5370DW is a flexible, high-performance solution for printer sharing in small offices. It offers the same print speed, input capacity and duplex printing capability as the HL-5340D, and it also features outstanding connectivity with its built-in wireless 802.11b/g and Ethernet network interfaces, as well as 32MB of memory. The built-in wireless 802.11b/g and Ethernet network interfaces allow you to share this printer with multiple users on your network. For users with wireless access points that support SecureEasySetup, Wi-Fi Protected Setup, or AOSS, you can automatically configure your wireless settings by simply pressing a button on your router.

You can also easily print two-sided documents as well as print professional looking documents, brochures, and booklets using the built-in duplex feature. This feature can help save money and reduce your paper use.

Samsung ML-2510 Compact Laser Monochrome Printer – $118:

Standard Paper Capacity: 250 sheets

Samsung ML-2510 Laser Printer

 The SAMSUNG ML-2510 is a monochrome laser printer that can fit into almost any space. Samsung calls it “The most compact printer on the market”. It is especially easy to install, all it takes is just four clicks. It also has a jam-free roller system that can make printing much, much easier.

Clocking in at 24 ppm for A4 size, and 25 ppm for letter size, its printout rate gives other printers a run for the money. A resolution of 1,200 x 600 dpi will deliver clear and crisp prints, but the resolution is not as high as the other two laser printers being compared here.

 

Xerox Phaser 3250/D Monochrome Laser Printer – $268:

 

Pages Per Minute: 30

Resolution: 1200 x 1200 dpi

2 Sided Printing: Yes (auto)

Standard Paper Capacity: 251 sheets

Xerox Phaser 3250/D Laser Printer

Connectivity: USB 2.0

Recommended Monthly Print Volume: Up to 4,000 pages

First Page to Print: As fast as 8.5 seconds

Size: 14.3″ x 14.5″ x 9.4″

 

The Xerox Phaser 3250/D is ideal for small offices where compact size and speed are a must. It has print speeds up to 30 ppm, a 400 MHz processor, a first-page-out time as fast as 8.5 seconds, and standard paper capacity of 251 sheets. You can also print on a variety of media including envelopes, labels, postcards, and more.

Save paper and reduce costs with “N-up” printing which allows you to print multiple pages on one sheet. When printing draft documents, you can use toner saver mode so solid areas will print gray instead of full black. Other advanced features include: Watermarks, Poster printing, Fit to page, Scaling, Overlays, Booklets, Reduce/enlarge, and Custom-size pages.

The automatic two-sided printing feature on all Phaser 3250 models can save you paper and money. You can also run your Phaser 3250 in Power Save and Toner Save mode and further reduce your electricity and consumables costs.

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After looking at the bottom line functionalty that each of these 3 prniters has to offer, I think it is clear that if you are just looking to print, nothing fancy, no network options, etc… The Samsung ML-2510 may be right for you at a price that can’t be beat. If you want a few more bells and whistles, it seems like the Brother HL-5370DW edges out the Phaser 3250/D,  offering a few more options and a slightly lower price.