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Category: Bill Sweetman

Ten Must-Have iPhone Apps for Marketers

Published February 9, 2009

by Bill Sweetman

Iphone-thumb
Now that I've owned (and loved) my iPhone for nearly a year, I thought it would be helpful to share my personal recommendations on iPhone apps (programs) that a marketer would find useful.

These are apps that I use on a daily or weekly basis, and in most cases these are free. As with anything Mac-related, opinions will vary, but these are the iPhone apps that I think no self-respecting marketer should be without. You can download them from the App Store or via iTunes.

Scribble – Ever found yourself in a meeting looking around the room to see if there's a whiteboard you can write on, only to discover you are out of luck? Scribble is a straightforward doodling application that I use as a mini whiteboard when I need to quickly illustrate a concept. Unlike a real whiteboard, however, my diagrams or drawings can be easily emailed to myself or others within moments.

AirSharing – This very cool app turns your iPhone into a wireless file server, allowing you to drag and drop documents between your iPhone and other computers without the hassle of connecting any cables. I use it to store backups of PowerPoint presentations for talks I am giving, and because AirSharing includes a built-in document reader, I can review and rehearse my presentations right on my iPhone.

DomainScout – Want to quickly check if a domain name is available to register? Or curious to know who the current owner is? DomainScout is a fast and easy tool that allows you to quickly conduct a WHOIS search. You can even customize it to search for your favourite TLDs, so if you only care about .com, .net and .ca domains, DomainScout can be configured to check up to three TLDs of your choice by default.

iTalk – If you're like me, you get ideas for things at all hours of the day and night. But what do you do when you don't have pen and paper handy? iTalk is a wonderfully simple voice recorder that allows you to quickly capture your thoughts, or record an entire presentation, on your iPhone. A very handy little app that turns your iPhone into a digital voice recorder, without the expense of the real thing.

Urbanspoon – Need to find a nearby restaurant or café to meet up with someone for a biz meeting? Urbanspoon is a wickedly handy tool that helps you locate whatever kind of eating establishment you are looking for. For example, if you've just landed in a strange city and need to find an affordable Vegan restaurant that's open for lunch near a client's office, just consult Urbanspoon. In seconds you will have restaurant hours, phone number, and a map of how to get there.

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The Return of Erella.com: A Cautionary Tale

Published November 17, 2008

By Bill Sweetman

I often write about the importance of managing your domain names and caution people about what could happen should they fail to do so.

I recently witnessed a chilling example of this. Thankfully, this story has a happy ending.

Erella

Erella Ganon is a Toronto-based artist whom I have known for over a decade. She also happens to be a friend of my wife. On Friday night, my wife asked me to look into something on behalf of Erella. A few days prior, Erella had lost ownership of her domain name, erella.com, and she was very upset.

Erella had first registered erella.com in October, 2000 with domain registrar GoDaddy, and had been using it since then for her Website and email address. Her Website, located at www.erella.com, is where Erella showcases her work and promotes her services. It is her primary means of generating employment.

An artist and single mother, Erella supports her teenage daughter by doing a number of freelance creative assignments. Sadly, for many years, Erella has also been battling brain tumours. 2008 has been especially difficult for her as she’s been in and out of the hospital for seven different surgeries. The good news is that she’s on the mend.

During the last few months, in between surgeries and post-operative recovery, Erella was unable to do a lot of her normal day-to-day activities, and due to a misunderstanding, didn’t renew her domain name like she normally did. The domain expired, and 26 days later it flowed into GoDaddy’s expired domain auction, where it was bid upon and eventually acquired by a domain name speculator based in Hawaii.

Since I work at Tucows, one of the largest domain registrars in the world (and, full disclosure, a competitor of GoDaddy), I am very familiar with the domain name lifecycle and expired domain auctions. I knew that the domain speculator had broken no laws when he acquired the erella.com domain name. It expired. He bid on it. He paid for it. He now owned it.

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