Stephanie Liu

Capital One Wants to Get Personal

This is fake.

I stumbled across Kristen Nicole’s article on Mashable titled, “Use Flickr for Custom Capital One Cards” and thought it was a great campaign for several personal reasons.

First, Capital One makes it simple to create a personalized credit card. I already have a Capital One card but now I can select a photo that’s already hosted on my Flickr account or simply upload a jpeg from my PC and make it more fun. See upload guidelines here.

Second, by using a personal photo I’m creating an emotional attachment with my credit card. When I’m in the middle of a transaction, do I whip out my boring debit card or use my fancy customized Capital One card? Chances are, I’m going to whip out the Capital One card then chat with the clerk on how fun it was customizing my credit card and tell her where she can go online to create her own!

It would have also been interesting to see what would happen if the Capital One Image Card promotion ran a user-generated contest around the campaign. Let people create their custom Capital One card with their favorite photo then offer a prize (i.e. a $150 Capital One Gas Card) for the best design in a photo category (i.e. Family, Best Friends, Graduation, etc.).

People can engage longer with the promotion and check out what other people have designed and leave comments if they want to. And if they’re not interested in other people’s creations, they can still order their new card. That’s a great way of building brand awareness in my opinion, what do you think?

Create your own personalized Capital One credit card now.

(Avatar Credit: PosePrints.com)

(Photo Credit: CapitalOne)

Stephanie Liu

Firefox 3 Download Day 2008

June 17, 2008 was dubbed Firefox 3 Download Day. The goal, to set a Guinness World Record for Most Software Downloaded in 24 Hours. When I heard of the event, I signed up for a reminder on FF’s download page so I wouldn’t forget. And just as I had predicted, June 17th was a very hectic day. I came down with the stomach flu and was ‘unplugged’ from everyone and anything Internet related. So this morning, when I checked my email, there was my FF reminder and I made it within the allotted 24 hours.

I checked in this afternoon to see the results and it looks like Firefox 3 was downloaded more than 8 million times. The results still need to be verified by the good people at Guinness. In the meantime, feel free to download your very own personalized Firefox 3 Download Day certificate.

Stephanie Liu

Work Smarter with Web 2.0 Tools

I was excited when I saw the question above on LinkedIn because I’m always interested to find out what other people are using to make their life easier at work. I’m glad I checked in on this otherwise I wouldn’t have found out about JingProject.com.

Jing allows you to capture any image on your desktop (includes adding text and arrows) and gives you the option of creating videos. Jing then gives you a link that you can share with your co-workers so they can see exactly what you see.

Now you can avoid lengthy and drawn out text tutorials with Jing. This is absolutely what I needed in the office.

Here’s a video about Jing:


So what about you? What Web 2.0 tools do you find most useful for businesses?

(Photo Credit: JasterArts)

Stephanie Liu

Highlighters Are Now Digital

“i-Lighter is a cool way to highlight, grab, and save text and graphics from virtually any Web site and store it for future use.” – PC WORLD

The majority of my reading material is online and if you’re like me, the materials usually covered are articles, blogs, forums, reviews, RSS feeds and more. With all this information, I was notorious for printing pages and depleting the printer ink at home.

Now I can help the environment and my budget with i-Lighter. It’s useful and it’s free. I don’t have to print articles to highlight and I don’t waste any ink. I love it because i-Lighter gets over two hurdles with one leap. I can highlight text, tables, and images from any web page, have it organized in my account by subject, and share it with my colleagues.

In fact, earlier this month they released twitterlights. If you come across an interesting article online, use the i-Lighter to right-click and twitter it to your friends. The URL of the web page will automatically be sent as a TinyURL and your i-Light will be stored in your i-Lighter account for you to organize later.

See how i-Lighter works:

Stephanie Liu

Mind Mapping Made Easier

“A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.” – Wikipedia

Mind maps are great when I need to get my ideas out on a page. In fact, I use mind maps exclusively to map out campaign concepts, types of medium, and prize categories before walking into and during a brainstorm meeting. I also use them for blogging concepts, story ideas, and other creative endeavors. So naturally, my notebook is filled with diagrams. Unfortunately, there are times when I map out ideas too quickly that when I go back and look at them, I don’t understand what I wrote… I had to find a way to do it better.

Just recently, I discovered mind42.com and nearly flipped out. Now I can create mind maps in my browser for free and collaborate with co-workers. I can assign icons and colors to specific nodes and best of all, I can add images too.

Here’s a quick overview of the features at mind42.com:

Now get mapping!

(Video Credit: Mind42)

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