I was never a big fan of Sodoku and frankly, I never quite understood it. That was until I downloaded a free Sodoky app from iTunes. Now I know what all the craze is about. It is quite addicting.

The app gas a great interface. I say this because I have never played Sodoku and without any instructions, was able to pick it up in a couple of minutes. Not much else to say, but I know why people can get addicted

Anyone who has had any issues setting up Microsoft Exchange on their iPhone has obviously come across hundreds of sites, each with a different explanation.

In other words, no two situations are the same

Not everyone is lucky to have a network admin willing to help. Here is what I have been able to work out with mine. (keep in mind, I am not an exchange pro. Just anxious to get it working)

Exchange Server Setup

• Exchange 2003
• Standard SMTP (80) and SSL (443) ports open
• Outlook mobile access is enabled (this was key for me). Test by logging into mail.example.com/oma and pay attention to the message you receive. If working correctly, you will see a list of hyperlinks resembling your outlook folder structure.
• Forms based authentication is disabled (this was the final hurdle for us. Not 100% sure what this does but like I said, every situation is different.

iPhone Setup

• Enter your full email address.
• Enter DOMAIN\username (the domain may not be the same as the email address, you will need you IT folks to verify)
• Enter password
• Enter a description
• Certificate may not verify immediately, this is okay. Accept anyway
• Enter webmail domain (ex. mail.example.com)
• If all worked, exchange should verify and email, contacts, and calendar should begin to push instantly

Like I said, every instance is different, but this worked for me. Out NA had the philosophy that it is better to work out the kinks now before the CEO buys an iPhone and wants his/her email setup instantly. Try that logic if you IT team tells you to go away…unless of course you are the CEO and then your IT team should be doing the research for you

I was so excited to hear that the WordPress App for iPhone was released today.  With the two blogs I manage, I was only able to get one setup successfully.  For this blog, the files are contained in a folder off the root (http://www.example.com/blog).  This blog was set up without any problems.

jonathanwilbur.com however, was crashing during setup (this is a known bug according to the FAQ’s found here.  The files for jonathanwilbur.com are located just off the root of the domain.

A note on another blog reminded me of some extra set up which was needed when I set up scribefire in Firefox.  I needed to point the Blog URL directly to the xmlrpc.php file.  So I tried this solution with jonathanwilbur.com pointing the Blog URL to…

www.jonathanwilbur.com/xmlrpc.php

Once added, the blog was set up sucessfully within the app without a crash and I have had no problems since.  While I doubt this will work in all cases, it worked for me.  Hopefully this will work for others using WordPress and iPhone.

I received this email from American Airlines the other day as I do on a regular basis and something always irks me about these emails.

Now, I live in Jacksonville Florida. So, I would naturally expect to see a subject titled “American Airlines Net SAAver Fares” have some content which would be relevant to me. Keep in mind, I have flown with American Airlines before, from Jacksonville and my profile is updated with correct city/state/zip.

Take a look below…Do you see any flights out of Jacksonvi

lle? Are there any flights to Jacksonville which i might be able to forward to a friend? No…nothing. Why would American Airlines fill my inbox with something which is completely irrelevant? An industry such as air travel would surely benefit from targeting their emails based on their customers location.

I know Jacksonville is not a big airport, but I would settle for getting a couple emails a year vs. getting one a month if it had content which was relevant to me.  The age old battle of Frequency vs. Relevancy.  I think Frequency is winning in this case but I would be interested to see what the metrics are for such an email.  Has American Airlines ever tested email targeting and segmentation?

If you are an email marketing in an industry where segmenation data can be easily collected, make sure you are using the data in an efficient manner.  Sending irrelevant emails will increase costs (if using an third party), decrease opens and subsequent clicks, and will likely shrink your email list size faster than you are able to build it.

Someday my obsession with my iPhone will wear off, but it will most likely be a few _______ (fill in the blank).

Every so often, I will search on wordpress for new plugins.  There is one in particular which I have come across which I think is killer.  It is a iPhone theme view for your blog which will be viewed when users visit your phone from an iPhone or iPod Touch.  The plugin is called WPtouch and is available here.

With mobile web becoming more increasingly popular, this plugin does a great job of taking a website, and enabling it for mobile web browsing.  (see screenshot)

And for those who are not viewing my site from an iPhone or iPod Touch, they will also see a mobile ready version which can be easily viewed and navigated.  This plugin is available here.