There are plenty of tools available nowadays to plan your day, set reminders, and assign tasks. You have applications on your mobile phone, you have Basecamp, you have Outlook, you have iCal, and so on.

But what do you do when you’re driving down the highway, remember an extremely important task that needs to be done tomorrow, and ensure you don’t forget it? Jott it. (Disclaimer: YGG does not recommend you talk or use your cellphone while driving on the highway. :)

That’s Jott it, without the down. A verb that seems to be almost as catchy as “Google it�.

This online service was first announced back in December or so on TechCrunch. The idea is that you have a local or toll-free number you call from the phone associated with your Jott account, say who you’d like to send a Jott to (contacts), say your message, and it’s then transcribed and e-mailed to the contact you chose.

Jott is entirely free, but is still in “Public Beta” mode. They are expected to roll out of beta in the near future and offer a Business plan on top of the freebie, most likely with a few new features, no Jott advertising in the e-mail notifications, and an unlimited amount of messages.

Where and when could this be handy? On plenty of occasions, many of which I’ll try and cover today.

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Let me first start by saying the title is not squeezing “exercise” into your busy schedule. Exercise is over stated, overall fitness is not. Being fit and healthy is more about your diet than it is about your workout routine. Getting in shape and losing a little weight (if that’s what you’re trying to do) is actually very, very easy.

You’re already going to eat, so if you can teach yourself to eat right that’s half the battle. Here are some basic eating tips that if stuck to will clean out your body in no time

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I shared my disappointment with Scoble’s prediction as to the future direction of blogs, a week ago. He didn’t take too nicely to my critique of his opinion, but I said at that time that I would send out a dozen or so e-mails asking the opinion of some other bloggers I thought would better fit the role of a creative psychic.

As expected and completely understood, only a few responded. Thankfully, one response from our friend, Collis Ta’eed at FreelanceSwitch, was quite thoughtful and I’ll share a few excerpts of it, along with Neil Patel’s from Pronet Advertising, an amusing response from Seth, and my own.

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He’s got the appropriate geek-brand tees, the classic nerd specs, and is followed by thousands of technology junkies. Shouldn’t that classify him as an ideal person for defining the future of blogs? Not a chance.

We love Scoble. Really. He’s interviewed plenty of people we wish we could have, and could probably address Steve Jobs as just Steve, and not feel sorry or inferior.

But his latest video rant from a few days back, makes me feel a little uncomfortable. When asked by Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress, what the “blog of the future” would be like, Scoble essentially defined what most creative blogs are already.

I won’t quote some of his key points, CenterNetworks has already done that. You can watch the video for yourself. What I will say is, Scobleizer is far from an innovative, creative, unique, blog. It’s as straight-out-of-the-box as you can get. That’s not his fault. He’s a techie, not a creative. That’s not to say his content isn’t good, just the presentation of it. He’s just the wrong person for the job of defining the future of blogging.

There are a handful of bloggers I can think of, that should have a say on the “blog of the future”, and I’ve sent an email to each of them asking for their opinion.

Until any of them reply, I ask what you think the “blog of the future” is and who should have the ultimate say in it’s direction?

How many of you MySpace account holders have seen something similar to the image below? It happens about 1/2 the time I login to their dreadful service. A screen pops up only for a few seconds that would appear to be a spot for a huge, obtrusive, obnoxious flash add. There’s a link on the top and bottom of that area that says “Skip this advertisement” but apparently News Corp’s MySpace is so intuitive, it already knows you’re planning on clicking it so it skips the add…wait for it…automatically! Now how’s that for high tech?

If I was the guy paying for that spot I’d have a conniption fit, and if Rupert Murdoch was dead, he’d be rolling over in his grave.

You’re better off advertising at Young Go Getter. Seriously.

So the iPhone hype has died down a bit. The early adopters got their hands on the first version, while the rest of the world somehow managed to continue with their lives. :) But why not cater to those few that may actually wait a minute and a half for your website to load on their iPhone?

Well, you can speed up that loading with an iPhone theme for your blog. Make that an iWPhone Plugin and Theme. ContentRobot has created such a package that automatically detects if a reader is using Safari on an iPhone, then serves up a custom theme formatted to replicate an iPhone application (clean and minimalistic).

All you have to do is activate the plugin and you’re done. It will automatically serve up the iPhone theme to iPhoners.

You can customize the theme like you would any other for WordPress. Add in your little logo to the header, remove post details, or whatever you wish. But the default installation shouldn’t take any more than a minute or two.

This is a handy plugin/theme combo, that the two or three people who have an iPhone and know you exist, will love. You can download it here.

Every single day, I go to get the mail, and next to my mailbox sits a garbage can, filled to the top with the exact same things. New condominium fliers, special offers, government newsletters.

If the postman were observant, he would put all this junk directly in that trashcan instead of our mailboxes. If the post office weren’t so greedy, they’d be honest with the advertisers and how effective these mailers really are.

At times, they think they’re smart, they’ll drop one of these on our doorsteps. Same difference.

When we see that you’re lazy, don’t take the time to think about each of us personally, don’t care if I say no to you, you’re immediately blacklisted. All the “thought”, time, and money you put into buying that mailing list, crafting that copy, acquiring those stock photos, running them off the press, a complete waste.

Had you sent me a simple, personal, creative, and genuine letter, you would have increased your efficiency ten-fold. Sure, thousands of others may have received similar letters, but I don’t know or care about that — look, I got this nice letter and great offer, just for me.

Eliminate the term “mass” from your vocabulary. Each of your customers are more important than all of your customers. And existing customers are more important than potential customers.

In everything you do, “Hey Travis” will get you a lot farther than “Dear valued customer”.

While writing a draft post on a wonderful WordPress plugin, Gregarious — which really wasn’t going anywhere exciting or interesting (probably will remain a draft forever) — I thought about an experiment I’ve been trying for the past several days.

If you Google “make digg homepage“, you’ll see around 10.7 million results. Most of the articles focus on the type of content you should write, catchiness of headlines, adding Digg widgets…….and a bunch of other tips that mean @#!* all if you don’t have a lot of regular readers and/or Diggers.

This experiment I mentioned is based on one of these articles that made the Digg front page a few days ago. Only this time, the author actually seems to know what he’s talking about. Brett Borders of Copybrighter wrote a step-by-step guide, which can be traced back to a simpler version from THE HORSE’S MOUTH, Mr. Calacanis back in December of last year.

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Over the past year or so I’ve come to the realization that sometimes the most important thing you can do in life is keep your mouth shut. Personally or professionally, employee or employer, it’s in your best interest to keep your cards to yourself.

Too often we feel the urge to share our opinion because we feel entitled to have one. True enough, in the free world it’s your right to have an opinion, but remember: The workplace is a dictatorship, not a democracy. Employees often miscalculate their place or even more dangerously, their relationship with the boss. Before you speak, put yourself on the receiving end of your comment. Without rationalizing, how did it make you feel? You can bet it’ll make them feel the same way. Now with your job on the line, is it worth sharing?

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“It’s another way for us to engage with our advertisers and our audience” said Chris McCumber, senior VP of marketing and brand strategy for USA.

The preformatted fluff to the right, care of USA Network’s Chris McCumber, is in regards to their latest project (USA Network and NBC Universal) called Didja. Like, “Did ya see that?”. Ha ha, he he, hilarious. Didja is said to be an archive of old and new TV ads, movie trailers, and other stuff that usually interrupts the content you’re trying to enjoy.

“Both efforts are designed to give NBC a bigger share of the ad revenue being generated by streaming video.” Exactly. Didja is being made to help NBC milk a medium for as much as they can.

Look at what TBS has done with Very Funny Ads. They transformed an annual highlight show on their network, into a popular online archive of some of the funniest ads. Conceptually, being that their tagline is “very funny”, such a site ties into their brand perfectly.

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