Your mobile phone is about to get a lot cooler. How cool? In the coming months, you’ll be able to dictate text messages and surf the Web just by speaking commands- no tapping or clicking required. If you’re trying to figure out where to go to lunch…

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Creative people want to express that creativity. Meanwhile, they need to make a living – possibly by finding an audience for some buyable form of that creativity. This is an old predicament, but the Internet enables new experiments in resolving it – like the Swap Meat, a project of a Web site called Coudal.com.

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Americans threw out just shy of three million tons of household electronics in 2006. This so-called e-waste is the fastest-growing part of the municipal waste stream and, depending on your outlook, either an enormous problem or a bonanza. E-waste generally contains substances that, though safely sequestered during each product’s use, can become hazardous if not handled properly when disposed. Those products also hold bits of precious metals like silver, copper, platinum and gold.

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When Andrew Newman and David Sullivan left corporate jobs and set out to launch their own Portland-based marketing fum, one of their founding principles was that they would cater solely to small business owners. Other firms could compete for the big national accounts, but the partners who set up ADMedia Communications in 2004 decided they wanted to offer affordable marketing services to entrepreneurs and family-run businesses that might otherwise not do any marketing at all.

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As CHIEF EXECUTIVE of one of the world’s biggest ad companies WPP Group’s Sir Martin Sorrell typically talks about the importance of creativity in successful advertising. So why is he calling econometrics, a complex statistical measuring technique, “the Holy Grail” of advertising?

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THE MARCH of digital technologies through cameras, video and a flurry of gadgets is reshaping old standbys and broadening their use. Clock radios are turning into uberstereos; and cameras into slim wonders that beam images to a TV or printer. Television, which had evolved only gradually since the advent of color in the 1950s, is now a digital jungle of new screen types, shapes and technologies. Here’s a look at those and other major trends under way.

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Disappearing are the bold-colored suit jackets, poufy hairdos and stilted smiles that, for decades, have been plastered across newspaper pages pushing real estate to potential homebuyers. In their stead: informal blogs, online video tours and sophisticated consumer targeting.

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Direct Response Marketing:Try SMS-Based Calls to Action – Advertising Age – Digital.

Digital: How Mobile Technology Is Changing Banking’s Future – Advertising Age – Digital.

Steve Jobs stood onstage in San Francisco and walked the Apple faithful through a demonstration of the company’s forthcoming iPhone. He showed off its bright, beautiful touch-sensitive screen and bag of associated goodies, from a cool voicemail system to an attractive Web browser. It all looked so elegant and easy. More important, it played to a fantasy that so many companies have long lusted to fulfill: the dream of One Device.

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