“I’m thrilled to be partnering with I.O. Metro on helping spread the word about this truly unique furniture shopping experience,” Yip said. “One thing I really love about I.O. Metro is the fact that every single store is stocked with experienced design consultants who will give you free design advice. In fact, if you want them in your home, they’ll come there too. I.O. Metro gives customers three important things: great design, excellent quality and an outstanding price.”

The biggest thing I do for marketing is one-on-one communication with readers. I use Twitter and Facebook and Goodreads to connect with people I believe will have an interest in what I’m writing, then I offer discounted copies and discuss the books directly with them. After years of hearing other authors and agents and publishers telling me what I was doing wrong, it’s a breath of fresh air to hear directly from a reader who has had heart palpitations from reading a particularly engrossing scene or chapter. They are the audience. I believe in letting them decide what’s good and what isn’t.

Kansas City women will have more of The Limited to love with the opening of two new stores in 2011. The iconic fashion retailer’s first store to open of the year is in the Kansas City area at Town Center Plaza at 4868 West 119th Street in Leawood. Plans are in the works to open a new store at Zona Rosa in late fall 2011. The Limited currently operates a store in Oak Park Mall in Overland Park, Kansas as well.

Congrats to the Bell. They won and had their public victory lap. The question is, how long do they remind people that they are the victors in this suit? Doesn’t continued use of this legal win in advertising remind people that their food quality was in doubt?

What are you pitching to the media, a dude with a clarinet and a monkey trying to cure cancer or a new discount?

The announcement of Cisco Systems’ discontinuation the Flip Digital Video Camera has Flip fan Alex Greenwood feeling “flipped off.”

On Friday, Taylor Dill-Reese went to an Applebee’s in Madison Heights, Michigan, where — among other things — she ordered her 15-month-old son Dominick an apple juice. What the little boy apparently got instead was a margarita. His mom told WDIV-TV that she only realized something was wrong when Dominick “kind of laid his head on the table and dozed off a little bit and woke up and got real happy.” The little boy reportedly began hailing strangers, too.

Use the tools that you need–don’t let the tools use you.

After a long series of odd comments to Big Al’s post–egged on by hundreds of others–Howett dropped the F-bomb. Repeatedly.

We’re not here to judge his actions–but we have to ask the question–is this really the sort of thing that as a CEO you want to promote with video? As a company, we generally avoid talking politics, religion or anything that may be easily misconstrued. Why? Because if you antagonize current or potential customers, you may eventually go out of business. Makes sense, doesn’t it?