The BlackBerry’s physical keyboard lets you take advantage of many shortcuts. Some are obvious, like using the space bar to page down; and holding Shift at the same time to page up. You can actually move back and forth between applications without navigating back to the screen. Press Alt and Escape, then release Escape and use the trackwheel on the side of your phone to select the desired program. Then press Alt again to select it.

When you are checking a list of emails, hit C to compose one yourself. When an email is highlighted, press R to reply, F to forward it or J to see the oldest message in that email chain. In the body of a message, pressing the space bar twice inserts a period and capitalizes the next word.

Press the left Shift and Alt at the same time to activate the number

lock. Or press the right Shift and Alt for the caps lock. Holding any letter

down will capitalize it. Using AutoText code in email can save time. Type “my

number” to display your BlackBerry phone number; LD for the local date.

Check BlackBerry Support and Services for more tips.

“Meatball Sunday” stirred up most of my beliefs about successful marketing. I enjoyed Seth Godin’s book and I wonder if I ever tried to fix Meatball Sundaes for my small business customers.   Maybe we as marketers try to cover up Old Marketing with whipped cream and put a cherry on top?

New Marketing leverages scarce attention and creates interactions among communities with similar interests. In other words: if you want your product to be successful, you need to build a community around it.  In addition, every product or service becomes a form of media through storytelling and interaction.  Dreamers, be aware – the triumph of big ideas will continue. Forget the command-and control approach to the creation and spread of ideas.

The important part of New Marketing – permission marketing is not up to the person sending marketing messages. Permission does not exist to help the marketer. The moment the marketing message ceases to be anticipated, personal, and relevant – doors close in front of the marketer.   Permission exists to help the consumer, and can’t be sold or bought.  In a market where everyone is a critic, there is a constant need to create products and services that appeal to and satisfy critics.

“Meatball Sundae” focuses on 14 trends no marketer can afford to ignore. It explains what to do about the increasing power of stories and shortened attention spans.

———Gotta get me some of that New Marketing. Give me blogs, e-mail, YouTube videos, MySpace pages, Google AdWords…I don’t care as long as it’s shiny and new.