- Key apps for frequent travelers, such as FlightTrack (great for checking the status of flights in real time), Convert (which handles all sorts of currency and unit conversions), Skype (which allows you to use wi-fi to make calls back home from overseas, thereby avoiding the $2-3 per minute overseas charges), iTranslate (like having 100 customized phrasebooks at your fingertips), various local subway apps (like London Tube or Metro Paris), and SleepMachine (a sound machine that’s a lifesaver in noisy hotel rooms)

- Photo apps that let you do basic photoshopping of iPhone photos right on the phone — my favorites are PS Mobile, Photogene, and ColorSplash

I hope others will add to this list. With 300,000 apps in the App Store, recommendations for peers are critical to finding the most valuable apps.

When using direct mail to attract new customersl, make sure you have an idea of what the Long Term Value of a new customer is, and what is an acceptable cost to acquire these new customers. Some people new to direct marketing use direct mail one time and say it didn’t work for them because the amount of initial sales from new customers didn’t pay for the mailing. Yet if they figured in how much a new customer would spend over the next year or years, they may find out that the effort was hugely successful.

If you are looking for direct mail marketing statistics to plan a successful marketing campaign, two studies are available from the National Mail Order Association, NMOA. They are, the DMA Statistical Fact Book, http://www.nmoa.org/catalog/dma/dma_stats.htm and the Response Rate Trends Report, http://www.nmoa.org/catalog/dma/dma_response.htm