Amex has interesting program "My Wishlist". The idea is they have all these great products, selling at heavily discounted prices ($800 for a $3,000 Vespa, $150 for a $400 digital camera, etc.) Also, some coupons to merchants, but the big hook is the potential ability to buy things at discounts. So, today, 30 Vespas, with 3 time slots that opened up. Given the likeihood that "lots" of Amex Cardholders were interested, or at the very least, liked the thought of being able to resell said gift, this is almost a completely pointless promotion. Clicking more than about a tenth of a second late misses out on the purchases. I'm imagining anyone who tries to take advantage of this is going to end up not so thrilled with Amex. Unless, of course, there's enough of a shortage of interest in a $150 shaving kit to have that last a bit longer...

Bikram yoga

If you were going to promote a Bikram Yoga studio and didn't have a ton of money, how would you do it. Key things I'd add...some local testimonials.. a trial period (great idea)... an email once a week... of encouragement, class changes, things going on to get people feeling connected... and maybe a small search campaign on the keywords of the location and yoga and variations.

Gmail stickiness. Interesting article by ReturnPath on numbers in terms of how Gmail is attracting new users. Not surprising, in that unless you have a big spam problem, incentive to change free e-mail accounts is not that high.

Good article in AdAge on "Why HP has purchased tens of thousands of search terms". (registration required). Basically, they want to be where customers are looking for them.

Having been reading "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. Really neat approach to organizing things, especially approaches that you may know intuitively, but not been able to condense into usable principles. The Outlook plug-in has a free trial version, and really does add some neat features, especially if you spend a large chunk of your time working in it.