I love gassing up my car these days.
My trusty ‘97 Taurus wagon is a great machine. It’s been dependable for 115,000 miles so far. Although slightly battered now, it was a deluxe ride in its youth, with leather seats, a sunroof and all the goodies. And it’s a great highway cruiser, getting about 25 mpg on [...]

I believe we’re on the cusp of a dramatic change in consumer behavior. I don’t know exactly how it will play out, but at its core is this undeniable fact: the American consumer is tapped out.
Foreclosures and credit card debt are skyrocketing. The savings rate is zero. The jobless rate hasn’t been this high in [...]

A few buzz words are always tossed into social media conversations. One of the favorites is “transparency.”
Zappos.com, an online purveyor of shoes, handbags and more, is always a shining star noted in social media discussions.
However, for the most part, they are transparent about positive aspects of their company. The corporate HQ typically is represented as [...]

Communication is taking up a larger than ever chunk of our budgets. I got to thinking about this over the weekend, when I sat down to pay the bills.
Our household spends around $200 a month on phone, Internet, cable TV and cell phones. That’s probably pretty close to the average. According to various industry databases, [...]

Editor’s note; This is John Reinan’s weekly marketing column for MinnPost. To see the original, go to http://tinyurl.com/5l2n4m.
I’m thinking about phones.
I carry a basic little Verizon flip-phone. I can make calls, text and take pictures. But I’m developing some serious lust for an iPhone.
I’m not the only one. At least half a dozen times in [...]

This week marks my grandma’s 82nd birthday. I know this because I received pointed reminder calls/emails/letters from my parents and siblings.
Grandma Mary is Swedish Lutheran, which means that she would never be outwardly upset that I’d forgotten this hallowed day, but I’d definitely be in her prayers because who would forget her grandma’s birthday? And [...]

I found myself getting a bit sentimental about the late-’80s/early ’90s Twin Cities music scene when I saw this post by Jim Walsh at MinnPost about a recent Jayhawks reunion show in Spain. Seeing the grainy reunion concert footage Walsh found on YouTube got me thinking about what might have been for some of my favorite [...]

If so, go to www.wordia.com and upload a video of yourself sharing its definition. This relatively new online resource is positioned as “a place where anyone with a video, webcam or mobile phone can define the words that matter to them in their life.” Trendspotters at Springwise.com featured the site in a recent newsletter describing it as “a video dictionary [...]

Editor’s note: This is John Reinan’s weekly marketing column for MinnPost.com. To see the original, go to http://tinyurl.com/63jrge.
 Not a day goes by when I don’t think about how much the Internet has changed our lives. I think it’s the most amazing development I’ll see in my lifetime.
It’s why I left the newspaper business, and it’s [...]

I’m not much of a gambler.  This is perhaps best illustrated by my most recent experience, which featured a friendly game of blackjack – until someone noticed we were using a pinochle deck. With no cards lower than a nine, it made for quite the winning streak.
But I have been obsessing over a gambling Web site lately, and if you politicos [...]