As a regular road warrior, I’m pretty up to date on changing TSA and airline policies, and I was pretty taken aback by the announcement last week that TSA is now allowing knives up to 2.36 inches long on planes. I’ve been stopped for items as benign as baby bottles and book marks, and most restaurants in terminals will only give you a plastic knife, so this is a real turn of events! The March 9th installment of the Wall [...]

My husband brews beer at home (we have no fewer than sixty gallons at home right now) so one of his delicious brews or a glass of California Cab are usually my libation of choice. However, when my good friend Jason Falls is in town, I’ve been known to enjoy some whiskey or bourbon on the rocks. While I’m looking forward to some green beer and green clothing in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, it only made sense to also [...]

Having managed teams for many years now, I have always stuck to the idea that happy employees are productive employees. In the last ten years, telecommuting and the ability to work from home has become one of the secrets of happiness in the workplace. After all, who doesn’t love working in sweats? And nowadays, there are so many collaboration tools to facilitate working from home, there are some who allow it almost 100% of the time. NetBase offers the option [...]

In my book, sushi is a food group – I can’t survive without a regular salmon or spicy tuna fix. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who sees a great piece of fish as a food staple – which makes the recent revelation of “fish fraud” by the FDA last week particularly upsetting. In a study, they found widespread mislabeling of seafood in restaurants and grocery stores (this does not happen with sushi, since it is basically [...]

I’ve never been a fan of cruises, especially since I went on my first – and only – cruise years ago and felt very claustrophobic. However, just watching the news coverage of the Carnival Triumph cruise stranded in the Gulf of Mexico solidified the fact that I am never stepping foot on a cruise again. I would completely lose my mind in that situation. The February 16th installment of the Wall Street Journal Sentiment Tracker looked at the Facebook and [...]

Working for NetBase, a social intelligence company that helps the largest brands and agencies in the world understand what consumers are saying about them, I started wondering about Big Brother: Do consumers know we’re listening, and do they care? To answer that, we joined forces with our partner J.D. Power and Associates and surveyed 1,062 consumers across demographics—Millennials to Boomers—and asked them a series of questions. Survey Results Here are key findings from the survey, presented in an infographic: 32% [...]

Despite getting occasionally swept up in my Twitter account and loving my iPhone, I am old-fashioned and analog at heart, so the news about the USPS cancelling Saturday deliveries was bittersweet to me. I love to write and get letters – but then again, so often the only thing that comes in the mail are bills and sweepstakes offers, so it might be a welcome change to have a day off. So much of the communication we have these days [...]

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, it simply wouldn’t be right to create a Brand Passion Index this month and not look at chocolate brands. I decided to look at a spectrum of brands when it comes to these sweet confections and chose eight brands from Hershey’s and Cadbury to more high-end names like Neuhaus. The final list came down to: Hershey’s, Godiva, Ghirardelli, Ferrero Rocher, Neuhaus, Cadbury, Lindt and Dove chocolate.   The insights were interesting, especially because sometimes [...]

I have always been an animal lover. When it comes to bambis, though, I must say I like them better when they’re not eating our fruit trees and trampling our freshly bloomed flowers to death. That being said, though, I would never wish them harm and had no idea that interfering with deer was a criminal offense. When I checked out the February 2nd installment of the Wall Street Journal Sentiment Tracker, powered by NetBase, on the couple who saved [...]

Forget second screen – in my case there were 3 (TV, iPad, laptop – did you manage to include a couple more?). I’m not sure what this means for the attention span of Americans, but I think we are all headed for national ADD. The lights went out, but there were still some shining stars during tonight’s Super Bowl: first and foremost, Twitter topped over 24 million tweets, surpassing the Twitter activity during the November re-election of President Obama. Oreo [...]