In the midst of this great GuideStar piece on writing fundraising letters comes a sentence that galvanized me:

• Beginning sentences with “and”- one of my favorite connectors that encourages readers to keep reading (actually “listening” because that’s the way we talk with friends).

Listening. That’s why conversational writing, be it in blog posts, speeches or direct mail, has such power. It’s the way you offer to be heard as – if not a friend – then at least as someone closer than an anonymous behind-the-scenes copywriter or marketer. And when people choose to accept that offer, they’re opening the door to a closer relationship.

Friends, our long national nightmare is over. As the CBC is reporting, TiVo is officially on its way across the border:

The TiVo set-top device, which allows viewers to record shows and skip commercials, will be available across Canada – except in Quebec – through Best Buy, Future Shop, The Brick and London Drug stores for $199. Device owners also need to subscribe to the TiVo service, which has a monthly subscription price of $12.95, with discounts available on long-term contracts.

For pioneering folks (Rob clears his throat loudly, points at himself), TiVo’s been here for well over a year – provided you don’t mind crossing the border to buy it. And much as I’d like you to think I’ve prevailed heroically against incredible odds (I am, arguably, the national poster child for Canadian TiVo adoption… and by “arguably”, I mean “if you’re really willing to stretch the definition of every word in that phrase”), our experience has been a lot smoother than the CBC suggests it has:

Some Canadians have been able to use TiVos bought in the United States but have reported problems as it has not been officially supported by the manufacturer.

Actually, we couldn’t find a way in which it wasn’t supported, apart from one initial glitch around ZIP codes, the lack of a major Canadian retailer stocking it. (Here’s one support experience we had.) Things like buying movies and TV shows from Amazon.com aren’t on the table, but that has nothing to do with TiVo and everything to do with rights licensing. And you can’t get the HD TiVo, because Canada’s cable providers are dragging their heels on supporting CableCARD.

Oh, and Merry Christmas, Michael Geist.

It’ll be interesting to see how much that changes in the next few months and weeks. For what it’s worth, here’s TiVo’s page for Canadian customers.

• Virtual Hosting Blog » Scientific Web Design: 23 Actionable Lessons from Eye-Tracking Studies
  Some of it intuitive, some of it surprising… but all of it handy. The one I wish more people would heed (including me): include white space in your design.
  (tags: usability eyetracking research web tips study design advertising)

• Go With The Flow | BPWrap
  Barry Welford on the Green Gifts FB app we created: “That’s the beauty of BC Hydro’s Facebook initiative. …accepting a gift from a friend is the most natural thing to do… That’s the height of permission marketing.” Thanks for the kind words, Barry!
  (tags: facebook software marketing sustainability energy conservation application branded_apps british_columbia bc_hydro hydro utility business)

• Custom CSS Signatures in Mail – All Forces
  One of my holy grails: a way to insert live HTML into an OS X Mail.app signature. Takes a while, but nothing’s especially hard to do.
  (tags: mail.app osx macintosh apple email signature html css graphics)

Amazing what people will put up with to keep a community alive. (And it sure doesn’t hurt if there are market forces involved.)

• eConscious market
  A Colorado-based enterprise selling sustainably-made products, and donating half of their profits to non-profit organizations.
  (tags: green shopping products mall)

I hope you had a quarter of the fun I did last night.

I headlined the Friday social for the BC NDP convention, a karaoke pub night sponsored by the Young New Democrats. (Wisely, they asked me to do stand-up rather than singing.)

And even though it was my first time onstage in a year and a half, it went swimmingly. The best response of the evening came for a line that occurred to me only a few hours before I went on: “My kids are at that magic age where the right wing doesn’t give a damn about them: too big to be fetuses, too small to be young offenders.”

Thanks to organizers Erin Sikora and Sam Heppell – it was a great evening.