In March, we decided to have them on the show.  You can see the write-up on my show site here, and listen to the interview on my podcast site.  Matt Palma, the VP of Sales & Marketing over at iRobot, was pretty convincing.  We talked about some of the new technology embedded in the new 500 series of Roombas and it sounded impressive, but I’ve seen the Roombas before and since I wasn’t terribly impressed with them I knew that his talking points had been bravado.

Then the impossible happened.  They sent me one to try out.  And I tried it.  Things changed.

It took less than five minutes to get the Roomba set up.  We programmed it to start every morning at 8:30 and set up a couple of “Lighthouses” in rooms we wanted it to clean.  Then we hit the “Clean” button to send it on its way, and after playing a little tune on its internal speaker, off it went.

It uses a special pattern combined with numerous sensors to make passes on the floor and try and cover the problem areas, which is does quite effectivley.  It even monitors the stream of junk that it’s sucking in to see when it hits an area that deserves some additional attention, and will immediately go into an intense spot cleaning mode by spinning around and cleaning in some concentric circles.

The version we have, the 560, uses two brushes combined with the vacuum to do its job.  The first brush is a bristle brush not unlike those found in beater bars in regular vacuum cleaners, and the second is a four-bladed rubber brush that Roomba uses to clean tile, wood and conrete (non-carpeted) floors.  Actually they both run together in most, if not all, circumstances.

The results?  An excellent job of maintenance cleaning.  Roomba’s two trash compartments were full.  It had picked up everything from small pieces of paper and even sand all the way down to dust.  The pet hair that was on the carpet — even in corners — was gone, and the 560 isn’t even their pet hair model.

Then there’s the computer wires, power wires and tassels on the carpets.  We always have had to be careful when we’re vacuuming because the beater bars will rip up most of these wires.  Not a pretty picture.  I was concerned that the little Roomba would have some real trouble with all of these, so we spent some serious time cleaning before letting her go loose.

Of course, over the next few weeks, we stopped all of the preventative cleaning.  Wires were left laying around, the carpet tassels weren’t moved out of the way.  Things kind of got back to normal.  But how would Roomba do?

Amazingly enough, Roomba detects when it’s pulling on a wire, tassels or other obstructions and hasn’t damaged a single thing.  All of the wires have been left in-tact, all of the carpet materials are still in great shape an Roomba keeps going.

The robot takes about an hour and a half to clean our entire first floor, and it even remembers the layout of the room if it is started at the same point each time.  We use it’s “Spot” button when when take it to an area that needs cleaning and let it clean an approximately 3-foot square area, then we hit the “Dock” button and off it goes to find its dock and plugs its self in, recharges and is ready for the next vacuuming job.

My opinion of this little robot has come a long way since I first saw it cleaning a small spill at the retail vacuum store.  The Roomba is still not a complete replacement to getting out the big old vacuum and going to town, but it does do an absolutely acceptable job of keeping things fresh and clean, eliminating 6/7th of our vacuuming jobs as the old equipment (and out backs) get a break.

Good job, iRobot!

Visit http://www.deltaportercable.com/Products/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductID=21238 to find out more about the tool kit.

This kit contains: A PCL180D Compact Drill/Driver, PCL186CS 6-1/2″ Circular Saw, PCL180RS Reciprocating Saw, and a PC180FL Pivoting Head Flashlight, as well as(1) PC18BLEX Extended Run Time Battery, (1) PC18BLX Compact Lithium Battery, PCLMVC Lithium Ion Fast Charger, (1) Double Ended Bit Tip, (1) 18T Carbide Tip Circ Saw Blade, (1) 6″ Wood Cutting Recip Blade, and Soft Sided Carrying Case.

Ian Collins, President
Storage Appliance Corporation
http://www.goclickfree.com

Linda Sanford, P-Touch Product Manager
Brother
http://www.brother-usa.com

Duane Sider, Director of Communications
Rosetta Stone
http://www.rosettastone.com/

Jan Caldarella, Senior Bluetooth Product Manager
Plantronics
http://www.plantronics.com/

Kristin Brocoff, Marketing and Public Relations Manager
CarMD
http://www.carmd.com/

Tania Ladic, VP of Industry Marketing Travel and Transportation Division
NCR
http://www.ncr.com/solutions/self_service_solutions/travel_self_service/index.jsp

Matt Palma, VP Sales and Marketing
iRobot
http://store.irobot.com/home/index.jsp

Joseph Carabello, Director
Unotron
http://www.unotron.com/US/index.html

Karl Sandstrom, Product Manager/Engineer
BRP Evinrude
http://www.unotron.com/US/index.html

Rosetta Stone has created software that runs on your computer and helps teach you another language the same way you learned your first language — through immersion, interaction and pictures.

From their web site: "Build a foundation of fundamental German vocabulary and essential language structure. Gain the confidence to begin to learn and speak German. Master basic conversational skills, including greetings and introductions, simple questions and answers, shopping and much more."

We have more give-aways scheduled over the next weeks.  Make sure you’re subscribed to our Listener List to find out how to enter.

We should probably start by answering the question, "What is an autoresponder, and why would I want to use one?" In its most basic form, an autoresponder is an email program that automatically responds to emails that are sent to it. This type of system will automatically respond with things like FAQs , product information and vacation messages.

High-end autoresponders provide features which allow people to opt-in and opt-out of your email list and provide double opt-in (also called closed-loop opt-in) capabilities.  These types of features are absolutely necessary if you have a list of more than a couple of hundred names, or if you’re trying to run a real business.

One of the best free autoresponders available is open-source and will run on both Unix/Linux and Windows machines. It’s called phplist and can be found at their website .  This software isn’t the easiest to install, but does have good basic instructions and can be installed by most system administrators without much trouble.

Be aware that even though this is the best free autoresponder, it isn’t the best thing to use if you are sending emails that are time-critical or if you don’t have time to follow-up on sites that blacklist you.  Sending out emails to bad email addresses (old, or expired) or to mail trap boxes will cause you to be blacklisted very quickly, which means that your email will start bouncing in a big way.  I’ve seen cases where competitors have subscribed one of these mail trap boxes to a competitor’s email list so that each time email is sent to the list it is immediately rejected — something that can be avoided by using double-opt-in.

If you’re looking for something very simple and use Google Lab’s email features (it’s very easy to get a free account if you’re not using it right now), check out the "Vacation Time!" feature to get a free, simple autoresponder.  There is also a more advanced feature you can use:

"If you’re sick of typing out the same reply every time someone emails you with a common question, now you can compose your reply once and save the message text with the "Canned responses" button. Later, you can open that same message and send it again and again," explains Chad Perry .

After enabling "Canned Responses " in the settings page for Gmail Labs, you’ll see a new drop-down when composing a message. The "canned responses" option can be used to save a new message or to load an existing autoreply. It’s interesting that Gmail saves the messages as hidden drafts: you can find them if you search for label:drafts , but they’re not visible in the Drafts view.  This isn’t quite the same set of features and functionality offered by phplist, but it may do for you or your business.

If you’d like more information on any of these points, or anything else related to Marketing Technology, post a comment letting me know.

A new web site has popped up call Setster that allows you to let your clients, partners, employees and even your family co-ordinate their calendar with yours.

I’m not a affiliate of his (maybe I should be), but if you’d like to find out more about creating information products and selling them online you really need to follow Jeff Walker’s Blog !

I can’t think of any better advise for people who want to just make a few extra bucks through those who want to create an Internet empire…

I’ve been debating if I should do it or not. I’ve had a hard time believing that people would be interested in getting details of anyone’s life — it seems kind of strange at best, but I’ve been talked into it.
There are a ton of reasons why anyone who is into marketing themselves should be on Twitter . One of my friends, Jeff Walker , recently convinced me of the importance of Twittering — not to mention FaceBook — so I’ve bit the bullet.

If you’d like to follow my tweets, go to my page at Twitter and follow along.  I’ll try to keep you up-to-date on the events in my life and you’ll get to know that I’m a real person after all

Overall, we had a great time at the event!  Thanks to all the people who visited us at the event and for your comments regarding our live broadcast.  We’re always looking for ways to improve things for next year!

If you have any comments about our coverage, send me a note via craig at craigpeterson.com and let me know what you think!