Absolute dead-simple staple of my work. Transmit 3 is absolutely unparalleled. I pulled the trigger on Transmit 4 before I’d even launched it.

Anyone want to know how much I love this photo? Anyone? Seriously, ask and I’ll tell you. I love it with the white hot passion of a star gone super nova. I love it, because it’s a picture of rocks. It’s a picture of rocks about sex and God, with a dash of good humor and a pinch of humility.

I love it because the man who made it is a man who loves more than anything to work with his hands. You can feel it when you pick up one of these rocks, the surface so smooth it’s as if nothing is there. And yet, the messages are at once salient, and impossible — it’s a burning bush argument: am I really getting fortune cookie karma from a river stone? Yep. From a guy who has a singular focus on what he’s doing, and has just the right tools to get the job done.

So, this is a post about tools. I have a lot of them, the digital kind, and I’m often asked what I recommend and could I teach them, and should client x buy Illustrator or Photoshop or InDesign or Final Cut Pro so they can make quick edits on files and on and on. And I’ve worked up a bit of my own burnished stone wisdom that may help someone other there in the Interworld. Here goes.

1. If you think you need a piece of software, you don’t. Because if you think you need it, then you don’t know how to use it, you’ll be shocked at the price, and pissed at yourself for not being smart enough to know what it is in the first place.
2. Text is the most versatile format ever, ever, ever. If what you do is write things, do yourself a favor and get rid of all the shortcuts to Microsoft Word. Replace them with shortcuts to TextEdit and Notepad. Write there. These are the pencil and paper of computerized writing and will make whatever you write more portable to design, email, web, production, whatever. Make all the partners in your workflow happy and ditch the other cruft.
3. The most important skill you can learn that will improve your communication online and in person, is how to lay a few words on top of a photo. Exception to previous point, PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google apps are clever — and now even a bit sophisticated — graphics applications. You don’t need PhotoShop to build a graphic for a website or poster — just head over to iStockphoto.com, find a clever kitten hanging from a branch, write “Hang in There!” with a little drop shadow, and export to a jpg. That’s all. From there, the world is your oyster. I have a client that does 90% of the graphics work for here organization’s website in PowerPoint, I kid you not. It makes me throw up in the back of my mouth a bit, but it’s true.

Bottom line, simplicity should always trump ego. Software is a drug that feeds that ego, people. Don’t let it eat you up. If you put a few braincells to thinking about alternative methods to doing what you need to do, you’ll find more often than not you already have the tools you need to get the job done, and get back to work.

Mint.com’s chief marketing officer, stunned a room full of digital marketing pros by noting that she really didn’t have much of a marketing budget. Mint.com has gone from zero to 1.5 million users in two years with no ad campaign, save a mid-five-figures sum spent on search engine terms. Rather than purchase traffic, it has pursued the same type of strategy that food trucks and online magazines do: Using free social media and piggybacking on popular new communications technology. Mint.com has more than 36,000 Facebook fans and 19,000 Twitter followers, a well-traffickedblog, and a popular iPhone application.

Great article. Worth checking out in more detail.

As outlined in today’s press release and my blog post, after the acquisition closes, the Mint.com team will contribute to improving the financial lives of tens of millions of consumers and small businesses. I’ll personally be taking on the role of GM of Intuit’s Personal Finance group responsible for online, desktop and mobile consumer personal finance offerings. Joining Intuit enables us to bring our vision of helping consumers understand and do more with their money to millions of Intuit customers. This is a compelling combination of our innovative product, technology, and industry leading user interface design with one of the most trusted brands in software.

This is good news for Intuit — not sure they can get any more disorganized than they are now. It’s probably good news for Mint, though they’re hitching their wagon to a brand that needs desperate help, putting themselves in the position of floating quality for both brands.

I left Quicken this year after being a user for over a decade. The software is less stable than it was when I joined the Intuit bandwagon and there is little evidence of evolution or rigorous development over time. In fact, several of the features I used regularly in those early versions have been taken out of the software today. I’ve moved to MoneyWell and have been able to make a remarkably easy transition to the package.