Introducing the iRag...

We're very excited to introduce the iRag & gRag to you!

These two products may look very alike, but we can assure you that supporters of the iRag say that it is "a truly magical and revolutionary product".

On the other hand fans of the gRag say that all the iRag does, the gRag does & then some, since the gRag is based on open-foam technology which gives you more access to the gRag innards.

Reviewers report that although the iRag cleans up the competition, it could be a little spotty in some areas. Users of the gRag report no such problems, replying with ad campaigns that claim "There's a rag for that!".

The iRag CEO retorted "It is the best wiping experience you've ever had. ... It's unbelievably great ... way better than a ragtop. Way better than a smartwipe."

While the gRag team's marketing strategy has been markedly more low-key than the iRag, they're steadily adding cleaning applications & reportedly has started to out-sell the iRag in retail outlets.

Whichever you choose, the iRag or gRag, here at Yellow Magic we use both.

While this blog entry might have been a little humorous and tongue-in-cheek, we'd thought we would let you know that we're working on applications for all the "truly magical and revolutionary products" such as the iPad, iPhone & Android devices.

For more information, please visit our website: YellowMagic.com

NOTE: Although this blog is based on true events, the product names & quotes have been altered to protect the innocent.

Sell4Search

We recently learned about a useful sales tool for the Yellow Pages Industry created by Kuk, Baldwin that we are sharing with Directory Publishers.

With all the new Yellow Pages publishing applications and advertising platforms recently created to maximize local search for advertisers, it is often difficult for the small business owner and entry-level sales reps to get a grasp how all this new technology, when combined with the print product, benefits a business owners’ local exposure and increases foot traffic and sales.

Kuk, Baldwin has created a website, "Sell4Search" (Educating Your Advertisers) that features informative animations of several important topics.

Sell4Search is a new and extensive website packed with business-specific information and animated presentations aimed at small business advertisers and dealing with local advertising strategies and issues. The website content relates to all media, including local search – but also has a strong bias towards the value of Yellow Pages in the media mix.

As a publisher participating in this program, you would have your own individualized web page as a portal to the system – and you’d have blocks of passwords to distribute (on your terms) that will let your advertisers access all of the content. And because they update content and add new features periodically, the site is DYNAMIC to keep advertisers coming back. Major benefits include using Sell4Search as an added incentive to buy into the rep’s recommendation, and to demonstrate key sales concepts.

To view a 4 minute segment from one of the animations, click here.

To sample the extent of the content coverage so far, click here then scroll down the panel on the Kuk, Baldwin website that is headed “Educate Your Advertisers”.

Congratulations to Kuk, Baldwin for creating this valuable tool that not only reminds Yellow Pages advertisers about the importance of advertising–but also the fundamentals of How it Works!

Big on Yellow

As everyone knows by now, we're pretty big on Yellow.

In fact, we're so crazy about Yellow that we've arranged a massive public flower show with Yellow flowers everywhere in California!

Okay, I made up the part of us arranging it, but we really do have beautiful wild flowers here in California this time of year & it just so happens that a lot of them are Yellow.

Just look at these pictures, aren't they amazing?




 

     








While it is true that we really love Yellow, you might not know that you can make your Classification Headings any color you want & even apply it to only a certain set of headings. Take a look at his:



















Isn't that a pretty sight! Yellow and Green, just like the flowers! To learn more about how to do this, simply log in to the TSR System on the Yellow Magic site, click the "Visual Cookbooks" link, scroll down to "Custom Colors for Headings" and enjoy the show! We'll show you step-by-step how to do it.

To inspire you even more to get creative with wonderful multi-colored headings, here are some more desert wildflower pictures, enjoy! Photos from: http://www.desertusa.com/wildflo/ca.html

Phonebook Bulletproofing

If you've ever wondered if Phonebooks could be used to bulletproof your car, I might just have the answer you've been waiting for.

At the recent ADP Annual Convention and Partners Trade Show, we spoke to a lot of Directory Publishers that told us just how many Yellow Pages and Phonebooks their sales reps carry around on a daily basis. Now, we're not sure if they're trying to bulletproof their cars for some or other reason or whether it is purely for business reasons, we just think there must be a better way.

The "MythBusters" team from Discovery.com, famous for "busting myths" of all sorts, did an experiment to see if it is true that you can bulletproof your car by sticking Phonebooks in the doors - http://bit.ly/bOiBtK. In all, it took 400 Phonebooks to completely cover the car & make it virtually impervious to all but the most high-powered rifles.

We're not sure if a lot of reps carry 400 Phonebooks in their car every day, but I've seen the trunks & back seats of a couple of Yellow Pages reps and for some it might not be that far off...

There is a better way though, you might even want to call it a "silver bullet", go take a look at our iPad solution for Yellow Pages, Phonebooks & Sales Reps at http://yellotouch.com and http://bit.ly/dfJCIA .

We cannot guarantee that it will bulletproof your reps' cars, but it's a lot easier to carry around!

YelloTouch Released Today!

YelloTouch utilizes a realistic page-turning display environment in which entire directories can be downloaded, searched, and viewed on an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.
Publishers can e-distribute their directories using the Apple Apps Store and users can download the directories for free. Not only does this create a new distribution channel, but maybe more importantly, it gives them an alternative to offer when someone says they would like to opt-out. They could say “If you do not want to receive a printed directory, how would you like to receive one on your iPhone?”.
It provides new sales opportunities and creates a competitive advantage.
It saves money for there are no printing costs, no books to distribute, and no recycling concerns.
Users can see the whole book, including the covers, inside covers, community pages, tabs, all white pages sections, and of course, the yellow pages.
The system is independent of the publishing system used to create the directory. Simply send us your PDF files.
See a video of the Hagadone Directories North Idaho May 2009 - 2010 directory by going to http://www.yellotouch.com where you will find the YouTube video.

Magic Club Has Been Scheduled!

Mark your calendar! We have tentatively scheduled our next Magic Club meeting for October 6-9, 2010 in beautiful San Diego.

As always, we will have a welcome reception on Wednesday evening where all Magic Club members can see old friends and meet new members. The meetings will start the next morning and will continue until mid-afternoon on both Thursday and Friday. Saturday will be a half-day so that everyone will have an opportunity to enjoy San Diego or to catch a plane home.

Yellow Magic Incorporated will host the welcome reception, continental breakfasts on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday as well as lunch on Thursday and Friday. All Magic Club members in good standing can have up to two attendees at no charge, but there will be a small charge for more than two.

Be prepared to learn a lot as we demonstrate all of the new features of Yellow Magic version 2.2 along with a host of exciting companion products. Learn how your customers can view and approve their ads and listings online and how your sales reps can have paperless contracts!


Paula will be confirming the date and venue soon, so watch this blog and your mail for more details.

See you in San Diego!

Is Yellow Pages Publishing An Art Form?

I think anyone that has gone through the process of creating a Yellow Pages Directory or even a regular Phone Book, would agree that there is a degree of art involved.

For some people far more so than for others. For some Yellow Pages Publishers it's all about speed & getting 500 pages paginated in a morning. Some others prefer (and insist) on rather spending an hour on a single page, discussing the layout & tweaking the settings until it is truly a work of art with the signature of the publisher proudly on every page.

Here at Yellow Magic, we understand that, which is why you as the artist & Publisher, are completely in control of what your book is going to look like. We have close to 500 different commands that you can tweak until you have exactly what you had in mind. If you have a change of mind, you can go right back, change it & see the result immediately. You don't have to call us or send any files to us in order to make those changes, it's all in your hands and in your control.

Of course if you just want to get the job done, we'll help you set it all up so that you get a beautiful book without all the fuss. We call it Sleight-of-Hand, you might call it magic.

Although not a Publisher, Alex Queral is a Yellow Pages artist, but he has chosen a very unusual canvas for his art, he carves faces out of old Telephone Directories.
http://www.projectsgallery.com/Queral.htm


Alex looks past the pages & sees the people inside and although we here at Yellow Magic might not all be artists, we also look past the pages and we see you.

Contact us if you need any help with creating your next piece of Yellow Pages art, we'd love to help.

Save Time, Save Money, and Save Trees

You may have received an e-mail from Grace titled “Save Time, Save Money, and Save Trees”. As some of you know, Yellow Magic has been in the process of implementing totally paperless business processes for yellow pages publishers.

It started out with our Document Imaging feature where all contracts, verifications, confirmations, copy sheets, proofs, customer correspondence, invoices, late letters, customer service notes, marketing material, and more could be created, e-mailed, and/or maintained electronically so that paper did not have to flow around the office. Many Yellow Magic users are already using this.

Last year when we introduced Mobile SalesMagic, we went a step further by distributing sales leads to sales reps on their mobile phones and allowing them to report sales call results electronically, thereby eliminating the time-consuming sales call reports. Now, at the upcoming ADP and YPA conventions we will be showing the last two pieces of the puzzle that will complete our quest to offer totally paperless yellow pages business processes.

The first piece is what we call ProofMagic. ProofMagic allows publishers to post their proofs (yellow page listings, white page listings, display ads, white page banners, internet banners, etc.) to a web site and the advertiser receives an e-mail with a link where they can approve (or not) these proofs.

And the grand finale is the ability to write contracts without paper! If you want to learn how this works, plan to come by our booth at ADP or schedule a Strategic Exchange Session at YPA.

Out-of-the-Hat Newsletter

On February 3rd we mailed out the latest edition of Out-of-the-Hat, the Yellow Magic newsletter. If you didn’t get one, you can go here to see it. http://www.yellowmagic.com/newsletter/

If you would like to subscribe, go here: http://www.yellowmagic.com/newsletter/signup.html

And if you have any suggestions for future topics for the newsletter, please let us know.

The Birth of Wolley Segap

The first Telephone Book had no numbers, just names & consisted of only one sheet of paper!

The image to the left shows the first Telephone Directory, printed just two years after Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent on his telephone in 1876.

From the records available, it would seem that the first Yellow Pages directory was published on May 15, 1886 for the Chicago Telephone Company. There is however another story that says that the first classified listings with ads were produced by the Cheyenne Wyoming Telephone Company, in 1883 on Yellow paper, because the printer had run out of White stock.

Whichever it is, the process of creating Telephone Directories & Yellow Pages have come a long way!

In 1960 the Michigan telephone book featured the cartoon character Wolley Segap ("yelloW pageS") that promoted Yellow Page ads & now Wolley Segap's ads amount to a world wide $30 Billion+ industry.

We're not quite as old as Wolley, but we've been around since 1989 & we love the Yellow Pages. We love to create products that make it easier for you to run your Directory Publishing company and get your slice of that $30 Billion!

Speak to us about anything from print directory and pagination systems, internet directory publishing, mobile directory publishing, CD Rom directory publishing to sales force automation & social media!

Our software has been licensed to more than 150 directory-publishing companies worldwide. In addition to many sites in the United States, Yellow Magic’s software is installed in Canada, Central America, the Caribbean, South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. It has been used to create directories for 54 countries and in 23 languages. No mean feat!

Images & information from:
http://www.oldtelephonebooks.com

Yellow Pages or Junk

Raise your hand if you have a Yellow Pages book in your home, okay, almost all of you. Now raise your hand if you receive "junk mail", yeah, thought so.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you kept all that junk mail (a.k.a. Direct Mail), you received for a year?

I was at a Yellow Pages conference towards the end of last year & that exact thought flashed across my mind. What I was interested in finding out was what would weigh more, the four Yellow Pages Directories I've got in my home, or all the junkmail I collect over the period of 12 months?

I didn't have to wait very long to find out. Just four months after I'd started with my little experiment, I've got some interesting numbers for you. Now of course these may not be valid for everyone, but I couldn't find anyone else that was crazy enough to have kept their junk mail for four months, which already tells you something...

So, here are the numbers. The junk mail weighed in at 12 pounds & all four of my Yellow Pages Directories together amounted to 9.4 pounds!

It means I collected 3 pounds of junk mail per month. If you do the math & extrapolate, that amounts to 36 pounds of junk mail per year! I'm pretty confident that after a year, those Yellow Pages Directories would still be 9.4 pounds & unlike the junk mail, each of those Yellow Pages are still useful.

I'd really like to continue my experiment to collect a full 12 months worth of junk mail, but what I've got already looks like a pile of trash. At first I tried organizing or at least stacking them, but it just didn't work, you can't keep that in your house (I eventually had to keep it in a corner of my garage).

Where's my Yellow Pages? Next to my phone :-)

Visual Tutorials

Yellow Magic offers step by step visual tutorials available online. The areas covered range from common day to day procedures to areas you may only have to perform once a year. These tutorials have been very helpful to new users and even good refreshers for long time users. Follow the link to get an overview tutorial on one of our latest Mobile Applications, http://www.yellowmagic.com/mcm/MCM-Application-Overview.html.

Yellow Magic customers can access the Visual Cookbooks by logging into the TSR system. Upon login follow the Visual Cookbooks link. You will find several tutorials that have recently been added. We are currently working on a list of tutorials, which will be released soon. If you have any suggestions on what you feel would be helpful for other Yellow Magic users, please let us know.

Search your directory with Twitter!

Now it is possible to search your mobile directory with a Tweet! Go to www.yellowmagic.com/MCM-TT.pdf to learn more.

To Google or not to Google

Given a choice between going for a printed book vs electronic, I'm the type of guy that would go for the electronic version, every time! Well, that's what I thought until I arrived home & found the water heater had stopped working on a cold winter day! The first thing I did was go online (of course) & do a search on Google for plumbers in Temecula. I got results, the issue is that I got just over 440,000 results. Now, Temecula has just a tad over 110,000 residents and I'm pretty sure they aren't all plumbers and even if they were, it still doesn't explain away the other 330,000!

Trying to deal with the overload, I resolved to stick to page 1 of Google & started clicking links, waiting for pages to load & reading through reviews, following links and reading pages and pages of information. After about 10 minutes of that, I stopped & did a sanity check. Right then, my wife walked into the room & asked if I'd phoned the plumber yet. My terse response was that I'm still looking for one, to which she replied "Why don't you just use the Yellow Pages?". I was about to launch into a whole oral dissertation on the merits of local online search, saving the trees from certain paper-death, but looking at her face, thought it best to just go get the book.

Needless to say, about 1 minute later I was on the phone with a plumber that worked after hours, was accredited, accepted credit cards, in business for over 25 years & already on his way to my house.

Trying to use Google vs Yellow Pages when searching for something like a plumber, or other service that you need, there's just no comparison. Seriously, think about it, you can't instantly compare companies on Google like you can with the Yellow Pages. I'm not just talking about the physical book, you can get a 100% Yellow Pages book look & feel online (of course Yellow Magic developed the software)! Just go here & take a look: http://www.completephonebook.com/ You literally get the best of both worlds, if only one of my local directory publishers had an online directory like this, it would have solved my problem immediately.

If you prefer the Google-look, but want to avoid wading through 440,000+ results for a plumber, check out an example of our "MagicCarpet Lite" pages on http://www.yellowmagic.com/guia You get all the relevant results, maps, comparisons, plus links to all the display ads at the click of a button. For Firefox & IE browsers, you can even replace the default search bar to go directly to your site! For those of us that are more inclined to use their mobile phones, the answer is "MagicCarpet Mobile". Go to http://www.yellowmobimagic.com/tem09 using your phone's browser & type 'yellow' as the name search term to see the full range of listing features.

Oh, by the way, even if your users do go to Google, our search-engine-optimized online directories can give you first-page results on Google & then pull them straight back into your online directory.

2010 YM Newsletters

Happy New Year to Everyone!
Yellow Magic has so many new Yellow Pages Industry Publishing and business products and features to introduce this year that we have decided to devote 2 mini-newsletters each month, one for will focus on new Print directory publishing news, tools and features and the second one dedicated to Electronic publishing news, tools, features and widgets. We hope to keep them short, sweet and packed with good info for you! You will begin receiving one on the 1st and the second one about the 15th of each month. We look forward to your contributions and suggestions. Have a Successful January!

We are pleased to introduce our new Sales Manager, Grace Salumbides to the Yellow Magic Team! Grace has more than 22 years of experience at GTE and brings both production and sales experience to Yellow Magic and our customers. Welcome Grace!

Another New Year for exciting new changes with Yellow Magic!!!