When attending a trade show, the decision to give away promotional pens will be one of the best you can make due to them being useful, functional and easy to carry around. It is possible to purchase low-priced personalized pens and have your company name or logo printed onto them, if you buy in bulk prices are very reasonable and they have been proved to be a valuable promotional plan that all businesses ought to integrate into their marketing strategy.

Whether you decide on a promotional pen that is gimmicky and economical or elegant and pricey will depend on the type of clientele you are trying to impress.

Promotional items are very easy to find online and can be purchased and delivered within a short space of time, just type in ‘promotional products’ into a search engine and select a website that suits your needs. You will find an extensive variety of fashionable and varied styles. Choose the item you need, pay by credit card and have it delivered to your business premises, it’s easy to do.

If you are after a quality pen then there are many brand names to choose from, such as Parker, Waterman or Quill, have it engraved with your company message or logo and it can’t fail to impress. If you are looking for something less expensive than any metal style pen can be as effectual.

Introducing promotional pens into your advertising strategy is a worthwhile, serviceable and reasonably priced way to assist any business promotion and very easy to introduce. Pens are very cheap to purchase especially when buying many at one time. Promotional Bic plastic pens are an inexpensive option and pens like these will only take up a small part of your marketing budget, the comeback from them will be worth every penny.

Any marketing department who knows what they are doing will be fully aware of the power promotional items have in raising brand awareness.

Practically everyone has a pen on their person, in their bag or kept in a pocket and during the day a pen is always requested. Even those who remain seated at their laptops all day invariably need a pen at some point to make extra notes or jot down a phone number. Imagine every time your potential client needs to use a pen they see your logo printed on it, this will act as a constant trigger to their memory and is great visibility for your product market.

There are lots of different styles and ranges of stylish pens to select from. Some of the more popular types of pens are desk pens that can be put together as a set with other smart promotional products including wall calendars, desk clocks, memo pads and other desk accessories. Stylish choices are metallic pens, ink pens and ballpoint pens can be fun and original designs. There are gel pens, trendy and fashionable styles, elegant and classy, pencils and highlighters, there are pens to fit every event and client.

If you are looking for an effective give-away for your next tradeshow, how about colourful and fun highlighter pens? The education market is another good place to distribute these and they are cheap and cheerful and come in useful. Quirky pens are always a hit at fundraising shows or events. There are pens that introduce new novel ideas and looks that will be very successful in getting your message across, and your logo seen and remembered. You can always have your pens engraved by laser for that special touch.

Another good promotional gift idea to consider are calendars and planners, they come in a broad range of styles and designs. You can purchase anything from a traditional business style weekly planner to a planner that has a gold tone laser engraved plate on the front cover with elegant and richly decorated front covers.

Giving away these types of gifts will mean your advertising message or company logo will be hung on the office wall for the rest of the year, or displayed on their desk and act as a constant reminder of your logo and your product or service. Definitely money well spent in this case. There is no other type of advertising that can be as effective as promotional gifts. A cute idea is a calendar wallet business card, with a calendar on one side and your business details printed on the other. These types of business cards have a practical use too and are perfect for banks, insurance agents and real estate businesses.

Promotional gifts are an ideal method of expressing your thanks to existing or potential customers and will assist in raising awareness of your company image whilst improving a client’s opinion of your company.

But after all these years I’ve realized still do like pen and paper. Whether it’s writing my To Dos or listing down my goals, there’s still nothing like this old
fashioned method!

2 Reasons Why It Works

For one thing, I remember things better when I write them down by hand. I find it especially effective for goal setting. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I feel that

the words sink deeper in my brain when I write things down on paper!

Here’s another reason why I love using pen and paper: I make better decisions using this method because I must think hard about each item I write down. It feels as if the words flow from my brain, to my hands, to paper.

While the same process seems to happen to me when I’m typing away at my computer, there’s the possibility that everything can be erased! And what about the iPhone that has a world of apps? (I mention this because a friend recently bought one and wouldn’t stop talking about it.)The productivity apps are amazing: timers, to do lists, calendars, etc. that we could all use to track, measure and schedule our time.

Still, I stick to my statement earlier: goal setting is more effective with the use of pen and paper.

And so today, even though I use some cool tools and apps for To Dos and goal setting, I still do it the old fashioned way. At some point I also tried Gmail Tasks, which I thought was a really cool task tool. Have you tried using it? I could add emails to my task list, which really uncluttered my inbox, but to get to my task list, I had to go to Gmail. And, that means that when I’m not online, I have no access to my tasks!

So you see, when you put pen to paper you turn your thoughts into something tangible. You can actually see it, touch it, and hey, even smell it if you want to! Goal setting becomes more exciting, and it’s easier to make the plans needed to reach your goals if you have something in writing.

How do you keep track of your goals and daily tasks? Do you still use pen and paper?

In the near future, it could become a common feature on all kinds of electronic devices. So what’s next?

NTT DoCoMo Inc. reckons that the next step is to “feel” 3-D images rather than just look at them.

The Japanese mobile carrier’s booth at the Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies, or Ceatec, has tiny 3-D screens on display. Each one, about the size of a mobile handset, shows a chameleon perched on a tree, which you can see in 3-D without glasses.

Then you hold a special pen and slowly move it toward the animal. When the pen comes close, the chameleon shoots out its tongue. You can feel the tongue hitting the tip of the pen in your hand.

So how does it work?

The setup: Behind the display, there are electromagnetic coils, and hidden behind the table is a large power condenser. When you hold the pen above the display, built-in cameras track its movement. As the chameleon shoots out its tongue, the condenser releases electricity into the coils behind the display, instantly generating a strong magnetic field. Because the tip of the pen is also magnetic, it gets pushed away from the display, creating an illusion — for both eyes and hands — of being struck by the chameleon’s tongue.

This technology could be applied to videogames, for example, a DoCoMo exhibition staffer said. To be sure, some of the existing controllers for game consoles vibrate to imitate the feel of being punched or a car crashing, and those could work in tandem with 3-D images. But this magnetic system can create a different kind of stimulation — the sense of being pulled or pushed, which vibrating controllers can’t imitate, he said.

Still, this magnetic system for “feeling” 3-D images will have to overcome a few obstacles before it can reach mobile phone users. The power condenser hidden behind the display is so large that it won’t be possible to carry around the system. And if you want to feel the stimulation through an object much larger than the pen, the magnetic field would have to be more powerful, perhaps resembling magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, used in medical facilities.

But the point of this 3-D chameleon exhibition is to paint a picture of what the future might look like, rather than proposing any specific product ideas, a DoCoMo spokesman said, adding that the company has no concrete plans to commercialize it.

That’s a bit of the high-brow spiel from a pen company about their “exclusive” John Lennon range. Featuring a “Special Edition”, a “Commemoration Edition” and, naturally, a “Limited Edition”, the Lennon pens start at about $700 (€514) and soar upwards from there.

The connection between Montblanc and John Lennon? Well, Lennon was known to have used a pen at various stages of his life so why not rush-release some overpriced tat to tie in with what would have been his 70th birthday next week (October 9th). Especially when everyone else is doing it.

The music magazine Q boasts two “previously unpublished pictures” of The Beatle on its four- different-front-covers November edition (available now at all good newsagents). If you want all four covers, send Q a cheque for £9.99 – and if you take out a yearly subscription you’ll get an “exclusive version” of one of the Lennon photos. Whatever that means.

Films, documentaries, tribute concerts . . . anyone whoever so much as ever passed John Lennon in the street is being wheeled out for their “impressions” and “recollections”. Lady Gaga and Susan Boyle are the latest to muscle in on the act. The former will join The Plastic Ono Band at a concert in Los Angeles next week; the latter’s brother fears that she will be shot just like Lennon. Painting a vulgar picture.

Time capsules are being bundled up, souvenirs are being dusted down. The toilet from Lennon’s Tittenhurst Park house, where he lived from 1969 to 1972, went for £9,500 (€11,029) at auction earlier this month, 10 times more than the asking price. There’s a worldwide contest to find the best new cover of a John Lennon song (send your video to Billboard magazine). Even Mark Chapman is having his say. Quotes from his appeal to the New York City Parole Board appeared earlier this month. “I killed him to become a somebody” etc have been widely circulated.

If you were to compose an identikit of someone with across- the-board appeal (and his reach was bigger than just musical), it could only reveal John Lennon. Other icons have simply never managed to align the twin attributes of authenticity and commerciality. But Lennon had it all and more: he could hold the counter-culture while still being a pop star; he was “arty” and “loveable”, intelligent and irreverent.

Even when he was resurrected to front an advertising campaign for a Citroen car earlier this year, using words from a 1968 BBC interview (“Why all this nostalgia?

Start something new. Live your life now”), Lennon managed to put a nebulous gloss on a tacky enterprise. And even his estate holders turned it into something vaguely

“humanitarian” by arguing that they were merely trying to keep his message alive: “We’re just wanting to keep him and all he stood for out there in the world,” chimed Sean Lennon.

All of this, though, is merely a sideshow to the main attraction. It’s easy to lose sight of the music with all the surrounding Lennonphilia that, over the next few weeks, will be particularly cloying and suffocating. But hit the play button on The Plastic Ono Band (Lennon’s first solo album) and revisit the neglected masterpiece that is Walls and Bridges , along with so much more of his re-upholstered solo work, and you will be able to hear an artist locating the fault line between pop and rock and mining one of the richest veins in music. Lennon still shines on.

A couple of students who work for The Armory commented on their experience working there. Senior, Patrick Traynor says, “I think it is a very intriguing experience.” Phong Nguyen describes it as a cool way to get “some experience for the future.” So if you’re looking for a place to find reasonable school supplies and snacks, The Armory is definitely where you want to go. Lost your pencil? Want an Iced Tea? Now you know where to go.

Naturally a promotional pen made from metal will be heavier than a printed pen made from plastic. The weight of the pen alone immediately increases its perceived value to the user, if the user perceives the value to be higher there is more chance they will use the pen for its entire life, therefore your corporate message or logo will be prevalent for a longer period of time.

Consider the scenario of attending a trade show, picking up countless freebies whilst being sold to at every opportunity. By the end of the day you have enough free pens to open up your own printed pen business. You are more likely to keep hold of metal promotional pens than the cheaper plastic alternatives, for the exhibitor that decided to invest in a metal ball pen they have achieved their objective and got the pen into the hands of a potential customer. It certainly pays to think about the type of promotional pen you are going to use at your next event rather than just opting for the cheapest product and assuming this will deliver the same results.

As we like to cater for all possible scenarios’s our customers might find themselves in, we also stock the Isis Grip Enterprise Ballpen. This is a cheaper alternative to the Isis Grip Metal Ball Pen as it uses composite materials instead of metal, but it has the same look and feel at a cheaper price point. If your budget won’t stretch to a full metal ball pen then look at composite alternatives, why not give us a call, we will be happy to help you choose the promotional pen that is right for you.

To be warned is to be armed – it came to my mind. I needed to get a hold of a way to find out what they were up to.

The way by which some movie characters use spy hidden cameras seemed to be the option for me. It is an effective way where important information could be obtained. Similar methods were clearly what I needed to adapt.

Thinking about the ways and means led me to search the internet. There, I began to see the options available to people like me. I saw that the best of spy hidden cameras for a situation such as mine was the Pen Video Camera.

The one which won my attention was the VGA Pen Cam camcorder, a pen video camera which is also an actual writing pen. It does not only have a high resolution 640 x 480 recording capability but it records audio as well.

The one-touch button of this pen video camera activates the camcorder and it can record up to 2 hours of video and audio for a single charge of the battery. I can download the recording through a high speed USB to my PC and view it any time. Its internal memory is a whooping 8 GB which can store up to 40 hours of recording.

There are other models like the Digital Multifunction Pen Recorder, the Video Pen Camcorder, the Pi-Pen USB 14 hour recording Pen USB and the Pi-Pen Notetake Pen Original Style.

I chose the VGA Pen Cam camcorder for personal reasons. I do not doubt that all the other spy hidden cameras are equally effective. Now, my friend whose table is near to these people will use this pen video camera to help me find out the things they are saying.

Richi B Fanner is a well known professional in Surveillance and Security and carries a full line of hidden cameras and surveillance systems. He gives complete support and set up guidance for all his products.

“But,” you say, “What if I’m not cramming for Japanese college entrance exams?” Or, perhaps, you already have your study materials and a multicolor pen. In response to that, we must point out that Saito Takashi no DS de Yomu Sanshoku Ball-pen Meisaku Juku (Saito Takashi’s DS Reading Three-color Ball-pen Masterpiece Cram School) is the only multi-color-pen-simulating Japanese literature study aid for the DS with the endorsement of Meiji University reading and memory expert Takashi Saito. You can see Saito’s light-speed highlighting at work in this commercial!

Determine what type of printing you’d like on the pens: laser engraved or screened. Screening imprints your company name and logo or design on the surface of the pen, whereas laser engraving actually engraves the information into the surface of the pen and lasts much longer.

Design the pen. You can choose a logo and address, a catchy saying or a picture of some sort. Stick to the size guidelines given by the company for the type of pen you chose.