Google Labs announced a new feature this week - Google Mail Goggles, a way to help Gmail users cut back on those regrettable late night emails and text messages.

Is this a cool feature? Or another device to keep us safe from ourselves? For now I will put it into the Quirky Google category and leave it at that.

It may seem odd to say, but the holiday greetings that I received from sundry and assorted vendors, business partners and acquaintances left me feeling less than cheery, festive, happy or blessed in 2007. It actually bothered me enough that I felt the need to write about it. A couple of my top peeves:

Lack of Personalization – these were the holiday cards that were stuffed into preprinted envelopes, no signature, no note, and the return address did not contain an individual's name. I received a fair number of these from companies whose connection to me, or my business was hazy at very best. These cards left me feeling that some poor salesperson somewhere had been given a Holiday Card Mailing Quota (does that even exist?) and was forced to dig into the bottom of their desk drawer for business cards from trade shows long ago.

Blatant Self Promotion – These bothered me the most, as I am a true blue, dyed in the wool holiday celebrating fanatic. That said, I think that holiday greetings should be just that about the holidays. A marked example came in the form of an eGreeting from company X who provides CRM solutions (I think anyway, I am not sure what my connection is to them) – when I clicked to get my “personalized” snow globe, I was greeted with nothing more than an extended Flash ad for the company – and it didn’t even run properly in Firefox. I will grant that it had snow and my name was in the ad.

Why Should I Care? – I classified into this category those holiday greetings I received that were nothing more than a company’s recital of how successful they were that year – I am so happy for them, but unless I, or my business, was instrumental to that success I don’t think it is really an appropriate holiday greeting.

All said, I did receive some great, personalized greetings from people I knew well, or had just met. One of my favorites was from a company called Acquisio, it was an eGreeting that came with a personalized note. The card itself (which ran in all browsers) was lighthearted and actually allowed me to put faces to the names of people I had never met.

In all, I categorize my holiday card disappointment as one where too many marketers were speaking to themselves as opposed to me – this has fueled one of my New Years resolutions for 2008 – to make sure that my, and my clients’ work speaks clearly, contextually and concisely to the intended audience, and not to our marketing egos…wish me luck:-)