Guy Kawasaki, one of the most influencial business leaders and technology minds of the last quarter century has accepted an invitation to speak at Elite Retreat - San Francisco. Guy will speak on Monday, March 19th. The event, which features prominent speakers Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney), Lee Dodd, Aaron Wall, Darren Rowse, Neil Patel, and yours truly is set for March 19-20 at the San Fransisco Courtyard Downtown in San Francisco, California. For details, click here.

Guy Kawasaki is currently CEO of Garage Technology Ventures, a venture capital firm which specializes in high-technology startup firms located in Silicon Valley, California. In addition, Guy is a regular columnist for Forbes.com. Guy Kawasaki was one of the original Apple employees and was responsible for marketing of the Macintosh in 1984 - in fact, Guy is attributed with much of Apple’s early success and was brought back years later as an Apple Fellow, which once again helped to re-fuel Apple’s business. Guy has started and sold numerous businesses, many of which he sold for tens of millions of dollars.

Guy is the author of eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

My friends - I am honored to be part of the select group of speakers at Elite Retreat. In fact, if I wasn’t going to be there as a speaker I would be going as a guest - this is going to be an opportunity of a lifetime for those who attend.

If you are interested in attending the Elite Retreat please visit eliteretreat.info for more information. I know I can speak for the other speakers when I say that we look forward to meeting you and spending face-to-face time with you in an effort to take your business and income to the next level.

At Pepperjam we request that employees spend up to 30% of their day reading blogs and staying in absolute tune with the online marketing industry. Our goal is that “water cooler” talk will center around someone’s growing pains with Yahoo’s release of Panama or some cool new tool released by Azoogle or CJ instead of whether or not so and so is dating so and so.

In this way, Pepperjam’s staff not only stays current with the industry but they are in a position to innovate and fully understand the complexity of the online marketing space. Say the names of leading blogs such as Shoemoney, Stuntdubl, SearchEngineLand or Revenews and chances are a Pepperjammer is prepared to have a discussion with you. The fact is the industry is changing as we speak and in order to keep up and be competitive you’ve gotta figure out a way to learn from others.

I’ve found Google’s Personalized Homepage to be key in staying in touch with the industry. If you use Gmail or have a google account you have the ability to create your own personalized homepage. What does this mean? Well, what you probably do now is either bookmark your favorite blog and use IE’s favorites menu to quickly retrieve it or you simply type the blog URL into your browser - this is very inefficeint and inconvenient. With Google’s personalized homepage you can add all of your favorite blogs and news sources to your page. In this way, all you have to do is make Google your homepage and stay current with what’s going on. Google also allows you to add other cool features like weather, “word of the day,” jokes, sports, etc. It’s not just for nerds like you and me who want to stay current - it’s also a way to stay current with whatever your heart desires.

Have fun and use Google’s personalized homepage.

With the release of the iPhone, Apple has a huge opportunity on their hands. Think about this, what company wouldn’t kill to be able to go to one area to find out everything they ever wanted about their users. With the iPhone Apple could assign each of their users who opted in for web browsing functionality a numeric ID, track the behavior of that user ID and serve ads based on the users behavior. You would most likely to be able to figure out the users age range, sex, hobbies etc… all without ever asking them because, although it won’t be perfect, you will be able to infer all of the demographical traits just based on how they browse the internet.

Apple and their network of partners could serve ads, through not only regular mobile advertising but through iTunes and other media outlets. For example, say you are listening to one of your favorite artists, Apple or their partners could serve an ad for a music artist that is similar to the one you are listening to. They will be able to target your choices in music with artists that are similar to your tastes which could prove to be very effective. Surfing the web and being served ads that are relevant to you is not only good for you but VERY good for online media companies

Cheers Apple, Don’t mess this up for all of us!