As I was sorting through the various emails from everybody at Gear Diary last night I noticed something interesting. A number of the emails came through with the signature ”Sent from my iPhone” or “Sent from my Blackberry“. It isn’t a surprise. I’ve long known that my iPhone pre-formats such a signature. But for some reason it struck me last night how incredibly smart it is for Apple and Blackberry and the likes to have such default signatures on their devices. After all, what better way to get some additional free advertising !
It was then that I decided to do a little experiment. I asked everyone to send me an email with the words, “What device am I using?” in the subject line and nothing in the message box. I figured that way I could quickly see the various signatures everyone uses. The results were… interesting.
There were a few people who didn’t follow the rules. They weren’t supposed to send anything other than the subject line and yet there were messages. For instance, there was this from Wayne…
For the most part, however, everyone played along and followed the rules. And as a result, I got to see a variety of signatures.
The most boring of them came from Judie and Doug. Neither HAS a signature. It’s perfectly understandable with regard to Judie since, from day to day, or even from minute to minute, you never quite know what device she’s using. One minute it is a yet unreleased HTC handset and the next it is a $20,000, platinum encrusted, one of a kind, hand-tooled phone that also launches missiles. Why Doug has no signature, well, that is anyone’s guess.
Next in line for most boring was a three way tie between Larry, Adrian and me. Our devices simply offer that standard, stock message “Sent from my iPhone” or “Sent from my Blackberry“. The most informative signature came from Clinton. His signature looks like this.
Now, it’s simple enough to change the signature that goes out with our email but for the most part, we don’t. For some of us, it’s simply laziness… we think, “Why bother?” For others still it may be a status thing to indicate that it was sent using an iPhone or BlackBerry. Others, however, may not realize how simple it is to change it. (On an iPhone go to “Settings”, “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”, scroll down to “Signature”, tap and change what is there.”
Then I got to thinking, why not change my signature to something more “interesting” and I had a few thoughts such as this
or this
or this.
Do you have an unusual, custom signature for your phone? If so — Show Us Your Sig!
