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One of the cool things about writing the Death By books was researching what happens when people die. Don't get me wrong - I'm not a serial killer at heart. I just found the whole dead body thing to be very interesting.

As I dug into researching various methods of murder, I discovered all sorts of fun and gruesome facts. In Death by Bikini, for example, I planned to leave my victim dead on the beach, strangled by the strings of her bikini top. While researching what the results of strangulation might look like, I came across an interesting article about a man who had strangled his wife and then stuck her body in the bathtub to make it looked like she had drowned. Investigators quickly disproved his story because of little pinpoint red marks called petechiae they found on the wife's face and eyes. Petechiae are the result of blood leaking from the capillaries, which could be caused by the extreme pressure of strangulation, but would not be present from drowning.

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Recently, I've seen a number of plucky black-and-white tv ads from Sprint featuring CEO Dan Hesse. The campaign offers people the opportunity to come into any Sprint PCS store and learn how to use one of their smart phones. You can even take advantage of this offer - presumably - if you already have a Sprint phone.

Wow! Someone finally figure out that customers don't always intuitively know how to use key features of their smart phones, or PDA's! Too bad this golden idea probably comes too late for Sprint to claw back the market share it's lost in the past few years.

In 1878, Thomas Edison invented the carbon button microphone that became the first commercially successful telephone transmitter. And Sprint, 130 years later, is finally learning one of Edison's key lessons for successful marketing, taken from Edison innovation Competency #5: Super-value Creation.

Thomas Edison knew that he could only build a successful brand if his customers understood the "utility" of what they were buying. He said, "...utility is success." Edison realized that if a customer didn't understand how to use what he or she was purchasing from him, it would be much tougher to convince them to buy the Edison brand again in the future.

» Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor will discuss why she wrote a book about her journey from a debilitating stroke to full recovery.

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» Read more about My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight, Podcast, brain, human consciousness