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Working in marketing, a huge part of your job is to stay on top of what's going on in our clients' industries, innovations and what people are talking about. Around the office, I'm always hearing tidbits of someone fired up about a new service that just launched, a really cool new Web site that's making life easier, or on something they're just plain excited about.

Here are a few of things that have got our attention lately:

• Dapper: Dapper allows you to take data from a Web site and put it into a given format (RSS feeds, Google Maps, e-mail, HMTL, etc). Personally, I use it to turn keyword searches on The New York Times Web site into RSS feeds. For instance, you can learn every time The New York Times reports on a company you're investing in, your town, your client—whatever you're interested in! For me, it's a great way to keep tabs on when top-tier journalists are writing on stuff I care about.

• Greenprint: Why print pages you don't have to—or want to? Greenprint makes it easy for you, saves money and helps the environment.

• Semantify: ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick just wrote about Semantify yesterday and we're eager to try it ourselves. From the same folks who bring you Dapper, it makes Web sites readable by semantic search engines.

Found anything really cool lately you want to share? I'd love to hear about it.

“The business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business."

This Peter Drucker quote has been well distributed and certainly is a favorite of most marketers. It is especially poignant as we all face what is certainly an economic slow down and quite possible a recession. All marketers worry that budgets will be sliced, jobs will be eliminated and more will be expected.

If this statement by Drucker is true – and embraced – then what do we have to worry about? Plenty. Most companies and CEOs don’t see marketing as their primary strategic weapon in a down economy. They typically add more sales people and decrease marketing.

I’ve worked through plenty of slow economies and recessions. Next time I have that anticipated meeting with the CEO regarding budget, I am bringing my friend Drucker with me.