Ford recalls F-series pickups, Edge, Lincoln MKX - Yahoo! News

Speaking of things that are scary...

Ford recalls F-series pickups, Edge, Lincoln MKX - Yahoo! News

Editors note- the only reason I posted this in such fashion is because I was testing out Blogger's Chrome extension 'Blog This.'  I've said it before and I'll say it again; the open source platform and app environment on Google Chrome is hands down the most efficient and groundbreaking browser in the market.  I challenge anyone to bring me one better.

A Quick Splash of Thought; Find My iPhone Is Awesome, Scary

I haven't downloaded 'Find My iPhone' yet. I will no doubt get it, because I do whatever it is Apple tells me (it's not my fault, I'm a twenty-something and their advertising helps me decide).

I'm not sure why, but thinking about it this morning, I'm extra aware that they know exactly where I am considering my phone is always on me. Obviously the GPS functionality of every other app can let Apple and all my advertising buddies know that I'm still in bed when I should be working. And yet, this morning it makes me nervous. This is like the first time I explained to my mother what behavioral targeting was and she swore off the internet forever.

2011 Forecast For Rants

The pace will pick up, and the opinions will heighten. This year, I commit to being smarter and more intuitive. Bam.

San Francisco's Dogpatch Biofuels Showcase

As a huge supporter of the Green movement, from home products to commercial production in sustainable fashion, it's always important to pay respect to the people pushing this movement forward. Everyday I park my car right outside of Dogpatch Biofuels before I jump on the train, and I finally was able to pull together some research on who they are and what they do.

The long and short of it, they are San Francisco's ONLY public biodiesel filling station. They carry B100 biodiesel from local and recycled sources, and also host a residential cooking oil collection site on behalf of San Francisco Greasecycle. [the latter is a sub-division of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission]

Having been started by two ordinary citizen who wanted to take part in the weening off of foreign oil and products, DB was recently taken over by Incredible Adventures, a Bay Area touring company that powers their entire fleet on biodiesel.

Here's a quick tour of the location, and be sure to head over to http://www.dogpatchbiofuels.com/ for more info:

'Your Circle of Control'

A phenomenal piece today in "The Drift" about how to be the most effective sales partner you can be. This knowledge goes outside the digital marketing space...

As I talk to digital sellers about their hopes and wishes for the coming year, one theme continually emerges: Control. Digital sellers worry a lot about a myriad of players, factors, decisions and technological forces over which they have absolutely no control. They fill out blind RFPs that they may or may not hear back on; they read in the trades about how trading desks and demand platforms will automate them out of their jobs; they wonder whether Google or Facebook be making a decision today that marginalizes their sales strategy tomorrow.

Enough.

To succeed in 2011 you need a strategy that’s rooted in certainty, not one based on hope, fear or speculation. In my workshops over the past few weeks I’ve been offering what I call the “Circle of Control” to keep sellers rooted in certainty. Stay focused on these five areas and you will create opportunity, get better information, know where you stand and create bigger, more durable relationships with your most important customers.

This week, The Drift is underwritten by Crowd Control from Lotame, the premier audience data management platform for publishers. Take control of your audience data to get larger budgets and win more business. Learn more at www.lotame.com/thedrift.

Orientation: The first area of control is all about what direction you’re facing and where you start your process. Do you begin with a customer need in mind, or with your own need to “move product?” Are you out to really make a difference or are you just one more rep out to get a piece of the plan? This step is nothing but a gut check about whether your out to do something real and meaningful or just take dollars. Get it right; if not, it’s all very tough to fake.

Ambition: Many reps say they want to do big programs for their customers. But when they get up to the plate they choke up on the bat and try desperately to bunt or hit singles. Be ambitious: align with customer business outcomes instead of the narrow agenda of the media planner. Instead of just talking about getting your share of the budget, start discussing how you can help the agency create more budget.

Preparation: Most sales are won or lost after 10:30 at night. Not in a bar, but over a laptop, where one sales rep is outworking and out-thinking another. But it’s not enough to simply work hard and prepare more: you’ve got to prepare the right stuff. Focus your prep on genuine consumer behavior and value creation. Forget the numbers, offer up some anthropology. Prepare to be interesting, but above all prepare to be interested. Your own curiosity should be the driver here if your orientation is real.

Approach: I like to say that most reps overvalue the meeting and undervalue all that leads up to it. They assume that since their e-mails don’t elicit replies they must be having no effect. Nothing could be further from the truth. Think about your approach — from initial e-mail to the opening minutes of the meeting itself — as one long campaign focused on creating a genuine picture of the value you’ll truly bring to the table.

Return of Value: I wrote about this concept in a recent Drift post, but it bears repeating. Simply put, “return of value” asks “how are you rewarding the customer for doing business with you?” Are you focused on great service, transparency? Are you taking personal responsibility for communication and troubleshooting in the relationship? Are you doing the work to make your customer smarter? Are you bringing them together with other great people and ideas? Those narrowly focused on “the numbers” miss the point here: Marketers are not lacking for one more place to drop their ads, but they don’t have nearly enough smart, committed, genuine people they can rely on. Be one yourself and you will be rewarded a hundred times over.

Happy holidays to all my friends, collaborators and readers. May 2011 be the most personally satisfying and rewarding year you’ve ever had.

Hulu Holds Off On IPO

So Hulu says it's foregoing an IPO to push harder on their subscription model, which is their current Hulu Plus offering ($7.99 for access to extra content libraries, as well the opportunity to watch on your mobile device or connected TV). As an avid Hulu user but non-subscriber, I find one very interesting point in Hulu's statement in the Wall Street Journal below, "subscriptions may allow the site to distribute material is currently doesn't offer. What that content is, the paper's sources couldn't say."

So they are counting on a new subscription model, but they don't know what the content is? Um, ok. So what am I paying for? I personally take a Netlix subscription over Hulu Plus any day, but that's just me.



courtesy WSJ...
While Hulu, the premium video destination has been mulling over the idea of an IPO since August, it has quietly tabled the idea. According to a report in today's Wall Street Journal, Hulu is instead looking at other ways to raise revenue.

Citing unnamed sources, the paper says that Hulu's board shelved the idea for an initial public offering (IPO) because of concerns that Hulu doesn't have long-term rights to the content is shows online.

Instead, Hulu may look to subscription offerings beyond the recently-introduced Hulu Plus. These subscriptions may allow the site to distribute material is currently doesn't offer. What that content is, the paper's sources couldn't say.

Additionally, Hulu may raise funds by getting its existing owners to put in more money.

The Hulu Plus service goes for $7.99 per month, down from $9.99 per month during the preview period. Hulu is already aggressive about raising revenue. As a recent report from comScore showed, the site streamed 1.1 billion video ads in November, making it the top site for video ads. Its viewers averaged 42.4 ads per person. Hulu shows ads even on Hulu Plus content.

According to the Journal, Hulu is outperforming the company's expectations for paid subscribers. In a recent interview, Jason Kilar, Hulu's CEO, said the site was generating "material" revenue, and will earn $260 million in revenue for 2010.

Today's FCC Ruling On Protecting Internet Traffic

FCC chairperson Julius Genachowski

The FCC officially ruled today in favor of a protective piece of legislation, basically stating that internet service provider's (ISPs) cannot interfere with the content and/or traffic flow of their customers.  The idea being that an AT&T customer might be getting blocked from accessing Comcast content, or a similar situation.  The truth is, this is a bit of something out of nothing.  Has anyone ever faced a situation where they couldn't access certain content, or faced extremely low web speeds due to interference from their ISP?  I don't think so.

To quote the AP - "Known as "net neutrality," the rules prohibit phone and cable companies from favoring or discriminating against Internet content and services, such as those from rivals."

"The rules require broadband providers to let subscribers access all legal online content, applications and services over their wired networks — including online calling services, Internet video and other Web applications that compete with their core businesses. But the rules give broadband providers flexibility to manage data on their systems to deal with problems such as network congestion and unwanted traffic including spam as long as they publicly disclose their network management practices."

As I said, I do believe in a completely free and protected Internet environment (I wouldn't work online if I didn't).  I do think this battle was a bit more smoke and mirrors than they are letting on.  The Internet needs to be untethered and in the consumer's hand to shape and mold.  But I do agree with the Conservative opinion in this case, which is this type legislation might slow ISPs from trying to build out comprehensive strategies to incite their customers with content and package upgrades.

Full story here...http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101221/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_fcc_internet_rules.

2010 US Census Says There Are Lots of Us

Here's the summary of below; population rate is slowing down by all accounts due to lower immigration numbers.  Women are popping at babies at about 2 apiece.  One interesting line in the story...."India's technicians and engineers who came here sent word back home that it's hard now," Haub added. "The IT industry is not the golden goose it's been in the past."  SO perhaps we are holding onto our technical positions more strongly than we were in the past?  Interesting position considering the struggles of our education system.  This is worth a second look.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The population of the United States grew 9.7% to 308.7 million people over the past decade -- the slowest rate of growth since the Great Depression -- the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday.

In the 1930s, the population grew by just 7.3%. Comparatively, the nation added 13.2% more residents during the 1990s.

This is the first time the Census Bureau has released data from the population surveys filled out earlier this year. And the counts include everyone -- not just citizens or legal immigrants.

"The mandate is to count everyone living in the United States," said a Census Bureau spokeswoman.

The U.S. Constitution charges the Census Bureau with the task of counting residents every 10 years to track population shifts in the country. And the law requires the Census to report the official population counts -- both national and by state -- to the President before Jan. 1. The numbers are used to apportion Congressional seats.

The winners are concentrated in two of the nation's four regions: Both the West and the South experienced double-digit growth rates, 14.3% in the South, already the most heavily populated region, and 13.8% in the West. The Midwest and the Northeast grew 3.2%

Nevada was the fastest growing state over the decade, followed by Arizona and Utah. Michigan was the big loser, with Rhode Island, Ohio and Louisiana also lagging badly.

Growth comes from both live births and immigration -- and births are down and fewer people have been moving to the United States.

The fertility rate of the United States is nearly 2.1 children per woman, just about the natural replacement rate, according to data from the United Nations World Population Prospects. That is down from the baby-boom years, when it hit a peak of 3.7, but above most developed countries.

And the recent recession resulted in a slowing immigration rate, according to Carl Haub, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington-based non-profit. "The population growth rate drop is largely because of a couple percentage point dip in immigration," he said.

"India's technicians and engineers who came here sent word back home that it's hard now," Haub added. "The IT industry is not the golden goose it's been in the past."

Despite the slowdown, the nation's growth rate is much higher than most developed countries. The populations of Japan and Germany, for example, are in decline, while France and the United Kingdom are growing at a rate of 5% per decade.

Google TV Struggling; Yanked From CES

Here's just another story regaling the struggles of Google TV.  Highlights include complex user interface, lack of top quality content (see networks not wanting to release TV episodes), and overall confusion on it's capabilities to laymen users.

Says NYT...

From Sharp to LG, top TV makers were planning to unveil Google TV-enabled devices at The Consumer Electronics Show next month. In light of poor reviews, however, Google has reportedly asked that they keep quiet for now.

"The late request caught some of the manufacturers off guard," reports The New York Times. "And it illustrates the struggles Google faces as it tries to expand into the tricky, unfamiliar realm of consumer electronics, and drum up broad interest in a Web-based TV product that consumers want."

"Conventional wisdom on Google TV: Not ready for prime time," notes MediaMemo, adding: "Google apparently agrees."

"The search giant is re-tooling the software to address the concerns of reviewers and early adopters citing the complexity of the software, its inconsistent interface, and the lack of top content as problems with adoption," writes Fortune, joking: "Surprisingly, people don't want to use a full-size keyboard as a remote in the living room."

"Google TV was supposed to be one of the stars of the show at the Consumer Electronics Show next month in Las Vegas," writes VentureBeat. "But the star just got the hook."

Another minor issue with Google TV, as eWeek notes, is that "Google has also found its service blocked from accessing Websites from CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox as the networks were leery of allowing Google to server their content for free."

Meanwhile, analysts tell The Times that Google's sudden change of plans reflects a weakness in the company's business culture around managing relationships with partners. "Google as a company is not a particularly partner-friendly or partner-focused company," says Forrester's James McQuivey.

Barnes and Noble Made An iPad For Kids; Meet The Nookcolor

In keeping pace in the tablet game, B&N has no interest in letting Apple, Amazon, or Sony have all the fun (read iPad, Kindle, and Dash respectively).

Barnes and Noble is taking on a whole new market for the tablet game, and it's the most fascinated audience for pictures and colors and touchy things.  Yes, B&N made a tablet specifically for kids, at least thats what the advertising would lead you to believe.  The Nookcolor is using kids in it's advertising as a way to show off the simplicity of the gadget, and the interactivity of animated cats and dogs.  The site page itself actually promotes the reader as a way to connect with magazine and old books, but god forbid the advertising should actually connect with whats on the product homepage (READ disconnect between kids in your ads and Vogue magazine as your lead publishing partner).

Major Weekend Headlines; DADT, North Korea Backing Down, And I Get New Shoes

The 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' repeal was easily the biggest piece of news over the weekend.  And it's about damn time.  The folks who are saying this will now cause a distraction with their armed forces is high.  I'm not doubting that there will be some redneck officer who is going to start some trouble with an openly gay soldier, but I'm going to guess those incidents will be few and far between.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/19/darrah.dadt.repeal/index.html

North Korea is lowering their arms momentarily after making a public statement, saying they would NOT be attacking South Korea over alleged drilling conflicts.  Days ago N.K. took the opposite opinion and said they would keep up the current hostility, but my guess is they got distracted when Kim Jong found something else to look at:
http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/

Personal highlight...was gifted a pair of Clae Strayhorn, half sneaker half work functional.  The best of both worlds.

Arsenal Draw Barcelona in The Champions League Knockout Stages

2006 Champions League Final, a day Arsenal fans will remember forever as the day Barca beat our beloved Gunners in the dying moments of le' grande finale.

Last season, quarter-finals, Barca again emerge victorious yet again.

Well it is now retribution time.  The two have been paired again.  Speaking on the draw, Arsene Wenger is being careful with his words it seems...

"My reaction is very simple - difficult but possible," Arsene Wenger told Arsenal's official website. "I didn't want anybody really, in that all teams would have been difficult. You could have said that Schalke - a team with less history in the Champions League - would have been easier maybe, but the advantage is that we will be on our toes and we'll be ready.

"Revenge is not on my mind. We want to qualify and we want to knock them out. So is it difficult? Yes. Is it possible? Yes.

"Barcelona are certainly the favourites [for the competition] and a famous team but, on their side, they did not want us either because they know they will get a game. I think we are better than last year and we have a good opportunity to show that."

Microsoft and Diddy Teaming Up?

Microsoft and Sean P. Diddy Combs launched a social media holiday campaign this week to get fans involved with giving away thousands of dollars to charities by deciding the beneficiaries without costing them a dime.

For seven days, Sean Combs, also known as P. Diddy, will use Tag to share exclusive content with fans through a link via Twitter and Facebook. More than 3 million Twitter followers and oodles of Facebook Fans also will participate in the giveaway of $10,000 per day for five days. Proceeds will go to five charities.

Diddy uses Twitter to promote the exclusive giveaway, tweeting to followers how to find the content, scan the Tag, and unlock the gift via smartphone, either iPhone, Android, BlackBerry or Windows.

The campaign -- created for Microsoft by Izea, a social media marketing company -- gives $50,000 to charity for twelve days. During the remaining five days, those scanning tags have an opportunity to vote on how thousands of dollars are divvied up to charities.

Izea CEO Ted Murphy, who is responsible for getting Diddy on board, says Tag can more accurately read results and gather backend data compared with a QR code. He calls it the "biggest campaign of its kind" where tweets are sent through a sponsorship in a social media platform.

Marketers can build rules into the platform that only allow each individual to phone scan a tag once hourly to vote for a charity. For each day during the five, site visitors will see a list of three charities to choose from. At the end of the day, Diddy announces the winner. "We're happy to support charitable giving," says Jeff Somers, director of marketing at Microsoft.

Microsoft Tag -- a slightly different technology than QR codes, another 2D barcode -- works in color or custom code images. The technology, which lives within Microsoft's startup and incubator business group, lets marketers continually change the code on the fly to point the URL in another direction, so designers need not hardcode the URL into the campaign. That flexibility aims to encourage testing and increase the lure for marketers.

As for metrics, Tag's backend platform tracks device IDs, so it recognizes the phone type and when the user engages with the tag. This lets marketers create campaigns targeting specific phones. The backend infrastructure, designed as an end-to-end solution, allows marketers to collect data every time a phone engages with a tag. On the backend, a heat map identifies the location of the scans, as more location-based data is built and pulled into platforms.

Mark Zuckerberg is Time's 2010 Person Of The Year

While this sounds like big fancy news, we should remember that in a reader poll on Time.com, Zuck actually finished 10th behind the likes of Obama and the Chilean miners.  Not saying he isn't worthy, but it is interesting when a nation of reader's thinks your are the 10th most important, and than the publishers of said magazine comeback and say no no, he is number 1.  Facebook rules the world, we get it.

[excerpt]

On the afternoon of Nov. 16, 2010, Mark Zuckerberg was leading a meeting in the Aquarium, one of Facebook's conference rooms, so named because it's in the middle of a huge work space and has glass walls on three sides so everybody can see in. Conference rooms are a big deal at Facebook because they're the only places anybody has any privacy at all, even the bare minimum of privacy the Aquarium gets you. Otherwise the space is open plan: no cubicles, no offices, no walls, just a rolling tundra of office furniture. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's COO, who used to be Lawrence Summers' chief of staff at the Treasury Department, doesn't have an office. Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO and co-founder and presiding visionary, doesn't have an office.

The team was going over the launch of Facebook's revamped Messages service, which had happened the day before and gone off without a hitch or rather without more than the usual number of hitches. Zuckerberg kept the meeting on track, pushing briskly through his points — no notes or whiteboard, just talking with his hands — but the tone was relaxed. Much has been made of Zuckerberg's legendarily awkward social manner, but in a room like this, he's the Silicon Valley equivalent of George Plimpton. He bantered with Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, a director of engineering who ran the project. (Boz was Zuckerberg's instructor in a course on artificial intelligence when they were at Harvard. He says his future boss didn't do very well. Though, in fairness, Zuckerberg did invent Facebook that semester.) Apart from a journalist sitting in the corner, no one in the room looked over 30, and apart from the journalist's public relations escort, it was boys only.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036683_2037183,00.html

Hugh Jackman, Oprah, And A High Speed Zipline Crash

You can't plan this stuff folks. The well liked Hugh Jackman decides to get all Aussie bad-ass on us by zip lining into Oprah's show in Sydney the other day. Little did he know, he would soon make internet video headlines...

All reports say Jackman is fine besides some glass in his eye. Apparently he recovered from his fall with a funny one liner about the heat and a few graceful pats on the butt from Oprah.

Ancient Pot of Soup Found in China; Apparently This Is News

A soup made 2,400 years ago was discovered in a tomb near where the terracotta army was discovered and near where the first emperor of China was buried, according to NTDTV.

The soup was made of bones, discovered in a bronze three-legged cauldron and found in a tomb in Xian, Shaanxi Province.

"It's the earliest-known discovery of its kind in Shaanxi Province," Liu Daiyun of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology said. "There isn't any report on similar archaeological findings that are earlier than this in the nation."

The soup was still liquid, but not edible. The liquid had turned green due to oxidation from the bronze cauldron and scientists say they will do more tests to see if the liquid was, in fact, soup.

"We discovered the left ribs of a cow next to the broken containers," Liu told AsiaOne. The cauldron is around eight inches high and 10 inches in diameter.
According to NTDTV, the tomb where the vessel was located is believed to have been that of a military officer. Archaeologists also found other vessels in nearby tombs but they were broken and did not contain much liquid inside.

In 1974, archaeologists found the now-famed terracotta army in tombs near Xian near the first emperor Qin Shi Huang's grave. Xian, formerly known as Chang'an, was the capital of China for more than 1,100 years.

"It's the first discovery of bone soup in Chinese archaeological history. The discovery will play an important role in studying the eating habits and culture of the Warring States Period (475BC– 221BC)," Liu told state-run The Global Times.

The Warring States period was a time when warlords took over and the country was deeply divided until the first emperor was said to have unified the country.

Several years ago, archaeologists discovered a pot of soup with noodles believed to be 4,000 years old near the Yellow River.

'Transformers: Dark Of The Moon' Looks Cool

I'm not a huge fan of the Transformer's live action flicks (enjoyed the first, didn't see the second). However, I do love a good conspiracy story that twists famous events into the mix. Enter the third Transformer's and Neil Armstrong's moon landing in 1969....

'The Kids Are Alright,' A Barcelona Tribute Piece

Before I say anything, you must read Phil Ball's fantastic look into the youth academy at Barcelona through the stories of three of the world's premier footballers (also the three players in line to win this years Ballon d'Or); Xavi, Andres Iniesta, and Lionel Messi. I'll wait for you to get back...

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=852733&sec=europe&root=europe&cc=5901

For those that didn't read, it's about the strength of the Barcelona youth academy, the top stars it's churned out, and the mental rigors this type environment places on teenagers. In America, we don't have this system in place because A) we aren't looking for the next Maradona within our ranks (the next Kobe maybe) and B) the American sports system isn't setup for an 18 year old star to emerge. Save for the Lebron's of the world, American superstar athletes are expected to emerge after a steady high school and college career.

To the untrained eye (and some trained), Landon Donovan is the best American soccer player the red white and blue have today. We should recall that he followed the European model, Donovan moved to Germany to join powerhouse Bayern Leverkusen at 17. He fanned out due to home sickness (not unlike the Barcelona stars in Ball's ESPN piece), but the long term success of his career still proves out the early sacrifices he made.

In the great ranks of European football, the sacrifice to become the best starts at a young age, and there is no room for slip ups. While success might come as a sacrifice to youth, those that make it out and become the Messi's of the world are proof in the system.

Starbucks Leads Foursquare Rankings For The Most Check-Ins

Random stat of the day, but what's most interesting to me is that Target and Wal-Mart are numbers 3 & 4 respectively. Maybe middle-America has a higher smart phone adoption rate than we expected?

From Trendrr...
You might suspect that the caffeine-driven check-ins that keep Starbucks at the top of our weekly look at Foursquare check-ins come from the centers of coffee-drinking America like New York and Seattle. Indeed New York tops the list for raw check-ins (followed by Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Boston and Chicago), but if you scale the check-ins based on population some surprising markets emerge. Leading the ranks of per-capita check-ins is Charlottesville, Va., followed by Washington, D.C., Austin and North Platte, Neb. We'll guess you didn't see that one coming.

(We're producing this exclusive chart with our editorial partner Trendrr, the real-time business intelligence tracking service created by New York digital agency Wiredset. This chart is updated each Monday morning and reflects the seven-day period ending Saturday night at midnight, Eastern Standard Time.)

'Do Not Track' Could Revolutionize Online Ad Industry

Really interesting perspective on the hottest topic on the online ad game today, FTC vs IAB (aka government vs online ad community). Great find by my boy Mintzer.

Here's my usual points on this topic:

1) Do you have a credit card? Great, they know more than we do. Do you really care if someone knows you are trying to buy a TV?

2) The onus is on major sites to protect their information and use it wisely. This ethical business practice is no different than the way any other professional sector works. Act fairly, and the economic and social rewards will come. E.g. ESPN gives users site feature access in trade for user info. Very very positive move.

3) Give users a chance to view who's tracking their behavior and give them control mechanisms. I don't think customers want out of tracking, I think they just want to understand how it's done and why.

Do Not Track could revolutionize online ad industry - USATODAY.com

Arsenal vs. Manchester United; A Day of Reckoning

C'mon you Gunners!!!

Arsenal vs. Manchester United; A Day of Reckoning

C'mon you Gunners!!!

Fourteen Actors Acting; A Video Gallery of Classic Screen Types

The New York Times Magazine has put together a fantastic video series, in which 14 of todays best actors doing just that, acting. From Jesse Eisenberg re-enacting the slow motion gunshot, to James Franco doing the introspective mirror conversation, this setup is brilliant. Oh, and there are no words. When you see the actors speaking, their sound is muted thanks to the overlayed composed tracks by Owen Pallett.

I absolutely love Matt Damon's street fight improv...http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/12/12/magazine/14actors.html?hp#index.

(the player is not embeddable so you'll have to click through to the site.

Google Chrome App Market Is Awesome

Google Chrome has been getting all kinds of press recently as they continue to develop their OS. I've been a Mac user my whole life, but would seriously consider a PC for personal use if this OS comes to fruition. I use Chrome as my browser and the app functionality really blows me away. Take the above Gilt Group app for example...it mimics the functionality of the iPhone/iPad app that Gilt built and it takes full advantage of the visual space allotted by the browser. It's this type functionality that is totally changing the way we view a browser, and more importantly, the way designers and developers look at the browser and OS landscape.

In theory, if the app market continues to grow, I'm willing to bet certain brands move their emphasis from an engaging destination site to a fully functional app. Gilt Groupe is the perfect example; looking at the app, and understanding this is a retail company, why would they ever need a site when an app is so much easier to develop and manage?

AdAge's Viral Video Chart of The Week Revives Lebron and Nike

"Rise" by Nike was hands down one of th best creative spots I've seen in the past year or so. Wieden Kennedy continues to outwit and out-create their competition. I especially have a soft spot this week because two nights ago, I finally watched "More Than A Game." For those out of the loop, MTAG is a documentary filmed during Lebron James' senior year of high school, and tells the story of how he and his three best friends culminated a decade of playing together at the high school basketball national championships. While that description might paint a sports story, what you get is much much more. It's a story of boys to men, of race and city divisions, of father and son, and of the long pursuit of glory.

Anyhoo...Lebron is back on top of AdAge's Viral Video Chart. So check it out:

Could It Be? iPad 2 In The Next 100 Days?

says CrunchGear...

According to Digitimes, Foxconn factories are currently assembling iPads 2 for shipment within the next “100 days” which, by my calculations, puts the ship date at around February/March or, if WolframAlpha is to be believed, March 17, 2011.

Foxconn is said to be preparing 400,000-600,000 units for sale. If this is true, we can expect a press conference in mid-January and a release date of February or March, which is line with Apple’s traditional start-of-year releases. It looks like CES (January 4-9th) is about to be spoiled.

As far as we can tell, the iPad 2 will have a front-facing camera made by Largan Precision and potentially a more iPhone-esque styling as suggested by this fake mock-up, below.

Well This Will Make You Sick....Highest Paid Reality Stars of 2010

I employ anyone to find me real value in what it is these people do.

Courtesy of US Magazine

1. Kim Kardashian: $6 million

2. Lauren Conrad: $5 million

3. Bethenny Frankel: $4 million

4. Audrina Patridge: $3.5 million

5. Kate Gosselin: $3.5 million

6. Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino: $3 million

7. Khloe Kardashian: $2.5 million

8. Kourtney Kardashian: $2.5 million

9. DJ Pauly D: $2 million

10. Kendra Wilkinson: $2 million

Arkitektive Builds New Agency Model, But You Won't Find It On Madison Avenue

Great stuff from a group of really strategic thinkers...

Courtesy of Mediapost

At a time when advertising seems as if it is becoming consolidated among Madison Avenue's big agency holding companies, a group of free-spirited, entrepreneurial and fiercely independent agencies are banding together to form what may be the industry's first "un-holding company." In fact, that's part of the language the new collective, dubbed Arkitektive, is using to describe what it does, and how it is unlike any organization spawned on, or by Madison Avenue before.
Operating out of the San Francisco offices of Catalyst SF, the fast-growing digital strategy agency launched in 2007 by Carat renegades Cory Treffiletti and John Durham, Arkitektive is more like a loose confederation of complementary and non-competing marketing services agencies than it is a holding company. The logic behind it, Treffiletti told Online Media Daily, is to replicate the same kind of scale and array of marketing services to enable a collective of "best in breed" shops to compete with the biggest companies on Madison Avenue. Symbolically, he said, none of those companies are actually based in New York, though many, including Catalyst, have offices there.

In addition to Catalyst, Arkitektive's charter agencies include:

* MEA Digital, an analytics-based digital branding shop based in San Diego with offices in New York.
* Hub Strategy, another smallish San Francisco-based digital strategy shop.
* New and Improved Media, an El Segundo, CA-based media services agency.
* WIT Strategy, a Philadelphia-based PR firm specializing in technology and digital media with offices in New York.

Treffiletti said many of the principals of the core group have worked together in the past, but that the confederation would ultimately expand to include other complementary marketing, advertising and media shops that have good chops, but lack the scale to compete with the "big boys."

"We have the chemistry, and the scale to go out and pitch larger pieces of business that we could not have gone after before," he said, adding that the model would benefit both the participating agencies, as well as potential clients, who would have the same ability to mix and match the best collection of marketing services shops, but without the overhead costs baked into big agency holding companies.

"We don't have that top layer of overhead that has to be paid for by a client," said Michael Chaney, another renegade of big Madison Avenue agencies who is now CEO of MEA Digital.

Operationally, Chaney said Arkitektive allows a marketer to pick the services that matter most for their business and brands, and to pay only for them. While Arkitektive will share certain back-office, research and administrative functions for cost efficiency purposes, none of those costs would be paid for by clients, who will be billed only for the direct marketing services the Arkitektive members provide.

Another big advantage of the model, Chaney said, is that all of the principals of the Arkitektive member companies are still 100% vested in their own operations, an incentive most of Madison Avenue's big agency holding companies cannot replicate, thought Canada's MDC Partners, at least utilizes a model that ensures the principals of its agencies retain minority stakes in their businesses.

Treffiletti estimated that the collective begins with an aggregate base of more than $100 million in capitalized billings, which is still relatively tiny compared to the billions billed by Madison Avenue's big holding companies, but he boasted that would change fast, and predicted that Arkitektive would have its first collective new business win by the end of the year.

Facebook Revamps Profile Page PART II

Here's an equally boring video on the Facebook update...

Facebook Revamps Profile Page

This isn’t breaking news by any means, but Facebook’s recent revamp of the profile page has left me completely reaction-less. It’s not really that exciting. There isn’t anything in the design update that affects the business model, or leads them to any new advertising opportunity. They just changed the page.

Charlene Li, founder of digital consulting firm Altimeter wrote "I do expect there to be significant push back from Facebook members, both because of the interface changes as well as the new social dynamics that will need to be gotten used to. And of course, privacy will always remain a valid and pressing concern."

The only thing I can see causing an issue is having certain photos popping up on your profile page that you didn’t want. In theory, you should just be de-tagging those nasty head shots anyway. Halloween is way over, get those pics off your page.

'NBA Jam' Is Back With A Social Media Twist

BOOMSHAKALAKA! I remember yelling it in my sleep as a kid, regaling the hours of 'NBA Jam' that consumed me day after day. The legendary arcade basketball game has officially made it's return (and includes original announcer Tim Kitzrow spouting off our favorite one liners like "he's on fire!!").

To jumpstart the games re-entry into the market, David Le, Director of Marketing for EA Sports, worked with Funny or Die to shoot a spoof on the timeless rivalry of uncle vs. nephew in a video game battle royale. Honestly, I think the short is boring, but the games return was enough to make me sit through all three minutes...

Uncle Boomshakalaka! - watch more funny videos

Whiskey Producers Using Factory Refuse As Clean Energy

Brown liquor and renewable energy, these are a few of my favorite things...

The Scottish island of Islay is home to some of the world's most prestigious whisky brands. But power cuts disrupt production so often that one of the distilleries is now transforming distillery waste into green energy.

GiddyUp; A Google Green Welcome Back

Today’s the day we bring it back. As per usual, I go off the radar and then come back with a new burst of energy. Well here’s the rebirth part VII. Smarter, fast, stronger. Oooorah.

Let's come back with a great interview from two of Google's leading Green execs....

Google Inc. often strays from its core mission of organizing the world's information online.
But investing in green, or renewable, energy is the company's most prominent real-world endeavor.


Google Inc.
Bill Weihl, left, and Rick Needham

In addition to reducing its own "carbon footprint" through solar panels atop its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, and increasing the energy efficiency of its data centers, Google's initiatives include developing technology that could cut the cost of building solar thermal power plants. It developed software that shows consumers how much energy they use at home and invested more than $85 million in early-stage solar thermal, wind and geothermal tech companies. It just signed a landmark 20-year contract to buy energy from a wind farm in Iowa, where Google has a data center. And the company got attention earlier this fall by announcing a multimillion-dollar investment in a planned offshore wind-energy project called the Atlantic Wind Connection.
The Wall Street Journal sat down with Bill Weihl, Google's green energy czar, and Rick Needham, green operations business chief, to talk about Google's investments in the wind market and solar technology. Here are edited excerpts of the conversation.

Riding the Wind

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Why do you make investments in wind projects that won't directly result in cheaper energy prices for Google?

MR. WEIHL: Our goal is to solve long-term problems in the world or set the company up for long-term growth. We took a risk around our data centers to improve energy efficiency, and that panned out really well. We experiment in investments, like with the Atlantic Wind Connection. There's a risk there, and all sorts of reasons why that project might stall at some point. But it could be very catalytic, enabling enormous innovation. Some projects may fail, but venture capitalists do that all the time.

MR. NEEDHAM: We thought, "There are a lot of capital constraints for getting good projects built. Why don't we give more capital?" We've made two investments and are in the midst of looking at several deals. The first investment we did was a tax equity deal in a North Dakota wind farm for $39 million, where we get tax credits as part of the investment.… There aren't a lot of tax equity investments anymore. Ours was the first such deal in 18 months.

WSJ: Do you think about your return on investment?
MR. NEEDHAM: Yes. We don't share ROI publicly, but the returns are good enough that we're willing to invest.
WSJ: Why did you sign a power purchase agreement with a wind farm in Iowa?
MR. WEIHL: The wind PPA [power purchase agreement] is not an investment. We made a 20-year commitment to buy [electricity] from that wind farm. That's very different from how people buy energy credits. This is the only way realistically for a developer to have the certainty of a contract with a credit-worthy counterparty. They can get debt financing and free up money for another project.
For us, it's a hedge against rising energy prices over the long term. We're not disclosing details of the contract, but it starts out with a slow escalation [in price]. It's a much slower escalation than we would expect to see in the energy markets in general. For our data centers, we already have power contracts in place. So if we sign that power purchase agreement today, we're buying that power but we can't use it. We can sell the energy on the wholesale market.
This is a structure that not many other people thought about. Contractually it wasn't simple. There was a lot of work in sorting it out. But it will be easier for us the second time around.

Doing It With Mirrors
WSJ: Tell me about your solar thermal technology project.
MR. WEIHL: We're not yet ready to disclose details. The fundamentals are we're developing solar thermal power generation to concentrate the sun's rays and generate hundreds of megawatts through mirrors called heliostats.

WSJ: Can clean energy technology become a core business?
MR. WEIHL: We're not an energy company and don't have such ambitions, but we want to help drive technology. I think that in a couple of years, we'll have [solar thermal] technology ready to be commercialized. Most likely we'd license it to get it to market. Renewable-energy technology that competes head to head with coal without subsidies will make a lot of money.

WSJ: What roadblocks do other companies face in making their facilities energy-efficient?
MR. WEIHL: We have dozens of engineers working on it. In many organizations you find that the person who [runs] facilities and has that budget is different from the person who pays operating costs. At Google on the data-center side, [one person] owns facilities and the operational costs to run those facilities. They focus on the total cost of ownership.
They can say, "I'm going to build this thing to last for five or 10 years, what's the cost going to be?" In many companies those things don't happen.

WSJ: Which companies do you admire for their "green" work?
MR. WEIHL: Wal-Mart does a lot with cutting waste in their supply chain and packaging. They had an initiative to get their suppliers to report to the Carbon Disclosure Project, a reporting mechanism to measure their carbon footprint. They have 100,000 suppliers.
MR. NEEDHAM: Procter & Gamble. They have good goals. Like their development of Tide [laundry detergent] that works with cold water. And they're driving their supply chains to think about carbon and sustainability.

YouTube Live Streaming Starts at 8am PST

Well, for a two day test that is. YouTube has moved slowly into the live streaming. How do you think it will pan out?

Check out the schedule below to see if any of the programming tickles your fancy.

Are You A Seller Or A Marketer?

No no, don't get me wrong, one isn't better or worse than the other. I've been having a rash of conversations lately about sales style, sales strategy, sales tactics, sales, sales SALES. And I don't even think I consider myself a salesman. But I think we should all understand the distinction between the two types of people who do this day in day out. No matter what part of the digital business you play in, be it agency, publisher, tech vendor, or creative, we all sell something. So in my opinion, there are two types of salespeople:

1) The Salesman (or woman)
It's Alec Baldwin in Glengarry. It's Brian Dennehy in Tommy Boy. These cats can sell online ad space, fur coats, rich media, design elements, grape sodas and a bucket of chicken. They just have it. People inherently trust them and they listen to people's problems. A true sale is an unbelievable process to watch. It's action-reaction, it's quick thinking, it's knowing the asker's question before you even hear it. These people are pillars in the online ad game, and no matter where they go, they always have a book of business from people who KNOW they won't be steered wrong. These people are polished, structured, buttoned up. I envy these people.

2) The Marketer

Marketers don't just consider the final sale, they understand the marketing umbrella, and where advertising plays a role. They think about the brand, the product, the customer, the market, the competitors, the look, the feel, the taste (maybe?). A true marketer understands these pieces, and recognizes that sales is either a natural byproduct, or a necessary evil. Marketers fall on both sides of the supply-demand conversation in advertising. Some straddle that line and bounce back and forth based on their recent employment opportunity. For better or worse, these are tactical problem solvers, and consider the big picture.

Let me repeat; I don't consider one stronger than the other. And I'm not making a plea to be bucketed or to bucket anyone. I just wanted to talk about the difference and the importance of both in advertising.

So who are you?

Awesome New Eminem and Rhianna Song

I am indeed a sucker for a beautiful hook, well sung chorus, and tough Eminem verse....

Awesome U2 "With Or Without You" Cover on Joost

Sneak Peek: 'Inception'

Wow this looks awesome...

Wow, Tiger and Hank Haney Break Up?

Open Source Government In San Fran?

It was only a matter of time, but San Francisco has opened up it's information pipeline in a more accessible fashion to the fine residents of this city. For people in the ad biz, 'open source' is not a new term. A former client of mine is an open source platform for creatives. An advertiser can submit a proposal to an online community (a similar user interface to Facebook), and people from all over can collaborate to submit a project to the advertiser. A director from LA could find a guy with a green screen in Burbank, while their graphic designer for the new logo is in San Fran.

Wikipedia defines open source as "the creative practice of appropriation and free sharing of found and created content."

Long story short, the idea has come to the business of running SF....

courtesy Fast Company

It's a good thing Gavin Newsom checks his Twitter feed during meetings. Otherwise, San Francisco's mayor would've missed a life-changing missive about ... potholes? "It really made me wonder," he says. "What if we used social media to make our city services work better?" That stray tweet led to the city's first-of-its-kind Twitter account (@SF311), which encourages residents to send queries and messages about nonemergency issues. But it also underscores the city's open-source stance on government. Just as Google, Facebook, and Twitter released their programming interfaces to app makers, San Francisco opened its arsenal of public information -- train times, crime stats, health-code scores -- to software developers. "There's a tremendous amount of tech talent here," Newsom says. "We'd be fools not to leverage it." To date, more than 140 data sets have been liberated, spawning roughly 30 smartphone apps, such as Crimespotting (browse interactive city-crime maps), Routesy (see real-time train schedules), and EcoFinder (locate the nearest recycling spots). But San Francisco's open-source stance doesn't stop at the city limits: In February, it launched an idea-sharing site, which blueprints everything from citywide health insurance to banning plastic bags. And in March, it released the API for its 311 city-service center. Boston; Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; and Washington, D.C., have already pledged to adopt the new standard.

iPhone 4 Firmware Reveals File-Sharing, Orientation Lock, and How to Close Multitasking Apps

The rumor mill continues....

Apple's just released the latest developer firmware before the official iPhone 4.0 roll-out. This is geeky. What is not geeky is some of the secrets it reveals about the future iPhone workings. Apple seems to have utterly nailed it.

File sharing direct to iPhone

This is an oft-requested feature by the more traditionally minded iPhone user, used to managing files in folders on desktops rather than the iPhone OS's hidden file management layer, but it's going to be damn useful all the same: Apple's enabling direct user-manageable file transfer between your computer and your iPhone (and later, presumably, your iPad). It's a question of syncing the two devices, then clicking through to the Apps tab in the iPhone and scrolling down to the "Files" section, from where you can drag and drop stuff to and from your main computer. As the name suggests, Apple's keeping a certain degree of control over this, and you can't just dump files of any type willy-nilly--it's app driven. For now it looks like only Mail is enabled, but it's certain that other apps, like Pages and whatnot, will get this power by the time the OS officially rolls out.

Orientation lock and widgets

The iPad's physical-switch orientation lock is handy for those reading-an-ebook-in-bed moments when the device's gyros might otherwise detect your reading position incorrectly. It too is a feature oft-requested for the iPhone, but it looks like it won't be replicated in hardware for the iPhone 2010--it's appeared as part of iPhone 4.0's multitasking pop-up panel as a virtual button. Hence, for users prone to using their iPhone when...erm...prone, a quick double-tap of the home button then a left-swipe will bring up the menu, then it's just a question of clicking the icon.

Apple's engineers have obviously decided that this new menu has some useful functionality, though, and have viewed it as a mini widget portal, of sorts, because there's also now a quick-access button to get to the iPod app (previously accessible by a double click of home in earlier iPhone OSs) as well as very basic iPod controls.

Closing Apps

Introducing multitasking also introduces the issue of users managing which apps are running (though iPhone 4 does a pretty good job of this automatically). That means letting users close active apps from the multitasking menu. Apple's just tweaked this, not a lot, but in a way that makes it super easy to do: It's now just like the old "delete app" function, where you hold your finger down over an app's icon. The OS then enters a "close app" mode, which lets you shut down as many sequentially as you like.

iPhone 2010 summary

iPhone 4

So with this news, the earlier iPhone 4.0 data, and information gleaned by Gizmodo from the leaked iPhone 2010 prototype, what can we work out about this year's new iPhone experience? A lot. Here's a guesstimated specs list:

* Size: Similar to iPhone 3GS, just squarer and a tiny bit shallower
* Weight: Similar to iPhone 3GS
* Battery life: Possibly up to 20% more for all functions, dependent on software power management
* Screen: High res, possibly 940 by 640 pixels (four times as many as before)
* Camera: Front facing, possibly VGA (may be higher though.) Read facing, 5 megapixels, with flash
* Multitasking: Check
* Direct file transfers: Check
* Screen orientation lock: Check
* Direct wireless printing: Probably
* Proper support for Bluetooth keyboard in iPhone: Possibly (to support iPhone iWork apps.)
* ARM-based 1GHz CPU: Very likely

Add those together and you have a smartphone positioned to challenge the growing army of Android phones, but coming with the provenance of the iPhone's history, lots of Apple chic, and hundreds of thousands of existing apps. iPhone 2010 with iPhone 4.0 aboard is going to be, let's face it, the bees knees...and since many of these powers will also be available on older iPhones too, when their firmware is updated, it's a bit of a win-win for iPhone fans.

First Offshore Wind Farm in the U.S. Approved

courtesy Fast Company...

Wind energy advocates scored a huge victory today with the announcement from U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that the country's first offshore wind farm, dubbed Cape Wind, will be built in the Nantucket Sound. The 130-turbine development could provide up to 75% of all electricity for Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket.

Land turbines abound in the U.S., but the $1 billion Cape Wind offshore project has been mired in controversy for the better part of the past decade. Opponents of the project argue that it will stand on sacred Indian ancestral grounds, mar the local landscape (potentially blocking the Kennedy compound's view of Nantucket sound!), hurt prospects for local fishermen who rely on areas that will disappear when the development is built, and interfere with airplane radar. The project could also raise electricity prices for local residents--electrical grid and transmission line improvements for Cape Wind may cost up to $10 billion.

Supporters argue, on the other hand, that Cape Wind will open up the U.S. to much-needed offshore projects. And if that comes at the comparatively small expense of the local landscape, so be it. "The U.S. offshore wind industry will build on the success and the lessons learned from the nearly 20 years of experience in Europe to provide clean, pollution-free, electricity along the coasts and in the Great Lakes. In fact, American manufacturers have announced plans to build factories in Europe to service the robust offshore wind industry there. With policy support in the America we can incent that new manufacturing sector to build here", said Denise Bode, the CEO of the American Wind Energy Association. Our recent polling shows that wind works for America--it means new manufacturing jobs, less dependence on imported energy, and more pure, clean, affordable energy for our country."

In addition to providing jobs and opening up the U.S to more offshore developments (Salazar says that Cape Wind is the first of many projects along the coast), Cape Wind will also cut CO2 emissions by almost 1 million tons per year, or approximately 1% of total greenhouse gas emissions in Massachusetts.

There are still plenty of hurdles to cross before Cape Wind can be built--nine permits are in the midst of being appealed, and nearly a dozen groups have threatened to sue--but ultimately, the project's green light is a good sign for our clean energy future. If we really want to wean ourselves off coal and stall climate change, we have to be willing to make some political sacrifices. This proves that the U.S. is ready to do just that.

Conan Heading To TBS

The iPad Built Into Your Car's Dashboard

I'm sick of talking about the iPad too, but this is ridiculous. The good people of SoundMan Car Audio built an iPad into the dashboard of a Toyota Tacoma, quite possibly creating the most popular carpool driver around. Nice find Jules:

A Great iPad Ad Model Discussion

The conversations are all early, but not too early for brands who have already invested in the iPad. Supposedly, the New York Times has sold out two months of iPad ad space against their reader application. And it hasn't even been released yet....

With the iPad's delivery now a matter of days, information about publishers' ad pricing and ad technology is making its way into the market. The information - assuming it is accurate as Apple and the publishers are not talking - is interesting, but not particularly telling for the long term.

For starters, it is unclear whether these advertisers are truly committed to the iPad platform or interested in riding the initial buzz that will inevitably accompany its rollout.

"Part of being first," said Steve Pacheco, director of advertising and marketing communications at FedEx, "is to be included in their in-store demos, to be a real-life example of a powerful brand going to market in a new way." (via the New York Times).

Full article HERE.

Doritos Mega Chip - Making Fun of The iPad

Pretty funny...complete with apple employee mock ups and clean, white backgrounds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgqnOqfehJE&feature=player_embedded

Amazing Pepsi World Cup Spot

Thanks Luaggz for the find....

World class players Lionel Messi, Thierry Henry, Ricardo Kaká, Frank Lampard, Andrei Arshavin and Didier Drogba star in Pepsis new global football advert. Multi platinum selling artist Akon whose smash new track Oh Africa accompanies the advert makes a cameo appearance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-XZk0yxCzc&feature=player_embedded

No Surprise, Bing Growth Is, Ahem, Growing

Nine months since relaunching its search engine (previously LiveSearch), Bing’s market share continues to inch up. It’s now at 11.5 percent, up from 8 percent prior to its remake, according to the latest comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) figures (via Business Insider). They've made a point of checking in each quarter, rather than monthly, in order to avoid anamolies, and the trend has stayed remarkably the same.

Google’s market share share has held steady. Its share is now at 65.5 percent, compared to 65 percent in May 2009. Bing’s gains, meanwhile, are coming almost entirely at the expense of Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), which has seen its market share fall to 16.8 percent from 20.1 percent before Bing came to market. That has to be raising some eyebrows in Redmond since the two companies’ search engine market shares will essentially be combined when their ad partnership goes into effect. Still, nine months of straight gains have to be some cause for celebration.

'Free Trade, Nationalism and Empire' vs. Modern Media

Awesome article today by Doug Weaver from Upstream Group. Compares the modern media world to the strongest and poorest nations in the world relative to their assets and willingness to work with others. Great 5 minute read!

Free Trade, Nationalism and Empire

Apple iPad Oscar's Commercial; Do We Like It?

Everyone has an opinion, so what do you think?

Viacom Yanks 'Daily Show' and 'Colbert Report' From Hulu

In the ad biz, you hear a ton about Hulu being hard to work with and pushing their weight around. As a consumer, I couldn't care less; I love the content, I love the interface, and the unique content deals are second to none. As an ad pro, it's about damn time people yank their dollars when negotiations go wrong with the giants and quick backing down (I'm hinting at some other big co's, fill in the blank....). Of course, my consumer and business opinion are intrinsically tied because I can't have the content without the advertising, but it's 6am and I don't have the energy to start a chicken and the egg argument.

via NYTIMES....

Unable to make the digital media dollars add up to their liking, Viacom will remove “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” “The Colbert Report” and other Comedy Central television shows from Hulu next week.

Although the companies said Tuesday evening that they were parting amicably, the decision represents the first major fracture between television show owners and the wildly popular video Web site.

Viacom’s decision is a serious loss for Hulu — this week “The Daily Show” is listed as the third most-watched TV show on the site — and it is a reminder that content owners can control just how much video — or how little — is placed online for all to view. At the moment, that spigot is being tightened, in part to protect the industry’s primary revenue stream, cable and satellite distribution.

However, the severing of ties with Hulu does not represent a strategic shift for Viacom. Comedy Central will continue to stream full episodes of the shows on TheDailyShow.com and ColbertNation.com, respectively.

Viacom’s Comedy Central channel reached a programming agreement with Hulu in mid-2008 that placed “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report” and a sampling of other shows on the service.

“In the past 21 months, we’ve had very strong results for both Hulu and Comedy Central, in terms of the views and revenue we’ve generated,” said Andy Forssell, senior vice president of content and distribution for Hulu, in a blog post Tuesday evening.

Mr. Forssell said that Hulu’s viewers had been “extremely vocal and passionate” about “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.”

In a message that seemed written specifically for Comedy Central, he said that Hulu had “driven steadily increasing revenue per view” for the shows “as advertisers voted with their budgets to take advantage of innovative ad formats and very strong advertising effectiveness.”

“After a series of discussions with the team at Comedy Central, though, we ultimately were unable to secure the rights to extend these shows for a much longer period of time,” he said in the blog post.

Hulu said it was talking to Comedy Central about “a number of opportunities,” and said viewers should “stay tuned.”

TV episodes and individual films regularly rotate on and off of Hulu, in accordance with the site’s agreements with the content providers. The site’s candor is impressive; it explains the limits placed on each show, and episodes and clips are marked with icons that indicate their expiration dates. But the removal of entire shows is unusual, especially one as popular as “The Daily Show.”

The three-year-old Hulu dominates the burgeoning market for online TV viewing, with more than 44 million monthly visitors, according to ComScore. The site’s monthly video view totals have skyrocketed in recent months, from 580 million last September to 1.01 billion last December.

Three of the broadcast networks, ABC, NBC and Fox, own stakes in Hulu. Viacom’s decision may suggest that the economics of Hulu make less sense for content providers that lack equity in the Web site.

“We tried to reach a deal; we got close; we continued to talk even over the weekend. But we could not agree on a price,” said a person involved in the Viacom negotiations who requested anonymity because the process was conducted in private.

The companies declined to say what prices were discussed. Hulu’s deals with content owners revolve around an advertising revenue split; the owners typically receive 50 to 70 percent of the revenue, and Hulu keeps the rest, according to industry executives. Because “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” are so popular on the service, Viacom may have insisted on an upfront payment as well, although representatives for the companies would not confirm this.

“There have certainly been instances where there was a premium paid for what you might call the ‘halo effect,’ ” the person involved in the negotiations said. In Hulu’s case, the “halo effect” would be the users who come for Mr. Stewart’s jokes and stay to watch other shows.

A Comedy Central spokesman declined to say whether the channel would strike a distribution deal with one of Hulu’s competitors.

In a statement, the channel said:

Comedy Central has made “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” available to consumers through Hulu since June 2008. Although that agreement has concluded, full-length episodes of each show will remain available at TheDailyShow.com and ColbertNation.com, respectively.

Hulu was one of the many digital distribution partners we’ve worked with over the past few years to add new outlets for our valuable and powerful content and to help drive the businesses of our partners. We had a great experience with Hulu, and we hope to work with its team again in the future.

Hulu users who have added “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” to their queue will be informed of their removal later today, a spokeswoman said.

The Handshake That Didn't Happen

Following up on the Wayne Bridge - John Terry saga, Bridge expectantly skipped the Chelsea skipper's hand in the pre-match routine. I think my favorite part is actually Craig Bellamy looking away in disgust when he approaches Terry....

This Will Put A Hop In Your Step

The Temper Trap's new album Conditions is absolutely amazing, I recommend you buy it immediately!! Check out the band site http://www.thetempertrap.net/Home/. Here's the song that has put me in an amazing mood today...

Bloom Energy Releases 'Bloom Box' - Fuel Cells To Power Your Own Home

Bloom Energy, a Sunnyvale startup that has been working for years on a fuel cell that would allow homes and businesses to generate their own electricity, officially unveiled its so-called Bloom Box at a highly orchestrated media event Wednesday morning.

Tech journalists joined Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bloom cofounder and CEO K.R. Sridhar, venture capitalist John Doerr and former Secretary of State Colin Powell at eBay's San Jose headquarters to learn how Bloom, which has raised about $400 million from investors, plans to mass produce its solid oxide fuel cells.

Google, FedEx and Wal-Mart are among the companies beta-testing the technology; several Bloom Boxes are in use on the eBay campus.

EBay started using five Bloom Energy Servers in July. They produce electricity to power space for 2,000 to 3,000 employees and shaved $100,000 off eBay's power bill, says Amy Skoczlas Cole, director of eBay's Green Team. EBay uses natural gas in the boxes but will switch to methane gas from an Oklahoma landfill this spring.

The video on 60 Minutes is 13 minutes long, but worth every second to learn about this amazing technology.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Heat Map Shows the Bing vs. Google Map is Raging On The iPad

Global Equities Research has published a report predicting that Apple will choose Microsoft Bing as the default search engine for the iPad.

Trip Chowdhry, managing director of equity research for the Global Equities Research, says Apple will choose Bing based on the search engine's technical merits, as well as the shape of the iPad touchscreen.

In the 8-page report published Tuesday, Chowdhry points to a heat map study of Microsoft Bing vs. Google Search. A side-by-side comparison reveals that the concentration of user activity on the Bing search page -- indicated by red, yellow and green colors -- fits more comfortably in the shape of the iPad screen.

The heat map study indicates that when people look at search results on Google they follow an inverted triangle. The widest part of the triangle remains at the top, from left to right, and tapers off at the bottom in the middle of the page.

The heat map study for Bing reveals that people tend to look at search results in a rectangle shape. The widest part of the page represents the top half of an 8-inch by 10-inch sheet of paper. This means people typically read the top half of search results.

A rectangular search layout for Apple's iPad, which requires people to use their fingers as the primary pointing device, would provide consumers with a better experience.

Chowdhry believes that Bing's search tools, such as Explore Pane, Best Match and Document Preview all lend to a better experience on an iPad, where interaction with the device requires humans to use their fingers, not by mouse.

People typically spend more time on Bing versus Google, view more pages, and bounce from one search to another, according to Chowdhry.

"Contacts tell us that Google Search will also be available, but will not be a default choice," Chowdhry writes. "Google will probably have more Map applications on iPad vs. Microsoft."

Chowdhry doesn't think Google's loss of not being the default search engine on the iPad will have a significant impact on the search engine's revenue. Google's Android Platform continues to grow in excess of 100% year-on-year, and can easily offset the loss.

Preorders for the iPad could begin as early as this week. The first wave of models with WiFi could debut in the United States as early as March.

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Hulu Adzone: Superbowl Commercials Live Here

How I didn't see this last year, I haven't the slightest idea. But the biggest day in advertising, the Superbowl, now has a place to house the players in the real competition; the commercials. Be sure to check back in to the Hulu Adzone to go back and watch the last 10 seconds of the commercial you missed because you were too busy laughing at the first 20 seconds. Or because you were elbow deep in guacamole, either one.