General Business

Here's a chart summarizing Nielsen's recent findings on OS and device share in the US market.

So how does this compare to the worldwide scene? We're not sure yet, but (again according to Nielsen) apparently we're to look for a massive growth in smartphone use in Asia, Real Soon Now.

Nielsen Post

GE has this very intriguing Tumblr blog, with pix of various cool stuff from their labs. I have to admit just spending twenty minutes on this site totally changed my attitude about GE. Maybe they do have something going on after all...

In the early 1900s, electric cars outsold gas cars. We found this electric car charger in our archives - it was used in both parking and home garages.

From AdLab comes this news about eCoupled's wirelessly-powered on-package lightup graphics. Read more »

Another move in the SEO wars... and perhaps a knock against eHow and so forth.

Google has updated their algorithm (which they do all the time) - this time, coming out and saying that they're targeting low-quality content farms, splogs, etc.:

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites — sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other Web sites or sites that are just not very useful,” Amit Singhal, a Google fellow, and Matt Cutts, who leads Google’s spam-fighting team, wrote in a company blog post. “At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites — sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

NY Times Read more »

Careful with that axe, Jeff...

An Indiana Deputy AG, Jeff Cox, has been fired for sending chilling messages via twitter and elsewhere, suggesting that riot police fire upon peaceful protesters at Wisconsin' state capitol building. Read more »

OReilly's Facebook page (here) has this snippet from a Twitter chat, part of the run-up to their Tools of Change conference:

In a twitterchat hosted by Tools of Change last week, Atwood reiterated the food chain concept. She wrote:

• author's role in publishing ecosystem: writers are the primary source for the foodchain. :) -2:08 PM
• Have heard authors referred to as "content," as if transmission medium were primary. -2:09 PM
• But w'out anything to transmit, transmission tools & networks would be dead. -2:10 PM

Conference starts Monday - would that I could go, but duty calls...

I had an interesting conversation with an old friend the other day about why a brand would write a mobile app, when there are such dynamic possibilities available for Facebook apps.

Aside from the desire to get your brand out of the Facebook sandbox, I thought of a few things you could do with an app that might be a little harder when working through Facebook, even Facebook mobile - geo-tagging and phone calls among them.

Fortuitously, here's a roundup of 6 mobile apps that stand well on their own, both for usability and branding. Read more »

The good folks at Target Marketing Magazine have asked me to present on the topic of how (and why!) to use online document customization and management strategies to solve marketing problems.

I'll be focusing on how retail, franchisee and sales agent systems can benefit from the ability to customize ads, sales support materials, point-of-purchase, direct mail, etc.

If there's time, we'll look at setting up localized cross-media campaigns, and may even get into personalized URLs.

The webinar's free, but you do have to register:
Registration Page

While I've long been convinced that the modern corporation is designed to prevent productivity, it's always nice to find tools that help prove one's point.

Here's a clock that figures out how much of our clients' money we just burned through, nattering on about synergy and ROI:

Introducing Bring TIM!® (Time Is Money) - a fun yet useful office clock that tallies the dollars spent in long meetings. Simply enter the number of people in the room, ballpark an average hourly wage, and press the illuminated start button. Everyone will be amazed as the dollars pile up with every second that ticks by.

Product Page

Pair this up with Bullshit Bingo and you've got a cure for the common drone.

Over at All Things Digital, Peter Kafka thinks Apple's iAd scheme is headed for total (or near-total) domination of the ad space on the platform:

I’ve talked to some mobile ad companies that are more hopeful. They think Apple will let them compete with its iAd platform in a fair fight.

Maybe they’re saying that because they have to appear optimistic. Maybe they really believe it. But I think they’re wrong. I think Apple intends to own the ad market for its app ecosystem.

Full Article at All Things Digital Read more »