That’s right, Google is about to enter the world of web browsers.  Announced in a very discreet (very Google) manner in a comic book by Scott McCloud, the browser isn’t live yet but should be in beta form fairly soon.

We shouldn’t be surprised that Google is coming out with a browser, only that it took this long for them to get here.  Lots of good information on Mahalo, but here are the high points:

• New tab system allowing users to create tabs that open on top of the browser, rather than within it (hard to visualize but check the comic book and you’ll see a good example)
• Users can have an ‘incognito’ window if they prefer, in which nothing will be logged
• It will include a new JavaScript Virtual Machine (V8)

There isn’t much more to know at this point and without seeing the browser its hard to know what to think about the success of this. However, the ease with which the Google search bar has been accepted into most people’s browsers already would suggest to me that people will quickly start picking it up.

Beating out IE will be a tough sell but I’d argue this is probably the closest thing Google has released (or will release soon) that will be close in service type to their bread and butter: search.  It’s not surprising that the other services (Google Calendar, Google Docs, etc.) are slowing gaining traction but not really competing with Microsoft yet.  But a browser would be something that would be much easier to switch to and would be a nice compliment to their superior search services.

More to come…

Google finally has an answer to Second Life. Their virtual world, called Lively, is a browser based world that you can bet will integrate all the Googley things we love (search, gmail, documents, etc.).

There are three reasons I always thought Second Life was going to fail. First, the search functionality in Second Life is about as bad as it could be. No doubt Google will fix that problem. Another problem with Second Life is that it isn’t browser based which I think severely limits the amount of people that will be willing to try it. And in the end, Second Life has a pretty steep learning curve. You spend the first few hours trying to learn how to fly and navigate, all the while being propositioned by naked avatars to do things you aren’t even sure are possible. The great thing about Google is that they consistently produce products that are intuitive to the user.

Unfortunately Lively isn’t available for Mac yet so I can’t play with it, so if anyone out there is able to test it and try it out, I’d love to know how it compares to Second Life.

Also, if you’re still one of those people that think there is no future in virtual worlds, you might want to rethink that, as over $345 million has been invested in virtual worlds already this year … in a tight economy.

I had the pleasure of speaking at the recent ACCM conference in Orlando on the topic of email marketing creative. No, I’m not a creative director, but I was particularly interested in this topic as I believe that email marketing as we know it is under attack and if we don’t make our emails more compelling, more relevant and in most cases more attractive, we’re going to continue to see results decline in this medium.

Email Insider had a nice article last week entitled, “Inbox Evolution May Force Facebook To Change Its Business Cards“. It’s a nice read but I can’t disagree more with the title. Facebook doesn’t have to change a thing. Marketers have to change in order to reach people today, as they have throughout time.

But I always think its great when we as email marketers (yep, we’re email marketers too, its still a very viable way to reach people — for now) put out studies like the one by ExactTarget mentioned in this article that says that 72% of respondents said they’d prefer to receive promotional messages via email instead of via social networks. Well, no kidding. I wonder why? Hm, could it be because you can unsubscribe or hit the “Mark as Spam” button in your email client when you get these promotional emails and you typically can’t in your social network?

Oh, I know, I just did a study in my mind. Turns out that 79% of people would rather get promotional marketing messages in magazines and newspapers rather than in email, where they might actually have to see it. Wait, more results just came in, 95% would rather get promotional marketing messages put right into their trash can at home rather than in their email inbox. So that’s what we should do, we should just create marketing messages and just throw them away immediately, that way the consumer gets what they really want, which is to be left alone.

Sometimes marketers get too far into the forest to see the trees and they/we lose sight of the fact that its not about kicking and screaming and fighting for the mediums that we are comfortable in to remain vibrant and worthwhile. It’s always been about finding relevant, non-intrusive ways to get a message in front of people in the hope that they may then, or later, take action on that message. And to do that, you have to be open minded, something that is foreign to most marketing people.

Ok, so maybe that title is a little dramatic, but I still feel like I’ve seen something that today is so foreign to most everyone but in 5 years will be completely commonplace.

For my recent birthday my mother, who I thought I had taught never to buy me any electronics for fear of reliving the “Mapping Software incident of 2003”, on her own judgment went and bought me the new Amazon Kindle.

The Kindle, if you aren’t up to speed on it, is Amazon’s answer to the digital book. Instead of buying paper books, you download them to your Kindle and read them on the device. It uses a new “inking” technology that basically makes the pages look as if they were printed in a book. Here’s a quick CNET video on it (or you can read a great Newsweek article on the Kindle):

I was pretty skeptical about it at first but having used this for a few days, it really is very easy to read on the device. I subscribed to the Atlanta Journal & Constitution as well as the Wall Street Journal and both arrive on the Kindle before I wake up, and when I read them I don’t get that ink all over my hands like you would with a newspaper. Plus I can highlight sections on it, look up the definition of words (for the WSJ, I’m not sure the AJC knows any big words) and save content for later. It’s been a blast using it so far.

So why do I think this is something that will be commonplace in a few years? Think about going to the beach for a week and having to pack 2 or 3 books. Think about kids in school having to carry big backpacks with all their books in them. If there was a device that was easy to read on and easy to download books, why wouldn’t we all shift over to this?

But the real reason I think this is the future is because of the greenness of it. Think of all the trees that would be saved if we didn’t have to print millions of books each year. Once Al Gore gets behind this thing, it’ll be as popular as when he invented the Internet.

Everyone is trying to figure out online video these days.  We know that every day more and more people are turning to the web to view content that they used to get from their television.  Look no further than the once popular TV show, “America’s Funniest Home Videos”.  Today that’s called YouTube.  And most of the popular TV shows today are broadcasting their episodes on their websites soon after the episode runs on TV.

I recently found two blog posts / articles that talk about how to get online video right.  The first is by YouTube Celebrity (he probably hates me calling him that), Kevin Nalts.  If you missed it, Nalts recently pranked us at Spunlogic and you can see it on YouTube (of course).

In his recent blog post entitled, “The Marketer’s Cheat Sheet to Viral Video” (which, if you are at all interested in viral video and how it should work with marketing, you should subscribe to his blog), he goes through eight steps to making a successful viral video.  This post is a must read for any marketer trying to figure this not-so-new medium out.

Taking a different tact on the online video space, Esquire magazine has an article that talks about the qualities that make a successful webisode.  I had to post about this article because it talks about Michael Cera, which gives me yet another opportunity to mention that Arrested Development is the greatest show of all time.

And if you haven’t checked it out yet, take a look at Clark and Michael (pic above).  Excellent example of what a webisodic show should be and yet another Cera masterpiece.  He’s the really cool looking guy on the right.

So I just watched Mark Zuckerberg (you know, the 23-year-old boy-wonder CEO of Facebook, he who turns down billions of dollars) on 60 Minutes. I had recorded it from yesterday, figuring that there probably wouldn’t be much that I’d learn from it considering how 60 Minutes typically covers such things - 12 minutes tightly pulled together telling us things we’ve known for the last year. You know, true journalism stuff.

But I did learn something. Zuckerberg is amazingly awkward. Like, he’s a real life George Michael. Not George Michael the WHAM! singer (he wishes, that’d be a huge step up in coolness for him, as sad as that is), no, George Michael from Arrested Development is more like it. And if you don’t understand that reference, then buy the DVDs for this show - you’ll thank me and I won’t be so embarrassed by you anymore.

Back to the point. The guy is scary uncomfortable talking to humans. At one point the lady interviewing him says that people say he’s the next Larry and Sergey. He just blankly looks at her. After a few seconds of the most awkward moments on television, he says something to the effect of, “uh…was that a question?”.

Alright, I’m not just picking on the guy for no reason. There is a point I’m hoping to make, once I get done with this, but one last thing. If you get a chance to watch him talk, notice that his eyebrows don’t move. At all. Ever.

Ok, my point is this - how can someone that owns the website that clearly is making all the rules of social networking be so unable to be…social?!  When the whole Beacon thing happened, and he handled it so poorly, I thought it was because he was some kind of steely entrepreneur that had this vision and went after it. But now I realize the truth. He just doesn’t understand how normal humans behave.

And now, for the first time, I’m wondering what the future of Facebook really will be. Unless they quickly get another CEO in there and let Mark focus on things he enjoys, like working on computers…talking to computers…going on long walks on the beach with computers… then I think one day Facebook might, instead of hanging around with its current cool friends MySpace, Google and YouTube, it might end up hanging out with a new group of friends: Geocities, Webvan and eToys.

If you’re like me, you can’t believe that its already 2008, your vacation wasn’t long enough and its way too cold outside right now. I mean way. The water bottle in my car was frozen this morning. That’s cold.

But if you’re also like me, you spent some of the down time this holiday season catching up on your reading, particularly all of those sites you’ve subscribed to that are just so hard to keep up with during the working day.

And one thing that I get quickly tired of is all of the predictions that marketing sites think they have to make for the new year. Inevitably every year its the same thing, “Mobile will be huge”, “Online Advertising is going to grow”, “Britney’s going to back to rehab”, stuff like that. We know all that.

But there was one recap post I really thought was useful. TechCrunch threw a post up on December 31st entitled, “Most bookmarked TechCrunch posts of 2007“. It’s a great list of what ‘we the people’ thought were the best TechCrunch articles of last year. Check it out.

Oh and if you have any really interesting Resolution’s this year, I’d love to hear them.

Happy New Year

Several airlines have announced that they will soon begin offering in-flight web access, according to the New York Times (and Adotas).  JetBlue looks like they’ll start by offering email and instant messaging.  More airlines will follow, including Virgin, American and Alaskan.

The fact that its taken this long for us to have internet access while flying is absurd, so I’m not exactly jumping for joy at this news.  The airlines seem to be stuck about 10 - 15 years behind the rest of the world.  We can put a man on the moon but I can’t listen to my iPod on take off.  You’ve got to be kidding me with that.  A few other things I’d like the airlines to work on while they try to give me email in-flight:

* How about letting me recline my chair to what almost would constitute as a normal posture while we take off and land?  Instead I have to actually lean forward until we’re in the air.  Makes sense.

* When I walk up and try to buy a ticket for a flight that leaves in 2 hours, do you really have to charge me 8 times the original price?  Do people really pay that?  Isn’t it better to fill the seat or are you hoping that 1 out of 7 people take that deal?  (This has only happened to me at a time when they lost my original booking…customer service isn’t exactly a high priority at some of these airlines).
* How about having more than 12 pillows and blankets on board?  Oh, and don’t give me those unsealed nasty blankets, that’s disgusting.  Sealed only please.

* And everyone has made fun of the peanut bags but seriously, the last time I flew I counted eight and a half peanuts in the bag.  At least the stewardess gave me two bags.  17 peanuts really hit the spot.

Ok, so I’ve been traveling a lot and just waiting for a reason to rail on the airlines.  Luckily this amazing news about in-flight web access gave me the opening.  I’ll enjoy that for the 18 minutes that they actually let me use my laptop in the air.

It’s a confusing thing, trying to figure out how to take advantage of the “new web” - social networking, video distribution, Web 2.0, etc.  I recently was speaking with a large group of marketers in the Atlanta area about social networking and the question that always seems to come up at these things is, “Should we create our own social network or should we try to work within some of the more popular ones?”

And my answer typically is “fish where the fish are”.  I first heard this quote in a presentation by a friend of mine, Tom Daly (who also just launched a great travel blog called Traveling Parent), when he was talking about some of Coke’s online initiatives.  What’s interesting is that Coke actually does a great job of knowing when to fish where the fish are and when to create their own pond.  If you have the kind of brand enthusiasts that Coke has, there are certainly times when it makes sense to create something just for them.

In the November issue of OMMA, an article by Mark Walsh entitled, “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over“, talked about Anheuser-Busch’s inability to cut ties with Bud.tv.  Granted, Bud.tv has been everyone’s favorite whipping-boy since it launched, and I even got into the act in the beginning.

In Walsh’s article he states that, “Perhaps A-B should think of its online business more like its offline one.  It doesn’t sell beer from a central outlet in St. Louis but through a vast distribution network…(online it should) maintain its niche sites but let third-party sites like YouTube act as brand distribution hubs.  Let Hulu, Joost and others figure out online entertainment networks”.

Well done Walsh, I couldn’t have said it better myself.  Case in point, why go to Bud.tv to watch their fantastic ‘Swear Jar’ commercial, when I can do it on YouTube in an environment I already feel comfortable with?

Being a part of Junior Achievement has been a great way for our entire agency to get involved in the community. It also means that we get to do stuff like job shadowing and fundraising. Just a couple of weeks ago we did another round of job shadowing, this time with a terrific group of 8th graders (it always amazes me how much these kids know about technology and the internet).

(The job shadowing group)

It’s also fundraising time and the team is doing some really fun stuff to drum up excitement and money. They did traditional fundraising activities, like a bake sale and raffles. But, because we don’t take ourselves too seriously, the team tossed in some fundraisers that have been a lot of fun around the office, like a Ping-Pong Tournament and Poker night.

(The bake sale. I hear Shannon’s banana bread is famous now.)

(The poker tournament)

Then, there is the Pie-the-Executive/Manager contest. The fundraising will be capped off with a Pie-ing of the executives, including myself at our Holiday Party in December. However, the first round of pie-ings happened today with our managers. How this worked was: employees bidded against each other to pie each person, the highest bid earning the right to pie.

Pictures won’t do this justice, check out the videos:

Arthur Pies Donovan:

Claire Pies Travis:

Jamie Pies Donovan (apparently he was popular):

If you’re intersted in donating to Junior Achivement, visit our donation page.