Every day we see millions of ads, but this one was brought to my attention by another blogger as brilliant for getting out your brand name in a very unlikely spot. The bins at the Airport terminal security checkpoint

*Note that this ad is strategically placed to catch people who are paying attention to their shoes as well as giving a simple, straight forward message that is absorbed in less than 20 seconds.

I’m a huge fan of Zappos and for building your business on the customer experience which Zappos continues to do very well at. While I generally think there is a lot of money wasted on advertising that never really hits the audience in the right way, this is just another example of a great marketing strategy.

I will be attending Chris Pirillo’s Social Media conference, Gnomedex on August 20th in Seattle. It’s sure to be an interesting two days accelerating ideas around social media and online communities.

I could have told you it was hot, my thermometer inside the house reads 86 degrees (that is with an air conditioning unit upstairs) but I had no idea that we are having the hottest day on record EVER in the Seattle area. It is currently 102 degrees in Kirkland and Redmond where I live/work.

All the news stations like King5 are covering the “heat wave” like it’s the end of the world.. maybe it is.

Now I just got back from 4 days in Las Vegas where the temperature never reached over 96 degrees the entire time we were there. I feel like I’ve entered the Twilight Zone.. of course there is no global warming.

I’ve become almost blind to my use of Google. Anytime I need to search for something, I use the built-in search tool in either Safari or Firefox that automatically defaults to Google without even thinking about it. Google had certainly succeeded in their search engine being the one and only thing I think about when I need to search.

Trouble is, lately the results in Google have been more of a frustration than anything. Granted the paid ads are sometimes relevant, and the results show mostly targeted sites for what I am searching on, but the breadth of results has narrowed greatly since I first started using Google and I just feel like I’m missing stuff.

Today, I was searching for travel options from Seattle. I have a few trips planned this summer and thinking about adding some more. Of course, the main travel websites all came back with similar offers. I wanted something different. I had a “Bing Moment” where I wondered if Microsoft’s new search engine Bing would give me something different. Continue Reading ->

I’ll be taking a break from technology over the weekend and enjoying some sunshine.

Regardless of the complaints I think I share with many others about politics and laws in our country, we are very fortunate to have it as good as we do considering the plight of many other countries in this current day.

According to the May 2009 Mobile Metrics Report by AdMob, Apple is taking a big bite of the Smartphone market share. In their newly released study, they take a closer look at the iPhone apps within the AdMob network. “It is general knowledge that the top free apps are downloaded millions of times. But with an incredibly crowded App Store, one important question is what happens to the rest of the apps.” view the entire report on the AdMob website including more user statistics and breakdowns of demographics.

Google has launched their mobile version of Google AdSense, now available on the iPhone and Android platforms. Not surprising that Google was the first to implement full blow advertising in applications. What was once free, will now be a little less free as users of free apps will now be forced to sit through targeted advertising embedded into the application. Developers of the app do have the choice to decide what ads are shown, block certain ads and how they are shown. While users may be less than thrilled with the new addition of advertising be delivered through their apps, many marketing and advertising professionals are scrambling to buy ads. Continue Reading ->