As you’re browsing a site you may come across a term or phrase that you’d like to know more about. For such instances, most browsers now come with a search toolbar. If you have a handy dandy search toolbar you can highlight that word or phrase and drag-and-drop the text in to your search box. Try it out.

Two main reasons that I use this: it is faster than typing out a long phrase AND it keeps my last copied text. This is especially useful if you’ve got something to copy and paste over and over but you don’t want to lose it with each search. For example, if I’m browsing Thoughtprocess Interactive and I want to know more about search engine optimization:

Sound familiar? If not, you’ve either got a shortage of tech savvy friends or something embarrassing and/or horrible showed up that they didn’t want to mention.

Most of us have Googled ourselves at one point or another. Why not? It’s out there for everyone else to see and we should know what they’re looking at! Well, Google has a (not so) recent release that gives you the power over what they see.

Google Profiles lets you define yourself in the way YOU want to be defined. It may not get rid of the spring break pictures from freshman year of college but at least it’s a start.

I came across this the other day on a blog somewhere and thought it was a great example of clever interactive marketing: It seems Charmin has become the “sponsor” of a little site called sitorsquat.com. Essentially, this site (which has existed in some form since ‘07) uses Google maps to locate the closest public restroom to an address entered by a user.

Now, thanks to Charmin, users can download free mobile applications for iPhones and BlackBerrys that use GPS to show you the way to the nearest public pit stop. Not only will you get location, Sit or Squat also lets users rate each restroom based on ick-factor (an average rating above 2.5 is “sit,” below “squat”) so you can avoid less than stellar accommodations (if you have the luxury of being picky).

Being a toilet paper company, this is obviously a great fit for Charmin, and it’s getting them a lot of buzz on blogs and other traditional media outlets-which is the point, of course. What’s so interesting about it though, is that Sit or Squat was a pre-existing site – the lesson being that you don’t necessarily need to be a corporate giant for a good, common-sense interactive site or application to pay off. Certainly, Charmin’s saving some cash by avoiding the cost of custom application development and Sit or Squat now has a corporate sponsor to finance their brainchild and tell the world about it. It’s a win-win.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 6 months (which may not have been a bad idea for some industries; cut overhead at least) you’ve heard of the new social networking website Twitter. Twitter simply asks the question “what are you doing?” and then chronologically tracks status updates.

Many are singing (or tweeting) praises for the simplicity and ease of using twitter to connect with friends, and the proof of the pudding is in the traffic. Twitter has grown to 8 million users in the U.S., doubling in size in the past 4 months!

Facebook evens seems to have taken a page from twitters book with a recent redesign to highlight what were formerly known as status updates. However, 94% of facebook users dislike the new design. Oops.

I’m not completely sold on Twitter just yet. Maybe I’m a cynic, but it seems like an old product in a shiny new wrapper. I could have updated my status on instant messenger, facebook, linkedin, or blogger and it would essentially accomplish the same thing. I could communicate with friends and generate followers just the same on any of these other time-tested services. As Twitter climbs the Top 100 sites I have to ask one question:

Does Twitter revolutionize social networking or it is just 15 minutes of fame in 140 character increments?

Okay, so that’s just my overly-snide first-take on this article about iPhone apps.

My second take is that I can’t decide whether this is a positive commentary on iPhone users (i.e. they know useless crap once they’ve seen it and never look back), or a somewhat less flattering one (they have an endless and apparently purposeless appetite for the latest gimicky digital froth).

I dunno. You guys tell me what you think.

Full disclosure: The device in my pocket was purchased when you still called them “cell phones” and they all had hinges in the middle, so this post might just be my pent-up gadget-envy lashing out at my luddite wallet.

Google Suggest isn’t a new development in the tech giant’s storied timeline. It’s not one of the most discussed features in the Google playbook. I’ll even go so far as to say that most people probably ignore it altogether. But before you dispatch this feature as ‘occasionally useful’ let me offer a new approach to looking at Google Suggest.

When you come to Google wanting to search something (which is 20+ times a day for some of us) think about variations of the words that you’re using. For example, you may want to search for the size of a hay bale. You can arrange the words to search “hay bale size”, “size of a hay bale” or a different combination. In terms of what will give you the best results, usually the less amount of filler words the better.

The way that I propose using Google Suggest is to start a common sentence or phrase and see what suggestions pop-up. Since the suggestions are aggregated from common and popular-queries you are getting an insight into public opinion. So, if ethics are generally based on public opinion, perhaps you are getting a look at what is ethical as well.

Here are some examples that I particularly like:

According to suggest “you should never…”

• you should never ask for help on the internet
• argue with a crazy
• underestimate the predictability of stupidity
• smoke in pajamas….good to know in case I ever pick up smoking and get a late night craving

Also suggest says “my job is…”

• boring
• killing me
• making me sick
• stressful

I disagree, my job is sweet, I get to blog. But you can see what I mean about public opinion coming out in the suggestions. Having this information can be useful for market research, politicians, or tracking societal norms.

Maybe you’ll pause for a brief second, maybe that’s how you found this blog post, or maybe you’ll just continue ignoring it altogether

Note: if you find this page in error and are instead looking for hay bale size, there’s your link

So we’ve all heard by now that Google is finished trying to save the newspapers, but others haven’t given up hope. Time Magazine published an article claiming that micropayments was the solution – Charging small fees such as a nickel for a day’s edition of the newspaper, or a larger (maybe $2) fee for a month’s worth of access. Critics argue, and I have to agree, that this model has failed in the past and will fail again. 

However, a “new” idea has been thrown on the table recently - Instead of making users pay for content, what if you asked them for donations if they like the content? Okay, so the idea isn’t new, National Public Radio has been doing it successfully for decades, but it’s something the newspapers have not tried online yet. Or at least not to my knowledge, please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

Start up venture Kachingle (in private beta) has a solution that some feel could help bring this model to fruition.  From a high level, the Kachingle model works like this: 

• A user creates a Kachingle account, and you determine a monthly fee of what you are willing to donate to support good content. This could be $1, it could be $50, whatever you feel good content is worth.
• You sign in once per device – PC, laptop, phone, etc and Kachingle remembers you from that point on.
• Publishers who are part of the Kachingle network place a little Kachingle medallion on thier site
• When you are visiting a blog, online newspaper, etc that you like, you click on their Kachingle medallion which notifies Kachingle that you’d like some of your monthly fee to go to that site.
• Kachingle measures your usage across sites you’ve tagged to receive money, and allocates your donations accordingly. So for example, if you are willing to donate $5 a month to good news content on the web, and 50% of your usage goes to WSJ.com, then Kachingle would give $2.50 to WSJ.com that month. The remaining $2.50 would be split up amongst the other sites you “kachingled” (not sure if that is a real term yet) based on your usage of their sites.

So the real question becomes, is the problem with the paid news model the lack of choice? Will people not pay for online content when they are required to pay for it, but change their mind if they are given the choice to contribute based on their own assesement of the content’s value?

Yesterday Google introduced their Latitude service, a new feature that allows smartphone and laptop users to share their location with “friends” through  Google Maps. It has been compared to the “Marauder’s Map” from Harry Potter, and since someone made a Harry Potter reference, I had to investigate…

Like all Google services, Latitude is in many ways useful, and in many ways creepy. 

On the useful side of things, this new service has some cool benefits:

• Share your location with friends – Could be useful if you are traveling and want to see if any of your friends are nearby so you can meet up. 
• Location based marketing – Could be very useful for businesses to serve ads based on a users location and time of day. For example you could be served ads for nearby restaurants at lunchtime, or bars with happy hour specials later in the day.
• Tracking your equipment – This information could be very useful in the event that your phone or laptop is stolen, assuming it is signed into the service.

On the flip side, this service has loads of creepy potential. You might want to ask :

• Do I really need my friends to know where I am at any given time? 
• In the event that a third party (including the government) demanded access to this data, how much of a fight would Google put up to protect it? What if there wasn’t a Google anymore, then who gets it?
• How many ways could this data be used for evil? Oh let me count the ways – stalkers, jealous boyfriends, crazies in general…
• Will companies begin requiring use of this service so they can track (spy on) their employees and equipment?
• Hacking. Yesterday someone hacked the highway signs in the Metro East, altering their message to warn motorists of zombies and raptors up the road. What if someone was sending you creepy messages based on your location?

Adweek released some previews of the upcoming Super Bowl Sunday commercials. With ads going for upwards of 3 million dollars for a 30 second clip, you be the judge if it was worth it for the big hitters of business.

The ads can be viewed on their website at

http://www.adweek.com/aw/custom-reports/superbowl/video.html

Also, check out the classics tabs for some oldies but goodies. After all aren’t the commercials the best part most of the time?

Things aren’t looking good for newspapers. Despite making a valiant (or ironic?) effort to save the newspapers, this week Google announced that it will discontinue the Google Print Ads program on February 28th, 2009, allowing advertisers who have already purchased ad space to see their ads run through March 31st. 

Spencer Spinnell, Director of Google Print Ads comments in the blog post announcement, “While we hoped that Print Ads would create a new revenue stream for newspapers and produce more relevant advertising for consumers, the product has not created the impact that we — or our partners — wanted.”

The program was designed to allow the hundreds of thousands of Google Adwords advertisers to conveniently buy excess ad inventory from daily newspapers, in theory giving the newspapers a big revenue boost. Ironically, the newspapers are desperately in need of a revenue boost because most of their advertisers have moved thier ad dollars online, realizing that their newspaper ads were less effective than their online ads. So really, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why this program failed.

Will they bailout the newspapers and just buy them? According to a Fortune magazine interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, no:

“The good news is we could purchase them. We have the cash. But I don’t think our purchasing a newspaper would solve the business problems. It would help solidify the ownership structure, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problem in the business.”

Well folks, at least we know they could do it, if they wanted to.  And as usual, there is a funnier version of this story at Valleywag.