• Why It’s Good News If Google Is Vulnerable To A Recession

  (tags: google advertising)

• Social Media: Slipping into irrelevance

  The decline of America’s major newspapers continues apace. The latest evidence came today: It was the first weekday I can remember (perhaps in decades) that the San Jose Mercury News ran no op-ed page. Instead, it was chock-a-block with ads.

  (tags: newspapers)

• PCC faces up to Facebook ‘intrusions’ | Greenslade | Guardian Unlimited

  The Press Complaints Commission has commissioned research into the newspapers’ use of material from social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

  (tags: facebook)

• @ Digital Music Forum: Keynote Interview, Thomas Hesse, Digital Pres. SonyBMG; Physical Not Dead | paidContent.org
  Hesse, who still has a mandate to sell CDs, offered a more nuanced view on the interplay between physical and digital distribution
  (tags: music)
• BBC iPlayer leaves ITV trailing | Media | guardian.co.uk
  (tags: video bbc itv)
• Google News Blog: Clarifications on local - for news readers and publishers
  (tags: googlenews local)
• Demystifying “Above the Fold”
  n the beginning days of the web, we thought we had to fit all the content on 1 page, all above the fold. The problem was everything got squished, ugly, and very hard to read. So instead of trying to get all content on 1 web page, people were smart enough
  (tags: advertising)
• I Switched Off Twitter and Doubled My Productivity
  in the last fortnight I’ve switched the mobile phone updates off and managed to cross far more off my to do list than I’d expected.
  (tags: twitter)
• UK digital agency sector grows profits 56% - Brand Republic News - Brand Republic
  Profits at the 40 largest UK digital agencies have grown by more than 56% in the last year, but too many businesses are not maximising their profit potential, according to a new study.
  (tags: advertising agencies)

Avenue A/ Razorfish’s 2008 Digital Outlook Report, one of the better works I’ve read from an agency on the digital landscape. [The intro to Group M’s All change: marketing in addressable media is up there as well, btw].

Guy Kawasaki does a good summary of some of the main points but this bit about digital advertising in a downturn seems remarkably prescient given what’s just happend to Google’s share price

Revenue derived from the cost-per-click ad model is driven by the volume of clicks and the cost a marketer is willing to pay for each of those clicks. While a marketer may keep the same cost-per-click during a recession, it’s quite likely that a difficult economic environment will lead to fewer commerce-driven searches, which leads to fewer clicks. the end result is less money being spent in search.

For the last few months I feel I have reached gadget nirvana for the first time in my adult life. As someone whose gadget grave yard from the last decade is frankly an embarrassment in these landfill-aware times, I find myself in the rare state of not wanting for anything, thanks to my three step programme.

1. Ditch the phone, love the Curve

Three months I did something I’ve never done before - I replaced two gadgets with one. A rare act of consolidation as I got rid of my phone and blackberry in exchange for a Blackberry Curve.

This has worked for me - big time. OK, so the Curve, or possibly the sever it works from, has a tendency to randomly eat messages, but all in all putting everything onto one device has been a major strike for sanity.

Obviously, when I lose it, I lose everything. But we’ll deal with that when it happens.

2. Get your Google apps all working nicely

Google has really helped here - in particular with Google mail and Google reader that work just fine on the Curve. That means all my incoming information now lives on one device. Yippeee.

All that was lovely enough - but then Google delivered Google Sync which Syncs your Blackberry calendar with Google Calendar. This works (pretty much) perfectly, which means my assistant can edit my calendar using Lotus Notes, which syncs with my Blackberry, which now syncs with Google Calendar - which means I don’t have to use Notes to look at my calendar. This sounds phenomenally complex, but it’s actually made things much, much easier for me.

Something has gone badly wrong with Google Maps for me, though. It sends the whole device into a bluetooth tailspin. No matter, the curve’s own mapping system is actually pretty good - although I could really do with a voice driven sat nav for when I’m on my bike. But maybe that’s just being fussy.

3. Bring on the iTouch

Given our corporate set up, an iPhone was never going to be for me. But, while it’s possible to do audio and video on the Curve, it’s not really what it does best. So thank you for my Xmas present - the Touch, which is working a treat as an entertainment centre for my commuting.

Thanks to the work of sublime (but legally questionable) genius that is Handbrake, I can watch my box sets of blokish cop shows on the train home. (and there’s now quite a lot of people on the way back to Surrey each night doing exactly that…)

Now, there’s a fair bit that’s not quite right about the iTouch. You find yourself having to go back to the main menu a few too many times for the user experience to be truly elegant, and the touch-screen slider for the volume is a pain for those of us who don’t have piano player’s fingers.

In addition the battery just drains all too often.

The web browsing is great - but I never actually need it. But, for podcasts, music and video - it is frankly unbeatable.

How long can this state of nirvana last, I wonder? I’m already a bit pissed off that there’s now a 32GB Touch…but such is life.

Technorati Tags: gadgets

I don’t do Twitter. I have tried. I have signed up, and followed a few people. I really, really want to like it, but frankly it just falls off the list of things I can focus on in a given day. It’s just one stream of information too many.

Every now and again, I get an e-mail saying someone is now following me, and I feel like sending them a profound apology for the silence they get back in return. Well, I would - but I never quite get round to it.

Jeff meanwhile, loves it. When he wrote in Monday’s Guardian

I also read feeds of news headlines from the Guardian and individual reporters. Jim Long, a network news photographer, Twitters from White House trips. Ana Marie Cox, the former Wonkette blogger and queen of the snarky political post, has been using Twitter to cover the US primaries for Time.com. I blogged about that, saying she has found the perfect medium for her bon mots and snipes. She responded that Twitter is the perfect medium for covering a campaign. The format gives us a glimpse into what’s happening right now, and cuts to the bone. It’s a hack’s haiku

It’s clear that here is a man travelling on the information superhighway, while I’m busy chugging along on the hard shoulder.

But, the more I think about it, the more my resistance to Twitter and its ilk is as relevant as some people’s enthusiasm. And I give three reasons.

• The need to focus. What’s with this need for people to constantly provide a narrative of their life, rather than just living it? Actually, I understand the need…but I have the curse of a butterfly brain, and frankly the fewer distractions the better. If I go through the day thinking I should be telling people what I’m up to, I’d get even less done than I do already.
• Too much information. Too little value . If I twittered all day, and followed others tweets all night, would I really be any wiser, happier or wealthier?
• The challenge of brevity. You know that quote “I’ve written you a long note, because I don’t have time for a short note”. I have that problem with Twitter and Facebook status. I trip over myself trying to be concise and then the moment has passed.

I have a suspicion I’m heading to becoming the grumpy old man of digital. I just about keep a blog (how old fashioned is that!!!), and I just use an RSS reader. No Tumblr, no Twitter and I haven’t updated my Facebook status for months.