Chrome OS – Google’s OS, the fact that you would log into any computer and if it was connected to the web it would be “your” machine. This makes you think differently, one thing I love is that it would choke out viruses quickly.

Chrome Extensions - The one thing that kept me on Firefox was that Chrome didn’t have extensions (specifically my delicious tags). But now I’m thinking that if I install all the crap I have in firefox that suddenly chrome wouldn’t seem as blazingly fast anymore…

Sprint Premier – One of the most popular posts on this blog is Screw Your Customers where I bitched about strangers off the street getting better deals than loyal customers. Sprint Premier is great, if you are a heavy customer you get the new customer deals. You’d think everyone would do this, but they are the first people I’ve seen going the extra mile. Nice Job!

And with that I am back to paying bills and trying to get my tax stuff together… Have a good weekend!

Click here to view the embedded video.

What will Sports Illustrated Look like? I am a huge fan of SI because of fantastic writing and incredible pictures, I follow sports in the papers but the magazine is in a league of it’s own. Mike Troiano had pointed this out in his blog:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What can film makers do with next generation DSLRs that shoot video? The evil mastermind behind Ask a Ninja shows what can be done with with a DSLR (regular camera) that can shoot video, hard to tell the difference between it an your average Rom-Com.

You really need to fail more. My Marketing Over Coffee co-host writes about the importance of failure. This was driven home for me listening to This American Life last week, it’s a fantastic audio program and one of the reasons why is that 8 stories get developed and the best 3 or 4 make it to the show

Will graphic novels transition to digital devices? Yes. I tried out the PSP comic reader a few weeks ago and it’s really good. It’s a comic store’s worst nightmare – easy to buy online and download wirelessly, and it actually is easy to read. Check out the demo here. As a DC fan I’m kind of disappointed that they are launching with Marvel – Dan DiDio, what’s the deal? I’d rather buy your stuff…

Ok, I need to finish my holiday cards and shopping, I hope your stress level is below the boiling point for December.

There are some interesting academic arguments, and defenses from PR specialists but I think people are losing sight of the fact that these are literally entrepreneurs working part time in their basements or other below C class office space, and Mike was dead on saying “I’ve seen a PR shop that would get out of bed for less that $4K/month”. Guys clipping coupons for a case of Ramen Pride between coding are not possible clients peoples.

After a night’s sleep it came to me that while the writers/bloggers were saying you can get by without PR people, you have marketing gurus saying you don’t need the writers/bloggers. You’re the expert in the space, you can create your own content. Why work around some other pub’s schedule, or spend time bringing a journalist up to speed on your specific niche when you can publish your own stuff and own the content, track it, and do with it as you please?

Stepping beyond the academic arguments that could be debated ad nauseam, Mike asked the big questions:

Is the “junior staff leverage” model really dead, and if so, what business model will support the next generation of great marketing services firms? The truth is I don’t know. But it seems to me that’s the conversation worth having among the “PR” digerati… not the semantic argument about what PR is or isn’t, but how, in the end, the people delivering it will build a sustainable and productive business.

Before I get into my answers, it’s a good idea to expand the definition of PR beyond influncing writers. Some good stuff already written on that from last night.

…PR is about developing a broad communications program that includes:

• Building a long-term strategy that establish lasting relationships with your core audiences;
• Creating content and managing conversations that engage those audiences directly; and
• Reaching industry influencers (media relations gets lumped in here).

Tactically this means that the communicator or agency you hire should have skill sets that include: writing ability; audio and video skills; creative thinking and the ability to connect with influencers.

That got me thinking about what the business model would look like. By 2012, most marketing, PR, and ad agency positions that revolve around tactics will be reinvented – a huge opportunity here. This is what I think it might look like (keep in mind that me writing this is a lot like all of the jackasses that start restaurants that go out of business because they think that eating out most of their lives is actual foodservice experience):

An Agency FROM THE FUTURE!

I don’t see a scenario where the existing junior staff model can work. It has in the past because of communications friction (trying to call all relevant reporters about hot stories from all your clients every day, hard work but low skill level).

The big idea is the Embedded Agent. Someone who can go into an account a day a week or more to shoot video, record audio and create other relevant content. Ideally they would be paired with a subject matter expert (SME) at the client who will ultimately speak on behalf of the client. Think about building your own Robert Scobles (when he was still at Microsoft) or Scott Montys. This forces a schedule of content production that can be used in a number of scenarios and at the same time will serve as SEO activity.

The agent’s team should also include a Preditor (Producer/Editor) who assembles the raw footage from the Agent. Preditors have access to the best tools and a support network of their peers – no client would be able to reproduce the the effectiveness of the Agent/Preditor team so this is a huge value add. This team would need an admin to handle scheduling as the Agent will be moving around a lot (let’s say with a 3 client load), and the Preditor needs long stretches of uninterrupted time for work – somebody needs to field calls and emergencies.

Beyond the teams are infrastructure that the client has access to that cannot be reproduced without huge expense by the client – the remainder of the value add. Audio/Video production and Photography, specialists in a variety of disciplines including CRM, Lead Generation, whatever the agency can leverage that clients need.

Influencer is the last category, executives that have access to people with markets. You can get on the Today show? Clients will pay for that. Having a strong database here would allow this system to scale to multiple people instead of a the single performer limitation.

Ok, enough with the BS, let’s see if I can backsolve this to a profitable business…

Teams (with benefits, taxes, etc.) Fully loaded agent – $200k, Preditors $120k, Admin $50k = $370k per team/3 clients=$123k, charge $150k to cover fixed expenses etc.= $12,500 per month for the client. The client is getting more than 1/3 of an agent and Preditor (at bare minimum $9k per month). So for 30k per year they get all the value and don’t have to do the impossible task of finding 1/3 of an agent and Preditor. All the specialist stuff can be sold ala carte for big margin.

Any opinions out there? Is this real or candyland?

I had heard a few things about Michael Jordan’s Hall of Fame acceptance speech and decided to consult the wise and powerful Google. I found a number of articles that were critical of the speech, and thought that it was a letdown. Prior to the web that would be it, I would have to take the news at face value. Now I can go watch the entire 23 minutes myself and form my own opinions.

Michael Jordan has always inspired me, I was fortunate enough to see him play a couple of times and in a time where sports icons seem to have a hard time staying on the straight and narrow he managed to do very well. If you don’t care about basketball, the punch line is that I think it’s a good speech about motivation and competiton if you listen to the whole thing. If it weren’t for the fact that streaming doesn’t work very well, I’d say watch the last few minutes starting at the 21:00 mark, I don’t think it matches what the soundbites say.

This week he did a piece on critics, please check it out before going further. No problem, I’ll wait…

So I start going through Robert Morris’ reviews and spot an interesting trend – the majority of them are positive, 4 or 5 stars. Based on adding his RSS feed to my reader I looked at over a hundred and didn’t see any 1 to 3 star ones.

This made me wonder about the Janet Maslin point he made – is there a place for negative criticism on the web?

I can see the mean spirited ivory tower stuff getting extinguished by two way communication and community voting, but what about legitimate negative criticism? For example, I recently bought a memory card adapter so that I could use a standard MicroSD memory card instead of the proprietary Sony card that’s 4x the price (big shocker, betamax-style baby!) . Of course the Sony device wouldn’t read it (shocker #2).

Posting a negative review would be very helpful as a “buyer beware”, more helpful than another 5-star review for a book on the NY Times bestseller list, but putting up a negative review has consequences – both the seller and the manufacturer have an interest in voting the review down. The buyer may consider the review but odds are, won’t vote because they don’t know for sure, and now they are less likely to try the product and find out.

As I’ve written this, another idea starts to gel – negative criticism has a tipping point and perhaps that’s the key. When you see something on Amazon with 20x the 1 star ratings over 5 star you avoid it. 80% of those are “pile on” 1 stars, and the 20% of 1 stars that came in were people so angry that they didn’t care about what anyone thought, they had to vent.

The end result – those who write negative reviews will always be always be at a disadvantage in scoring, and therefore visibility and level of trust (due to the automated nature of the system), compared to those who avoid writing any negative reviews.

This raises a bunch of interesting questions:

Will the job of the critic transform to that of referrer of quality stuff only?

What’s lost by having only positive reviews on the web?

Is it worth the risk to be a negative critic in a public forum?

Should negative criticism only to be done in private forums? Think about the waiter that will mention avoiding a certain dish, as opposed to reading a negative review on Yelp.

Web reviews could be considered SEO, content generation, social networking, branding, providing a good and valuable customer service, demonstrating thought leadership, perhaps even generate leads, or it could be just a hobby. With so many different motivations, what’s important?

I’d really like to hear your opinions on these items, and I’d really like to hear more from Seth Godin. Here’s my offer – if he’s willing to answer the questions above (in the comments, send them to me, whatever), I’ll give him $100 (or $100 to his favorite charity). Everybody else, you can get the latest Marketing Over Coffee audio program from iTunes for FREE! Ok, not as good as $100, I know, but this is a one man show…

Check out this post: Never before has news been gathered and spread so fast. Is it any wonder that trade magazines are doomed to extinction?

Some stats here, and links to campaigns by Ford and Pepsi and more info, as usual, at wikipedia

Click here to view the embedded video.

I had seen the same thing with Mini Cooper a few months back, I think there will be a lot of interesting stuff on this front:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The other thing that struck me about this post was the number of worthless trackbacks. I’ve started to look at blogs along a spectrum where the degree of interactivity is inversely related to the popularity of the author/blog owner (which, for the larger ones may be corporations or the former dead tree vendors Mr. Shirky is talking about).

The blog starts with everything open, although by default now you have to have some spam protection on. If you reach critical mass you start to have comments that deride you personally, are generally crude, or caricatures of humanity, usually submitted anonymously, and so the comments get shut off in favor of trackbacks.

The acceleration continues and then the trackbacks get too spammy so they have to go too.

The underlying issue is that it doesn’t scale as well when you hit explosive growth. Something I need to think about some more…

But then last month, I learned that what I consider to be Boston’s most iconic newstand is closing up. I had been convinced that it was a behavioral issue – and too many people enjoy reading the paper -  but what about the economic side? Printing news on paper and having people drive it around on trucks is a business model that can’t survive compared to delivering it online? Maybe I do have a shot at the cash by 2013…