As a recent contributor to the Age of Conversation 2 “Why Don’t They Get It?”, I thought I would provide some little summaries of the the articles this remarkable book contains (You can order a copy of Age of Conversation 2 here, all proceeds go the the children’s charity Variety)

Three Principals for Fusing Experimental Marketing and Social Media by Peter Corbett www.advercation.com

Peter Corbett shares his three main principals for fusing experimental marketing and social media. 1) The Creation Principal, 2) The Distribution Principle and 3)Socialization. With these three principals you will have the tools you need to create a marketing campaign that will generate social media

I would love to hear your thoughts, please leave a comment.

Always Innovating is preparing to launch a new product:

Until now, all netbooks were engineered the same way: Power-hungry Intel Atom, ugly case, and outdated 90’s OS. Our goal: To achieve a breakthrough in both architecture and design.

The result: a revolutionary device that works as both a netbook and a standalone tablet thanks to a detachable keyboard and a 3D touchscreen user interface.

I wrote about this in July of 2007 in a post titled “The iPhone Killer”:

One Gadget, Multiple Uses

The idea of convergence in technology is an exciting one, I mean who wants to carry around a backpack full of different devices just so you can go online, track your appointments, listen to music, watch videos/TV, and make telephone calls? Pretty soon you have 20 pounds of gear and half-a-dozen chargers.

The idea behind the iPhone is an attractive one. There is one major drawback, however, with this kind of connectedness: it’s too much and too little at the same time. Don’t get me wrong, I am looking forward to the day that we can get a small device that can handle all sorts of functions: combining the power and utility of a laptop with the portability of a Palm Pilot or BlackBerry, the “notebooks” one finds in William Gibson’s fiction. But I do not want it to be a phone.

Phone + ______ = “The Next Big Thing”

I personally find it difficult to understand the current fetish of combining one’s phone with other types of devices – the phone/music player, the phone/video player, the phone/organizer, the phone/camera. Can someone please take all of the other devices and combine them into one, 5″x7″x1″ unit with a screen and a little keyboard? This would be a useful device. Then we can do all of the things that we need to do while we are on-the-go and experience the productivity that this technology promises. Without being interrupted every few minutes by incoming calls.

The Wrong Direction

The Marketing Geniuses are taking the idea of the telephone down the wrong road, adding features that phones just do not need. I can just imagine a bunch of “creative types” sitting around a table brainstorming, “What if you had a phone that could also make cappuccino? That would be cool!”

No, it would not.

This device is pretty close to that ideal. The specs are good:

I especially like the idea of the internal USB ports and the small size makes it very portable and conference-friendly.The device is being debuted at DEMO today, and I for one am looking forward to the reviews.

UPDATE: Gizmodo has a hands-on review of a beta-model of the Touch Book:

As far as software goes, the OS is based around the Open Embedded Linux platform, but fully customized for the Touch Book hardware. As such, the Touch Book has the power to handle full screen video, and render OpenGL 3D graphics. Gentil says the Touch Book can run some of the same games found on the iPhone and plans to offer them in the future.

The Touch Book UI design depends on what configuration the hardware is in. When docked to the keyboard, the Touch Book uses a standard, cursor-based UI that looks like other Linux desktops. However, when in tablet mode, it uses a custom-designed, touch-based UI. The touch UI is based around spherical icons that rotate in a circular fashion as you swipe to the next one. Content is divided into three categories: web, apps and settings.

Crunchgear has this to say:

It will also include Mozilla’s Fennec browser and – get this – the screen is magnetic, so when you detach it from the keyboard you can “put the tablet on the fridge to serve as a kitchen computer or digital frame.” Finally, there are a whopping six USB ports – three internal, two external, and one mini. The internal ports are for things like a wireless dongle or a USB thumb drive – stuff you wouldn’t want hanging off the side of the machine all the time.

The Touch Book will be available in “May or June 2009” and will come in two versions; tablet only or netbook (tablet + keyboard). The tablet version will cost $299 and the netbook version will cost $399. Those are both going to likely be tough prices for would-be customers to swallow but perhaps the cool features, tiny weight, and super long battery life will be enough to win people over. If the company could eventually lop $100 off each model, though, this thing might have a much better chance.

And thanks to Patrick Rhone for sharing this video:

If anyone out there has had a chance to see it in action, please leave a comment.

I wanted to share some interesting articles from the latest edition of Ad Age Digital:

Using Google Search Data to Read 2009’s Tea Leaves from Steve Rubel

Blogging may be making a comeback. Searches related to blogging resources and services posted 64% growth in 2004. Then they basically flat-lined the next three years. However, in 2008 they climbed 24%. It’s highly likely that both the growth in 2004 and 2008 was fueled by elections. But my gut is that something deeper is going on here. Perhaps some see blogs as a powerful personal branding tool that can help them weather the recession. Searches for the keywords “personal brand” are also up significantly.

Read more –>

A New Year’s Challenge to Brands From Mat Zucker

10 important resolutions for you to make on behalf your brands and agencies in 2009:

1. I will put my brand in the service of the country right now — not my P&L, not my division, not my parent company, not a quite-possibly already irrelevant 2009-2010 plan. This is the time to spend the years of positive brand equity we’ve built up.
2. I will impart optimism to the customers who have come to believe in the brand. I will not give into the national self-pity promoted by our news media. I will not be a Pollyanna, but I will not be depressing.
3. I will finally add to my brand standards how I expect my business to behave. These principles are more important now than just look, feel, tone or advertising message. I’ve gone too long without them.
4. I will find new ways to connect to my audience. They used to rely on me to ask them for money. What else can my brand offer them?
5. I will finally learn how to communicate the way my customers communicate. I will get fluent in the digital media they’ve come to love — search, text messaging, blogging, paid content, e-commerce. And my brand is going to make digital media better, just as we used to make traditional media better.
6. When I do use digital advertising, I will use it to actually sell product through news or differentiation. (Remember when ads did that?)

Read more –>

Most Manufacturing Brands Are Missing the Mark Online from Kelly Mooney

The web is the platform that integrates all customer touchpoints and it’s the one place where manufacturers have an opportunity to establish a direct relationship with the end consumer. It provides a unique opportunity for manufacturers to tell their brand story and differentiate themselves in a competitive landscape.

Even in the case of non-transactional sites, the brand still has a tremendous opportunity to influence the sale without being responsible for the ultimate transaction. That influence takes shape in information and tools that empower users to make confident, informed buying decisions, particularly about high-dollar products. A brand can create an open dialogue online, offer decision support and even support a community, resulting in an inspired consumer running three quarters of the race before even entering the store — and choosing a brand before she arrives.

Read more –>

LinkedIn has officially become much more useful than the majority of other social networks on the Web. They have opened their platform to developers who want to build apps for profiles. So far, there are nine available applications that do have a business slant to them. LinkedIn has been very clear that they want to keep these applications of a professional nature. And in order to maintain their business networking image, that’s exactly what they need to do. The following are the current available applications:

SlideShare: Create and share presentations, resumes, ideas, etc. up to 100 MB. Supports ppt, pdf, odp, and doc files. If you have an existing SlideShare account, you can import your presentations.

Google Presentation: Like SlideShare, upload presentations to post on your profile. You can import Powerpoint files or use Google’s free presentation application.

Box.net: Perhaps one of the more useful applications, Box.net lets you upload files to your LinkedIn profile, share them with contacts, collaborate, edit and post to your profile. A nice way to collaborate on projects, or pitch ideas to colleagues.

Huddle Workspaces: Create private, online workspaces with your contacts. Share files and collaborate on projects and participate in discussion forums (a nice way to cut down on massive email threads between coworkers.) Comes with 1 GB free storage, and you can import information from your existing Huddle.net account.

My Travel: This is exactly what it sounds like. Share your travel information so that you can connect with friends, colleagues and coworkers while on the move.

Reading List: Amazon’s app lets you post your reading collection, current books you’re reading, ones you have already read, etc. You can view your contacts’ reading lists and choose to follow them.

Company Buzz: Another very useful app, this one lets you tap into Twitter to find out what people are saying about you and your business – an excellent reputation monitoring tool. You can customize topics to follow, see historical data charts and follow trends.

Blog Link: Connect your blog to your profile, so that every time you post, it shows up on your profile. Blog Link supports TypePad, Movable Type, Vox, WordPress.com/.org, Blogger, LiveJournal and more.

WordPress: Basically the same idea as Blog Link. And, along with Blog Link, probably the easiest way for people to get involved in spreading the word about their business through Social Media.

For more information on getting the best use of LinkedIn, please check out the assortment of links that I posted at Productivity in Context.