Wanna Be Wired In? Think Inc.

This is an unsolicited, uncompensated plug for Inc. Magazine, one of the more interesting and helpful business magazines too often pigeon-holed as a publication for small business. Even if you work at a very large company, Inc. will keep you abreast of developments out there, particularly on the web.

The current issue includes an interesting article explaining “How to Get in On The YouTube Craze.”

One example: Smirnoff pushed its new malt iced-tea drink by posting a rap parody on the YouTube site, where consumers watch 100 million videos DAILY. The two-minute clip included country club types rapping their lifestyle and their new iced tea drink with a kick.

Bottom line: It was viewed more than a million times within a few weeks.

Here’s one more testimonial, this one for the online news site WebProNew, which has become a reliable provider of news about the fast-developing Web 2.0 culture and business environment.

Mr. Watson, Can You Dig This?

Some news articles are easily read and forgotten. But others stick out like giant red fingers pointing the way to the future for the smart business executive.

We got the finger from four such news articles in the last 36 hours. They all pointed to one sure-fire bet in the next few years: The good old telephone, which is poised to again revolutionize business the second time around.

This article describes why graphics chip-maker Nvidia purchased a company that makes chips and software for portable devices. The last line is the best line, as follows:

Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia's boss, stakes out the company's claim for this ground: "We intend to drive the next digital revolution, where the mobile device becomes our most personal computer," he said today.

Bet on this folks – the days of a single purpose portable player (think iPod) are numbered. Why carry two or three devices when one can do it all?

Consider this article about the pending deal between Verizon Communications and YouTube, which will result in YouTube videos showing up on cellphones. The Holy Grail indeed. If a phone can hold videos, it can hold music, books and web pages.

(See the article on News Corp. looking to team up with Japan’s Softbank Corp. to offer its MySpace.com product via cellphones. And the one on VodaFone Group doing a deal with Microsoft to streamline the number of platforms needed to create “smartphons.”)

So how can this change business? By itself, not so much, ,perhaps, but with the new search engine muscles allowing users to capture all manner of video, consider this scenario.

Company Cool has created a hot new video game and wants to get it known to the game-playing kid population. It will certainly crank out the press releases and hope for some ink and web news space.

But it also will produce a zippy video about the game that is uploaded to all manner of sites, including YouTube. A youngster searches on his cell phone for cool new videos, finds the new game video promo and, shazaam, it is now playing on his cell phone.

From company to consumer with no human middle man.

In Praise of Boring Lotus Leaves

On the video blog front, just wanted to show you a sample video from the GE Global Research Blog called Edison’s Desk. Look at it here for the few moments it takes and ask yourself this:

Why put a boring video on a blog? And why would GE do this?

The answer is simple. The employees working on this Lotus Leaf project do not consider it boring, nor do the handful of persons who commented.

Rather than demand that content be universal, Web 2.0 asks only that it satisfy someone out there. The research blog has a nice little “show and tell” feel to it, unexpected from a large corporation. And, it has a blatant cheerleaderish tone that viewers do not seem to mind.

Is your company doing enough “boring” things to attract this kind of audience?

Innovate! Innovate! Dance to the Music

When Microsoft was under fire from anti-trust warriors in this country and Europe, Bill Gates continually complained that the company needed the freedom to innovate. If any word was his mantra, it was that one: Innovate.

The mantra hasn't seemed to be working too well.

That "I word" came to mind today when the news wires were afire with word that Google has purchased privately-held JotSpot, a site that permits users to create their own wikis, either free or paid, with premium users getting more bells and whistles. More than 300,000 people use the free service. (See some of the web news about the deal here.)

If you don't know wikis, you will. They started out as electronic whiteboards that allowed users to share content over the internet, contributing their own words or changing what already is there. JotSpot advanced the wiki, allowing users to post and change photos, spreadsheets, etc.

Wikis are perfect for business teams dealing with projects that involve many employees and facets.

As usual, Microsoft is not unfamiliar with wikis and it seems to have fooled around with some wiki-type products in its Office environment. Not that most businesses have ever heard of Microsoft's offerings in this field.

No, once again it has been the small and independent creators of new, innovative products that have captured the early-adapters and now reap the financial rewards for their creators(although no details of the JotSpot deal were made public).

The Jotspot web site today carried a notice saying it has closed new account activity until the content is moved to Google, but it does have a FAQ list about the deal.

With its thousands of employees and billions of dollars in cash reserve, Microsoft has been in a good position to head off the Googles of the world. But the news today casts doubt on the company's ability to remain in the driver's seat in the Web 2.0 world.