Marketing Pilgrim

Aol is really a little slow on the uptake aren’t they? They purchase TechCrunch who has a history of not keeping anything secret (especially e-mails) and then they send an e-mail to a TechCrunch writer, Alexia Tsotsis, asking her to tone down the snark on a post about an Aol related property. Doesn’t look like anyone at Aol will be splitting any atoms any time soon.

The story is really a non-story but it’s interesting to see how even with the promise of editorial lines of demarcation, Aol is looking to make sure that nothing too ‘out of line’ comes from their properties especially when it’s about another one of their properties or relationships.

There’s a lot of discussion surrounding a new video from Matt Cutts.

In it, the prominent Google engineer explains why you should not be swayed into registering a domain name that includes the keywords you are likely to target for your SEO efforts. He provides many examples of successful companies that have a branded domain name–and not a keyworded one.

Then he drops somewhat of a bombshell for all those SEOs that have been relying on the keyword in the domain to do all the heavy-lifting:

Google is doing what it can to make sure that if you don’t have Android as your mobile device of choice that you are still using Google search on the iPhone. What they have done is dolled up their old Google Search app and made, well, pretty cool looking. The homepage is a bit different as you can see

But the real fun is in how you can dig deeper into search in the app. As an Android user myself, I echo the comment from the Google blog post regarding why we get the not as cool version when we’re are the ones closest to home? Just a right swipe on a search result nets you the following UI.

If there is something that really isn’t being challenged in the Google empire these days it’s the dominance of YouTube in the online video market. Yesterday, a post on the YouTube blog announced the acquisition of Green Parrot Pictures which has a technology that could make the video site even more powerful.

Today, we’re pleased to announce we’ve acquired Green Parrot Pictures, a digital video technology company founded by Associate Professor Anil Kokaram at the Engineering School of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. In the last six years, their small team of engineers has built cutting-edge video quality improvement technology that has been used in major studio productions from Lord of the Rings to X-Men to Spider-Man. Their technology helps make videos look better while at the same time using less bandwidth and improving playback speed. If you’re interested in seeing some of the incredible work Green Parrot Pictures has previously done, check out some of the videos on their website.

In a recent article called “Why QR Codes Will Go Mainstream,” Mashable referred to these quizzical little boxes as “the shortest distance between curiosity and information retrieval.” Very poetic.

The author of the piece suggests that QR codes are likely to become the commonplace connector between all things offline and online. He points out the fact that the code is open-source and freely available for use, that adding it to a magazine page doesn’t cost extra and that the rise in smartphone usage makes them accessible to more people every day.

All of this is true, but there’s one big downside to QR codes that I think will keep them from becoming mainstream; they don’t mean anything when you look at them. They’re cool and for folks who love puzzles, they’re enticing, but for the average person flipping through a magazine, they’re an out of focus eye chart.

As this past week has shown us, news is still an integral part of life on this planet. As the drama in Japan unfolded, CNN’s viewership jumped up 172% and Fox news saw a 47% increase in viewers. At the same time, Twitter and Facebook exploded with information from both traditional news sources and the man on the street. We may toss out the Wednesday LA Times unread but when a major event happens, we all turn to the news for information and answers.

The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism has an extensive report called State of the Media 2011. Going in to it, you may think it will be all gloom and doom, but there are bright spots and hope for the future, if the media will simply learn to embrace change.