Expanding ways to reach audiences with ads

Ready, set, go for a new kind of advertising option - on license plates while a car is standing still more than 4 seconds!

The San Jose Mercury News reports, "The California Legislature is considering a bill that would allow the state to begin researching the use of electronic license plates for vehicles. The move is intended as a moneymaker for a state facing a $19 billion deficit. The device would mimic a standard license plate when the vehicle is in motion but would switch to digital ads or other messages when it is stopped for more than four seconds, whether in traffic or at a red light. The license plate number would remain visible at all times in some section of the screen. In emergencies, the plates could be used to broadcast Amber Alerts or traffic information."

Read more.

A new car to love: Saab Aero X

I am attracted to stories about auto styling - good design always pulls you in.

Check out Wired magazine's story on the new Saab styling.

Jason Castriota, the designer, says the new Saab 9-3 will emphasize aerodynamic efficiency.

Spyker Cars NV [owner of Saab] CEO Victor Muller says, “It is truly aircraft-inspired and Swedish-clean." Read about his plans for the company.

Evidently Saab pulled in a 36-year-old American to accomplish this. Read more.

While I scouted for a photo, I found the Saab Areo X, and I have already changed my affection to this auto! Images.

Getting to the bottom of AT&T/iPad email exposure

The best way to look for answers on the AT&T/Apple iPad snafu this week is to look for analyses from the experts who cover this technology. Here are some excerpts and links to help figure out what went wrong.

Gregg Keizer at Computer World says: "The hackers who harvested an estimated 114,000 Apple iPad 3G owner e-mail addresses defended their actions Friday as "ethical" and said they did nothing illegal. The hacking group Goatse Security obtained the e-mail addresses using an automated PHP script that collected iPad 3G owners' ICC-ID numbers and associated addresses from AT&T's servers using a publicly-available feature of the carrier's Web site. AT&T disabled the feature last Tuesday, a day before the Valleywag Web site [that was given the info from the hackers] first reported the story.

Gawker Media LLC is the focus of a Wall Street Journal article that is tied into the controversy this week of iPad owners' email addresses. Even thought the FBI, say the WSJ, is looking into Gawker records, it not a focus of the investigation. "Gawker's Valleywag section wrote Wednesday about a glitch in AT&T Inc.'s website that exposed the email addresses of iPad owners, including politicians, military officials and media executives," notes the article.

Information Week's blogger George Hulme through in cut to the chase message on Friday: "Essentially, all that happened is that a security firm managed to brute force a process that returned the correct unique identifier for the iPad and associated e-mail address. Based upon published lists, there were plenty of .gov, .mil, as well as high-level politicians, journalists, and CEOs affected. Our Paul McDougall has an in-depth write-up here. Jim Rapoza blogged earlier today that Cloud Is Real Culprit in iPad/AT&T Security Hole... The "cloud" isn't the culprit at all: AT&T's security and development processes are.

No doubt we will hear more about this in coming days, as well as other security issues for mobile technology.

Social tools making headway, enhancing work in organizations

I am following the new concepts underway for social networking within an enterprise -Facebook-like features that allow workers to more effectively. I came across the article by Mike Swift at San Jose Mercury News that does a good job explaining it - excerpted here:

"... Social media — complete with Facebook-like status updates, profile pages and networks of social connections — is coming to your office cubicle. Palo Alto-based Socialtext and other smaller companies already supply workplaces with the same sort of online social tools that Facebook, Wikipedia and Twitter brought into the mainstream in recent years — features such as networks of personal connections, internal wikis that allow groups of employees to collaborate, and Twitter-like microblogs that co-workers can follow. But with Microsoft, the 800-pound gorilla of office software, set to push deeper into the market with its SharePoint 2010 release May 12, analysts say online social networking is crossing over from something you do for fun with friends and family to something you increasingly will do with co-workers as part of your job."

Obviously this concept will spill over as a tool to interface with customers along with current use of Facebook etc. to engage our targeted audiences.

Privacy control issues addressed by Facebook today

Finally, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a news conference to let people know he is making it easier to adjust privacy controls on Facebook. Considering how many users, over 500 million people, depend on Facebook now for communications and to interact with fan pages, companies still need this channel in their toolkit to reach consumers.

You can read what Zuckeberg said on his blog today. Here is an excerpt:

More recently, we also launched community pages and other ways to give you personalized and social experiences on other sites you use. Since then, you have sent us lots of feedback. We've listened carefully in order to figure out the best next steps. We recognize that we made a lot of changes, so we really wanted to take the time to understand your feedback and make sure we address your concerns. The number one thing we've heard is that there just needs to be a simpler way to control your information. We've always offered a lot of controls, but if you find them too hard to use then you won't feel like you have control. Unless you feel in control, then you won't be comfortable sharing and our service will be less useful for you. We agree we need to improve this. Today we're starting to roll out some changes that will make all of these controls a lot simpler. We've focused on three things: a single control for your content, more powerful controls for your basic information and an easy control to turn off all applications.

Nuancing the social in the online world

Thank you to makeitwork.com for this image.

Staying in touch with friends - how nuanced is the online and mobile world becoming and will this become something like the "splinternet" in acquisition of information and social conformity?

Read an observation at Yeah! - ..."digital identity is beginning to define who we are offline (or at least it's becoming a symbol or identification). It's how we're known to friends (real and digital) and strangers alike. Non-users of pervasive technology platforms will quickly find that they're the odd man out. The person who can't be counted or included."

Awareness and Personal Branding

I have been reading a book by Harrison Monarth called "Executive Presence, The Art of Commanding Respect Like a CEO" [on Amazon] and decided to Google him to see what comes up - afterall, he says you should be good at branding yourself!

Well, he is good. I found a lot of ways to learn more about him and his skills. I think one of the best ways to brand yourself is to write a book about how to do something well in the current business environment. I like it when someone thinks innovatively, and Monarth seems to combine common sense with new ideas.

With my Google of Monarth, I found an interesting person who has written a book, too. Dan Schawbel of Millineal Branding, published "Me 2.0". He interviewed Monarth for his blog, and I will give you one sentence to ponder and then visit Schawbel's blog for an interesting interview - "knowing the impact of how you come across is most critical." I agree that awareness is important. I haven't read Me 2.0, but it looks interesting!

In Monarth's book, he tells CEOs, or CEO wannabes, that they should utilize all social media to enhance their brands. I agree that communicating your ideas in various forums is good, and building relationships in a 2.0 world is important.