It really does seem that green is the new black … but if Walmart is on the bandwagon maybe the trend has jumped the shark. (Three cliches in one sentence … a new record). I will await developments … this may be a PR stunt but I guess I have to applaud Google for doing something…

Edward Winslow wrote in a letter dated December 12, 1621:

Our corn [i.e. wheat] did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good, but our peas not worth the gathering, for we feared they were too late sown.  They came up very well, and blossomed, but the sun parched them in the blossom.  Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors.  They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week.  At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others.  And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.

While online ads keep growing … 21 percent to $773 million industrywide, it is not enough to make up for the decline in print ads. Print in the third quarter was $10.1 billion. That is $1 billion less than it was in the same quarter last year. Meanwhile, online newspaper ad sales rose only by $135 million. After six straight quarters of decline, print ad sales are at 1997 levels—lower if you adjust for inflation.

1. Legitimate commenters, who have something thoughtful to say and/ or add to the conversation (for and against)
2. Link spammers who comment on the off chance they might get some traffic as a consequence of their comment
3. Trolls, who make it their business to criticize anything written and the people who wrote it.

Here’s a blockquote from the New Scientist:

Social psychologists have known for decades that, if we reduce our sense of our own identity – a process called deindividuation – we are less likely to stick to social norms…the same thing happens with online communication such as email. Psychologically, we are “distant” from the person we’re talking to and less focused on our own identity. As a result we’re more prone to aggressive behavior, he says.

Another factor influencing online communication, according to Epley, is simply the risk of miscommunication involved with text-based messages, which are inherently more ambiguous. At the same time, he notes, email “has the feel of informality – we just fire something off”, even though we probably ought to treat it with the same care as a written letter. And, as most people probably know, this can cause problems for both the sender and the receiver.

Like TechCrunch, I will leave the final word to the New Scientists’s Michael Marshall.

I’m not sure what we can do to minimize miscommunication and abuse online. But being aware that we’re not as good at communication online as we’d like to think seems like a good start. I know I often have to restrain myself from joining in.

The Kindle is being heralded as the “iPod for books” (not the iPhone I note!). Business Week has given five reasons why the Kindle is the next must-have gadget.

1. Solves real “problems” for consumers and readers
Kindle is the first ebook reader with its own cellular wireless connection to let you get new books anytime, almost anywhere when the mood strikes. It’s not wifi, you don’t need to find hot spots — it’s like a cell phone. What about periodicals? I want to get my newspapers and magazines quick. Wake up in the morning, grab some coffee and the paper. Kindle’s wireless connection puts them there before I wake up.

2. Moves the value equation in favor of consumers
Want to buy a digital book from Sony? It’s about the same price as in the book store — or MORE. Want to read Clive Cussler’s new thriller “The Chase” in hardcover? It costs $16.17 at Amazon.com or $21.56 at Sony’s ebook store. Ouch. What the heck? No paper or printing or shipping costs and it’s still more? Kindle books top out at $9.99 and many are less.

3. Smart design changes the existing product landscape
Kindle is filled with a bunch of smart design features, like a real keyboard to let you search in a book or document or page turning buttons on both sides of the screen. Another major decision will also help Kindle take off. It’s not hanging off your computer. You don’t need to sync it with a computer. Purchases are backed up online by Amazon so you can delete and recover any book you bought.

4. Bezos has an established track record as a visionary
Jeff Bezos packed it all up and moved to Seattle last decade to build his online superstore, beating out zillions of more (and less) established competitors. Amazon.com got many things right, including the important focus on reader reviews, cheap shipping and giant selection. Sure, not everything Bezos has ever conceived has been a hit. I’d say that puts him in Steve Jobs’ camp.

5. It’s cool
(!)

Says Bezos: “This is a 500 year old technology. We forget it is a technology. As readers we don’t think about this often. You print books 16 pages at a time or 32 pages at a time, that collection is called a signature that gets folded, the edged get abraded. the printing press has definitely gotten a lot more sophisticated since Gutenberg’s time. Gutenberg would still recognize a modern-day book.”

“Why are books the last bastion of analog. they have stubbornly resisted digitization.The book is so highly evolved and suited to its tasks that it is hard to displace. the key feature of a book is that it disappears when you read it. All of us readers know that flow state when we read,we don’t think about the glue, the paper, the stitching, allof that goes away. All that remains is the author’s world, and we flow right into that.”

Let’s just say I am putting one one my Wish List!

I have never owned a Mac (I do own other Apple products, notably an iPod) and personally never saw the allure, outside certain outward design features. I have friends who work at agencies who have them, and I have always been mystified by their smug attitude to “PC people”, and dewy-eyed devotion to their “Mac”.

What is it about Apple that does this? I confess I have intermittently admired Apple marketing: I can still remember first seeing “1984″ for example and some of their Think Different offerings were outstanding. (Not so the new iPhone ads!)

Three things really stand out for me: (1) That Steve Jobs recognized digital devices were about entertainment not technology (2) The way Apple Stores have been leveraged and (3) The Apple Community.

And it is point (3) which intersects with my own universe. Say what you like about quality, Apple were really pioneers in Social Media … and you have to give them their props for that (hey, I could almost forgive the terrible Mac v PC ads …)

I don’t know much about the company (or even who the other tw0 romantic -looking figures are) apart from what I have read on Facebook; but actually the one simple (BS-free) paragraph pretty much says it all.

“The Advance Guard is a new company focused on using social media and emerging technology to create radical marketing programs. It’s led by award-winning Podcaster CC Chapman, and digital advertising veteran, Steve Coulson.”

Maybe CC learned from the mistakes at Crayon, and the Advance Guard launched efficiently on Facebook and then came straight out of the gate with a client. More than that – a live campaign, with their work for Verizon’s MyHome 2.0. Talk about “show me the money!”

There seems to be a huge gaping opportunity for a “Web 2.0″ agency and I think the Advance Guard could be the guys to fill it.

One question though … who are THESE guys?

I happen to think David Armano is a great thinker, and I owe him a debt for the many pictograms of his I have “borrowed” for my own presentations. Contrast his approach to the rather more self conratulatory approach of certain other Web 2.0 commentators …

Last week three senior staff at Joseph Jaffe’s fledgling company Crayon announced they were leaving. (Steve Coulson, CC Chapman, Gerry Cohen). By my math that’s a third of the company…

Jaffe posted a somewhat – let’s say “authorized” version of events on the Crayon blog, along with the usual jargonized piffle that characterizes his prose style. Evidently AdAge’s Jonah Bloom (having entirely ignored Crayon’s launch fiasco last year, as most of us did – if we even noticed) saw this and wrote this article.

I am sure Jonah won’t mind me reprinting it in its entirety in case you don’t want to leave this page(!)

Taken from Adages:

“Posted by Jonah Bloom on 09.10.07 @ 10:10 AM

Joseph Jaffe’s Crayon is up to something. Our best guess is that it’s called cutting your staff in half while making a play for whatever budgets marketers have assigned to word-of-mouth marketing. But why don’t you see if you can do better at deciphering his explanation on crayonville.com.

We’d completely filled in the bullshit-bingo card before we got to the end of the second paragraph. Particularly enjoyable were the two references to companies being “living organisms.” (We imagine Ad Age is a Capuchin monkey, BBDO an octopus, etc.)

And then came paragraph three: “To achieve this objective, Crayon will focus its efforts on transforming prolific thought leadership and vision into cutting-edge, differentiated and prescriptive strategic solutions.”

Let us go through this slowly. Somewhere in there are thoughts, and they are leading to something. They are also thoughts that are very productive, hence we can call them prolific. And there’s also vision, although we’re not sure whether that’s prolific too. So we’ve got the ability to see and thoughts that lead stuff and are productive. But we presume it’s not stuff we want, because the new Crayon is, if we’re reading this correctly, promising to change that stuff into something else. Specifically into solutions. But not just any kind of solutions — solutions with sharp or serrated sides . . . . OK, we give up.

If Jaffe has fallen on hard times, he might want to consider applying for one of those big, corporate PR jobs where the key to success is saying and writing nothing, but employing so many unwieldy long sentences and so much repetition and jargon that no one ever guesses. Certainly this effort vaults him straight into the Spinmasters’ Hall of Bullshit.”

Yowch … I am looking forward to Jaffe’s response though…