I never tire of watching videos which highlight the incredible statistics surrounding the penetration of the internet, and I’m still surprised by the growth in some of these statistics.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

One of the hottest news for social communication this month was the beta launch of Google Wave.
Like a lot of people, I’m still waiting for my Beta invite – Google released 100K invites on Sept 30, 2009, and hopefully a 2nd wave of invites will come soon.  {Update : Thanks to Gus for sending me a twitter invite soon after this post was published)  Read more... (300 words, 2 images, estimated 1:12 mins reading time)

The Economist has published this video which contains a series of interesting statistics about the changing media landscape.

Whilst the stats are US focused, they are representative of the changes that are occuring across the globe.

I continue to read with interest the growing number of Augmented Reality applications that are starting to emerge, this one a pretty cool 3D Augemented Reality version of the humble business card.

AR Business Card from James Alliban on

The major limitation of the technology today is the lack of standard Augmented Reality readers, but work is being done to address this.

I can see implications for the Real Estate market.

Via Dean Collins

Since Apple’s release of the iphone 3GS, there has been lots of discussion around the various tools and applications that will help deliver video content from the phones directly to social networks and to the web.

Tweetreel is one such application seen here in use with video stream from the Michael Jackson memorial

Techcrunch also reports of Facebook’s new iphone app which looks set to amplify the delivery of content from iphones to Facebook.

One of the highlights from Cannes is the Wildfire stories.
You can watch the full presentation of  Wildfire – Stories in full here presented by Contagious and Leo Burnett.

This year’s focus was on stories with a strong talkability factor to faster spread the word.
This is definitely where marketing communications needs to head.

Social Media has brought content creation tools to consumers, allowing an efficient means f­or organ­i­zi­n­g, f­aci­l­i­tati­n­g ou­treach, en­cou­ragi­n­g di­al­ogu­e an­d rai­si­n­g m­on­ey­.
This video describes how social media is being used in Lebanon for “di­gi­tal­ acti­v­i­sm­”.

Successful cause initiatives such as Kiva (Microfinance),  myC4 (Microfinance & Mentoring), Build An African School (Financing new schools in Africa) and MobileMovement (Microfinance using mobiles) all understand that the social media landscape provide consumers the means to more deeply engage with the cause, and in doing that these initiatives are reaping the benefits of communal support.  Read more... (93 words, estimated 22 secs reading time)

Here’s the video Bullseye produced for the Australian Sports Commission to encourage the development of young Australians sportspeople on this promotional site.

Already the viral has been picked up by many of the mainstream press both here and in the UK.

Australia Press Coverage

Marketing Mag

Livenews

Sydney Morning Herald

Sydney Morning Herald (2)

Sydney Mornging Herald (3)

Adnews (subscribers only)

Brisbane Times

Canberra Times

UK Press

The Times

The Sun  Read more... (309 words, estimated 1:14 mins reading time)

Here’s a very clever animation made entirely from street graffiti by Blu.

It’s quite amazing how a story can be created like this.  Because it’s different it rises above the clutter of content.

Can your brand message do with a new canvas?

via Chris Brogan

MSNBC have released a NewsWare site, which provides an interesting news spectrum which can also be customised into a widget to embed on your blog, social network profile, or desktop.

The news experience includes this spectrum which is very engaging.

There is also a Newsblaster tool which lets you read the news while you are playing an online game.

To promote this feature, MSNBC setup the world’s first interactive cinema crowd game.  Read more... (121 words, 1 image, estimated 29 secs reading time)

Google has just announced a new web based purchasing and analytics system that allows anyone to run television commercials.

The system has been available as a trial program for about a year, and this announcement now opens the system up for everyone to use using this simple process.

-  Select your target audience

-  Choose the networks, days and times, and  the specific programs you want your ad to run on.

- Choose the cost-per-thousand impressions you’re willing to pay  Read more... (262 words, 2 images, estimated 1:03 mins reading time)

One of the better April Fool’s stunts this year !

For those who loved the 1982 classic Tron movie, will enjoy this cardboard version.

This just shows the type of quality content that can be created and shared online.

Brands should consider tapping into these resources for producing videos.

via EpicFu

Listening to consumers has never been more important.  What are your consumers saying?

Brightcove have just published an excellent whitepaper on 5 keys to successful online video.

The 5 keys are :-  Read more... (152 words, estimated 36 secs reading time)