I've been a fan of the iconic Flip camera for some time now. In my own experience, the device has single handedly unlocked the immediate power of creating video for me because it has made it a simple process. It has always been a great product. But now there are other products that offer similar features. Their groundbreaking idea of a compact video camera with popup USB connection is no longer the differentiator it once was. To take it's place, they've done something very smart with their most recent product, the Flip Mino (and Mino HD).

The rise of Web2.0 success stories has created an interesting phenomenon in the world of business. Today, far more than 5 years ago, you could easily point to a list of entrepreneurs who have built successful businesses without having a graduate business degree. The same MBA degree that was once considered the "green fees" to success in the business world seems to be rapidly becoming an optional asset on the road to success. The tradition of taking time off of work to complete a degree, for example, is rapidly giving way to more hybrid options such as part-time programs and Executive MBAs (targeted at professionals later in their careers).

Just a few minutes ago, Barack Obama was officially declared the winner of the Presidential election and my vote in Virginia was officially deemed to mean something for the first time by going for the Democrats as part of Obama's huge victory. Looking back, there were many marketing lessons that any business could learn from Obama's campaign, but perhaps the strongest is the power of having a strong AND shareable brand. Obama's logo and brand identity were consistently used across all his communications, but also treated with a flexibility that would drive many holders of a brand identity completely mad. Instead of taking a closed approach to his brand identity, the Obama campaign let people remix the brand for their own uses.

Yesterday at the MarketingProfs event, Ariana Huffington took the stage for a keynote presentation sharing some lessons she has learned about building a successful blog network with the Huffington Post. Though she definitely ignored my advice to speakers about spending some time at an event to get to know the attendees (she was barely off the stage before heading out the door), she did share some interesting points in her talk that should be useful to most marketers:

Beijing, China - If you are one of those people that gets in front of the television every evening with a box of tissues to get ready for the melodramatic overload that is the American television coverage of the Olympics, then you'll be thrilled to know that as part of their sponsorship of the US Olympic team, Kleenex commissioned a documentary to take an inside look at some of the most powerful tear-jerking moments in the Olympics over the past few years. The film is mostly focused on the US (to match their sponsorship) and takes you on a hosted journey with a nameless host who plays the part of "good listener" as past and future hopeful US Olympic athletes are interviewed on a blue couch about their Olympic moments and aspirations.

Beijing, China - I have officially been in Beijing for 4 days now. I start this post with that admission, because before you read this I want you to know that I'm no expert on Beijing or China. Before this current trip, I have been here once before. Aside from a few useful phrases, I don't really speak any Mandarin ... and any experience benefit I might have from having been to Beijing before has surely been erased from more than ten years of development and more recent construction and preparation for the Olympics.

I have a former colleague of mine who left Ogilvy to focus on his own production company and create video projects. His group, g14 Productions, has just released a fantastic online video show worth checking out. It's called The Reservation and features weekly episodes of 3-4 minutes of a show that is a cross between 24 and Heroes. You might be tempted to called this User Generated Content (UGC) and lump it into the range of video being produced and uploaded to YouTube (some of which is highly entertaining, I'll admit). The difference, though, is that g14 is doing this for a living.

As I tour around at events talking about why brands need to have a personality, a question that comes up often is about which brands don't have a personality and suffer from facelessness. One of the most obvious categories that has built a dreadful reputation for itself is the wireless phone industry in the US. On the whole, people are distrustful, disloyal, and generally suspicious of just about anything these carriers do. The reasons are fairly obvious, from their cruel pricing structure designed to charge you for every kilobyte or nanosecond of use, to their requirement that you lock yourself into long contracts before they will give you service. In my own experience, my last month's wireless bill was 18 pages long (and I don't even have a teenager at home).

As a marketing blogger with a fairly decent audience, I tend to make it onto a lot of marketing lists. And they are pretty popular these days. Sometimes it seems like each month I get placed on several of these new lists (along with the accompanying requests to include a list to the lists on my sidebar). Recently I got yet another one over the weekend and realized that this tactic is likely to get more and more popular as companies continually try to find ways to connect with prominent bloggers. If you are considering coming up with your own list, you might want to take a look at a few relatively successful marketing lists and what you can learn from each one:

If you're among the social media initiated, chances are you are Googling yourself more than once a day. In fact, you probably have Google alerts set up with your own name to notify you (and your ego) whenever anyone mentions you. It's ok, you can admit it. As many of us build our digital profiles and publish content online, seeing who else is talking about us has become more than a voyeuristic thrill ... there is a personal ROI that is rapidly emerging, and it relates to your personal brand. I have lots of thoughts about personal branding, including something that I'm planning to share very soon which will hopefully be quite useful for any of you trying to build your personal brand.

Late last week I had the chance to participate as a faculty member at WOMM-U, an engaging event put on by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (which my employer, Ogilvy PR, is a member of). My role was somewhat unique among other speaking events that I have done - along with Jason Anello from Yahoo!, I was meant to lead six half hour sessions on the topic of "speed trials" of tools in the WOM and social media space.

Just over a week ago during lunch at the New Communication Forum, I had a great conversation with Tim Tozer from Radian6 (a social media monitoring service) about the real metrics that marketers are looking for and the increasingly common difficulty of finding metrics that are actually useful and offer actionable insights. Many people who have to contend with web analytics tools today will tell you that it is no longer an issue of having the technology available to measure things online, but rather the analytical ability to hone in on the metrics that really matter.

Some guy named Bob probably hates me. I don't know him and he doesn't know me ... but he's the unfortunate registrant of Bob.com and has used his first name for his email address. Yup, you guessed it - that makes his email address bob@bob.com. That also happens to be the email address that I have used for the past ten years to fill out forms that require an email address that I don't want to give. For more than a decade, Bob has been getting my junk email and to tell you a truth, I feel bad about it.

As someone passionate about travel and the travel industry, I pay a lot of attention to sites that are out there. Travel has long been an active industry online, whether you talk about people's behaviour with increasingly booking travel online, or the slate of review and opinion sites that let people share their opinions about travel destinations. From Yelp to Driftr to Dopplr there are new travel sites that let you do just about anything you want and they are all great ... yet none have quite found the right formula to harness the one thing that travel enthusiasts like me all have in common: a passion for talking about travel and sharing my experiences.