Lost in the shuffle of Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantive, is Avenue A | Razorfish. As the largest interactive agency in the world, Razorfish carries an immense amount of clout in the industry. Does anyone think for a second that the $6 billion purchase price didn't include Razorfish's army of developers converting to Silverlight for development of their RIAs? I suspect this purchase was as much about establishing a credible channel of Silverlight developers and evangelists as it was to answer Google's purchase of DoubleClick. While I still believe Flash and Flex will be the RIA and interactive development platform of choice, Microsoft certainly can't be accused of not trying.

According to this story, Joost has signed advertising deals with a number of major brands, including Nike, GM and Coca Cola.  I highly doubt that all of these brands would be willing to advertise with second-rate content.  Is this a sign that Joost will soon announce more content partnerships?  CBS and MTV have signed on already, but I have to believe that more are on the way.

I just saw a commercial from my local cable television company letting its viewers know that they were looking for "highly motivated individuals" looking for a challenging new career. They, of course, touted their competitive wages, competitive benefits and 401(k). My question is this: What would motivate anyone to take a job where they can get nothing more than competitive? Isn't that sort of like saying "I want you to get excited to come work for me. To get you excited, I'll offer to pay you no more than any of my competitors. I'll offer you no better benefits than my competitors will. The only reason I'm even willing to give you this much is so I can say I'm competitive. Are you excited yet?"

So, the big game was mildly entertaining. Most Super Bowls don't live up to the massive hype machine that grows over the two week wait between the Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl itself-and Super Bowl XLI was no different. It was an OK game, but it was nothing great. Usually, however, one can count on the commercials being as or more entertaining than the game. In fact, some folks watch the game solely for the clever advertising and "flip-a-coin-maybe-good-maybe-bad" half time show. Now that the game is over and I have seen all of the commercials, I can honestly say that this year's crop of ads was among the worst I've ever seen. Sure, there was some novelty with Doritos and the NFL giving us user-generated content. I applaud them for taking a risk and being the first, and certainly not the last, companies to capitalize on the YouTube phenomenon. But even those commercials were average at best. GoDaddy.com was unusually conservative and boring with their annual ad. Maybe I've just let my expectations get way out of whack or maybe there's something to my rant. Anyone else feel like they were let down this year?

I just don't get it. Wouldn't this be like plumbers taking out full-page ads deriding manufacturers for making more durable pipes?

Link to DailyTech - McAfee Places Full-Page Ad in Financial Times Blasting Microsoft

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Vista, McAfee, Symantec, spudnik187, Bryan Bartow

So, after spending some more time with my "Two birds" killer, I realized I had made an incorrect observation about it's capabilities, or, rather, Windows Mobile 5's capabilities. Whereas I thought I had set up true Outlook synchronization with my MDA, I had really only set up email pop access through the device. It turns out that, with the most recent iteration of Windows Mobile and ActiveSync, Microsoft had disabled wirelss syncing between PCs and mobile devices.

This was not good for obvious reasons. After much "research" on the subject, the only answer I could some up with was to beg my IT department to move to a hosted Exchange service. You see, Microsoft didn't totally kill wireless sync, they just restricted it to Exchange-based networks. Granted, that accounts for a large majority of people who might use a device like the MDA, but it in no wise helped me.

As I was using Google to launch one of my many searches on the subject, an ad on the results page caught my eye. It said something to the effect of "wireless sync for mobile without Exchange". Curious, I clicked on the ad, as I am not want to do very often. I sure am glad I clicked on this one.

The company being advertised was Emoze. Sure enough, they provide a plug-in for Outlook, with support for Lotus Notes and Mozilla Thunderbird promised, which provides "push" sync services with mobile handhelds, such as my trusty MDA. The service is in beta, according to the emoze website. After a simple registration, I downloaded and installed the beta client on the laptop on which I run Outlook. In no time at all, I was up and running. Next, I had to install the client on my mobile. Another easy painless install later and I was up and running.

True to its word, Emoze delivers Blueberry-like "push" email to various handhelds. As soon as I receive an email in Outlook, I receive it on my MDA. Outlook calendar items, tasks and notes are instantly synchronized both ways. While this may be a beta product, I have yet to see anything wrong with it on my Windows XP SP2 / Outlook 2007 Beta combination. Everything works as advertised. This is an incredibly useful application and I'm sure many will find it useful. For the first time ever, I'm glad I saw a banner ad.

Tags: T-Mobile MDA, Emoze, Blueberry, Outlook, Microsoft, Office 2007, Microsoft Exchange, Bryan Bartow, spudnik187

I found a new blog today. From what I can tell it's devoted to all things advertising. Its name is ADJAB. They're running a story right now that claims that The Matrix story may have been "stolen". Didn't everyone know this? I'd heard of this long, long ago. I thought they just picked it up where the original author left off after getting his blessing. Guess I heard wrong. This still doesn't change the fact that they are some of the greatest stories ever told via motion picture.