I use Comcast for my home internet service. The connection is fast and pretty reliable, but dealing with their customer service department is like dealing with wooden puppets who can’t answer any question that doesn’t come off a cue card. I’m not the first person to have a complaint like this and candidly if you spend anytime searching the web you’ll find people with issues that range from annoying to shockingly bad.

They’ve managed to inspire a multitude of hate websites from ihatecomcast.com to comcastsucks.org. If you search Comcast on Google there is a video result showing a Comcast technician sleeping on a customer’s couch. I frequently talk about how a brand’s perception is now being defined not only by their own messaging, but by the content consumers are creating and permeating search, media sharing sites, and viral jokes. Comcast is case study example number one.

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LinkedIn announced today that it’s adding the ability to add custom applications to your profile page. It’s based on the OpenSocial application development platform.

OpenSocial didn’t take off nearly as fast as I thought it would. I had always assumed that when MySpace enabled it that adoption would pick-up rapidly. LinkedIn has now finally enabled it and I believe future tech like Google Friend Connect (which also uses OpenSocial) will really push this application platform over the top.

I installed two applications immediately. An application to quickly and easily port this blog to my profile as well an application that scans twitter with references to my company. The two apps are called Wordpress and Company Buzz respectively.

The installation was easy in terms of the number of clicks, but there were some bugs. LinkedIn didn’t acknowledge that the application was complete and the apps were only working intermittently when I viewed my profile. On the basis that I got the email they were launching this at 12.21 AM and blogged about it at 1.35 AM I’m going to cut them some slack. Hopefully it will work a bit better by the time you check it out.

If you haven’t got a LinkedIn profile yet your missing out. Social networking in the business space is equally as interesting as Facebook or MySpace. It’s just harder to pick up a date on LinkedIn…

I wanted to apologize that we didn’t post for a couple of days. The last week or so has been complete madness.

I think I did five flights last week, spent two days on site at GE, completed two massive client presentations and still managed to keep up with my normal load (excluding Take Me To Your Leader).

This weekend burn-out finally caught up with me and I slept for two and a half days. I didn’t leave my house except to go to Best Buy. (One of my latest obsessions is trying to get Windows Media Center to work with my Comcast digital cable.)

All this withstanding I actually enjoyed every second of the pressure. I do get off on this stuff. The big reward was on Friday. I bought a puppy for my girlfriend (which I think was as much a present for me as it was for her). The puppy’s name is Amelie and she’s a 1 pound 10 oz. Pomeranian.

Check out her picture after the jump…

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Everyone knows that we’re very passionate about Facebook. We’ve been actively building Facebook applications since they first launched and consider them to be one of the fundamental differentiators that helped propel Facebook to such lofty heights.

Facebook embraced what I believe builds the most successful new model businesses successes on the web. They created an open platform and let user innovation drive the direction of their business. Unfortunately, like most open platforms, it got out of control. People abused their rights in an effort to push their application to the top. The constant stream of invitations to join applications became one of the number one gripes of Facebook users as they felt they were being aggressively “spammed” (even if it was by their friends).

Facebook has been re-evaluating it’s infrastructure quite a bit these days. A new Facebook layout, for better or worse, has been released. Additionally they have been making some heavy changes to how applications were handled within the system beyond the presentation layer.

The obvious change that you would have noticed includes shifting all of your applications mini-views to a tab on your profile called “Boxes”. Really? They couldn’t name it “applications” or “apps” so it was even mildly intuitive. It’s bad enough that they’re now treating the application concept they popularized as the ugly step-child, but this is just adding insult to injury. I wish they made the tab name “don’t click here” - it would probably get more people to check it out.

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Apple just released two new “Get a Mac” spots mocking Microsoft’s $350 million advertising investment. Although I do like the new “I’m a PC” spots and the “Windows without walls” or “Life without walls” messages, I always find the “Get a Mac” ads hilarious.

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Avenue Fighter 2008, “Battle for the White House” is a political fighting game that is controlled by the current tweets (messages) appearing on Twtter.com.  Once running, the game scans Twitter for new tweets containing either McCain or Obama, and weighs the phrase as positive or negative.

The weighted phrases are then used to determine each candidate’s attacks. Theoretically every fight is different as it’s based on the tweets that are happening at that moment.

Check it out!

Big week for Rich Internet Applications with two big releases: Microsoft Silverlight 2 and Adobe Flash 10. Both bring in new sets of capabilities that make the Internet a better place. So anything changes with this new release? should you look into using them, adopting, which one is better? Many questions, but the answer as always is ‘it depends’. I will list all features introduced by the new versions, but an important factor as it has always been, is adoption rate or market penetration. Adobe Flash Player 9 is installed on 97.7% of all computers, and Microsoft has not yet released their percentage…. They claim that Silverlight gets 1.5MM downloads per day (def inflated), but my guess is that they don’t have over 25% penetration with Silverlight 1.0. Adobe has demonstrated their growth rate and can guaranty that Flash 10 will be at 90% penetration within a year, my best guess is that Silverlight 2 won’t even have 15%…. so choose your product wisely, Adobe may have some better features, Microsoft may have others… but if you need anyone to actually see your site, use Flash. If you ever doubt this, remember what happened with the Olympics.

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I just got back from Boston after speaking at the New Marketing Summit. I met a lot of nice and interesting people and hopefully left a positive impression on the crowd.

I got to meet up with one of my favorite bloggers, who coincidentally organized the event, Chris Brogan. He wrote a great piece this week that echoes my sentiment of taking bold moves in a recession and using it as an opportunity to leave a mark in the marketing landscape.

He also used a metaphor of pirates and a pirate ship which pretty much guarantees instant inclusion into this blog. If you haven’t read Chris’ blog before you should check it out.

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/the-beauty-of-pirate-ships/

The iPhone obviously had a huge impact on the smartphone market selling over 1MM phones on its opening weekend,  but on top of that it also created buzz on the smartphone market and all those people who also wanted a smartphone but not necessarily an iPhone or switching to AT&T are looking around for alternatives… Blackberry stock doubled, Verizon came out with the Voyager, and now T-Mobile with the G1. So would the G1 compete with the iPhone? Experts say that the G1 will sell 400,000 phones before the end of the year … not an impressive number, but then again, t mobile is tiny compared to AT&T. The main difference with Android and the iPhone, and that Android has all its numbers combined — all carriers, all brands, all models — and the iPhone is just one.  Read More »

I thought you might enjoy checking out this real-time widget comparing the search frequency comparison for Obama and McCain (as well as their running mates). I found it particulary interesting that people are searching for Palin more then any other candidate.