Chris Martin has said: “We’re definitely good, but I don’t think you can say we’re that original. I regard us as being incredibly good plagiarists.” I bet he wishes he hadn’t said that now…

Though what really caught my attention with all this is yet another use for YouTube. A video titled “Did Coldplay copy Joe Satriani?” was uploaded to YouTube comparing both songs and asking people to comment, using YouTube as a destination for generating discussions based on a hypothesis presented in a video format. The video is less than a week old and has over 1.5 million views and almost 12,000 comments.

With that said, I wish YouTube had a better comment management and filtering, allow to search on comments, filter by date, rating, display only your friends’ comments, etc …

So we’ve seen YouTube being used for entertainment, news, learning, gaming, advertising, and discussions… I can see YouTube using Google Friend Connect or if Google is smart, even Facebook Connect to gain a few new million users

Next they announced AIR 1.5, which ships now with Flash 10 adding the new text engine, pixel blender, 3d capabilities to the desktop. They demo’d a New York Times app that dynamically renders text in multiple column layouts adapting to any screen resolution. AIR 1.5 also ships with the latest version on WebKit and squirrelfish, making all JavaScript executions at least 50% faster than the previous build.

Following, they showed a few demos of Flash 10 capabilities, which I’ve seen before, just as an audio mixer, 3d audio visualization, pixel blender effects on real time videos… Which preceded the announcement that MLB now uses Flash to stream all their games, completing a sports monopoly of the NHL, NFL, MLB, NBA, …
As part of how AIR is being used nowadays, Adobe invited Maria Shriver to talk about the California Museum applications. I found that a poor choice, mostly before most attendees are from out of town, don’t know Maria, and even the locals, don’t really seem to care.

Kevin Lynch mentioned that they are targeting 100MM AIR installs after just one year, thought they’re a little far, having now about 25MM.

An Adobe engineer demo’d Tour de Flex, a demo app with component browsing, code, examples, and over 200 API implementations with full source code… amazing piece of application, useful for every Flex developer for sure (http://flex.org/tour)

Nigel Pegg takes the stage and talks about Cocomo, which was introduced last year. Cocomo is social applications with Flex using Flex components and API hosted by Adobe hosted services. It pretty much allows you to build Adobe ConnectNow with Flex components, and it’s available today at Adobe Labs.
Kevin then announced Adobe Wave, a social notification service in your desktop… so the idea is that it hooks up to every social network and aggregates all notifications. Although I see the value as teen agers stopped using email and rely mainly in social networks messaging, I don’t see why Adobe had to build this… doesn’t really belong.

Main announcement of the night, Kevin shows and demo’d a full Flash Player 10 install on multiple phones such as Nokia, Samsung, the Android G1, and even the iPhone. Lynch was browsing full Flash sites, youtube, video, audio, and all from a mobile phone running a full unmodified flash site.

For full Adobe coverage check out http://adobe.com/go/keynote

Android is Google’s attempt to dominate the mobile advertising market, just as it has dominated the online PC advertising market, said Craig Wigginton, industry leader for Deloitte’s telecommunications practice. “Their number-one driver for pushing this is the advertising model,” he said.

The G1, the first Android phone introduced by T-Mobile, Google, and HTC on Tuesday, comes loaded with Google applications, including Gmail, Gtalk, Maps, and YouTube. The home screen includes just one item: a Google search bar. Each of those applications is an opportunity for Google to deliver advertisements to users.

There are 3.5 billion mobile-phone users worldwide; many more than computers users. Google, with their success at delivering advertising to desktop computers are looking to monetize this enormous opportunity.
Mobile advertising so far is a small market, but some analysts have high hopes for growth in the future. M:Metrics found that mobile display advertising was an approximately $200 million industry last year, a figure analysts there expect to at least double this year. Analysts at Heavy Reading predict that the mobile advertising industry will exceed $10 billion in annual revenue in 2013.

AdMob is the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace. Founded in 2006, AdMob allows advertisers to reach their customers on the mobile Web and publishers to increase the value of their mobile sites. AdMob offers both advertisers and publishers the ability to target and personalize advertising to their customers in 150 countries. AdMob has servers over 43 trillion impressions to date, and I’ve seen quite a few on my iPhone, on my sportacular app where I follow up to the minute football games and stats.
Researchers at Strategy Analytics predict that 400,000 people will buy the G1 by the end of the year, compared to 1,000,000 people who bought the 3G iPhone on its opening weekend.

Google and T-Mobile appear to be mainly hoping that mass-market consumers will buy the phone, even though smartphones have traditionally appealed most to business users. The G1 lacks some features that business users might want. For example, it doesn’t support Exchange mail, however Android is an open platform and developers can build applications that might interest enterprise users. I think the main difference between Android and the iPhone is the application publication model, since Android developers don’t have to go through Apple Store approval hell.

Once other Android phones start appearing, the platform could gain momentum. “There will be more to come in 2009 when manufacturers such as Samsung and LG will deliver their devices. Android has the potential to become the de facto operating system for Linux, and we expect sales to reach around 10 percent of the smartphone market in 2011,” said Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza.

While most social networks struggle to sell advertising due to lack of proper segmentation and totally irrelevant content for advertisers, LinkedIn has so much demand that they decided to launch their own ad network. LinkedIn claims 27 million registered users, according to comScore, 5.2 million from the U.S. visited the site in July (8.7 million worldwide).

LinkedIn already sells ads against this audience on its own site, targeted by industry, seniority, company size, geography, gender, and number of connections. Now, it will expand that targeting to other partner sites. Publishers will have to apply to become part of the ad network, but LinkedIn will probably try to sign up some of its existing content partners such as the Businessweek, CNBC, and the New York Times.

Whenever someone visits LinkedIn, a cookie will be placed on their browser, which will identify them as a LinkedIn member when they visit a partner site. Personally identifying information will be removed, but members will be grouped into different, targetable categories. As with Yahoo and Google’s similar ad-network targeting, anyone will be able to opt out of this program.

Most social networks have a hard time selling ads at more than $1 CPM, but LinkedIn’s rate card shows display ads starting at $30 CPMs and going up to $76.50, and text ads range from $12 to $20 CPM.

LinkedIn has amazing selects on small business, SMB software/hardware decision makers, business consulting, IT consulting, marketing services, travel services, PC Buyers, Mobile Professionals, C-Level SMB execs, C-Level Corporate execs, VPs, Business Travelers, Tech Spenders, Female Professionals, Luxury car buyers, etc… As you can see, no questions why they attract such high demand on targeted ads.

The ad shows a variety of people representing PC’s, which is part of the new image Microsoft is pushing for: Windows is everywhere, every person, every medium, every device, using a few new tags lines like “Windows without Walls” and “Windows: Life without walls”.

windows: life without walls. Another facet of the campaign tries to play up the notion that Windows works across multiple devices, from desktop PC, to laptop, to phone.

The print portion of Microsoft's new ad campaign characterizes the Mac vs. PC debate as an epic struggle between "Windows vs. Walls"

The widespread consensus: Microsoft + Jerry + Bill = FAIL.
The result: Gates + Seinfeld = CANCELLED.
The Microsoft version: it was all part of the plan.

So would you believe that they paid Seinfeld $10MM for two ads? Are they bringing him back later? Is this really going somewhere?

A Microsoft spokesperson said that Microsoft was launching its “largest consumer focused marketing campaign in its history” that it hopes “will engage consumers about the broader value of the Windows brand.”

Microsoft’s new adverts that will feature a brown-suited company engineer who resembles John Hodgman — the comedian who plays the unfashionable PC character in the “PC vs Mac” ads. Other adverts will include cameo appearances from Bill Gates, as well as celebrities like Desperate Housewives actress Eva Longoria, hip-hop star Pharrell Williams, and the author Deepak Chopra.

It won’t be hard to make anything better or more successful than the line they drew with the two Seinfeld ads (Shoe Circus and New Family). Anyone wants to take a wild guess at CPB’s overall strategy?

That explanation is as lame and as boring as the ad itself. I hope CPB has something better than celebrating what Windows can do for consumers at work if the campaign is supposed to be compared to the hilarious Mac vs. PC ads.

A new video featuring Jerry and Bill showed up yesterday in YouTube, and my first reaction was WTF! I’m sure CPB has something really good planned, they always do, and perhaps this is intentional, but seriously, what is this?

It reminds me of a famous Steve Jobs quote on Microsoft: “The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste.”