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Top Internet Strategy, Marketing & Technology Links – Jan 11, 2010

fleur120We’re trying a new format for our link posts – one which is hopefully more useful for you and more efficient for us.  We’ll only be posting the top links (determined either by popularity with you – clicks & retweets or by us for importance of the information), with some information about why the link is interesting or useful.  This should make it easier for you to get a snapshot of information without having to comb through a long list of links.  The full list of links will still be available throughout the day on Twitter or on our Google Reader Shared (which you can follow or subscribe to).  We’re trying something new, but we always welcome your feedback on what you think – blog@sazbean.com.  Thanks for reading!

YouTellYou is a fun and simple tool that allows users to grab, annotate, tag and share their pictures in an online magazine-type format. Users can pull in photos from Smugmug, Facebook, Flickr or one’s own computer, then go to town in a frenzy of sequences, captions and true pictorial story-weaving.

There are a lot of great photo sharing sites out there like Flickr & Photobucket. And a lot of people just use Facebook for sharing photos with friends and family. But so far it’s been pretty difficult to tell a story around pictures unless you know how to design web pages. While blogging is certainly one option, YouTellYou offers a pretty easy-to-use tool to share stories through pictures. I think I’m with ReadWriteWeb on this one. I’m not sure if I’d use it, but the fact that it’s becoming easier for everyone to publish media in many different forms online is certainly important.

I went from a guy who hated Google Wave to telling Kodak’s CMO on stage yesterday that Google Wave would be the one app I’d ask to salvage if I could only save one app running today. So how? Why? What’s that about?

Google Wave caused a lot of stir when it came out.  There was a land rush for the coveted invites.  But pretty much everyone who has seen it has the same reaction – neat, but I’m not sure what I’d use it for.  I think Chris Brogan has it right… Google Wave is an excellent collaboration tool.  Aaron uses it quite a bit with his clients when they’re working through the functionality for a new feature or to problem-solve a bug with the programming team.  I can see it as being useful for collaboration as well.  I’d just like to see it integrated with the other Google products – gmail, gtalk, etc. so that I know when a Wave gets updated without having to go look.

Despite a difficult year for auto companies and more stringent restrictions for online drug marketing, the automotive and pharmaceutical product categories saw the highest levels of ad spending in various media through Q309, according to a recently released “top 10? list from The Nielsen Company.

I’m not really surprised the Pharma and Auto lead in ad spend – Cars are a big-ticket item which require a bit of brand recognition for purchases.  Pharma companies have pretty big margins on their successful products and advertising helps them keep the margin.  What’s interesting is that Auto had high levels of advertising despite the recession and problems with several of the larger companies.

Today on the company blog, Boxee revealed the specs for the Boxee Box and announced that theBoxee Beta is now officially open to the public.

Boxee is a freeware system (first software, now hardware) which allows people to view media from the Internet or computer on their TV.  It also boasts some social media aspects – allowing ratings and sharing of comments with friends.  Hulu, an Internet site for viewing TV shows, is already very popular, as is watching video online, in general.  The next few years will probably see a continued blurring of the lines between TV, movies and the Internet for watching video.

If you’re a Gmail user who’s coveted third-party Outlook email productivity add-ons like Xobni or Gist, you might like to check out Webyog’s new MailBrowser. It’s a free plugin for Firefox and IE (with Chrome support on its way) that aims to extend the contact and attachment management capabilities of Gmail.

If you’re like me, you may use Gmail as your only email client, which is nice because I can access my email from just about anywhere.  We used to run our own email server, but the headaches with supporting it just didn’t make sense.  While there certainly are other email options out there, Gmail provides a pretty good package.  MailBrowser helps fill in some of the gaps between Gmail and desktop clients, namely good contact & file management.  This highlights another bonus for Gmail – being able to add functionality with browser plugins and other add-ons – therefore you’re not depended on just the email application company.

What do you think?  How are these stories important to you?

We post links to stories about how to use the web for business throughout the day on Twitter, Google Reader Shared or Delicious.  Also, if you have a post or link you think is worth sharing, please let us know!

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