All was not quiet on the sports-drink front of the Hydration Wars, as one of its power players, Glacéau Vitaminwater, received a crippling blow to its propaganda machine last month - a blow surprisingly not dealt by SoBe Lifewater's army of break-dancing lizards.

Sure, you've twirled your share of linguini in Little Italys across the country and devoured chow mein and designer knock-offs in Chinatowns from Manhattan to San Francisco, but when was the last time you enjoyed a cup of Earl Grey in the Little Britain part of town? Maybe never.

The new year opened amid a global economic crisis that reached beyond national borders and across industries. In 2008, businesses and individuals saw the stock market shed a third of its value, unemployment rates grow to a size unseen in decades, and financing freeze as foreclosure rates soared.

When we first heard of twitter, we thought about it much like many of you probably still do. It's just noise. Who needs to know when someone is having a pizza? But we've had a few epiphanies along the way that have changed our thinking. The bottom line is that Twitter is a news source, and a place for tracking general and specific information in the blogosphere, whether it is about you, your company, your competitors or, well, ordering out for pizza. And the noise level behind something is a good indicator of interest.

When life hands us lemons, we make lemonade. While experts predict a grim year for all media categories, including the much-hyped digital arena, we see an abundance of aperture moments for smart marketers. Those moments will be realized through strong negotiations with desirable partners whose media properties offer value in both pricing and consumer connections.

A recent story in the new york times bore a telling headline, "Even if You Can't Buy It, Happiness Is Big Business." It's true. The happiness trend has not appeared out of nowhere. In fact, it is an expected correlate of an increasingly materially affluent society, a pattern of development called "post-materialism."

More than 14 years have passed since wired magazine launched hotwired, the first ad-supported Web site. One would think 14 years is long enough to establish a media business that is safe for advertisers, transparent, free of deception and devoid of outright fraud. Unfortunately, advertisers and agencies must still constantly look out for many deceptive and fraudulent practices.

Hollywood has made a habit of giving loud shout-outs to madison avenue lately. tnt's dramedy Trust Me about Chicago creative directors - created by former Chicago creative directors - is the latest. Meanwhile, the Emmy Award-winning Mad Men is on amc featuring Don Draper, a creative director during the so-called "creative revolution" in advertising in the '60s. And let's not forget Revolutionary Road, the Sam Mendes film based on the classic Richard Yates novel about Frank Wheeler, who is not an adman per se, but a familiar type of toiler in the marketing department of a business-machine brand during the …

March madness is one of the most exciting sporting events of the year. A significant portion of America watches the tournament unfold - and advertisers invest large sums to access that audience.

It's funny how times, and topics, have changed over the last year. We've gone from talking about seizing opportunities and exploring new platforms and emerging media to simply surviving to see another day. All it took was a little worldwide economic crisis to redefine our business priorities. Case in point, in the July 2007 issue of Media, I wrote about the newly announced Sony Home, a 3-D virtual world and community where gamers could meet, interact, play games, watch videos, listen to music and even own and furnish virtual homes - all via extremely customizable avatars.