• by Laurie Petersen , April 12, 2007

It was officially a Search Ad Buyers forum, but moderator Dana Todd of SiteLab opened with a few pointed barbs for the industry: Stop developing half-assed products every 20 minutes and fix the ones you already have.

She reminded everyone that online video was happening a decade ago, but it took 10 years for the market to be ready. Which brought her to the subject of mobile, and the frenzy to develop new products, services, alliances and ANYTHING at a pace that makes everyone insane trying to keep up--never mind understanding what it all means.

Toss your PDAs out, she said, and spend time in the sun with your families. (If you attend any Internet conferences, you might know Todd by her trademark--that distinctly unnatural purple/red hair color.)

Mobile search is two years away--or more, she said. Yet the combination of readily flowing dollars (venture money going to anything and a Red Herring event on the East Coast), is reminiscent of those crazy pre-Bubble Internet days--except a lot of people are older, and should be wiser.

It came up at other panels I happened to hear over the past month--agency executives at OMMA Hollywood talked about how the digital people are working 2-1/2 times harder than anyone else.

On the opposite coast in New York, a survey of senior-level publishing execs unveiled at the American Business Press's Digital Velocity conference indicated that it's hard to get print staff to move to the digital side because they see the digital people are all working a lot harder. (Of course, they also have a lot more JOB security, but I guess that's a question that wasn't asked.)

So how is YOUR life? What's the length of your typical day? Is this "work work work" harangue only a myth? Do you feel what you're getting back justifies what you're putting in?

Let's talk about it. Go to the blog.