Advertisers used to think we needed to give consumers more information upfront in order to influence their decision-making, but in reality consumers need to be armed with the correct tools to navigate the wealth of information and make a decision. That means search is going to be even more important--and Google will probably keep growing.

Talk to any interactive media department heads about what their biggest problem is right now. Most of them will point to staffing. There are a lot of agency positions open right now, particularly in emerging media, and not a lot of qualified folks left to fill them.

I'm sure you've heard about Google Print, which has Web sites, newsletters and the like buzzing with controversy. Google Print makes public domain books accessible to the world.

Steve Smith did a great job in his three-part series that ran this week in OnlineMediaDaily, explaining why media executives have been shying away from behavioral targeting. BT is tough to explain to people, no question. When was the last time you tried explaining the differences among BT, performance marketing, single-site versus network buys, or any of the other arcane-to-everyone-else-but-second-nature-to-us idioms of our business to someone on the outside?

They're popping up all over America--in backyards everywhere--it's the latest do-it-yourself craze, the WiMax Price Club. Want free Internet access for life? No problem. Just go to http://www.WiMaxPriceClub.com and order your tower kit online.

The hot topic of late is centered on consumer-centric, on-demand delivery of content, and rightfully so. What's getting slightly overlooked is what implications the recent developments in wireless access may have for the delivery of on-demand content to the consumer.

Relevance is one characteristic of an online advertising program that drives success, and will likely continue to do so. But perhaps it's time to amend that assertion. Relevance is nice, but it's apparently only a part of the equation.

Seems like no matter where you look everyone is Instant Messaging (IM). Like everything else online, IM is being threatened. If you, like me, use IM like me for work and personal messages, this is a red flag waving--you are most likely at risk for viruses, Trojans, worms and hackers.

Anyone who reads this space knows that I've not yet become sold on the vitality of blogs. That is, I don't really see what the big deal is, except as they pertain to a special class of sub-media, if you will. That is--blogs feed search. And when people search for something, as an increasing number do, they are at least as likely to be influenced by blogs as they are by anything else.

I am at Telecom '05 in Las Vegas this week, listening to all the telecom industry's future plans. As you can well imagine, IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) is the flavor of the month. Everybody has a technology, everybody has software, hardware, middleware, intelligence layers, content partners, billing systems. In fact, there's only two things missing... a customer, and even more important, a consumer value proposition that might actually attract one.