Ok, my Vtech ip8300 DECT6.0 infoPhone was supposed to be in my grubby little hands by April, and it STILL doesn’t seem to have shipped.� This is the phone with Yahoo! Local built in making it, as far as I know, the first home phone that is directly� affected by web marketing efforts.� Well, you could argue that Google 411 is also* (speed dial #1 in my car - I love that service!)

I am also looking forward to seeing how the phone� accepts news feeds.� Hopefully it lets you use standard RSS and not some proprietary limited portal set.� I’ll use Yahoo! Pipes to make a nice small RSS feed� for family information (e.g. school closings, forecast, traffic) that we can glance at from any room in the house.� GEEKY!

But first I have to get the damn thing in my HANDS.� Where is it?????

Hurry VTech, my old home phones are dying!!!!

*Little known fact:� With Google 411, once you find the thing you’re searching for, you can say “map it” and Google will send you a link to the map!

If you’re a local business, and you’re not in Google Local now, I must admit, possibly living in denial.� Google 411 (1-800-GOOG411) is amazing, and I am just blown away that so many businesses haven’t taken the time to insert their company into the Google Local Business Center.� We couldn’t find our favorite pizza restaurant through it tonight.� Paid 411 is dead.

Another thing that’s apparent is that names not easily pronounced phonetically are going to be at a disadvantage without human assistance.� Puccinis Pizza (pronounced Pooch-ee-nees) for example, will lose to simpler names such as “Mad Mushroom Pizza.”

The other thing I’m looking forward to is the ability to send the google results to my phone via text - and for attached coupons to come with the text into the phone (codes, hopefully, that the restaurants, etc. will accept over the phone.)

click to zoom

I was toying with some ideas related to the sensing internet, and thought of a customizable wall-mounted device for small businesses.

This little device would be given away to the merchants. They would be custom configuered with 20-30 specials that the merchant agrees to - like a set of coupon templates they could use when they wish. It may be based on a little wall device, or could be a web-based service. Either way, the merchant would adjust it based on how busy they are.

Customers would sign up for this service motivated by the chance to get cut-rate pricing on oversupply or slow business conditions.

• A slow night at a restaurant might result in a half-price meal.
• An oversupply of Ice Cream might mean buy 1 get 2 free.
• A quiet bike shop might get busy if it had half-price tune ups.
• Free drinks to the next 15 customers might get a depressingly slow nightclub rocking again.

So, the merchant would enter their password and select the coupon of choice, and click publish. The coupon would then go out via email, RSS, or SMS messages to customers who have subscribed. Merchants sending out crappy coupons would lose their subscribers, so it would be self-policing to some degree. The coupons would be time limited to 1-2 hours - and the feed on the phone would display the expiration time.

There is a very interesting industry related to remote, networked sensors that seems on the verge of explosion. Check out this article on Microsoft’s plans to integrate real-life-measuring sensors into maps. It feels like one of those tip-of-the-iceburg situations.

I cannot wait to see the Google Adwords Local Ad for windshield wipers that gets turned on based on rain gauge data at the store.

You KNOW it’s coming.

I like trees.
I use the web (like nearly 70% of All Americans)
I don’t want printed phone books.

Today, a loud thunk on the front porch signaled the start of a very efficient, yet wasteful process that I suspect is repeated in households and businesses across the nation.

1. Phone book arrived on my porch.
2. Phone book was picked up by me.
3. Phone book was put in recycling bin (or worse, trash)

How many others out there do this exact thing? The Always-On Internet and local marketing online are killing the usefulness of the phone book, at least in my household.

I don’t get it, but surveys show phone books seem to be holding their own, the Kelsey Group reports some interesting stats:

A random sample of 500 teens and 1,000 adults in the U.S. were asked to indicate where they would “turn to first” when looking for a business in their area. Print Yellow Pages was, not surprisingly, the No. 1 choice among all consumers surveyed. The one exception was teens, who indicated they would first turn to search engines when looking for local business information.

• All consumers surveyed – print Yellow Pages, 61%; search engines, 12%; directory assistance, 12%; online Yellow Pages, 7%
• Annual income over $75,000 – print Yellow Pages, 51%; search engines, 27%; online Yellow Pages, 14%; directory assistance, 6%
• Teens – search engines, 47%; print Yellow Pages, 28%; directory assistance, 13%; online Yellow Pages, 9%

I think that you’ll see the population as a whole using search engines 50% of the time within 3-5 years as their first choice.

I like Marshall Brain’s blog post about phone books also.

I want to OPT OUT… I’m going to find out how. I will post it. Please, if you do what I do, opt out of receiving phone books and save some trees!

Microsoft’s new Live Local Preview lets you drive around downtown Seattle in a virtual race car looking at buildings, businesses and more. Check it out.

Using digital photographs of the area, combined with Areal views, you can look at building fronts. Right down to the signs on their doors.

Clickz pointed me to the test being done in NY for hotels in Manhattan. This is expected, and not a huge shock, but what will be important for the future is the use of LOGOS in the details area.

Oddly, in the test, the little details page that pops up did not link the URL shown. So www.holiday-inn.com was not linked in the little box. The title, however, was redirected to http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/hi/1/en/hd/NYCBY.

A click on the sponsored links in the left side of the box ONLY brought up the map bubble, and did not bring up the site, and there were no alternatives to that other than to then go over to the bubble and click. I would have hoped for a rollover affect to SHOW it on the map and a click-to-site effect on the ad. The question is, will advertisers pay for the map data display or the second click on the header?