Well, they’ve not actually said it as such.  It’s just a conclusion that’s extremely easy to come to.

When I’m not forced to suffer the commute to work by the swine flu express I’m cycling to work.  There’s a couple of pretty major billboards by the Clydeside Expressway and I was fairly surprised to see a Google Chrome advert up there this morning in place of the usual Cheryl Cole “you’re worth it”/Davidoff Adventure nonsense that’s usually up there.

Excuse the quality of the image.  It doesn’t get properly light again in Glasgow until mid-March.  What the image does illustrate though is what passing motorists will see, which is not a lot.

Whilst I’m a big fan of the uncluttered element of the Google homepage, this level of minimalism on physical advertising seems a bit short-sighted.

The advert features a mostly blank page with a big Chrome logo and the words “Chrome by Google – A fast, new browser. Made for everyone.”

They wouldn’t be able to make this claim until they had a version of the Mac version of the Chrome Browser ready.  I wonder how long they’ve been sitting on the Mac version just so they could tie it in to their marketing campaign?

More importantly, what’s their thinking behind this ‘real world’ marketing campaign?  They’ve only really attempted it before once, when they promoted  its enterprise office and collaboration suite.  Now the big push is on,  with a pretty significant spend on UK billboard and newspaper marketing and  what they are hoping to achieve is significant market penetration (I hate those words) for Chrome as the operating system.

And they still need traditional forms of advertisting to achieve this.

As the way we search and the way we want need our computers to operate become increasingly linked, there is a pretty hefty battle looming.  With Microsoft already committed to spending over$100million dollars on marketing Bing alone and Windows 7 already past Apple’s OS market share, this latest move from Google is all the more intriguing…

Place your bets…

It’s Christmas!

Whilst I don’t officially play Santa until next week (my daughter’s playgroup) I’m up for spreading a bit of Christmas cheer now by giving away ten Google Wave invites.  Granted, it’s a bit of a cheap present to give away seeing as I got them for nothing but that’s not the point.

All you have to do is drop me a line at via the contact form.  First ten past the post are in there.  In the meantime, check out this Xmas card design that I did from 2005.  Summed up 2005 really…

We’ve just launched a new website for Smarter Grid Solutions, an award winning and innovative technology company that provide Smart Grid products and services to the power industry.

Scotland is well-placed to be a centre of excellence and world leader for renewable energy but the biggest challenge it faces is getting the energy from where it’s most plentiful and reliable such as the Outer Hebrides and Orkney to where it’s most needed – the mainland.

Smarter Grid Solutions are at the forefront of developing the technology to make this possible.  They needed a fully content managed website that was expandable, easy to update and that would let them showcase the wide variety of services they offer within this sector with the easy addition of audio, video and Flash.

We’re particularly interested in the renewable energy industry and seem to be attracting more and more clients from within this sector.

More to follow soon…

…starting with my daughter dancing to Nirvana.

Interesting “warning” from Facebook this morning…

We have removed your video entitled “Smells Like A Roll & Sliced Sausage” uploaded at 8:42am November 26th, 2009. We did this because it appears to contain copyrighted material owned by a third party, such as a video clip or background audio. If you believe this material was removed by mistake, you may file a counter notice of alleged infringement by following the link below.

Please note that if you re-upload this video without filing a counter notice, or if you upload another video that infringes on the rights of a third party, we may remove the content. This could cause your access to the Facebook Video application, or your Facebook account itself, to be disabled.

You can judge for yourself whether the clip in question is a threat to the current and/or future financial security of Messrs Love, Grohl and Novoselic…

Considering the clip was originally uploaded to Youtube and I can simply add it to my Facebook profile, it seems a bit futile on Facebook’s part to remove  it.  It limits the effectiveness of their video upload service if it’s so easy to fall foul of copyright laws.  It’s even more futile when different sites operate different policies and Youtube don’t even stick to their terms and conditions of use.

Anyone had any similar experiences?

When news is free

I HATE getting the bus to work.  By the time I’ve walked to the bus stop, waited on a bus, got on the bus, caught swine flu and been deposited outside the Ubisan Office, I could have cycled to the office almost four times.  Aside from the risk of communicable disease and being attacked by Rottweilers named after Celtic football players, the only plus is I get to sit down and read a leftover newspaper for half an hour.  Even if it is The Sun.

Don’t worry, I washed my hands afterwards.

Whilst I’ve contributed to the chatter myself about newspapers feeling the pinch and trying to charge for or limit content it opened my eyes even further to the way things are going on my last bus journey.

The Sun Sports section carried a story about Andy Murray’s final third round match with Verdasco and because of the paper going to print it didn’t know if the Murray victory would be enough to qualify him for the semi’s of the ATP Tour Finals as it depended on the result of the following match.

To find out, The Sun encouraged you to log on to their website to find out.  What did I immediately do?  I logged on to the BBC Sport website (stored as one of my favourites on my phone) and read the story there.

Rupert Murdoch would hate the fact that:

1. I didn’t buy the paper in the first place.
2. I went to the BBC for the news rather than the website he wants me to go to.
3. The information was free.

Everybody has their own source that they trust for news, views, restaurant reviews etc whether it’s a friend, somebody at work or God forbid, a search engine!   What’s your source?

For those that are interested, Murray didn’t get through and here’s the links to the two stories.  I guess Rupert got me to visit in the end.  Doh!

The BBC. (Headline: Andy Murray knocked out of World Tour Finals at O2)

The Sun (Headline: I MUZ BE OFF THEN )