Couple of sites with some more details about the Future of Online Advertising Conference.

BehindtheBuzz has the most comprehensive coverage I have seen.

Lots of links to other sites with coverage over at Digital Perm.

The conference has been excellent. 

I'm a bit weary of writing about it, so let me summarize (in my own words like Mrs. Johnson told me in sophomore English).

• The rate of growth in online advertising is steep which is creating a lot of opportunities for those who figure it out.
• According to a survey by Marketing Sherpa, the combined spend for paid search and online ads for a recent 12-month period is estimated at 12.2 billion dollars.  This is substantial but to give it perspective consider that the spend for direct (postal) mail alone was $58.7 billion, newspapers $30 billion, and even local radio rang in at $15.5 billion.  But online is growing the fastest and is in fact eating into ad spends for many other mediums including television.
• According to Jay Adelson of Digg and Revision 3 fame, forget trying to build Internet video around the Flash player.  You're going to need something portable and something that will work well with that big flat screen hanging on your living room wall.
• Carla Hendra of Ogilvy had a lot of great points including:

Lunch was "butlered" no less.

This FOOA conference really has a great line up of speakers.  There's almost too much to digest, but I've been busy making mind maps for each of the speakers to help me remember the salient points.  And my MacBook Pro has been performing flawlessly.

Chas Edwards of Federated Media kicked off the afternoon focused on the emergence of conversational media.  For businesses, the key is finding out what your customers are discussing and then try to enter into that conversation.  He noted that Business Week says its blogs are now more influential than its magazine.

Ted Murphy of PayPerPost talked about connecting advertisers to bloggers.  I'm not too big on the idea of bloggers selling ads and I think the number of organizations who can benefit from blog advertising are limited.  But, PayPerPost is a good resource for those interested.

Henry Copeland, founder of BlogAds, was up next.  Blogs could be locations where your customers are carrying on those conversations. 

Would you rather have a high search engine ranking, or higher sales?

Read more.

High school teens say they'll plunk down $500 for an iPhone.

85% are aware of the iPhone.  Of those, 25% say they would be willing to spend $500 (the indicated price when the iPhone goes on sale this summer) to own the device.

Devices such as this are providing the technological context for our massive cultural shift.  What does this survey tell us about the increasing cultural impact of the emerging generation?

• It's a personal communications device.  Emphasis on personal. Teens nearly have a relationship with their cell phones and iPods.  Now, both in one device.  Computers are not as portable or personal.  Neither are flat screens and subwoofers.
• It's a wide screen iPod.  Great for watching downloaded video.  While you walk.  Or ride.  Or anything else.  It's not G3 compatible (yet) so it won't play mobile broadcast video.  But that will likely change. 
• It's a totem of cool.  Having an iPhone may be more important to your image than the car you drive.  At least with teens.  What car allows you to be so connected with your friends?
• It has much improved internet browsing compared to other cell phones.  This laptop of mine is starting to look like a boat anchor.
• You can sync contacts on the iPhone with your computer.  Can you imagine the day when your personal communications device will be the key to your home and car?  Instead of a debit card you have a debit chip in your iPhone.  Or maybe someday download a movie to your iPhone and then play it back through a wireless connection to your 102-inch flat screen?
• I think this generation will be collaborators.  All this connectedness will pay big dividends as they mature and use their implicit communications skills to pool collective wisdom and solve problems that loners could not subdue.

Methinks the future is looking pretty good. 

Especially for AAPL.

Great post by Peter Rip on his EarlyStageVC blog examining whether the Web 2.0 movement has peaked. (Thanks to TechCrunch for point)

Here's the article -Web 2.0 - Over and Out

And, not being one to leave you without hope or vision, here's an article about the future of things web - (Alex Iskold at Read/Write Web)

Web 3.0 - When Web Sites Become Web Services

From Advertising Age (Danny Sullivan) -

"It is clear that 2007 will be the year that mobile-search-query traffic grows substantially." That's what Google CEO Eric Schmidt told analysts during his company's earnings call in January. Schmidt hopes his prediction comes true, because mobile search could mean new revenue for the search engines. But are we ever seriously going to search while on the move?

We've certainly been told long enough that mobile search is the next big thing. Heck, Google rolled out its first mobile-search service back in 2000. Seven years later, it's finally going to happen? That long-promised reservoir of search queries will be tapped at last?

Complete article

Terminology alert -

Mashup on Wikipedia

Mashup on Webopedia

Do you remember the old Burger King advertising campaign - "Have It Your Way?"

Menlo Park Presbyterian Church has done a great job of organizing and presenting six different options for visitors to use in accessing sermons on their website.  Several free options, a couple paid, but really a great job of presenting the content in a clear and intuitive way.  Doing this makes the content accessible to the maximum number of visitors in the medium they prefer.

Check it out.

My only recommendation would be to include a summary or description of each message that could be accessed by clicking the title or a "Message Summary" link.  Adequate product descriptions are a key to conversion rates.