Here is a sampling of the results:

Sprint Navigation for the BlackBerry Pearl 8130

I was desperate, so I decided to scroll through the results. Not one of the results on the page is for Sprint’s standard GPS navigation software, but it got me thinking of some of the ways that good search experiences have completely spoiled me:

• I constantly look for search kiosks in grocery stores.
• I get mad when I do a local search and it doesn’t bring up a OneBox result.
• I refuse to click next page if I don’t find what I want.
• I only type in a few letters to most search boxes and anxiously wait for suggestions.
• The first thing I look for on a complex page is a search box.
• I suffer anxiety at the thought of having to browse through a directory.
• I have become very, very bad at finding anything in the Yellow Pages.

I’m a little extreme, but I’m also part of a very valuable segment online for all kinds of businesses. There are a lot of us, and there is a lot of bad search. As a retailer, I’d want to know exactly how that segment felt about the experience I was providing, and optimize it as effectively as I could.

How much money do you think Sprint loses to bad search?

(I know, I know. Buy an iPhone. On it.)

In 1985, James Vance and Raymond Belknap killed themselves after drinking beer, smoking pot and listening to Judas Priest. In 1990, their parents sued the band for the alleged inclusion of a subliminal message exhorting their deceased sons to commit suicide. Long story short, my mom didn’t want me listening to the apparently undeniable call of suicidal power metal, offering instead to buy me a Petra tape.

It’s difficult to be enthused about Petra when you are much more enthused about Judas Priest, but the point is, hysteria + moms = forced exposure to Christian hard rock. Or kids losing their Twitter accounts.

According to a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition (what an ungainly thing to put on your resume!), Twitter and other social networking sites are bad because they have the potential to desensitize people in general and children in particular to other peoples’ suffering. Apparently, the “rapid-fire” headline-refresh destroys a person’s capacity for empathy. Of course, I think this is baloney, of the same brand as the idea that Judas Priest destroys a person’s ability to keep from killing himself. Admittedly, there’s a minute possibility if you really, really hate Judas Priest, but you get what I mean.

I’m not really a fan of Twitter. I think it’s useful if you’re taken hostage by militants, and it should be useful if you are waiting to see overrated bands at SxSW (assuming you can connect it to your phone, which I couldn’t do), but otherwise, it’s just another annoying toy for tweens. From what I’ve seen, what Twitter diminishes is an 11-year old’s capacity to sort out what’s interesting in life and what’s merely self-interesting. If anything, I think Twitter helps a young brain assimilate information more quickly, scanning for what’s relevant and what’s hysterical garbage. Frankly, I don’t think kids need to read a lot of what’s in the news, because a lot of what’s in the news is sensational, biased or fluff. Don’t believe me? Check this out–it’s the most popular stories read by people who also read the one about the Dominos employees who topped a sandwich with extra farts:

People Read Hysterical Stuff

I think we should be more concerned with an national obsession with Schadenfreude than information overload.

True, we are not in the best of times – the retail world is hurting for sure. But the hysteria flooding the market right now does little but produces more doom and gloom and further skew everyone’s perception of what is really happening. Instead, I propose a two-pronged approach to handling this little “recession” we are in:

1. Celebrate the Good News – For all the bad news out there, there is a decent amount of good news as well. Retail stocks are on the rise as of late, March losses are less than expected and Jos. A Bank’s is even reporting a 15% jump in net profit last quarter. This by no means is an indication the recession is over and we can go back to our free-spending ways, but it is a sign that not everything is terrible. Celebrate these pieces of good news as signs that the end of the world is not the only possible outcome.
2. Don’t Cower in the Corner – Yes, times can be scary, but cutting budgets and cowering in the corner and crossing your fingers isn’t the solution. Instead, use this time to challenge your teams, your agencies and your partners to innovate and become more efficient. Use this time to improve your business – find ways to run smarter campaigns, improve your customer experience, make customers happier!

Yes, this approach may seem a little idealistic and is definitely easier to write than it is to execute, but think of it this way: would you rather be Chicken Little always worrying that the sky is falling or would you rather be the person that just happened to improve your company (both short term and long term) should the sky just happen to stay up in the sky?

The frustration felt when you see a client throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at short-lived, easily forgotten campaigns while allowing their brand positioning in something as basic as paid search to be ignored is maddening. You go home after days like that and just beat your head into a wall. Then you wake up and go at it again.

That is until now.

Because now, in the ad world, while the news is bleak all around, the light at the tunnel is finally shining in our direction. It sort of feels like you’ve been in a one sided relationship and all the sudden the other one decides you’re the partner of his/her dreams. You’re expected to just accept this, but the history lingers in the back of your mind. See, I completely understand the decision process here – now we make sense to CMOs. We didn’t make a lot of sense when we asked you about branding or share of voice but dollars on spreadsheets? That feels real now. That feels painfully real.

I’m not ungrateful – Quite the opposite. It’s our moment to shine, but a couple of things stick out at me. First and foremost – we want your programs to not only work, but be wildly successful. I’ve gotta tell you, though, you sure picked a tough time. You can’t steal from Peter to pay Paul. People are scared, conservative and downright unsure, but that doesn’t mean they don’t watch TV or flip through the glossies or give the billboard 10 seconds of a loving gaze. I fear brands will dial down spend in one media channel hoping to make it back in the one that they’re currently fixated on. But then that’s our job and I suppose it always has been: to be honest and set expectations. Sure, I think we can do more, but all of the channels working together to support one another? It’s beginning to sound like science fiction to me.

Five Tips to Cope — or Even Thrive — Through Downturn
A Dig Through Ad Age Archives Reveals How to Grow in Adverse Times

LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) — Ad Age has dug deep into our archives to analyze the issue of innovation during three of the worst times: the Depression and recessions of the early ’70s and early ’80s.

It certainly caught my attention so I clicked through only to find out that in order to access THE GOLDMINE I’d have to pay for the whitepaper.

Sigh.

Exactly AdAge, release a paper that was only created because of the*unforeseen events of today’s economy and then charge for it! Brilliant! Thriving in your own downtime and then pimping it out to my inbox. Disguised as help!

You sneaky little devil.

*depends on who you ask

While I realize that most of you know this, the recent release of Yahoo’s top 10 searches for 2008 merely confirms. Before we take a look at the psyche of American searcher’s though, let’s just quickly rattle off a few things we’ve collectively lived through these past 11 months. Hmm… let’s see. Our financial system has and continues to be a roller coaster ride invented by the Devil where the moments of reprieve are simply when there isn’t blood squirting out of your eyes, Michael Phelps ears have 4 medals hanging from each one, Hurricane Ike’s arbitrary swath of destruction, OH AND I KNOW!!! The first African-American ever elected president in the United States history……Really all pretty pithy.

America, here are your top 10 searches for 2008:

1. Britney Spears
2. WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment)
3. Barack Obama
4. Miley Cyrus
5. RuneScape
6. Jessica Alba
7. Naruto
8. Lindsay Lohan
9. Angelina Jolie
10. American Idol

Sure the Brittany thing is easy to be irritated with but the WWE absolutely undoes me. It’s not even real!

I did feel a bit guilty when reviewing my own personal search history. It might not be Brittany but it sure includes gruesome medical anomalies in image form (not just for me though – I share). We all have our secret escape routes but still…..This really makes me question the audience or at the very least the intention of Yahoo! users. I’m not going to make any sweeping statements yet. At least not until Google’s Zeitgeist year in review is released.

Until then I’m going to do some “work” and find out what some of these top 10 even are.

What I didn’t realize is the rules that apply to our industry do not apply to the rest of the world. From the second I walked into the TPC Four Seasons Resort in Irving, Texas, I was bombarded by vendors and other advertisers handing me pamphlets, asking me to sign up for a credit card or drawing, or beckoning me over to endless booths of people grabbing your arm to come check out their latest product (99% of which had nothing to do with golf). Here I am, going to check out a golf tournament with some friends and getting physically spammed. It’s bad enough that I have to wade through a virtual sewer of unwanted erection-pill spam to get to the email I want to read, but I can’t even cruise a golf tournament without being piled high with flyers and trinkets for crap I will never sign up for in a million years.

After I walked about 200 yards, I was finally able to see the first hole. But by this time, I had a handful of paper spam and needed to offload it. Thankfully, there was a Junk folder nearby (the nearest trashcan). Not surprisingly, the Junk Folder was very full—not with beer cups or plates, but with a hundred copies of all the garbage in my hands.

I’m thinking there should be some process to just move all physical spam directly to the Junk Folder. Can we get some legislation on this? Is there someone in Congress I can contact? Or is it up to us, like with networks, to filter this spam or set up spam blockers? I am thinking of bringing a few football linemen with me next time.

I know that as marketers, we try advertising without being obnoxious. And at golf tournaments there is plenty of advertising to go around with sponsors, banners, the golfers. Am I alone on this? Is there really a need for these spammers to ruin what would be a nice event with “legitimate” advertising?

See, I don’t have cable, and while my TV has rabbit ears, for whatever reason, it can’t nab an ABC signal that doesn’t make my TV look haunted. So I watch Lost on ABC.com.

You might think that watching TV on a laptop’s monitor kind of sucks, and if you’re used to the expansive grandeur of a 52” plasma screen, then yeah, TV on a laptop monitor is probably disappointing. But my TV still has a tube, and it’s small, so I don’t care. Plus, I don’t have to sit through so many commercials.

Ah yes. TV commercials. You know, the things you sit through the Super Bowl for? Well, for the most part, I hate them. Okay, so the recent Pontiac one is pretty awesome, but that’s only because it incorporates Spy Hunter, the arcade classic that taught me how to drive. I understand that if not for TV commercials and their precious, network-exec-salary-paying dollars, we wouldn’t have shows such as Lost¹. So I guess I tolerate them, but only barely. After all, I don’t need a Cialis or McDonald’s ad to mark the appearance of a major plot point. I can figure those out on my own. Moreover, I don’t need Cialis or McDonald’s. In fact, rather than making a connection with me, they are instead building a brand association with narrative interference. Or, I guess, trips to the kitchen or the bathroom. This is probably not an original thought, but when I hear the phrase “I’m lovin’ it,” I am reminded not of glistening, sculpted McMeat, but of the Triskits in my kitchen or the Charmin in my bathroom. That and the fact that it will be another four minutes and thirty seconds before I find out why Sayid is playing golf and flat-ironing his hair. And that really sucks.

But thank the maker² for streaming video. When you watch Lost, or The Office, or I guess, Buck Rogers³ online, you only have to tolerate a single brand pestering you a handful of times, for a measily 30 seconds. This is waaaaay better than breaking up the show into 8-minute blocks surrounding five intrusive minutes of various products I will refuse to buy out of spite. So I’m okay with Honda sponsoring an online episode of Lost. It doesn’t necessarily make me want to go out and buy the new Accord, but I appreciate that their interference is minimal and strangely polite. If this is a sustainable model for televised content, then it’s okay by me. It certainly works well online.

¹Nor would we have shows such as Two and Half Men or According to Jim, which is less of an argument against TV ad dollars as it is an argument against TV.

²If you got this reference, I’m sorry for both of us. Also , would you be able to run a game of D&D on Friday night?

³If you recently read about Hulu.com in Entertainment Weekly, probably.

I mean, really? This is what people want to spend tons of money on?