I'm not sure why - maybe the economy? Maybe it's that marketers are learning more about ROI? AdAge has an interesting take on this concept with their reviews: Ed McMahon's Bad Ad Steals the Super Bowl.

I personally thought the Coke spot trying to be a remake of the best ad ever - "Mean Joe" - was awful. To me the best ad was NBC's "LMAO" ad which, I guess, wasn't in consideration because it was for the network. I did really like the Bridgestone ad with Mr. Potato Head - that was pretty clever. And, the Cheeto's ad with the birds was pretty good, too. Also, I'd love to know what kind of traffic GoDaddy generated with their ads - I'm sure it was through the roof.

Here is the place you can watch and rate the commercials @ ESPN's SportsNation. It'll be interesting how these ads and reviews shake out over the next few days.

Here's an excerpt:

All the common rules of society still apply when contacting Journalists and Bloggers:
- Be nice.
- Be respectful of their time.
- Recognize that these are busy people too.
- Be self-aware that most of them do not like to pitched.
- Don't annoy them or hound them if you don't hear back from them.
- Say please and thank you.
- Make it easy, simple and fun to connect to you and whatever it is you're pitching them.
- Give them time and space to breathe (your rush is not their rush).

There's a bunch of other great info in the article - check it out.

Fifth of U.S. TV viewers watching online: survey

"This is the first study to show there are a significant amount of people watching primetime shows online who are not watching some portion of those shows on television," Amanda Welsh, head of research for IMMI, said in a statement.

I wondered when we would begin seeing this trend. This is just another case of the consumer now having the tools to control the transaction. I wonder how many of the networks hold onto their old ways as this plays out?

But, there is one thing out there that I really feel is unethical and that is when web designers subscribe their clients to services and don't give the clients access to them. Another thing I loathe is when a web design firm does domain registration for a client and "takes care of it" for them - more on that in a minute.

I'm seeing more and more situations where someone will sign up for some kind of a Google account - like Analytics - and not give the client access. Note to those out there - make sure you do this yourself and give the web designer the code and/or access to the account. Even better, in cases where an employee who is managing your site may leave - have them sign up under a generic account and get the username/password.

The other one that really gets me is this domain thing. I have see clients held hostage because when they decide they want to leave a web design firm for another - the former will hold their domain hostage as leverage. Note to self - always buy your own domain names. If a web firm buys a domain on your behalf - there's a very good chance that you don't really own it. And, that can be bad if the relationship sours - especially if it's yourcompanyname.com.

Here's some great information from one of experts on the subject - Jacob Nielsen

• A collection of articles on writing for the web
• Writing Style for Print vs. Web - this one is really interesting. The last sentence says it all.

If you're smart, you'll write accordingly: make your content actionable and focused on user needs.

The only thing I'd add would be ... well not really anything. That's pretty good.

Through the coaching of David Fabricius I was able to take the leap and walk over a 10 foot bed of coals. No burns - didn't even hurt. It was an amazing experience and a great way to look at dealing with and overcoming your fears.

Prior to fire-walking - David gave an excellent presentation on "Breakthrough, Balance and Bliss." There were some amazing topic covered and some great insight that I took away from the evening. One really interesting thing that I did take away was his quote about working 8-14 hours a day as the norm.

Working an extra 2-6 hours per day will do nothing to solve the real problems you're avoiding in your life - either personally or professionally.

That's so true. Think about it.