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The Colonel has dropped the chicken and hit the pavement. KFC is paying for the repairs in exchange for a chalk stamping with the KFC logo and the phrase “re-freshed by KFC.” Now, I don’t put KFC and refreshing in the same sentence, but this ad campaign is pretty interesting.

The idea comes Cone, a Boston-based cause branding and corporate responsibility firm. The idea is to generate some goodwill among corporations in the current economic situation. Whatever it is, filling potholes is a good thing!

[Read] AdAge – Need a Pothole Filled in Your City? Call KFC.

1. Nearby Tweets - http://nearbytweets.com/
Find people around you who are Tweeting. You might find a local celebrity or find out great local deal. Who knows, you might even get the scoop on a new position opening up by you.

2. Micro-RSS feed.
Follow your favorite blogs and local news outlets to keep things in one place. If you casually browse your RSS feed maybe it’s time to funnel everything into twitter. Most blogs, including this one, will post updates to their Twitter feed. You might want to update your own Twitter feed to do this with your blog.

3. Trend Spotting
If you follow a large enough flock, it will be easy to spot links that come up often. Or even if you don’t, check out TweetDeck to see a bubble list of the most popular terms.

4. The ever vain – search for yourself.
You can use search.twitter.com to look for yourself to see if people are retweeting you or just talking about you in general. Of course, this also serves a valid purpose of search for tweets like how many people mention your company or product.

5. Retweet and be Retweeted.
I wish Twitter would implement a better way to do this with it’s web interface, but most TwitterTools like Twhirl and TweetDeck handle this very well. ReTweeting is basically stealing tweets. It’s a great way to pass along information. Just remember to give credit. An example would be “RT @mmusa: i’m sorry but th…”

I’m not sure I buy into Jon Friedman’s approach to Facebook. He thinks Facebook (and Twitter) is for journalists because they can source people. Sure they can, and I can source Wikipedia for my term paper. The problem is that it just isn’t enough. I’d like a little more investigation from supposedly credited news papers like the Wall Street Journal than quotes captured from status updates and tweets.

Why? Because I’m sick of “Buy the rumor, sell the news” mentality of media outlets. You’ve no doubt heard, don’t believe everything you read. Part of that is because of the media. If you missed the humiliation of Jim Cramer on the Daily Show, you missed one of the greatest televised humiliations of a news personality in recent memory. Jon Stewart held Jim Cramers’ feet to the fire and had such indisputable evidence of Cramer’s fraud that even Cramer couldn’t deny it.

Facebook is an invaluable tool for journalists though. For the same reason it’s a invaluable tool for the rest of us, networking. So is Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on. It’s about networking, not about news. There might be some truth in tweets and status messages, but dig a little deeper than that. Just like there is valuable information in Wikipedia, but go to the source, don’t solely rely on the Wiki. So Journalists, join Facebook, Tweet away, but when it comes to the news, “Just the facts, Jack!’

1. Zip ties (and conduit) are NOT your friend.
Zip ties stink. There’s nothing more frustrating than needing to move one cable and having to cut and replace that zip tie. Way too much work for a simple task. Save the zip ties for things that will rarely move, like the cables inside your computer. Conduit has the same problem. Trying to move one cable will result in a mental breakdown and taking everything apart. Save your sanity and your money and follow step 2.

2. Go Cheap.
There’s no need to spend big bucks on fancy color tabbed velcro ties. You can buy rolls of colored velcro if you like to color code. I bought black pipe cleaners and they did the trick. Best of all, unlike zip ties you can move and undo them in a snap.

3. One of these things is not like the other.
If you run dual monitors that means you have two video cables and two power chords for them. Power cables are video cables. If you have your computer in a different place from your power strip trying to bundle all four cables isn’t going to help. Bundle power with power, and video with video.

4. Plan ahead.
This should probably be number one, but it’s also the most obvious. Still, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it. The best way to approach this is to turn your computer off and unplug everything. Chances are the reason you need to do this is the area behind your desk violates fire codes, which probably means there’s a lot of tangles. It’s better to start from scratch. Group things you know will be coming from about the same place, and going to the same place.

5. Kill the clutter.
This is a great time to evaluate which gadgets you need, and which gadgets can be ditched or temporarily set aside. Chances are also high you will find a power cable or two you don’t need as well. If you have a bluetooth keyboard and a wired or RF mouse, consider a bluetooth mouse. It will save you a cable and a usb outlet.

In the past month or so at least 4 executives have branched out from both Google and MySpace. If you know what it’s like to work at Google you have to wonder what they are thinking. Apparently, it’s that they think they can do social networking better. Most recently, three executives from MySpace, including Amit Kapur, left MySpace to join a start up. It seems a little crazy to ditch a well paying job in this economy but you gotta do what you gotta do.

The biggest question it sparks, is just how much social networking can we take? Isn’t the social networking market pretty well saturated? Between MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many other sites what are the odds for social networking startups to succeed?

One of these start-ups is Likaholix. Started by a former Googler, Likaholix seems to be a Twitter like item for products and media. The idea is that you make suggestions for things that you like and people comment it and favorite on it. It is still in private beta, so to say it is a tad undercooked is being pretty accurate.

[Read] Total Telecom Three MySpace execs quit, including COO
[Read] Mashable Why Googlers Are Leaving to Start Social Sites

To the non-corporate user (IE, most of us) the most noticeable changes will come in the form of the visuals. Both the Facebook “homepage” and corporate pages are changing to become more personable. Now those pages that you are a fan of will look less corporate and more like your buddy. Also good news for you super friendly types, no more cap on 5000 friends.

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Twidroid: If you’re a twitter’er and you’re in love with your T-Mobile G1, there is no better Twitter Application than Twidroid. Although the name might take a little tongue twisting to get out the program rocks. It allows you to upload geo-tagged photos and customize how frequently you want to check for updates, or even on demand. This is actually crucial because the G1 isn’t exactly what you would call long on battery life.

The Weather Channel: Waiting for summer is brutal. The Weather Channel app lets you check weather in multiple locations so, since it’s 30 degrees and snowing here, I can at least pretend I’m in Hawaii. The application also loads radar maps so you can prepare for the snow and rain. A frequent worry if you’re in Ohio this time of year.

SnapPhoto: The G1 camera is…. horrid. If it isn’t a bright sunny day, it usually isn’t worth trying to take a picture, until SnapPhoto. SnapPhoto offers a plethora of customization and filters. The biggest helper for non-fuzzy photo taking is the stabilization feature. It uses the G1’s accelerometer to judge when the most stable time to take the picture is.

GPS Status: Nothings more frustrating than watching the GPS satellite icon blink… and blink… and blink. THe GPS Status program shows you how many satellites you’re connected to, the speed you’re moving, latitude and longitude and more. Quite a handy application.

Shop Savvy: We’ve all been there, tempted to buy this or that but wondering if you could get it somewhere else cheaper. Shop Savvy lets you scan items using the camera and bar code, searches local stores and the web for the product and even gives you reviews. Never over pay again. The only catch is that most smaller products aren’t really in there.

There’s a few reasons why you want people to follow you on Twitter. The first and most vain reason is that it gives you the impression people care about you. That may or may not be true, but there are genuinely valid reasons. Among them is increasing brand awareness, either the company you work for or the “you” brand. Sometimes it can be tricky to get people to follow you but there are some things that you can do to increase the odds.

1. Follow those who follow you. Nobody likes to give and not receive. If someone takes the time to follow you, follow them back. For the simple reason that it increase the chance they will stick with you and not drop you a few days later.

2. Follow Others With a Larger Following. There’s a really quick way to gain at least 5 followers in one day. On Twitter, go to Find People, then Suggested Users and follow all of those people. You don’t have to keep following these people, but you will be surprised how many people you might gain.

3. Post often on a wide range of topics. I did a little experiment the other day and posted at least every 15-30 minutes for 6 hours. This combined with No. 2 netted me 20 extra followers in 1 day. Remember though, quality counts. Sharing links, quotes, and videos are all better than “just refreshing my Twitter feed because I’m bored.” Although shaking things up a bit good, nobody wants to know boring details.

4. Email/Facebook/LinkedIn/Blog etc. Adding your twitter feed to your email signature, integrating it with your Facebook status or profile and LinkedIn profile are all ways of exposing your feed to new viewers. Integrating your blog to update your Twitter status keeps new (and possibly original) content of your

5. Comment, ReTweet, Reply. Every time I get a reply from Guy Kawasaki I swear at least one other person follows me. The catch is, to get Guy to reply, I have to comment on something he does. It helps to actually mean what you say, if it’s obvious you’re just trolling the waters of someone else’s twit success then they probably won’t reply. Don’t forget, the reason these people are followed is because they have something of value to give and provide interesting content. You should provide value if you expect people you don’t know to follow you.

For as long as I can remember I was told to design for 800×600 resolution monitors. As time went on it generally seemed to move up to 1024×768. Now two things have come a long that could make change back to good old 800×600: Netbooks and Smartphones. Smartphones have come along way, now with phones like the Apple iPhone and T-Mobile G1 there is full Internet browsing but with smaller resolutions than even 800×600. Netbooks have been extremely popular lately but also focus on small resolutions like 1024×600. With screens sticking around the 9-10″ range they aren’t exactly easy reading. The key point with both these devices is that they are supposed to be mobile. Why is that a big point? Because of navigation. Users don’t want to have to pan significantly to have to read even a small amount of text. Although it is a lot easier with touchscreen devices, trackpad navigation has never been ergonomic. It’s just clumsy.

Fine, you think, we have mobile sites that fit this problem. You’d be right, but there is a catch to that as well. Consider the rapid development of both netbooks and smartphones. Where will these devices been in 6 months? A year? It’s not inconceivable that both will see a moderate gain in resolution putting them much closer to their larger counterparts. Which begs the question, with a line so blurred, why maintain two sites? Start shrinking larger web pages a bit and just maintain one. In other words, go back to 800×600.

As I have pointed out before, one of the best things about marketing on the internet is the ability to watch the results of ads and to see what is working and what isn’t. However, as Andy Atherton at Advertising Age has pointed out, that’s really not the big selling point anymore. It’s not very surprising that the biggest selling point to market on the web is that it reaches the most customers. Yet companies still spend 95% of branding money in offline channels. It seems really odd that companies fail to act on web advertising with more capital. Now, there are those that notice it. Certainly, if you noticed CNN or the NY Times homepage this Monday were covered with a banner ad at the top half for Apple, and we have discussed how Porsche capitalized on mobile advertising.

As Atherton notes, the internet advertising industry has grown faster than any other medium before it. It still has ways to go. Is it the uncharted territory of high dollar web campaigns that have companies sticking to traditional but declining mediums like radio and print? Possibly, but I believe that is also that the people with the know how and chutzpah aren’t out there yet. In a medium that is just barley 15 years old it means that at most, online marketers have probably a decade of experience under their belts. Which might seem like a lot but, given how fast the industry and medium has developed it really isn’t.

Online marketers are continually struggling to find out what works because they have so many options. We now know pop-up ads are a quick way to irritate the customer, but how long did it take to find out something thats so obvious? It isn’t like TV had been, your option was a commercial or sponsor a show, the end. Banner ads, text ads, flash ads, viral video, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. The list can go on, and just because it works for company A, doesn’t mean it will work for Company B.

Online marketers are now faced with the largest demographic of any medium, and they don’t know how to handle it. You are now starting to see colleges offering degrees in eMarketing and eCommerce and even still these degrees can change frequently. You will start to see companies advertise online more but not because they are figureing it out, but because print and radio and to a lesser extent TV aren’t working as well as they should.

Advertising Age: Digital Marketing: Is it time to forget Measurement?