QuicklyBored.com is a great place to read about mobile gaming.  As handheld devices continue to become a platform for entertainment as well as communication, this site will continue to be a leader in relaying news and reviews to a mass audience.  It already has a Google Page Rank of 6, which is testament to the amount of people starting to care about mobile games.

So it’s exciting that this industry leader covered the story of Sandlot’s deal with Movaya.  It’s a real indicator that more of the mobile games web sites may begin to pick up on the story of Movaya’s emerging technology. 

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So just for fun….Thanks to the guys from 2dayblog for finding this

According to ESPN.com, Dr. Robert Cade passed away this week.  You have probably never heard of Dr. Cade, but if you have ever played a sport or been to the gym, you have almost certainly tried Dr. Cade’s invention, Gatorade.

The story of the birth of Gatorade is one that every marketer should read, memorize and copy into their own campaigns.  I’ll leave the entire article for you to read, but the bullet points go something like this:

1. Discover a problem that needs a solution
2. Create, test, recreate, retest, and recreate the solution until the customer likes it
3. Find an anchor customer with influence and size
4. When tempted to change the brand, listen to your audience
5. Build products because you love the project, not for the money
6. When you get bigger than you can handle, take the money and run.

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So another of my favorite bands are coming to town, this time Flogging Molly on December 4.
You can check out just about all their songs with Rhapsody.

If you asked me for a list of my favorite things, Bill Bryson books would fall just under Air and Water. I was turned on to Bryson’s classic
Neither Here Nor There
about 10 years ago (and have now probably re-read it 7 times), and look forward to each new global adventure as if he was taking me along for the ride.

In fact, I would probably consider it the perfect vacation if I ever stumbled into a little pub and saw this bearded 50 year old author sitting by himself with a pint and his notebook. I’m quite sure that my head would be buzzing with tales from his travels more than the beers.

And so you must imagine my situation as I entered an airport bookstore and lazily scanned the rows and rows of books I had no interest in. And then suddenly, like a bottle of fine red wine stuck in among the Apple Juice, there was the latest Bryson offering:
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.

Now take into consideration that I was headed to a Blog and New Media conference, and yet this little paperback book was now tasked with keeping me entertained for 3 hours or so. The irony was not lost upon me.

Unsurprisingly, my review is quite positive. If you are interested in nostalgia, humor, American history and absurdity, then this will keep you laughing well past the time that you should be turning out your lights. Few books make anyone sad when a plane trip is over, and this one did it.

Even though “Having Beers with Bill Bryson” is still making no upward progress on my life’s To-Do List, “Reading the Next Bill Bryson Book” is just about done.

I can’t think of anything more tech-geek than going to a Bloggers Conference, attended by Bloggers, and then Blogging about the event, while listening to a Professional Blogger.

So, I would be remiss if I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity for ultimate tech-geekiness. 

Long story short – There is a ton of enthusiasm around social media, blogging and podcasting.  If you are a company not engaging in Social Media, you really need to.  Everyone from Press, PR companies and major corporations, and amatuer bloggers were here at Blog World Expo, learning all about it, and I was pleased to see that I knew most of the stuff being discussed, but still learned a few bits here and there.  Plus Mark Cuban gave the keynote, which was cool.

Anyway, the major thing I took away is that i need to write more to be relevant, so look for more posts per week in the future. 

Well I don’t have anything to say about the Facebook / MSFT deal that is any smarter or insightful than anything else already published.  But here’s my personal view on how this affects people like us.

The life of the average blogger or other purveyor of Social Media just got better.  Google’s Ad Sense, the gold standard of Internet advertising, had started to get a little stale.  That happens to everyone making truckloads of cash – the need to radically innovate lessens.

But now, MSFT is locked into Facebook forever, and as Facebook impressions rise, MSFT ad impressions rise, and Google has to do more to please the millions of publishers out there.  Competiton is good, and in one investment, MSFT was able to do join up with an established web property haven’t been able to do with any of their homegrown properties – deliver a universally admired user experience, with virtually unlimited growth potential.

And wow, a valuation of $15 billion….. That’s simply amazing.       

I think I’m about 2 years behind on this post….But I saw this little app on someone else’s web site and had to try it out. I know I’ve heard of Slide.com, but I guess I don’t spend enough time on MySpace to have seen it put to good use. And I really haven’t seen it on Facebook yet. (Maybe my Facebook friends aren’t the creative types.) Anyway, it’s a pretty cool way to add some visual functionality to your web site. Check it out at Slide.com (By the way, the images for this little test come from Imagekind.com.)

Seattle’s Ad Club brought Social Media to the forefront today, as Eric Weaver, Principle of Brand Dialogue, and Laura Porto Stockwell, VP and Director of Interactive at Publicis, "explored this new(ish) medium and (taught us) how it affects your brand and you personally."

The house was packed and just about everyone stayed until the end, indicating agencies and professional marketers are at least interested in figuring out how to wrap their arms around this giant mixture of bees and butterflies called Social Media.   Look for more events like this in Social Media, and Spring Creek Group will be at many of them.

This Saturday, the people from Cure Autism Now are hosting ‘Walk Now" at the University of Washington.  Autism attacks more children at a faster rate than any other disorder out there today, and Cure Autism Now is singularly focused on finding cures and treatments.

Autism suffers an invisibilty issue at times, because parents with Autistic parents are often confined to their home and long therapy sessions.  Current treatments can run as much as $90k a year, with many not covered by insurance who call them "Experimental," so think about how much spare time you would have trying to make $200k a year and care for an autistic child at the same time.

Anyway, Walk Now is a great event and gives you a sense about the real effect of Autism.  You can get more info at the Web site, or just show up at the UW this weekend.