Gotta Get the Gist!

It isn’t often I get excited about a contact manager but everything I read about Gist makes me want it and want it bad!

According to the guys at JoshSpear:

Gist combines all your important information by combing through Outlook, Gmail, LInkedIn and Twitter to create a happy place where your data and relationships integrate in a logical order, making all the elements of your electronic life easier to manage. For instance, if you’ve been emailing with Josh, and he’s been tweeting, and then he appears in a news story, Gist aggregates all of that info and puts it at your fingertips.

Of course, I have tried other info-aggregators and ended up finding them to be more work than help so it will all come down to the user-interface and automation.

Come on, Gist, let me into the private beta…

Kids Multitask, A Lot.

According to eMarketer our kids are very  heavy tech users:”Grunwald Associates says that in 2007, 64% of the US 9- to-17-year-olds surveyed in early 2008 said they went online while watching television. Nearly half of US teens said they did so frequently, up to several times a day. “That’s pretty incredible, especially at the younger end of the spectrum.  They’ve got all the data-goodness on their site. 

We Love Web Video

More good news from MediaPost:

“A recently released comScore Video Metrix service report, revealed that U.S. Internet users watched more than 10 billion videos online during the month of December, 2007, representing the single heaviest month for online video consumption since comScore initiated its tracking service. Google Sites saw substantial growth and extended its video market share gains, now accounting for nearly one out of every three videos viewed online.”

You can check out the specific data here.

If we are watch 10 BILLION videos a month, at what point are we actually consuming more video online than via traditional film and TV?

More Positive Data on Web Video Ads

NewTeeVee has the inside scoop on the Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research study on TV advertising:

“Of all the new formats the industry is eyeing, 65 percent of advertisers surveyed were looking to try ads in online shows, compared with ads embedded in VOD (55 percent), interactive television ads (43 percent) and ads within the set-top box menu (32 percent). And 87 percent of the same group said they intend to spend more on web advertising in 2008, which can only be good news for new media. For producers looking for sponsors, 87 percent of advertisers believe branded entertainment — from sponsor shout-outs to product placement — will play a stronger role.”

You can read the whole report here.

This is just more good news for those of us in the business of developing original content for the web. As more brands see the opportunities/cost ratio lay waste to the current TV model we’re going to be hearing a lot more on this topic.