“As Google and Microsoft battle for dominance in technology, a skirmish in Los Angeles City Hall is offering a rare public glimpse into a rivalry that could help determine the fortunes of both companies — and, quite possibly, how workers in the future will communicate.

The two tech giants are clashing over a $7.25-million contract to replace L.A.’s outdated e-mail system. The stakes are high enough that both companies have fielded teams of lobbyists and executives to press their case in City Hall.”

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-email-wars28-2009sep28,0,3711416.story

OK, this worries me. I am not a big fan of Google as their products are so boring. I like quirky – I like Clippy and all the weird easter eggs that find their way into MS products. I like LA because it is quirky – I don’t want this city I call home to be all efficient and robotic. I f I wanted that I would move back to Germany.

While the numbers are not huge in comparison to the US, it is interesting to note that Vietnam is bucking the global trend and experiencing growth in ad spend.

Online advertising in Vietnam is predicted to reach $US 7.7 million by next year, nearly triple 2008 figures (Nielsen and Yahoo!, December 2008). Furthermore, this year, nearly 1 in 4 Vietnamese (predominantly in major cities) have Internet access (Nielsen, March 2009), more than China and India. In other words there are 20 million internet users in Vietnam.

More here: AdMax

Great commentary on Sarah’s awesome interview with the Zuck @ SXSW:

http://tweetscan.com/index.php?s=train+wreck&u=

I am addicted to tweets. I can’t get enough of them. These one to two liner posts to twitter might as well be a new chocolate similar to Treats (remember those?). Friends are able to keep up with my life by following my tweets which I can easily send via SMS at any time and place–even while I’m on my throne. I was in London last week without my US mobile and all I could think about was how I wish I can twitter. My constant twittering annoys my girlfriend; Verizon loves me because SMS tweets contributed to a $160 bill last month.

What I really love about twitter is that it extends to other applications by creating a twitter feed for that application. Twitter has an API and I recently saw 2 cool applications of it:

1. The blog rock star known as Jeremy Wright uses twitter to update his blog. Each daily post is a digest of that day’s tweets that he sent via his mobile. He demonstrated this application when he twittered about my girlfriend and now we are on his blog.*
2. Remember The Milk is allowing users to send updates to their to-do list and interact with the service via commands sent over twitter. These are direct messages to RTM so they do not appear in your own tweeter feed.

* Note: I am not canadian nor am I engaged. We all had a lot to drink that night...

Interesting Quote from AOL re: MicroHoo deal via Rafat Ali —

AOL (NYSE: TWX) CEO Randy Falco spoke today at IAB’s annual conference, and echoed what the official and unofficial thinking within Time Warner is at this point: “I’m hoping the two of them will beat each other’s brains out over search and leave the display market to us,” he said

Some useful tips from Chinwag on design tools for selecting colors and fonts on your prototypes. I like these kind of tools because I can play around with designs and then had off to a techie for proper implementation. I love seeing the look on their faces when a “business” dude is able to pull together a quick demo without their help.

As part of a recent trip to MSN Research Lab I picked up a copy of the Expression Studio design package. I have been playing around with it and it is a great tool for creating prototypes for products. You can actually use it to create rich websites but I have been using it to design my new mountain bike.

I was just twittering and I had some problems adding friends. I looked at their help and saw a link to a discussion topic about the same problem I was having. The link took me to Get Satisfaction, a site where companies can create their own discussion forums for their products – i.e. a help system built by advocates of the product. This is the kind of UGC I can really appreciate – it is a slick and clean interface which is easy to contribute to.

I added my current employer to the site. I wonder what content might come out of this?

I bought some sheets from West Elm recently, and ever since I keep getting emails from WE with offers, etc. Now I am not likely to buy from West Elm on a daily basis (more like “once-in-a-blue-moonly” basis) so I felt like I was getting spammed. Instead of banishing them to the junk mail dungeon I decided to try and unsubscribe. It was such a refreshing experience to see it done right I had to blog it.

I opened the email, looked at the footer and found an unsubscribe link. “Looks good so far”, I thought to myself. I was then redirected to a page where I could unsubscribe from the promotional emails.

Instead of just one option, I was presented with 4 options:

• Send no more than one west elm email each week
• Send no more than two west elm emails each month
• Send no more than one west elm email each month
• Unsubscribe completely

Given that I was pleased with my purchase and I may want to to buy something else in the future, I chose the “no more than once a month” option. Now I get the occasional email and it piques my interest. Before that I had a torrent of emails in my inbox that felt like an invasion.

West Elm gave me options to make my experience better, they didn’t say “take it or leave it”.

For those of you that are actively looking for jobs, or employers that wish to post jobs, a new resource popped up today.

Inside Facebook, an excellent blog tracking the latest Facebook application and platform news, has created Inside Facebook’s Top Jobs; a jobs board for social software and media companies to connect with technology and business savvy social networking experts looking to make the next step.

Personally I think Yahoosoft rolls of the tongue better however I don’t think they will get top billing if Steve Ballmer’s marriage proposal gets the formal yes.

I am both a Yahoo! and Microsoft Alumni which give me a rather cool perspective on this. The cultures are similar in that they are both founded by engineers however Yahoo! is clearly inferior in terms of being able to cope with growth and maturity into a major corporation. While I am sure there will be some riffing, MS is clever enough to recognise talent so I don’t think any of my old friends need to worry too much about aquisition pain. For those people that thought Yahoo! was just one big gravy-train: you know who you are and I would be worried.