OverLinked

A new report from Magna, an advertising forecaster widely watched in the biz, predicts that while this year revenues will fall about 14.5 percent for the year, in 2010 they’ll fall just two percent, and revenue growth will resume in the second half of 2011. It sounds modest, but that’s welcome news since advertising is currently suffering its worst slump since the Great Depression.

Interesting prediction about the advertising “slump” – I see that certain segments are already making small gains forward. In particular those recession resistant industries are making investments right now, such as 7-11 expanding with large purchases of lots for future stores. These investments in capability will need investments in marketing & advertising to bring people in the doors. A return is close at hand.

I have to say that these comps for what a common icon in our culture could be are very compelling. They remind us that the old dollar, though sentimentally prestigious, is just that – old. It hasn’t had a redesign in years, and compared to some other more plucky nations, we seem stuck in our ways. Could the US Government tap the creativity in America’s graphic designers? I would really like to see that happen along with it being moderated through adequate use of crowdsourcing. And out the door in 3 weeks flat. That would be soooo very American.

This is just one example of a consumer robot that will not see the light of Retail day as the recession hits Japanese consumers’ pocketbooks. This particular robot wanders around your house with a web cam keeping an eye on the place for you, but this might be overkill when you can get a Shiba Inu or Chihuahua for much less.

Interesting graphic showing the sales volume of those who kept advertising spending up in all media, and those who retracted their advertising in the face of economic difficulty. Short term thinking will cost many companies $$ in the long-run.

Google says the software architecture will basically be the current Chrome browser running inside “a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.” So in other words, it basically is the web as an OS. And applications developers will develop for it just as they would on the web. This is similar to the approach Palm has taken with its new webOS for the Palm Pre, but Google notes that any app developed for Google Chrome OS will work in any standards-compliant browser on any OS.

My last post indicated that Chrome was a competitive platform to Linux, but after learning that Chrome OS is based on a Linux kernel, technically it is an offshoot, or a variant. It’s actually encouraging that a large company has used the development environment of open source to it’s own advantage – very shrewd from an internal cost of operations angle. It still remains to be seen what type of reception that the OS will have in the Linux world, whether it will be accepted as just another port or whether it will be shunned for being too corporate. In the end it’s all about usage, and what works best for the largest audience. That will determine any platform’s staying power.