The "CNNTube Effect"

Did you see the Republican presidential debate this week? Not to worry. Catch the highlights. Thirteen of the 20 most popular YouTube videos tonight as of 7 p.m. PST were from Wednesday's live broadcast of the debate on CNN (for you kids, that's a cable news network on television). This CNNTube Effect is yet another example of the Internet's growing symbiotic relationship with traditional television news media. More than 1.4 million people had viewed the 13 newly posted debate videos. YouTube is trending near the top of all sites visited on the Internet. In early 2006, it passed CNN's website, which of late has been experiencing a traffic decline, according to Alexa the Web Information Company (see graphic). Yes, CNN the television network commands a robust audience, but many of its viewers think YouTube is a merely a mispronounciation of Boob Tube. Do they vote more? We'll see. The 18-24 demographic is flexing its muscle. YouTube and CNN are a great marriage. Content is still king. And broader distribution of that content benefits everyone. Just ask Ron Paul's campaign, whose own YouTube channel counts 38,647 subscribers and 6.2 million channel views.

I Live on the Freeway

Google's new feature "My Location" for its mobile maps application is groovy. Because it's in beta and 85% of us don't have GPS-enabled mobile phones, we can't be too picky about accuracy. I tried it tonight on a Blackberry 8130 from my living room to learn that my house is on the freeway. OK, not quite. A shaded larger area the shape of blue circle is the best Google can do if your cellphone is not GPS-enabled. Within that circle is my house, with about 100 others. Cell towers provide signals to draw these coordinates. From a non-GPS cellphone, you'll still need to type in a real start address and destination if you want the best directions from point A to B (or ask a cabbie or concierge when on the road). Here's is one funky thing I also learned: If you're using the mobile maps to find a hospital in my neighborhood, be flexible. From the downstairs living room on the west side of the house, a search with keyword hospital produced first on the list Intellidot Corporation (not a hospital). But from the upstairs office on the east side of the house, the same search performed spot on: Pomerado Hospital appeared at the top. Progress.

Facebook or Macy's Parade

Saw a little item on NYT today. The topic: How virtual our lives have become, yet how face-to-face interaction remains a natural wonder. No logging in with user name and password required. Smile. Talk. Enjoy. Online social networks help us enhance and expand human networks. We benefit from access to information, cultures, interests and knowledge that each of us is willing to share. So now that the parade has passed, flickr has lots of colorful photos posted and available for you to see, some of them from Thursday. A search of Macy's Parade yields 7,246 results as of tonight.

Email : Losing out to TXT and IM?

Slate this week included a catchy piece that asks if those of us who remember how cutting-edge and cute Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were in 1998's "You've Got Mail," will abandon email for more popular texting and IM of our children's generation. The rise of Facebook and Myspace, combined with texting (wildly popular in Asia while the U.S. was still spell-checking Yahoo outbox missives) has a few techies wondering if email will die. For social interaction, the answer is yes -- at least as we know email today. For business, hell no. Here's why. Staying current with the ebb and flow of your buddies' movements and their free time requires 24/7 connectivity. Voice, text, IM. It's an A.D.D. sort of world - quick exchanges with little or no punctuation: what up? r u going? ttyl. For 9-5 office mates, it's email and structure. The line between "knowing now" and "checking email" is a firewall that divides our personal lives from our professional lives. The line blurs when your google email forwards to your mobile, but I've been in offices where 90% of employees under 30 juggle IM dialog boxes, emoticons and trusty but dry Microsoft Outlook. It's second nature. They move back and forth between fun and duty. Email outside of work? Only when they have to send resumes if the employer won't accept video resumes posted on You Tube.