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I often use Google Alerts to give me the heads up on what people are saying on blogs and forums about Microsoft adCenter, Live Search and Microsoft in general. It’s a great way to measure the buzz in the market place and judge the temperature of opinion.

My own name is on the list because I do a lot of speaking and while it’s good to get feedback, not everyone emails me and says they’ve written about the presentation or lecture.

This way you can measure your online reputation and get to know pretty much instantaneously when someone’s published some sentiment about you or your company.

However, as you can see from above, even Google throws up some spurious results!

I’ve been following online conversations about “Faile”, the New York street art collective, because I recently bought one of their pieces.

You’d be surprised how many people spell “failed” wrong when talking about dismal exam results on their blogs and in chat rooms! 🙂

Was dragged kicking and screaming to see Mama Mia The Movie on Saturday after my cricket match was rained off.

It’s actually a really good movie!

The cast is just perfect and it’s nice that Pierce Brosnan can’t sing a note because the guy he’s playing probably couldn’t sing either.

Meryl Streep should get an Oscar and, as usual, Colin Firth stole the show with a perfect rendition of the bumbling English fellow who’s got more to reveal than he first looks like he possibly can.

Sadly for me, one of the highlights was when Streep’s son-in-law-to-be – Sky – says he wants to set up a web site for their Greek Villa Hotel to help get more paying guests.

He utters something like, “if I market it well, I’m sure we can do some really good business!”

Nice to see blockbusting scriptwriters understanding that it’s not just good enough to have a web site but that you need to market it as well!

Check out The Mama Mia Web Site for more fun and frolics 😉

Last week I talked about the new Live Search home page images. Some of the coverage from around the web asked if the pictures would change and the answer is yes they will!

The above is the latest pic. Very cool (literally) and inspirational if you ask me 🙂

One of the Hotspots leads to an aerial shot of Langjokull Glacier in Iceland.

Wonder if Kristjan’s been there?

People often ask me what happened to Photosynth!

Well it’s still live on the Live Labs Site and new synths are being added all the time.

The above is just one application of the technology which was used in an episode of CSI New York.

Check out also the technology being used at the Hard Rock Cafe and Renault!

My morning train ride from North Sheen to London Victoria can be a cacophony of sound and vision at times.

The commute itself is just 30 minutes and you have to change at Clapham Junction, but you do have lots to look at and hear, especially the odd balls that get on too.  

Not least the guy who boards the train with a bag containing a china bowl of porridge.

He begins to eat it with a metal spoon while reading the paper, oblivious to those around him wondering just how bad his time keeping and organisational skills are that he can’t even get up in time to have his breakfast.

Goldilocks he ain’t!   

Today I sat next to a guy who had printed out the instructions on how to use his iPod in colour and was reading them on the journey into work.

He was obviously very excited….. 

Bless! 🙂

Back in January I wrote about How Not To Write Email Confirmations and how so many companies get the subject line so badly wrong.

I just got the above subject line in a marketing email from Agent Provocateur!

Buxomly Brilliant!

Not seen the film yet? Let this Microsoft Advertising feature help you decide!

The Dark Knight – MSN Special

Find videos, downloads, a photo gallery and a competition…

Staff here at Microsoft Advertising have got together to take some time out from the rigours of daily life in online advertising and decided to put a bit back into society.

Over the next few months, groups of us will be going down to the Sunrise Children’s Centre in Kent (part of Barnardo’s )to help revamp their facilities including their sensory garden, games room and outside play area.

No XBox? We might have to do something about that!

In order for us to complete the work we need about £10k!

I’ve kicked off the donations with £150 on behalf of Dave Naylor who I did a deal with to revamp this blog, and what a great job he and his guys did!

If you can spare some cash, the children at Sunrise could do with all the help you can give.

For more information, please check out our Microsoft Advertising Community Project Site!

The Live Search guys have announced a new homepage design on the Live Search Blog!

The above design is just the first in a number they’ll be rolling out. I’ve seen a couple and I can only describe them as gorgeous.

What makes them better is the inclusion of “hotspots” that pop up on hover with different facts, or possible searches that can take the user to services on Live Search that they may not know about.

This hotspot clicks through to:

And this one:

Leads to:

It’s only being released in the US right now with other countries to follow.

If you want to see, just change your Live Search country setting to United States here:

Like it? I do 🙂

So it’s been a few days and we’ve had reaction here, here, here, here and here.

Oh and here, here, here, here and here, and my favourite being here!

Most, if not all the feedback and comments have been less than positive and I’m sure the management team have not been sleeping easy, nor have the investors.

I said on Monday we needed some time to assess the relevancy, and was reserving judgement as I’ve been involved in launching big profile products and it’s not for the faint-hearted!

So when is a good time to launch a new service with such huge press fanfare? How ready does it have to be?

I would suggest that it should be able to cope with a huge tug on servers, and that “about” & “feature” pages should return information and not 404 errors.

But what of the rest? What is the baseline for pushing the button? What are the “go/no go criteria”?

And how long will you give it before you try Cuil again?