Everyone in my address book received an invite to let me stalk them and then two emails telling them where I was (sadly both times at the office). One of my friends was so kind as to let me know via Facebook that she had received notification that I wanted to know her every move. While for the most part stalking my friends is totally cool, there are a couple people in my address book I would rather not stalk (especially when it tells them I’m doing so). Awkward….

So thanks Google.

Is a double opt-in set up so much to ask? You couldn’t have put in a little pop up that says “Are you sure you want to send an email to these people to invite them to your Latitude network?” 

Oh and my assesment of latitude is that it is sub par geo-location social networking; BrightKite does it better.

I hate to give up my secret, but I pretty much Google everything.

Any questions, random thoughts, names of people I meet, seriously everything. Unfortunately, as everyone thinks I’m super brilliant (thanks to Google) they come to me with all of their questions. Now I don’t mind being the smarty pants, but really if you don’t know how to find out answers to simple questions then the rest of your life will be extremely difficult. 

So for those people who ask the annoyingly simple questions I can now find their answers with Let Me Google That For You. Check it out for yourself. The site creates a URL (or a tiny URl if you want to be sneaky) of you typing in the search term. So when someone asks you “Hey when is Talk Like A Pirate Day” you can send them here. Arrgg

As Google continues to slowly take over our lives and do everything we could ever image something to do, they’ve released a 411 service.

Just dial  from any phone for a Google based voice recognition directory. I hate voice recognitin anything. While I’m normally an early adopter and technology lover, I will scream ‘Help’ and pound on the 0 key to be connected to a real live person on any answering service. 

Google’s voice reconition is better than the few other services I’ve tried (5-1-1 traffic is especially heinous) and it pulls data directly from the Google Maps database.  I tested it for our clients and they all are within the first round of businesses within thier category (automotive, credit unions, etc). 

But really, I only call 411 when I’m driving around lost. Even then I tend to go online rather then dial 411. I wonder how long until they monetize it with some advertising or featured listings….

First up, Google’s SearchWiki has killed off SEO.

Google has made the SearchWiki function a permananet fixture on Google Search. So now you can organize and make comments on your search results. Your organized results will populate and influence future searches while your comments are made visible to other users who search on the same terms. Read more about how it works from The Telegraph.

SEO is thus ended as consumers have the power to rank and comment on results. No longer can back end tweaks, text edits and SEO the heck out of webpage. Or so some people think. I really don’t think it will have a negative effect on SEO, just force folks to stay relevant, informative and honest. Web 2.0 is all about being social and interactive, so embrace the change and SEO will live on. 

Banner ads have also been pronounced dead (yes, again)

Silicon Valley Insider thinks Banner ads are on their way out of digital media buys and I agree (sort of). As the billboards of online, its hard to measure their effectiveness (even with click throughs and impressions), they tend to only be effective for brand awareness and direct response. There are a bazillion articles and studies that discuss the types of people who click on banners. Lower income, serial clickers, people who know those lips belong to.

So few brands really can utilize banners for much good. I don’t think they’re going away, but there will be a lot more inventory available.  

The End of the Ad World 

I’ve seen a post or two about that. But I’m hoping to keep my job so I will not be promoting that one

In a study posted on the Future Lab Blog, 70% of ads on Ads of the World posted in the last 4 months, did not include a URL. The article continues to rant about how ads should contain a URL by default in todays advertising world; I totally disagree. 

Most people use search engines by default when trying to find a website, even when the URL is knows, its entered as a search term rather than as a URL. 

Additonally, if you really need a URL posted in your ad then you’ve done a poor job of buying a URL thats in sync with your brand. Don’t be cute or tricky when buying selecting your domain, pick something obvious and easy or else you’ll HAVE to put your URL on everything. Really, only some local and niche companies should HAVE to list their URL.  

Instead of cluttering up your print ads with a URL, make your site incredibly easy to find utilizing SEO and paid search. If someone can’t Google your name, product or service and find you immediately, then you need a lot more web work then adding a URL to your ads. 

When we hired a new addition to the agency…I immediately ran the candidates names through Facebook, Google and Addictomatic to find about more about them. I won’t divulge the dirt, but it made me think about what online dirt is out there on my name that is not really me.

My name is pretty standard, so I’m not surprised that when I search for myself there are plenty of results and I am not one of them. Addictomatic returns some of my blog posts and tweets, but most of the listings are the other hundreds that share my name.

There is an Erin Norton who makes jewelry, another who works at FPL FiberNet, one who plays collegiate softball, another who designs for Retro Rags Collection and many Facebook profiles that are not me. No police blotter results or major negative press at least not in the first few results pages.

While I’m glad there is nothing bad about me floating around out there, as an online media professional it saddens me a bit that who I am does not rank in Google.

What I like: 

1) Pop-up blocker lets you easily retrieve pop-ups without having to go into your settings to allow pop-ups for the page and then reload. 

2) Start screen is a snapshot of my most frequently visited pages, which I love! 

3) Streamlined look condensed tool bar with the same bookmarking feature of Firefox. 

4) Search Bar is really similar to the Firefox Awesome bar which is one of my favorite features of Firefox. 

What still needs to be improved: 

1) No add-ons as yet. I love my Firefox music add on which allows me to control my itunes in my browser and a blog posting tool. 

2) Issues with certain windows. Some links on Facebook and Current TV don’t work in my Chrome browser. I can’t click open replies to comments on any Current comment thread. 

3) Goggle can track everything I do and apparently has rights to everything I do. This made big news in blogs and apparently the terms of service are being revised to take those provisions out which will then apply to all of us who already agreed to those terms. As an advertiser I’m not opposed to the tracking but as a blogger I am seriously against Google claiming the ownership rights to anything I do using their browser. 

4) I wanted something super innovative and Chrome seems like a different take on Firefox. 

Its not a spectacular – you must download now – product. But I think it’ll do a lot in the way of innovation for the web and certainly it will boost Google.

I’m testing it and will let you know what I think

The new Google browser, Chrome, goes into Beta testing today. I hope I can snag an invite, if the site goes live again.

Read more from the official Google Blog here, keep up with news and screen shots from CNET here, or try to access the Chrome page here (but it’s been down most of the moring).