The new generation of Blackberries and the iPhone are important steps on the evolutionary path toward a single multi-purpose device that combines, integrates, synchronizes and aggregates computers, the Internet, telephony, credit and debit cards, digital photography, and who knows what could be next. And while it might take a few years for the number of daily users to reach hundreds of millions, this phenomenon will be upon us before you know what hit you.

That means NOW is the time to get familiar with mobile media. Begin thinking about the idea of constant access to the Net and constant consumer motion and communication.

This development will forever change they way we stimulate brand awareness, preference and purchase and change shopping expectations and behavior in ways we can’t yet predict..

“The police often question him just because they find him interesting.”

And he can drive an expensive imported beer brand to double-digit sales gains during a recession that’s forced many of its competitors into steep declines.

He is the “Most Interesting Man in the World,” the 60-something Connery-meets-Castro-meets-Hemingway character created by ad agency Euro RSCG to sell Heineken USA’s Dos Equis brand.

Through mid-June, a period when imported beer sales dropped 11%, sales of Dos Equis rose more than 17%, moving the brand into eighth place among imports (in a tie with Stella Artois), when shipments rose 13%.

That success prompted Heineken executives, who had been running the ads since 2007 in a few stronghold markets for the brand, to take the message national this spring.

“There’s never really been an import brand that’s been built so clearly through advertising,” said Benj Steinman, publisher of Beer Marketer’s Insights.

Equally unprecedented is the campaign’s reliance on two things rarely seen — actively shunned, even — in beer ads: a gray-haired protagonist, played in the Dos Equis ads by veteran TV actor Jonathan Goldsmith, who in every ad acknowledges that he doesn’t always drink beer.

But to hear the people behind the campaign tell it, there was really no other way to effectively attack the 2006 brief, which challenged the agency to “establish a distinctive, desirable and premium identity as evidenced by significant growth of key brand-tracking measures,” which would, in turn, be “different from other brands,” a “cool brand” and be “worth paying more for.”

They came up with a character who has spent his life, according to the grainy images in the spots, engaging in swordplay, leading mysterious expeditions, reeling in large sailfish and arm wrestling soldiers. The images are provided without context or explanation, which is the point.

“Drinkers want to be seen by their friends, and by ladies, as interesting.”

That’s seldom clearer than it is online, where the Most Interesting Man hosts a Most Interesting Academy, in which he delivers various life lessons and opines for an avid Facebook following of about 58,000 fans (the brand has an additional 114,000 fans on its own page) who seem to hang on his every word.

Consider that, on July 8, he advised his Facebook followers: “Every now and then, bite off more than you can chew.” Within an hour, 965 people had blessed the comment with an approving “likes this,” and 110 more had taken the time to write out their own responses, many of which were attempts at similar pearls of wisdom. Likewise, on the Dos Equis’ website, which he dominates, visitors spend an average of 7.42 minutes per visit, according to Google Analytics.

Every disc tells a story in The Rod Stewart Sessions 1971-1998 is a four-CD box set spanning nearly three decades of the rock legend’s career in studio tracks, outtakes and ephemera.

The set, out Sept. 29 on Warner Bros. opens with an early, ragged version of Maggie May, the hit that launched his solo career in 1971.

The set boasts unreleased versions of Scottish rocker Frankie Miller’s “When I’m Away From You” and Python Lee Jackson’s “In a Broken Dream”, featuring Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones.

The unfinished “Think I’ll Pack My Bags”, which later resurfaced as “Mystifies Me” on Ron Wood’s solo debut, made the cut, along with alternate takes of “Sailing” “Tonight’s the Night (It’s Gonna Be Alright)” and “You Wear It Well”, plus acoustic renditions of “You’re in My Heart” and “Rosie”.

Rarities from the ’80s include unreleased song “Thunderbird” and a spare “Forever Young”.

I will have to buy it as I have been following Rod since the Faces and the Jeff Beck Group. Maggie May came out as I was leaving family, friends and a special relationship to go to school. Hey L.G. remember that?

MillerCoors just refreshed Coors Light packaging with a two-sided cold-activated label that will be featured on 12- and 16-oz. Cans.

The entire lineup of Coors Light cans—10-oz., 12-oz., 16-oz. and 24-oz.—sport a two-sided Rocky Mountains logo that turns blue when beer reaches optimum temperature. Coors Brewing last year rolled a cold-activated 24-oz. can for c-stores with a thermo-chromatic label, which changes color depending on temperature on one side. Evolving to packages with two sides that change color ensures that consumers will see the symbol for cold refreshment no matter how the cans are stocked inside retail coolers.

Distributors report that previous package innovations like the Cold-Activated bottle and the Vented Wide Mouth can contributed to higher sales after their introduction last year. MillerCoors managers told wholesalers during a Chicago gathering last week that the new cans will create an opportunity to drive home the No. 3 light beer’s positioning as “The World’s Most Refreshing Beer.”

While the longneck bottle is the most preferred by beer drinkers, the can is the most consumed package in the category because of portability. Cans constituted 48.7% of all beer consumption in the U.S last year, compared with 48.3% in 2006, per the Beer Institute. Market share for bottles last year was 41.5% and 9.5% for draught beer.

“Major brewers can gain traction with packaging,” said Nick Lake, vp/group client director for the beverage alcohol group at Nielsen, “Coors has cleared the way with its cold activated positioning. Consumers like things that look cool and are different.”

Last month, MillerCoors announced that it would introduce 9-packs of Miller Lite aluminum bottles in 20 test markets through the end of the year. The new packaging is designed to keep beer cool for a longer time.

Case sales of Coors Light in grocery, drug and c-stores increased 6.9% for the year ended Oct. 4, compared with a 0.6% rise for the beer category, per Nielsen. Can sales for the brand rose 7.5%, while bottle sales increased 5.8%.

What if legislators learned dryers use 10 to 15% of domestic energy in the United States!

What if they found out that this reduction could be obtained right away, at a negligible cost? What if they discovered that the savings would be obtained by using less power from coal-burning plants and dams, relying instead on energy from the sun? And what if they saw that the primary impediments to such a conversion were fussy provisions in the rules for residential subdivisions?

An unbeatable coalition of legislators would form. Crusaders against global warming and boosters of alternative energy would make common cause with advocates of consumers’ economic interests and defenders of property rights. Greens, blues and reds would join to support a House Bill and would then scramble to take credit for its approval.

Apparently clotheslines are associated in some people’s minds with urban tenements and rural poverty. Such people don’t want to walk — or more likely, drive — through their neighborhood and see someone’s shirts and towels flapping in the breeze. Actually, the shirts and towels probably aren’t the problem — it’s the idea of underwear in plain view that induces waves of dread and fear of falling property values.

Opponents might change their minds if they knew that the U.S. Department of Energy reported that they could cut their electric bills by an average of 5.8 percent by spending a few dollars on a length of cord and a bag of clothespins.

Even if the weather permits outdoor clothes drying only half the time, the savings would be noticeable. About 17 percent of clothes dryers run on natural gas. These appliances are more efficient, but a clothesline still costs less.

Should we have to fight for the “Right to dry”? There is even a petition to get clothes lines up at the White House.

Can your mobile phone read these codes…all new phones in the USA will by next year. In Japan more than 80% of cell phone users access these codes daily.

The desire of today’s society, particularly among the younger, more tech-savvy parts of the population. To instantly gain information about a person, place or thing has been termed “infolust” by Trendwatching.com.

The fact that “Google me” has entered the English language is just one example of the way in which social networking and marketing is being affected by the web. The inclusion of 2D symbols as a shortcut to this information — whether it’s information about a product or person — is just the next step in this evolution.

Currently, scanning 2D symbols on ads or items can link the user to a website for more information, to receive a special offer or discount coupon. However, the trend toward the use of 2D symbols and cell phones goes beyond mere information.

There are currently pilots and limited implementations that allow consumers to purchase event tickets over their cell phones (scan a symbol to go to the web site, make a purchase, get a 2D symbol — ticket — to display for admission).

The vision is that 2D symbols will be used to help consumers order a taxi, sign up for a text alert service, enter a competition, and more.

This code will take my phone to my xanga blog!

According to a Pew survey, more than one out of five adult Americans still don’t use the internet. What are they missing? Well they’re missing the skating babies.

It’s a simple formula. Take babies. Put ‘em on skates. Add music. Watch the internet hits take off.

The latest viral ad sensation has become the talk of the water cooler crowd, which is just as well as it’s for a French bottled water company.

Over six million hits since its release last weekend – almost three million in the U.S. alone. It’s rolling toward rarified territory, the 20 million-plus hits that only the lucky few viral ads get to.

But in the viral ad business, you’ve got to be good to be lucky.

The babies could barely walk, let alone skate. They were placed in front of green screens and Ludo Fealy of the Motion Picture Company and his team in London did the rest, turning the baby-auditioners into roller-dancers.

“They would have rocked the baby gently backwards and forwards with that particular break dance move in mind,” Fealy said.

Fealy and his team filmed a professional skater doing the moves, then programmed a computer-generated baby’s body to replicate them. Then they added the heads of their baby models, attaching them to the dancing digital bodies. They put it all together over a park scene shot in Melbourne and made to look like Manhattan.

Yet even with this kind of technology, it doesn’t always work.

“Its really only one in 50, one in 100 that has this kind of success as this ad’s had,” said Colin Marrs of Campaign Magazine.

“You can’t get too attached to them,” Fealy said of his dancing babies.

But the rest of the world already has.

Ready-to-drink coffee in cans first became available in Japan in 1969, so it has been around for almost 40 years. It was developed by a company called UCC Ueshima Coffee Co., a coffee manufacturer and retailer based in the city of Kobe.

Until the arrival of canned coffee, people in Japan did not have a wide choice of beverages to drink when they were out and about – while standing on the platform waiting for a train, for example. Many people drank bottled milk beverages if they got thirsty while not at home.

The invention of canned coffee was inspired by an incident that happened in 1968. One day, the founder of UCC, a man named Ueshima Tadao, was drinking coffee-flavored milk at a train station where his train had stopped. Back in those days, if you drank a bottled beverage you had to return the bottle to the store after you were finished. It turned out that Mr. Ueshima’s train was leaving the station earlier than expected, so he did not have time to finish all of his drink. He felt bad about wasting the milk, but there was nothing he could do about it because he had to catch his train.

He returned the bottle to the store with the unfinished milk and dashed onto the train at the last minute. This incident made Mr. Ueshima wonder if it would be possible to make a coffee that people could drink anytime, anywhere. And the solution he came up with was canned coffee._

By trial and error, Mr. Ueshima developed a technology for producing coffee drinks that could be put in a can and could stay in the can for a long time without losing their flavor. After a lot of hard work, Mr. Ueshima finally succeeded in producing UCC canned coffee with milk, the world’s first canned coffee with milk inside._

UCC began to sell this coffee, but at first it did not sell as well as expected, perhaps because people were not accustomed to seeing coffee in a can. It was not until 1970, at the World Exposition in Osaka, that canned coffee began to catch on. After offering free samples at the event, UCC received a flood of orders, and sales of canned coffee took off.

Launched in 1975 Coca-Cola’s “Georgia Coffee” became the number one brand in Japan while I was there. This is one of the commercials we did for the brand. At one point the canned coffee from Coke was bigger than Coke itself.

So many US stars have been used to promote the brands there, Arnold, Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Bowie, and the list goes on.

Canned coffee is certainly convenient but it can’t beat a Starbucks.

With attention focused on President Barack Obama’s visit to Russia this week, PepsiCo made some news of its own in Moscow. Chairman-CEO Indra Nooyi announced a $1 billion investment in the country, making it the latest beverage battleground. PepsiCo, in partnership with the Pepsi Bottling Group, plans to expand its presence in the country over the next three years through a variety of manufacturing and distribution investments.

Just this week a new bottling plant was opened outside of Moscow in Domodedovo. That plant is expected to eventually be Pepsi’s largest globally. A new snack-manufacturing plant is also slated to open later this year in Azov.

Already, Pepsi has invested more than $3 billion in Russia. Last year Pepsi spent about $2 billion to acquire the country’s largest juice company.

“Russia is a very attractive growth market,” said Eric Foss, chairman-CEO of Pepsi Bottling Group. “The investments we’re making in our Russia business are creating new jobs, providing us with the flexibility to produce a wider range of beverage offerings for consumers and enabling us to better serve our valued retail partners.”

Ms. Nooyi is in Russia attending a business summit called by Mr. Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Her trip also coincides with the 50th anniversary of Pepsi’s introduction in the country. In 1959, former PepsiCo CEO Donald Kendall introduced the soft drink to Nikita Khrushchev at the American National Exhibition in Moscow.

In the early 1970s, Mr. Kendall brokered a deal with the Soviet government, giving Pepsi the distinction being the first Western consumer product to be made and sold in the Soviet Union.

Talk about an iron grip on search. To research this blog comparing Google’s venerable search engine with Microsoft’s upstart Bing, I Googled “Bing versus Google.” It didn’t even occur to me to Bing the search.

Microsoft recently unveiled a fresh and attractive search alternative to Google. It’s just going to be difficult to change my own habit. I us Ask quite a lot but now to add a third mode of search good luck Microsoft.

Google’s is the search box affixed near the top of the Web browsers I use now. And way more often than not, Google delivers the thorough search results I’m seeking and does so with speed.

But give Microsoft props. Bing, launched about a month ago, is really impressive, in another league compared with the Live Search engine it replaces.

Bing bests Google on aesthetics. The Google home page is clean and sparse with the familiar Google Search button and links at the top for images, video, maps, news, shopping, Gmail and more.

Bing’s home page adds pizazz, with a stunning travel-oriented photo posted daily. Mouse over the images for factoids about the pics. From the home page, you can click on images, videos, shopping, news, maps and travel.

We all want fast, comprehensive and relevant results, a Google strength. Microsoft more than holds it own here, especially in the areas Bing is initially concentrating on — travel, health, finding local businesses and shopping. There’s even a cash-back program on certain items you buy through Bing.

Type “New York Mets,” and the team’s most recent scores and upcoming schedule are shown at the top of the results. Google displays the score of the last game and lets you know when the next game will be played.

Type a company name in Bing, and its customer-service phone number appears near the top. Bravo. Such numbers are hard to uncover through Google.

Throughout the Bing experience, you can access snippets of information that may satisfy what you’re looking for without leading you elsewhere. If you move the cursor to the right of a Bing search result, a summary window opens with excerpts lifted from the underlying site. You can quickly determine whether to navigate to the full site.

When you hover over a video thumbnail with the cursor, it starts playing, though I hit an occasional snag. You don’t have to click “play” or go to the video source (YouTube, Hulu, etc.). Clicking a thumbnail lets you watch in a larger window, often without leaving Bing. Hover over an image, and it jumps out in a somewhat larger window.

Another plus: the “quick tabs” that appear down the left side of the results pane to help you refine a search. Enter “Charleston, S.C.,” and you can categorize results by hotels, restaurants, real estate, weather, etc.

On Google, you must scroll to the bottom of a page to see “related searches,” though you can also summon a side panel, by tapping “show options.”

Bing is also dabbling in real-time search. For example, if you search for an influential person and add Twitter to the search, such as “Al Gore Twitter,” you’ll get a list of their recent tweets.