here is a great video from Sports Illustrated showing how their magazine will look on a tablet device with streaming video, full interactivity and customization. Looks very promising…

Looks like Augmented Reality is the hot new technology of the moment. A great article from Fast Company came out last month touting a the new technology as the “Fad of the Moment” highlighting a few start ups expanding into the space and a good implementation on the Yelp iphone app.

Apparently Augment Reality also makes money. Venture Beat reported that self funded start up AccrossAir is profitable from it’s suite of iPhone apps including a subway finder (Nearest Tube) and a bar finder (as seen above).

Now if my phone could help me find my remote (as long as i can find my phone)…

Most companies in the US monitor two things like a hawk: 1. Revenue and 2. Employee Vacation days.

Are you over your allowed vacation days? Have you accrued enough days to take that week off to visit Grandma? Only employees here over 5 years get an additional week…

Well more companies should take the European model of 4 weeks plus off and mid day siestas. One company in the US is doing it correctly: Netflix.

They don’t track vacation days at all. Instead they trust and believe in their passionate employees to take vacation when they need it and not to abuse it. Wow. Imagine a company believing in the integrity of their employees and their company culture. Don’t believe it? Read the full Mediapost article here

Despite having fewer titles and less revenue than Zynga, EA bought Playfish for ~$400M. Both companies have similar business models and very similar products, but the philosophy of the companies are much different.

Playfish focuses on the quality of their games with a consistent design aesthetic and compelling game design. While this might mean fewer games and higher cost per game it ensures their mission statement of creating the best games they can stays true.

Zynga focuses on making money. They either acquire games or fast follow/emulate other games and pump money into the space to drown out the competition in marketing and customer acquisition.

Zynga makes alot of money. Playfish does as well. And both companies have a lot of users playing their games. But at the end of the day is it the quality of the customer (repeat player, organic word of mouth, user turned ambassador) versus the number of customers (one time players, subversive acquisition, lead gen tactics) that really matters to potential acquirers?

It will also be interesting to see what will happen when the changes to the Facebook platform take effect in the new year in regards to notification spamming, customer acquisition flow, and direct messaging.

Read the Silicon Alley Insider article here

According to Experian’s Hitwise service, Google and Google News accounts for 25% of the daily traffic to WSJ.com and 44% of them are users that haven’t visited in over 30 days…

In Murdoch’s interview with Sky News he said “I think we’ve been asleep. It costs us a lot of money to put together good newspapers and good content. They’re very happy to pay for it when they buy a newspaper, and I think when they read it elsewhere they’re going to have to pay.”

Completely disappearing from Google search engines for topical news content is an early death warning. Especially in this time of change and shift towards an increasingly important mobile search market (Google’s purchase of AdMob for $750M) where News Corp content will not be from the onset?

Read the Mediapost article here

Here is a great interview with Rupert Murdoch from Sky News in Austrailia. He discusses actively removing or hiding content from internet aggregators such as Google and Microsoft as well as not valuing the type of traffic their search engines send to content destinations.

Mr. Murdoch mentions “stealing” from “comptetiion” quite a bit. The last half of the interview goes into global economy, politics and general opinions… Try not to imagine him talking to a kangaroo with glasses while watching…

Read the article from mUmbrella here and ironically the Youtube video here