• Reading and the Web – Texts Without Context – NYTimes.com – "THESE NEW BOOKS share a concern with how digital media are reshaping our political and social landscape, molding art and entertainment, even affecting the methodology of scholarship and research. They examine the consequences of the fragmentation of data that the Web produces, as news articles, novels and record albums are broken down into bits and bytes; the growing emphasis on immediacy and real-time responses; the rising tide of data and information that permeates our lives; and the emphasis that blogging and partisan political Web sites place on subjectivity. "
• Social media survey finds use in bed, on waking – "How addicted are we to social media and text messaging? According to a new survey, 48 percent of social media users check or update Facebook and/or Twitter after they go to bed and 56 percent feel compelled to check Facebook at least once a day."
• Online TV Audience Reaches 26 Percent –
• Beet.TV: Average Weekly Video Viewing via Mobile/Online/TV Will Reach 50 Hours, USC’s Jeff Cole – Screen time keeps rising and rising.
• Gadgets: Ad Land’s Newest Inventory – Brilliant piece by Ben Kunz. I want to meet him.

We’re now just over a month out from our San Francisco show and I’m excited about the changes we’re rolling out for our biggest show and the biggest show in the industry. In this post I’m going to do two things: 1) Tell you about how to save some money on the Conference and the Expo; 2) brag a little about the changes.

Save Money!

Register for a Full Conference Pass by the end of Friday, March 19, and you’ll save $200 over what you’ll pay later. If you’re just going to the Expo, register now and it’s FREE, but on the 20th it will be $50, and onsite it will be $100.

Kinda hard to argue with FREE, huh?

You can register here for ad:tech San Francisco.

So What’s New?

If you look over the Conference Agenda, you’ll see a lot of changes, including our new Marketing Masters series that do a two-hour dive into top of mind interactive channels and best practices.

Eight of the Marketing Masters series have a new component, which is a relationship with the Expo floor that includes a walking tour and also on-floor theater presentations from relevant exhibitors.

You’ll also see a lot of exciting new changes on the Expo Floor, including an “Innovation Alley,” and an “App Exchange” that will fight tooth and nail with the Conference for your attention.

And we’re throwing a party! This year ad:tech, SF/BIG and the SF AMA have joined forces to throw a party in Moscone Center immediately after the Tuesday closing keynote by Board Member Geoff Ramsey of eMarketer and Lori Schwartz of the IPG Emerging Media Lab—please join us!

Another significant change is that we have no panels at ad:tech. Instead, we have a series of single speaker presentations focusing on trends, statistics, case studies and best practices, with barstools on stage for people to sit on after they’ve presented.

We also have more sessions with a single speaker doing a deep dive on a relevant topic – Mediasmith’s David L. Smith on understanding digital metrics, for example – and when this happens we’ve programmed a “First Respondent” who will both introduce the speaker and run a 10-minute interview followed by audience Q&A after the speaker’s talk.

Our ad:tech Conference has always had fantastic speakers who have generously shared their time and insights. We’ve created these new structures to give our speakers better ways to shine and our attendees better opportunities to learn and to network.

See you there!

• The death of business cards? – Fortune Brainstorm Tech –
• SXSW 2010 – It’s time to leave the echo chamber : BatesHook – Great post by Uwe on tired conference formats.
• Batman Vs. Shark – Now Internet Famous! » Andrew Zubko Illustration – Not to be missed.
• Wearable computing expert now Apple "prototype scientist" –
• Poynter Online – Al’s Morning Meeting –

• Journalism.org- The State of the News Media 2010 –
• America’s Great Escape Ticket – CNBC –
• Vast F.C.C. Plan Would Bring Net to More in U.S. – NYTimes.com –
• OK Go Ditches Label Over YouTube Embedding Rights | Not Quite Conversation | Fast Company – Fascinating account of how short-sited the label was…
• TV ratings smile on Oscar as viewership rises – Yahoo! News –
• MySpace Co-Presidents Reveal Company’s Plan for the Future [INTERVIEW] –
• Crowdsourcing Movies – Forbes.com –

• Facebook Will Allow Users to Share Location – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com – Watch out FourSquare.
• Digital Marketing Spend to Overtake Print This Year :: MinOnline – Can it be true?
• Sizing Up Promising Young Companies – WSJ.com –
• iPhone Addictive, Survey Reveals – Yahoo! News –
• YouTube – Chrome Features – These are beautiful.

• Should ‘Avatar’ get an asterisk in the box-office record books? | The Big Picture | Los Angeles Times – Goldstein does a good job on the Avatar vs. GWTW race– see in particular his final paragraph on not confusing attendance with revenue.
• ‘Avatar’ vs. ‘Gone With the Wind’ | Movies | EW.com – EW's smart take on the Avatar vs. GWTW box office marathon– the only publication that I've seen to take re-release into account, although I still want somebody to factor in home video…
• Ultimate Mobilizer Kassan Finds More Success – 2010-03-01 15:01:57 | Broadcasting & Cable – Great profile of Michael.
• The Art of Moderating a Panel – Fresh Event Tips - –
• Publishing: The Revolutionary Future – The New York Review of Books – Interesting Op-Ed.
• A&E Exec: Having Fewer Ads Online Was “A Huge Mistake” –

• Tim Heidecker – The Garry Shandling Movie Poster Project – Picked this up from Funny or Die… it's amazing what the combo platter of photoshop and monomania can do.
• Funny or Die’s Presidential Reunion from Will Ferrell, Chevy Chase, Ron Howard, Jim Carrey, Fred Armisen, Darrell Hammond, Dan Aykroyd, Maya Rudolph, Dana Carvey, FOD Team, Jake, and Antonio Scarlata – Video – NOT TO BE MISSED!
• Dailymotion – The Break Up – a video – Terrific video from a couple years ago about the dysfunctional relationship between modern advertisers and consumers.
• Apple puts limits on location-based advertising in the App Store –
• TiVo to Offer Boxes Beyond the Recorder – NYTimes.com – Fascinating article, but until TiVo seamlessly integrates the vast amounts of On Demand content available from my cable provider, then this is a non-starter for me as it still makes me juggle remotes and pay an extra $15/month for a service that isn't quite all there.

• U.S. Ad Spend Falls Nine Percent in 2009, Nielsen Says | Nielsen Wire –
• Advertising with Sound: Retail Marketing Focus on Audio – TIME –
• Advertising – Four A’s Prepare for Combined Management and Media Conferences – NYTimes.com –
• In ‘Mind Movies,’ the Word Picture Continues to Appeal to Eager Ears – WSJ.com – "A 26-year-old with blond bangs and a goatee, the director was busy dramatizing a detective story. Not for the screen. For the iPod. The book it was based on—"Open Season" by Archer Mayor—begins with an image: "The snow lay before our headlights like a freshly placed sheet…" But Mr. Greenhalgh had no camera. His job was to translate the book into sound."
• We re-write our memories—and often don’t know it. –

• Tom Clark Confections – Yayas popcorn, caramel popcorn confections – Truly amazing Almond Pecan Corn.
• From AARP Magazine: Where Conversation Goes From Here – No, I'm not yet a subscriber to AARP, but my father recommended this article about how digital media are negatively impacting conversation, and it's worthwhile.
• MRI: More Teens Choose TXTing over IM –
• Hot Potato Offers Tool for Event-Based Chats – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com –
• ALEXIS MADRIGAL – Russian Literary Theory and The Way Twitter Is Broken – Interesting…

• A Personal Assistant on Your iPhone – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com – Although it sounds like Tom Cruise's daughter, this is actually a useful-looking iPhone app– and FREE. Wonder what the revenue model is?
• Apple vs. Google: Tech’s Newest Rivalry? – BusinessWeek –
• Advertising – Synergy Is the Game for Super Bowl Advertisers – NYTimes.com –
• How Fox’s ‘Glee’ Married TV, Music in New Moneymaking Model – Advertising Age – MediaWorks – Fascinating.
• A marketer’s guide to overcoming banner blindness – iMediaConnection.com – Truly brilliant piece on banner blindness by my old friend Brandt Dainow.