Pligg, the creators of free web software that works like Digg (where users vote submitted content up to the front page), announced in their second birthday newsletter some exciting news. They plan to launch Fraxi soon, which will operate like the Ning of Pligg.

To those of you who aren’t familiar with Ning, they offer a 5 minute setup for your own branded social network. This way you don’t have to worry about installs, upgrades, maintenance, and all the other obstacles for non-techy users to build their own sites.

Surfing the last few weeks, you may have noticed Pontiac’s new ad campaign targeting women for the Torrent, a crossover utility vehicle. Titled “Crossover Confessions”, the mini-site shows you a few features the Torrent touts (safety, cargo, engine) and then encourages you to “confess” and “unload your baggage” on their site. I wasn’t terribly impressed with the mini-site, and for good reason.

I checked my mail today, and found a thick envelope with a candy cane attached.  I’m still excited by the surprise of actual mail (sometimes even junk mail), and rushed to open it, when I noticed it oddly was addressed to my apartment number - not me.  Only slightly disappointed, I pulled out a letter with illustrated Santas, reindeer, and Christmas trees.   After looking at the header, I recognized the letter was from my landlord.

Sometimes, we all need that kick in the pants to get motivated to accomplish something.  Whether it’s listening to pumped up music before the big game, exercising each morning, or rewarding ourselves with little chocolates, no single method works all the time. 

Today I stumbled across a site designed (and I use that term loosely) to show you just how lazy you are, and make you feel very underachieving.  Why would I share this with you?

Partially, because it is very entertaining (warning: productivity threat), and also in the slight chance that you might actually be motivated to do greatness as a result of it.

TomTom and Google announced a partnership today, and it is a particularly interesting one.  Tom Tom, maker of the popular portable GPS systems many people use in their cars, plans to let users send addresses from Google to their devices.

While Tom Tom already has “Points of Interest” on its devices, Google Maps will soon be able to be transferred right over with one click. This should cause a lot of moving around in the young industry, and here are some thoughts on what might happen.

Analysis

Remember the time your friend borrowed a jacket from you but forgot to return it? And, each time you saw him you hoped you would remember that he didn’t return it, and uncomfortably brought up the subject, only to have him forget again a day later?

While the makers of Hassle Me intended the site to send you “nagging” reminders every variable amount of days, I found this site to be more useful in keeping track of nagging others (something which I detest, yet find necessary, for lack of others’ organization skills). 

Over the last few years there has been great buzz surrounding text messaging and how businesses can use it to market. Less emphasis has been put on how businesses can use it to actually carry out their business. However, Papa John’s, a popular national pizza chain, has found a way to use text messaging - to order your pizza.

Papa John’s already accepts online orders, and the neat thing about them and the text message orders is that they both appear on the same screen at the store - integrating methods of ordering. This integration technology is key, since the number one reason why most restaurants today don’t offer texting or online orders is because of the hassle to manage those orders, and the additional hardware that is generally needed.

Newspapers continued their slide in the third quarter of 2007, with 9% less advertising going to print.  While most newspapers added web properties to their portfolio in the last few years, that has not been enough to offset the losses in the print section.Newspaper classified ad sections suffered some of the worst losses, with that portion down 17%.  The three largest areas of the classifieds sections are:

Real Estate - The weak housing market has only added to the hurt of real estate companies shifting advertising to more interactive forms of advertising.

Market research has the power to make or break any business idea you have. You may be planning, for instance, a retail clothing store targeted at women ages 35-44. But, what if the location you chose has an abnormally low percentage of residents in that target market? The result most often would be a lack of business, potentially without your ever knowing why (and leaving you erroneously blaming your logo, for instance).

Luckily, the U.S. Census Bureau tracks just about every useful detail about our cities. Whereas it would normally be a major headache to sift through all of the data, I use a site that cuts down my research time to just a few minutes.

Coca-Cola, the world’s largest beverage company, has just won an award from Consumers International (an international consumer group with 220 member organizations) for its Dasani brand of water.  The award given is the “Bad Drinks Marketing’ award, for trying to sell off Dasani as anything other than the bottled municipal tap water that it is.

Dasani’s packaging includes marketing messages like:

‘Filtered for purity using state of the art processes’ and ‘enhanced with a special blend of minerals for a pure, crisp, fresh taste’