Since an audio disturbance at Skynet Research, more bloggers are taking a closer look at the robotic technology company. Joseph Harris, who sells bot kits, researched the technology behind Skynet's aquatic workbot and compared it to the RHex by Boston Dynamics.

Harris plans to research several of the other models, but the major buzz involving Skynet is new video on resistorbeterminated.com.

It's hard to determine where the video came from, but it appears to be a distress signal. The first man in the video introduces himself as Lieutenant James Walker. He's heavily armed, with two companions, who appear to be guarding a refuge. You may find it difficult to hear the audio, so I typed a transcript for you.

Walker: This is Lieutenant James Walker please respond.There's noone out there who can hear the report.

Unidentified woman :Hunter drones are in the area, they're making random search patterns.

Unidentified man: Our signal is broadcasting, it's just not being received here, or now. I think it's going into the past.

I cant wait to see what Warner Bros. comes up with next. The Terminator Salvation debut is less than two months away.

Tennis superstar Serena Williams stars in the latest Gatorade commercial, along with Serena Cuevas, an everyday woman who is working her way back from a life-threatening injury. 

According to Fleishman-Hillard, the Serena in this video participated in a G2 casting call to find Serenas  with personal testimonies of how sports and exercise have helped them overcome a challenge or allowed them to reach and accomplish a significant, personal goal.

Serena Cuevas:
"I've never been to Wimbledon."

Serena Williams:
"I've never been in a car accident and watched my dreams spin out of control."

Serena Cuevas:
"I've never been raised in an neighborhood where I had to dodge bullets."

Serena Williams:
"I've never been told I might never dance again."

Serena Cuevas:
"I've never gone from Compton, to #1 in the world."

Serena Williams:
"I've never defied the odds at 120 beats per minute, but I've always tried as hard as I can.....

Serena Cuevas:
"To be the best the I can."

The commercial ends with an image of the new G2 bottle and this quote:
"Low calorie G2:Less Calories, for more athletes."

The Serena/ Serena spot is the second G2 commercial to compare and contrast an everyday American with a star athlete. You may have seen the Kevin the swimmer & Kevin Garnett commercial, which aired two weeks ago.   Garnett's quote "I've never received a pink slip",  was interpreted as a condescending remark, rather than a sympathetic one. His quote didn't go over to well with some of our readers,who replied with furious comments.

I  think the Serena/ Serena ad will clarify the new theme of Gatorade: Everyone is an athlete. Pepsi Co, (NYSE:PEP) ,owns Gatorade.

Imagine the price marketers would pay for a tool that provided instant feedback from millions of people, opposed to the typical focus group. 

In my opinion, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) wants Twitter's live data, which provides instant sentiment analysis via scoring tools such as Twendz.
Twendz mines Twitter conversations and alerts you to brewing trends, conversation topics and points of view. Most of all, it provides sentiment scoring with a keyword-based approach.

 

Meaningful words in each tweet are compared against a 'dictionary' of thousands of words that are associated with positive or negative sentiment; each word receives a score that, when combined with the other scored words, allows twendz to make an educated guess at the overall tone of a tweet. After Twendz scores a handful of tweets matching certain criteria, it extracts key terms, assigns a tone rating to each of those, and assembles them in a word cloud.
 

Google Trends offers a glimpse into popular search trends, but marketers want to know more than the phrase you're searching for, they want to know your take on a product or person.   Political advisers focus on real-time sentiment displayed during  debate highlights via linear graphs such as Fox News' Voters Voice. The graphs scores indicate the topics from each candidate that resonated with voters,. Imagine a text version of the Voter's Voice graph that provided real time sentiment scoring from everyone in the Twitter community. (Or anyone with a Google account)

You may recall my post about analytics company: Alterian and their survey of CMOs, titled, Calibrate how you operate, which surveyed 400 members of the Chief Marketing Council. Among its notable results, 94% of CMOs are utilizing platforms designed to better capture, qualify, communicate, convert and manage leads and customer contact information.
For demographic-specific sentiment analysis, PR companies such a Vocus offer detailed reports, but Twendz reveals the unflitered opinions of the online community as a whole. Imagine you're the movie producer for Bruno and you want to gauge the public's response after Sacha Baron Cohen appears on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno or the Late Show with David Letterman.

Producers at NBC and CBS could also utilize the data to see which guests generated the largest buzz. Advertising firms and CMOs like McDonald's Mary Dillon could monitor online reputation and detect the most effective segments of their commercials, etc.

Slower revenue streams and shrinking profits have forced many major corporations to curtail their advertising spending. BtoBonline reports:

 

Morgan Stanley (NYSE: ME)predicted that ad spending on broadcast TV will fall this year by 16.6%, to $36.8 billion, while cable TV advertising spending will drop 5.6%, to $26 billion. Local advertising is expected to be the most severely impacted; Morgan Stanley added that 30% of local advertisers see ad rates dropping this year by more than 3%

Are marketers analyzing and gauging their consumer touchpoints with inefficient tools and and outdated methods ? If they've failed to implement SEO tools, then the answer is YES.

Here's another question to ponder: Could Search Engine Optimization emerge as a major category of advertising, rather than a its current classification as vital component? If exposure is understood as the ultimate goal, shouldn't  a first-page ranking in Google serve as the ultimate example of successful advertising?

Just some food for thought.

Google's streamlining process for its cross-platform advertising strategy continued today, as Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) announced its plans to eliminate the Adsense Video Units feature. The sobering announcement on Google's Adsense Blog read:

After reviewing our AdSense video units feature, which allows you to show YouTube content and ads on your pages, we've found that it hasn't had the impact we had hoped for. As a result, we've decided to retire this feature at the end of April so we can focus our resources on other opportunities to help publishers earn from their sites.
 

The latest sweep came only a few days after 200 workers faced the chopping block in the sales and marketing division  and a few weeks following  the demise of the radio ad division(40 workers.)

Anyone with a decent grasp of media trends knew the imminent doom for print and radio ads, but Google's elimination of Adsense Video evoked critical responses. Matt Marshall of VentureBeat, declared Google's cross-platform advertising strategy is in shambles.According to Marshall, Google has spent roughly $10 billion on non-search initiatives and properties. His column reads more like a eulogy than a commentary:

A year or two ago, Google’s bold, sweeping advertising strategy seemed to be written in the stars: it was on a roll, and there was no stopping its algorithmic rigor from vanquishing old-economy advertising and industry titans. It was simply more efficient. But one by one, Google’s efforts proved much tougher than the company anticipated, and the economic contraction has only made things worse.Google increased its market share in display ads over the past year, but that growth came at a cost.

Last night, I was enjoying an episode of Dhani Tackles the Globe, starring NFL linebacker Dhani Jones. When Dhani wasn't training for his Muy Thai Boxing bout, he was walking the streets to sample the local culture.

When he's in  casual mode, Dhani seems to prefer clothes with a comical reference or vintage theme- a perfect fit for Dhani's gregarious personality.

One of my favorites was a subtle yet humorous one that read: "You are here", (like a map legend). Other vintage shirts included a green T-Shirt that read: "I'm not Johnny Ramone." Another paid tribute to the boxing legend, with a picture of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.

Dhani, I want to know where you get all of these great shirts.

The Thailand episode was fascinating on many levels, especially the culture. Dhani's blitz through the streets of Bangkok included a stop at the street market, where he was introduced the snack of choice: Insects. 'According to the street vendor, locusts and bees are good sources for fiber. Maybe Dhani's pal Andrew Zimmer of Bizarre foods could confirm the nutritonal value. In case you missed the episode, here's a vivid description from Dhani's Travel Channel blog:

Not just any bugs, but your general household insects, beetles, cockroach and silkworm, to your outdoors variety. I placed the bugs one by one into my mouth cringing as I bit into each one of them. Several of them had a small explosion of bad complex flavors where others you only tasted the spices added...Now the grasshoppers started to feel like they were moving in my mouth and the cockroaches I could imagine them in the crawlspace of my house. But this is real eating in Thailand, this is what is considered a part of their custom

Earlier today, I submitted a video to  Dhani's Sports Challenge on Youtube. Have you ever heard of  Crash Ice? Similar to cheese-rolling event in England, only there's no cheese and instead of a grass hill, participants wear razor-sharp hockey skates and jostle for position as they speed down a glorified bobsled course. I found video of a Crash Ice Race sponsored by Redbull.

*Update:Check out our Dhani Jones Autographed Poster giveaway

Razorfish is testing a tool to give you twice the Twitter power- Tweetdoubler. Visit Tweetdoubler.com and enter you up to 280 characters, opposed to the standard 140. Razorfish's patented compression algorithm compresses the text and publishes your Tweet. Twitter CEO Evan Williams has yet to comment on the tool's potential.

The tool is in test mode and only available to the public until midnight, April 1 (the end of APRIL FOOLS DAY).Try to enter your tweet, and you'll realize you fell for their prank, hook,line and sinker.

You shouldn't feel to embarrased. According to one of my sources, this email from Razorfish's  Australian office was circulated to the U.S. staff this morning. Aussies got the last laugh on this one.

Hi all,
Delighted to launch www.tweetdoubler.com from the Sydney office, which .... have been working hard on for the last few months. It features a new patented text compression algorithm that compacts and expands what you can type from 280 characters to 140 characters (the twitter limit).

 This is going to have a HUGE impact on the twitter community. Hope everyone that is on twitter will give it a go, and help spread the word!

 

"You call that a Tweet? TweetDoubler:Now THAT'S a Tweet