While in New York on a business mixed with pleasure (Happy Anniversary wifey) trip earlier this month, I learned at a web business conference that Pepsi Co. has decided against advertising during the much-hyped Superbowl for the first time in memory.

Instead, Pepsi Co. will devote the entire sums spent on that usually-massive television campaign to a Social Media advertising campaign promoting their beverages to live users of the web.

It is hardly surprising considering the staggering findings of this Nielsen report.

I fully expect Australian companies to take note of the numbers above and do similarly in coming months.

Android, as an open platform, was available to all phone makers to use when creating smartphones to rival the dominant iPhone (by Apple) and BlackBerry (by Research In Motion).

While popular manufacturers like Motorola created Android-powered smartphones, they failed to make a dent in the market.

Google responded by partnering with hardware manufacturers HTC to develop Nexus One, and the results are detailed in the video below. Enjoy.

The "right gear" includes either a HD camera for your PC, or soon-to-be-released LG and Panasonic Skype-enabled televisions.

And as a Twitter user like myself, you will be interested to see an image of the TOP TRENDING TOPICS for 2009 below:

Source: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_14cEenKeR04/SygI8Gp0F9I/AAAAAAAAADY/hELPQB1mQKo/s1600-h/2009trends_large.png