It looks like the major networks have bought in to the web video phenomenon, at least until the next ratings book comes out. Witness the new ABC show i-CAUGHT, which I did in fact catch the other night. The concept is to highlight what is most popular on the web. We’ll see how long it takes for the network to make money from these clip-sharing folks (or maybe they already are).

I’m interested to see if this marriage between Internet video and broadcast TV will last. It looks like it has potential. One of the more interesting viral segments asks people to submit videos for inclusion in the show. The concept is to put in three words how your week has gone. The first round got my attention.

I enjoyed this idea so much I had to submit my own. Here’s hoping I make the cut next week!

In a recent survey by ChangeWave, the iPhone is receiving a customer satisfaction rating of 92 percent. (By comparison, Blackberries receive the second-highest rating, at 50 percent.) At the risk of sounding like another Apple cheerleader, I have to admit that I’m one of these customers.

But I hadn’t expected to be.

I haven’t had good experiences with PDAs and smartphones. The Treo 650, for instance, was a nightmare when it came to bulk, reception, and sound quality. And gradually the idea of hunkering down over a tiny glowing screen with a stylus seemed less and less cool. A friend reminded me, “You work in an office—you should want to spend less time at the computer, not more.” So I bought the simplest clamshell I could, resisted the temptations of the Crackberry, and felt liberated from my gadget obsession.

Then the iPhone ad campaign began. I admitted to myself I was curious, but I reminded myself how much I hated smartphones and tiny screens. I had trouble believing that any touch screen could be genuinely comfortable. I’ll go see a floor model, I thought, and that will be that.

Of course, that’s like an alcoholic walking into a bar to look at a “floor model” of the latest brand of vodka. Once a gadget freak, always a gadget freak. I went to my local AT&T/Cingular store after work—after the lines had died down and the mobs had left it looking like the remnants of a party: dirty floors, disorder, and a significant number of stragglers snapping up the final stock. I asked myself if I wanted to be one of these people. One guy received his new iPhone over the counter with a classic air of paranoid covetousness—like Gollum possessive over his precious (and it should go without saying that there is significant overlap between tech early adopters and Lord of the Rings devotees). The staff had long since run out of the decorative gift bags.

“You bought into the hype, man, you got sucked in.” These are the things that reformed early adopters say to each other. My friend wouldn’t even look at my iPhone he was so disgusted. “I swear,” I said, “I went in to look at a floor model.” And that’s what I had done. And the next day I found an Apple store that hadn’t sold out, and walked out self-consciously transporting, through a crowded mall, the black decorative gift bag that is a mark of pride or shame, depending on your state of mind.

What sucked me in?

First, the iPhone is aesthetically pleasing. Second, it’s a pleasure to use. And that’s about it.

It’s not because I need to check email away from the computer. It’s not because Web surfing is absolutely essential wherever and whenever. It’s not because I get to listen to music while talking on the phone and chatting and emailing and surfing the Web and looking at photos and using Google maps and popping off a beer cap with the built-in bottle iOpener. And after all, the iPhone’s greatest innovation is that it does less than any other smartphone!

Really, it comes down to intriguing innovation in user interface that is hard to resist. The touch interface makes it enjoyable to surf the Web—the only small device I’ve used for which this is the case. And when I say “enjoyable,” I don’t mean merely “functional” or “tolerable,” and I’m not saying that what it does is more useful than other phones; it’s just fun—justifiably unnecessary.

The best way to describe why this is so is to say that the iPhone decreases the distance between you and the tasks you’re trying to perform. That’s an immediacy that technology usually takes away via mouse, keyboard, and stylus interfaces. Getting to use your fingers, on the other hand, is satisfyingly basic—even primal. Hence the iPhone may also be the anti-gadgeteer’s gadget in the same way that the Wii is the non-gamer’s video game. And both I see as an extension of recent trends in social networking, which have become successful by lowering the barrier of entry for users and applying principles of simplicity and immediacy that Google and Apple have adhered to for some time.

The only question left, of course: will it blend? [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dr5zAOc7-0]

What a luxury to be able to respond directly to a news story about you or your organization. Google recently announced a system allowing such responses on their Google News blog:

We’ll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from a special subset of readers: those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question.

MediaPost discusses the potential conflict here between Google and mainstream news outlets. What exactly is Google doing? Are they now a news outlet? Will they employ journalists who will actually pursue the reactionary soundbite and edit it for publication?

I realize Google is becoming the everything to damn near everyone, but this move seems to me to be a huge jump away from what is, according to Google’s Company Overview webpage, their mission:

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Where does it say “creating information”? Google is search. Google is online applications. Google is search-based advertising. Google is, well, according to this Google page, Google is lots o’ stuff, and it’s adding more stuff every day.
I remember a time when another company that made its bones in search decided to expand into a cloud of features and services, diluting the brand it had solidified. It became the everything to damn near everyone. And then Google showed up and kicked Yahoo!’s ass. Does anyone else feel like they’re listening to Justin Timberlake? “What goes around, comes back around…”

Megabrands can, for a time, get away with breaking some of the 22 immutable laws of branding, simply because the train is rolling so hard and fast. But I’m a firm believer that you can’t get away with diluting the brand to something indefinable. If you get into the information creation business, Google, it may well end up hurting your brand.

A few months ago, I mentioned an article by Tom Kuhlmann called “5 Myths About Rapid E-Learning.” It seems I wasn’t alone in being impressed by Tom’s take on the subject because now he has launched a whole blog on the subject.

Tom’s blog offers tips, tricks, and information about the world of rapid e-learning, a world that most of us are involved in as either developers or students taking e-learning courses. I am looking forward to Tom’s insights.

A recent article on Time.com is getting a lot of traction on Digg today:

Specialized credit/debit card kiosks are popping up in churches.

“Automatic checking account withdrawals are used by some churches, and more recently, ATM-like kiosks are now available in many church corridors and lobbies, where parishioners can swipe a card and receive a printed receipt, which they can either save for the IRS or plunk into the collection basket with a flourish, so pew mates will know they’re not spiritual freeloaders. “

Is it brilliant? Is it sacrilegious? One Digg comment added a Bible verse (Matthew 21:12,13) to the argument.

The driving reason for the appearance of ATMs in churches is a new IRS rule, but c’mon, you can’t tell me the churches aren’t simply loving the idea flat out. The church kiosk is brilliant because it makes an action easy. When something is easy, that in itself is added persuasion to execute the action. Now that’s good usability.

Let’s look at it out of the context of the church because that can be the only factor that’s muddying the waters: Whether you are a nonprofit or commercial entity, doesn’t it make sense to create an environment in which visitors/customers can do what they want to do, and what you want them to do, as easily as possible? If you run an association that relies on membership dues, would you ask website visitors to print out a form, fill it in, then write a check and finally mail it all in, stamp and all? No way. If it’s hard to do, fewer folks will do it. That’s why you make it easy with an online form. The visitor is happy because he or she can easily sign up, and you’re happy you’re getting new members.

What’s wrong with making it easy for church members to both make and track their donations? Churches have been asking for donations since the dawn of time. This news is simply an evolution. An evolution in recordkeeping, sure, but an evolution in usability design as well.

Marketers, writers, designers, programmers, even church administrators, whatever it is you are inspiring people to do, it’s no sin to make it easy.