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SEW coverage here. This is AOL US - not UK, which was sold to CarphoneWarehouse in 2006 (although elements of ad sales and technology are managed in the UK by AOL US I believe).

This would create a super-strong ad sales house with direct ownership of hundreds of millions of impressions, email accounts, IM users and profiles as well as deals to re-sell the ad space of other websites.

I'm excited. Tomorrow I'll be speaking at the Marketing Forum's Digital Symposium event in New York. I'm really chuffed that they have asked Steak to participate. What will I be speaking on? How Search can be used beyond Search Marketing. It's a topic I'm very passionate about as I've seen first hand how the insights that search data provides can help drive a brand and a business forward and I'll be sharing those experience with the audience. Here's what my session will be covering:

Search is more than just a direct marketing tool, it's a strategic tool. By using the intelligence of search across all communications both online and offline, you can create a successful, cohesive marketing strategy.

Search engines are the world's largest market research tool; you can use them to guide both your business growth and marketing messaging based on consumer demand. Search intelligence is powerful as it is the only pull advertising medium. People are telling you what they want and how they think about your brand and category, rather than being a push medium where marketers are trying to give a message.

• Learn what data from search campaigns can be used by businesses and their agencies to understand how people search and interact with their brands.
• Using paid search as a test-bed for your creative brand messaging , product or service offerings, price points or landing pages or all of these with real customers and gather search data.
• How analyzing search behavior helps you make informed decisions on how to segment or prioritize what you are selling or what new products you could be offering.
• The value to using search across all marketing activity both online and offline and from media to design.
• Using client case studies you will learn how to drive your business forward by putting search at the heart of the marketing mix.

The Marketing Forum's Digital Symposium event is taking place on Thursday 25th September 2008 at The Westin, Times Square, NYC.

I can't wait!  

The idea is simple: to help Google reduce the amount of heat the company's server farms expel into the environment, moor them seven miles offshore and use sea water to help with the cooling process. This avoids the need to pump and pipe water long distances or use water that communities need for industry, farming and drinking. Security can be increased too - will we see a Google mini-navy one day, patrolling the waters around their servers?

One thing that immediately struck me on reading this - if the barges are moved later on to be more than twelve miles out, they will in most cases be in international waters*. What implications does that have for data security,legal compliance and countries requesting copies of data Google holds (e.g. emails or web search history) for court cases? Could Google refuse to provide the data because it is offshore and outside of national jurisdictions? Will courts have to serve notice against Google targetting infrastructure located on land in countries with laws "friendly" to their requests?

The blogsphere agrees - alongside the normal posts verging into "Big Brother" hysteria.

Reducing the amount of heat computers, and especially server farms, expel is important in the fight against global warning. The Times cite a report stating that it won't be long before computer emissions have the same carbon footprint as the aviation industry. There's another opporuntiy here for Google - use the server heat with turbines, solar panels on deck, sea power (as per the patent) and wind turbines to generate some, or all, of the power the servers need to begin with.

*NB: international waters and the legal treaties etc governing the seas are not as clear cut as many assume. See the Wikipedia link above.

Well done to everybody who climbed this weekend, and thanks to everybody who went along or helped make the weekend memorable – both at Steak, the British Army and JSMTC Indefatigable at the Nuffield Centre.

Despite heavy rain, low visibility and gale force winds, all the Steakites present reached the summit and also camped at the Nuffield Centre despite the weather, turning down the offer of warm accommodation on the base.

We were hiking (and in my case, falling over) for two charities: one for UK service personnel suffering from psychological disability as a result of their service, Combat Stress, and one working to help children in Afghanistan develop reading skills, the Afghan Reading Project.

Please consider donating to support these charities and our forces via Just Giving.

Our next challenge is the Four Peaks hike next year – you are all invited!

As a recap, the table below shows current 2008 browser standings:

Top line features include:

• Open source code base
• Based on WebKit used by Safari
• Powered by Google Gears
• Multi process design
• Built in task manager
• V8 virtual machine built from the ground up
• Redesigned user experience based on 2008 web browsing habits
• More robust error management
• Safer browsing through process sandboxing

So what will the above features mean for the rest of us? Well, reading Google’s cartoon pitch we should be seeing some impressive results including:

• Faster browsing
• Quicker JavasScript performance, so quicker web apps (i.e. gmail, netvibes, etc.)
• Less chances of the browser crashing because of unresponsive applications
• The ability to close an unresponsive web page using a task manager just like on your computer
• Privacy mode to clear your browsing history as you surf
• Better pop-up manager, which can contain pop-ups within individual page tabs
• Safer browsing by using sandboxing techniques as found in operating systems

We haven’t tried it yet, and will update you once we’ve tested it thoroughly. At first glance Google Chrome sounds like a revolution in the browser space, and it comes just after Google renewing their deal with Mozilla to support Firefox.
So far it’s Windows only, but Google are hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux.
So what are the implications of Google releasing a web browser?

Apart from extending its reach beyond the search engine, advertising, video, social, knowledge, medical, financial, and technical space, Google Chrome sounds like an ideal complement to Google’s suite of analytics and tracking solutions.
Now for the Big Brother thing and conspiracy theories… If Google were to track users’ web visiting habits, bounce rates, visit times, and interactions with websites from within its own browser, than it would be able to provide the ultimate model of web behaviour, and base its algorithms and advertising solutions on this data. It would also be able to provide granular information on trends, and insight based on very accurate metrics.
Another aspect is the integration of the Omnibox... Similar to Google Suggest, it replaces the URL bar, which will undoubtedly blur the difference between typing in URLs and searching which will undoubtedly affect keyword bidding on the likes of Google Adwords.

So we look forward to reviewing Google Chrome, and how it will affect our clients.

We’ll update you with our feedback soon!