From Bombay, India comes “Hitler’s Cross” a four day old resturant steering up a heap of controversy in its’ opening. The owner of a restaurant named after Adolf Hitler said Thursday he will change its name because it angered so many people.Â� Puneet Sablok said he would remove Hitler’s name and the Nazi swastika from billboards and the menu. He had said the restaurant’s name — “Hitler’s Cross” — and symbols were only meant to attract attention. “Once they told me how upset they were with the name, I decided to change it,” he said. “I don’t want to do business by hurting people.” The swastika symbol, which was appropriated by the Nazis, was originally an ancient Hindu symbol and it is displayed all over India to bring luck.

Today, is my first day of school for the Fall Semester at Minnesota State University. I am only registered for 13 credits with 36 left until I graduate with a Bachelor’s in Marketing. I am still deciding whether or not to persue a MBA - Master’s Degree. I love the marketing professors and I hate the english teachers here. My first class today is for Marketing 302 - Market Research and Analysis. My guess is that they will have me doing spreadsheets and data entry. I’ll keep everyone posted and check back for some interesting articles that I’ve been day dreaming about writing all day.

Most people have probably seen the Pontiac commercials which encourage users to “Google Pontiac”. Seems like a colossal waste of money to me. Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people have searched for Pontiac after watching these commercials. I bet at least 10% clicked on the Pontiac sponsored ads.

How many of those searchers are actively interested in searching for a Pontiac? Very few, I’d be willing to bet… Most are probably just curious about this stupid commercial they just saw on TV.

Countless sites are now bidding on the term Pontiac, from automotive web portals to Pontiac dealers and different divisions within the company. They have surely driven the cost of these keywords up significantly. I did a little research, and it appears that “Pontiac” keywords may be fetching $20+/click now. Hmm, maybe I’ll switch back to Adsense on this blog… serve up some overpriced Pontiac ads. Nah, the CTR would probably be horrible, even if each click was worth $10+.

Ecommerce web sitesÂ� need constant updates and sometimes people simply make mistakes. I work for a network of online costume shops called “Costumes Galore” which is a collective network of 7 costume shops.Â� Every once and awhile I would make ridiculous spelling errors such as “Princess Leia Organ Costume” instead of “…Organa Costume.” With thousands of updates per day handled only by myself, I would make a mistake 1 / 700 product updates. I was the only web designer, developer, and only person putting the products online. When Best Buy listed the new “Sony Cybershit 7.2 Camera” I knew what they were feeling. But wouldn’t a corporate giant like Best Buy be able to hire enough people to prevent these mistakes? Spell check anyone! Granted, the letters “i” and “o” are right next to each other on the keyboard, a professional organization like Best Buy should have prevented this ridiculous spelling error.

This ripple concept is amazing and brings back thoughts I had about the sphere of influence in the blogging community. About a month I was discussing how best selling author Seth Godin of such books as “Purple Cow” and “Free Prize Inside” can post a thought in his blog and have thousands of other bloggers responding and paraphrasing his work.

His “sphere of incluence” puts him at the top of the charts when it comes to the online world of bloggers. Surely being a best selling author automatically puts his ’sphere of influence’ towards the top. But how can a common blogger just starting without amazing credentials reach a higher sphere of influence? Producing high quality content and resourceful tools is a start. Unique content or tools can have a ripple effect. One person might find your tool useful and tell another person and so on. The link-back popularity of your tool or article will directly have an effect on your search engine rankings as well.

Those bloggers with pre-exposure, such as acclaimed authors and heads of corporate agencies will often automatically get a large scale of exposure. The key to achieving a greater sphere of influence over the blogging community and therefore your blog’s traffic is to create the unique. To create what others are not talking about. Simply put, to be yourself. Thanks to Logic + Emotion for the ripple chart.

Thanks to Beyond Belief Media and Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert Report there are a large collection of new “Star Wars Kid” viral videos available. Bringing some life back to the “Star Wars Kid” viral video, Stephen Colbert challenged viewers to produce their own variations of the video. My question is how can we truly profit from viral videos such as these online? MTV’s Jackass, Viva La Bam, and The Tom Green show thrived through its use of what we now watch and love everyday online… slapstick videos. We have them online and anyone can make one and promote it through You Tube and other video sites. But other than putting a credit tag to the video how can we captalize on the millions of people viewing these videos everyday?

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Want to expose your name or company in a Hollywood Produced Movie?

Thanks to a mixture of clever marketing and a unique produced film, now you can! For only a $1 donation to The Global Fund For Women your name will appear in a 90 minute credit strip at the end of the one minute film. Started up by 1 Second Film, its a unique fundraising technique for a good cause. The site hopes to bring “thousands of diverse people around the world together to create film history.” The project is entirely funded by donations. The film is produced by some falling movie stars such as Andy Dick, Tom Green, Pierce Brosnan, Kevin Bacon, and more. Get yourself registered and see your nameÂ� amongst theÂ� stars!

The interactive agency, Click Here, has just launched a new mini web site for Fruit of the Loom “Fruit Guys” fans. Check the website out at FruitGuyFans.com. The website contains the music videos, a place to meet the guys, bonus features, and downloadable MP3’s of your favorite Fruit Guy songs.

Spam and viruses are just a part of using the internet. Letters will sometimes go missing. Your� inbox might become filled with spam.� Planes might even crash in New York City. Are we really going to stop� going online, sending letters, or flying, or buying contextual based advertising with Google because of this or should we really step back for a second and cross examine our online world.�

Last month when Google confirmed that they had not adequately prevented click fraud many online advertisers had their world shook. When we step back for a second and really think about click fraud and the internet as a whole, should we really blame Google?

Like all of these, click fraud is simply going to happen. Many experts have put click through fraud rates at 50%. Other studies have showed a figure around 15%. Either way, it’s part of what makes the internet the internet. An ecosystem of free exchanging ideas and information. Just like any ecosystem there are predators and prey. We have to cope with the reality of our online world and do our best to prevent click fraud. Duncan Perry, a click fraud expert recently said “Click fraud is like any other business risk; you should take appropriate steps to reduce the risk and gather firm data of any fraud.”

This fun new gadget came in the form of a commercial to promote the new Beer League The Movie staring Artie Lang. Introducing Beer Googles by Sharmco. Send hottie signals to your balls and brain. So leave your pride in the bar and take that dog to the car!

Check out Beer League The Movie - Commercial.

Cable Giant TBS is bringing an online tie-in to their hit television specials “World’s Funniest Commericals” hosted by the Saturday Night Live star Kevin Nealon. The website, Veryfunnyads.com will be the world’s largest collectionÂ� of humorous television commercials. The website will showcase what you cannot see on TBS because it’s too raunchy.Â� Visitors also have the option of leaving comments, suggestions, and emailing links to friends.

You may not know it yet, but the forms you place on your web site might be scaring off potential customers and clients. To kick start your web site into higher conversation per visit its best to test drive your contact us, order, or ezine subsciption page. These forms are great ways to gather information on your customers. Without proper test drives your customers might leave your site out of frustration and you’ll be left in the dust.

Some of the following mistakes in designing your web forms might be hurting you more than you might think.

1) Forcing Repeat Work: If you’re inputing certain required fields, often denoted by an asterix, without giving your customers a good notification they might end up hitting submit and having to fill out the whole form again. They won’t click the back button 9 times out of 10. Be sure to keep your forms simple and not treat them like a census collection. A fax, pager, home, and work number might be an overkill for your web form.

2) Various Contact Methods: Web forms are often run on php scripts and your customers won’t have any idea where the form was submitted to. You might not be providing them with more than the web form to contact you. Give your customers the option to call or email you directly instead of relying on a structured web form only.

3) Requiring Too Much Information: Is it really necessary to your web form’s purpose to require a person’s company title, mailing address, log-in and password? Do they really have the time to fill out unnecessary information on your web form. If not, you could be losing potential customers for good once they leave your web site out of frustration. Either remove these fields or list them as optional.

4) Restricting Text Fields: Never restrict the length of a text field unless it’s for a username or password. Long names and even longer emails require long text fields for your visitors.

5) Not Offering A Newsletter: Use a small checkbox to ask permission for your visitors to receive weekly newsletters on your upcoming events and specials.

6) Not Asking Your Visitors How They Found You: Use an optional drop down box on your web form to gather information on where your conversion customers are coming from. That is, the customers who come to your site looking to buy!

This billboard speaks for itself.

Fab-u-lous! Acording to AdAge “Wal-Mart Stores has hired a gay-marketing shop, joined the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and begun discussions with activist groups about extending domestic-partnership benefits to its employees.” The Pro-Gay partnership aligns mega supermarkter Wal-Mart with Witcheck Combs Communications, a gay shop widely known for targeting the gay and lesbian markets. After some skeptism by the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, Wal-Mart is turning heads to try and gain important market share in upscale and urban markets. The hope to broden the company’s target market will likely help detour the constant discrimination lawsuits directed towards the company over the last few years.

I can only imagine seeings a change in the design and stock that Wal-Mart will carry after the move. Perhaps the 80 something Wal-Mart greeters will be replaced with former employees of Abercrombie & Fitch decked out in sequence rainbow colored vests. Although Wal-Mart has tried this stunt before, one can only wait and see!

A dating site for Dutch farmers lost a court case against Google on Thursday after demanding that the world’s biggest Internet search engine stop publishing sponsored links to sex sites. Farmdate.nl had asked Google to install a filter that would prevent links to sex sites from appearing alongside query results for “farm date,” arguing that it harmed its reputation. The Amsterdam court judge ruled that the words “farm” and “date” were too general to be granted exclusivity by Farmdate. (Yahoo)