Prometa.

ACTOR WHO DIED OF OVERDOSE STARS IN ADDICTION TREATMENT ADS

I find this fascinating. The foundation run by Chris Farley's family gave permission for his photo to be used for this new addiciton treatment protocol's ads. His brother is even the voice-over.

Google Finance.

Yes (yawn, yawn) another Google product -- Google Finance. As annoying as it might be, the fact is that they keep doing it right. So check it out.

It is in Beta stage at this point (which Google product is NOT in Beta?)

You can search with a company name, stock symbol or even with a general term. I searched for "advertising agency" and it showed 175 results and listed the biggies right there.

I tried Applebee's (my Dad's favorite!) and found:

Market Data
News
Company Facts (revenue, profit, etc.)
Site links: News Releases, Financial Information, Corporate History/Profile, Products/Services, Employment Opportunities
Company Financials Quarterly and Annual Income Statement
Balance Sheet
Competitors
Analyst Estimates
SEC Filings
Major Holders
Discussion Group
Options
Research Reports
Events
Comparison Charts
Company Summary
Management Info
Blog Posts (wow!)

It's well-organized and has real depth. This is a great place to start for getting consolidated information on companies.

Great job, Google. Again.

Science search.

We know a lot of search engines, as I'm sure you'd imagine! So when someone sends me something new, it's very exciting. A world renowned medical writer sent me this:

Scirus is the most comprehensive science-specific search engine on the Internet. Driven by the latest search engine technology, Scirus searches over 250 million science-specific Web pages, enabling you to quickly:

• Pinpoint scientific, scholarly, technical and medical data on the Web.
• Find the latest reports, peer-reviewed articles, patents, pre prints and journals that other search engines miss.
• Offer unique functionalities designed for scientists and researchers.

Definitely worth a look. Very cool.

Marketing to women.

I've long followed WonderBranding at terrific blog by Michele Miller about Marketing to Women. And I have been reading Andrea Learned for ages. It's an interest of mine and, with some large clients that have very female target audiences, it's important to keep up. This morning (awfully early on a Sunday, I might add!) I followed a link from WonderBranding to Holly Buchanan's How to Shatter Stereotypes and Understand What She Really Wants. Great stuff here. Read back a bit to some editorial about research findings discussing women online. I love when people challenge the conclusions of a study in the media. So often, the data are barely the basis of the publicity....

Global warming.

Following two recent studies on changes to Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, NASA is touting a survey that it says confirms “climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in Earth’s largest storehouses of ice and snow.”

“If the trends we’re seeing continue and climate warming continues as predicted, the polar ice sheets could change dramatically. The Greenland ice sheet could be facing an irreversible decline by the end of the century,” says the lead author Jay Zwally.

The full article is worth a read.

The unbanked....

More than 10 million U.S. consumers do not use a bank. I find that shocking. Scarborough just released a report about these unbanked folks and their use of credit cards. Almost 1/4 of them do use credit cards, it seems. One might ask how they pay for the charges...with cash? Money orders?