Here’s something you don’t see every day:

A San Francisco photographer posted pictures on Flickr (yes, Flickr and not Picasa) of the Google Maps “Street View” camera vehicle pulled over by the police in the Presidio.  It seems that a SF motorcycle cop found the enormous apparatus mounted to the roof of this lady’s Prius to be a little suspicious.  Either that, or she was speeding. 

I have always wondered what Google’s camera apparatus for Streetview looked like, and thanks to Damian Spain, now I know.  Some bloggers are speculating what the hardware included– with some convinced Google is working on collecting 3D data for some new functionality to add to Street View.

So, now we know what it looks like.  And, the next time you see a hybrid vehicle with a 5-foot camera array following you down the street, don’t miss your chance.  Do something visible and memorable for the camera, write down where you were when you saw it, and watch for it on Google Maps.  When else will you get a chance for such fame? 

For anyone that doesn’t live under a rock, buildup to November’s presidential election has reached a fever pitch in all media.  Television commercials, whole-page ads in newspapers and magazines, as well as incessant news coverage (yes, I’m lumping that in with other commercial media) are impossible to avoid or ignore.  

This year, the most successful candidates are finally near fully embracing (although, perhaps still not fully understanding) the internet as a truly leveragable media outlet.  Of course, the internet has played a growing role in the past few presidential elections.  Here are some internet memories of elections past:

• 2000 - Ralph Nader gets good viral buzz
• 2000 - Bloggers and the other “free” media make election irregularities more widely known than previously possible
• 2004 - Support rallies for Al Gore organized through meetup.com
• 2004 - Blogs rule
• 2000 & 2004 - Anyone heard of a little political action committee called MoveOn.org?

So, what are the candidates doing online to promote themselves so far this time around?  Here are a few of the biggest candidate internet marketing pushes of 2008 (so far):

• 24% of people report regularly learning something about the election from the internet, up from 13% in 2004 (and compared to 40% for TV news)
• Perhaps this is why the average age of voters continues to decline (arguably creditable to a more informed, more motivated voting-age populace).  In Illinois (where I live), Barack Obama wins the 18-24 age group nearly 2:1 in the democratic primary versus Hillary Clinton
• “Yes We Can” is released as a musical remix of Obama’s motivating speech, tops Youtube ratings and inspires some humorous parodies (including one called “No You Can’t“)
• A ClickZ column points some of the blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss in the primaries to lower Google Adwords spending (the same article suggests that candidates relied much more heavily on search distribution than content network placement)

So, now the primary season is finally over and we have our major-party candidates.  What will the internet change this time through?  Hopefully, a lot.  I expect to see much more as the national election season gets underway. 

Don’t think that the internet will be a big factor in this year’s contest?  Barack Obama sure does, his campaign is hiring internet marketing professionals.

Merely a few short weeks after Microsoft officially withdrew it’s bid to purchase Yahoo, Google has come into the picture with a corporate mashup that is sure to peak the interest of Capital Hill’s antitrust legions. 

June 12th, Yahoo put out a press release stating its intention to “strengthen [it's] competitive position in online advertising through [a] non-exclusive agreement with Google”.  By the terms of the agreement, Yahoo will now serve Google Adwords advertisements alongside their own, both in search results and on Yahoo’s thousands of highly-trafficked (but poorly monetized) content pages. 

Ads will also be shows on member’s sites within Yahoo’s Publisher Network, which has never seen the adoption of Google’s Adsense program, but still gives Google a boost in content ad placement inventory. 

This agreement is non-exclusive.  Meaning, Yahoo is free to pursue similar deals with other ad providers.  They are even still free to pursue acquisition by Microsoft, although that would carry a $250 million penalty (termination fee).

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo claims that by better monetizing searches and other page views on their properties, they are projecting an extra $800 million in annual revenue.  And, that’s just the beginning— integrating other Google ad serving technologies on to Yahoo’s vast (and widely-used) user pages would certainly mean other opportunities.

It is all good news for Yahoo, whose leadership (Jerry Yang) have come under intense scrutiny from Wall Street, investors and Carl Icahn for missing an opportunity to sell the company for top dollar and subsequently causing a dramatic drop in market cap.  The deal is a positive move to add revenue security in an uncertain time for the internet sector.

Certainly, this deal is going to be reviewed under an electron microscope by fair-trade officials and monopoly watchdogs at the Justice Department.  In fact, Yahoo has claimed that the deal will not go into effect for as long as three and a half months to permit time for thorough regulatory investigation.  Likely threatened by a Google-Yahoo partnership, Microsoft is expected to apply significant political pressure to add further hardship to making the execution of the deal a reality.

So, as a Google/Yahoo mashup appears to be in our near future, I propose the following names:

• Yahoogle
• Goohoo

Did you know that you can control what syndicated content and/or advertising shows up in your Google Gmail account? Neither did I, until just recently.

I just learned about Web Clips, the feature of Gmail that controls what displays in this area.  It can include content-matched PPC ads, feeds from trusted RSS sources, or custom content.  If you want, it can also be setup to show content from RSS/Atom feeds of your choosing.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Log in to your Gmail account
2. Go to ‘Settings’ on the primary navigation
3. Choose ‘Web Clips’
4. Enter the feed URL you’d like to view in the field under ‘Search by topic or URL’
5. Click ‘Search’
6. Once Gmail locates the feed, click ‘Add’ so you can view it in Web Clips

Of course, there is no better feed you could add than the Paperclip Marketing RSS feed.

For anyone following this thread, my fascination with the Spam Primavera Incident has caused me to spend much more time digging into the way Google Gmail really works.  So, instead of just being a total waste of time, I end up learning some new things.  That’s a good thing.

The area of Gmail where I was presented the link for “Spam Primavera” is populated by a content placement function called Web Clips.  This content may include content-matched PPC ads (I knew this), Gmail-specific content such as tips and tricks (I had seen this, too), but also “custom content” (something I didn’t really know about).

Apparently, this custom content is sometimes written at the discretion of the Gmail product teams.  Who, somewhat surprisingly, have a sense of humor.  Miriam Schneider, Associate Product Marketing Manager discussed what happened to cause this on Google’s Gmail blog.

“Turns out that when they came up with the idea for Web Clips, they didn’t think it made sense to show these RSS feeds and ads in the spam folder. After all, these clips should be useful and fun, but spam (of the email variety) is neither of these things. Not knowing what to put here, Keith searched for “spam recipes” and decided to make a feed out of the results. As he said, “it was just one of those late night ideas” — probably a consequence of too many said energy drinks.”

So, it looks like this chapter is now over.  I wasn’t seeing a PPC ad, afterall.  Thankfully, there isn’t a company out there that is truly this bad at running an Adwords account (or, at least not showing up in my Gmail spam folder).  Instead, it was Google having some fun.

Think the people at Hormel (the makers of Spam luncheon meat) are getting a bunch of free traffic from this?  Today, their stock is at a healthy $37 a share.  I guess you could credit this on the recession driving people to eat at home more often and purchase more canned meats, but I like to think all these Gmail users seeing new and inventive ways to cook with Spam is also having a positive affect.