Everybody wants to be the person who stumbles across the next big thing. Mark Zuckerberg was they guy that created Facebook in '04. It was initially a big deal at Ivy League schools exclusively, but in the past 12 months, Facebook has official reached big thing status. Google decided YouTube was such a big thing that they paid over $1.6 billion to acquire the company in '06. According to TV week, the potential next big thing is Howcast.com, a site devoting to answering "how to" questions via amateur and professional videos.

The "how to" site is divided into 25 searchable categories or you can enter a keyword to find results on your own. This week's top viewed videos include How to Fake Being Sick, How to Debone a Chicken and How to Dance Without Embarrassing Yourself. The site is supported by advertising, although it's starting off just as simple as Facebook's advertising options used to be. Targeted sponsorships are available, but as the site takes off look for the options to become more vast and costly. For example, jetBlue is the sponsor of every video in the Travel section.

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A few days ago I came across some neat advanced search techniques that you can use in Google’s search and here are a few of my favorites:

inurl:<keyword> this will only return websites the keyword in the url

allinurl:<keywords> this is the same but allows multiple keywords

Along with these there are a few operators that you can use also:

+<keyword> this will return all pages that include the keyword only.

Example: Louisville +interactive agency will return only Louisville agencies that have interactive describing their agency.

-<keyword> this will return all pages that don’t include the keyword.

Example: Louisville –interactive agency would return all agencies that don’t have interactive describing their agency.

Here are a couple of links if you are interested in learning more neat tips and tricks for optimizing your searching in Google:

Google Search Operators

Google Query Tips

Events and Festivals are in my blood, and I love it.

I attend them. I produce them. I develop and execute marketing plans for them. I even got engaged at North America's largest fireworks show.

So that makes me some kind of expert. At least our clients think so.

I do love discussing and analyzing everything about events to help groups get the most effective use of every dollar they have to produce events. Our experience with Kentucky Derby Festival, Butchertown Art Fair, The Cup Experience (Louisville's 2008 Ryder Cup Host Committee) and the Kentucky Bourbon Festival has brought a few things to my attention.

First, many festivals and event companies don't realize that partnering with key groups like a PR or marketing firm, can improve communications and get professional insights that an event group, working alone, may not otherwise have. Many groups choose to handle these efforts internally, in an effort to conserve costs, but it is not the best use of their time, skill sets or resources. Event groups should focus on what they do best...events.

Secondly, far too many event groups have no consistent theme. When I was a judge for the Kentucky Festivals and Events Association event materials competition, I was amazed to find the amount of work that carried no consistent theme and had no clear message they were trying to deliver to their audiences.

Lastly, event groups need all the help they can get. If "It takes a village to raise a child," it takes an entire community to successfully promote and produce an event. Seek out volunteers, who can recruit more volunteers. Find experts in marketing, crowd & traffic management, concessions, signage and recruiting to build teams that will help with the event you're planning and for future growth.

Later this week, I'll share what I think are four keys to successful event planning and management.

When I tell people that my husband and I work together I often get this reaction:

"I could never work with my spouse!" And for me, I can’t imagine a day NOT working with my spouse. It feels strange when he is out of town or out of the office for a day. We work independently and in different areas of the agency and so we’re not "on top" of each other every moment of every day. Typically, we see each other in a meeting or two during the day, try to grab a quick lunch together and that’s about it, except for a break here and there to touch base on something personal.

In my previous marriage I didn’t have someone I could share my marketing passion with and it meant a lot of silence at the end of the day. My mind would race with ideas and I had no one to bounce them off. You see in this business, you’re almost always "working" because just moving through life means being bombarded with tons of messages and images. I’m always processing information and looking for new ways to reach people, observing how something is portrayed and produced. And my best friend happens to be my partner "in life" so we’re always sharing information about the latest communications technology, media we experience (a bad commercial -- and good ones, too), etc.

I love working with my spouse and I love this business. The only time we silence the work chatter is while on vacation. And we go far, far away so we can’t be reached or found.

Fortune Small Business recently released a set of short bios on working couples here.

Don't know if you caught it in the news this morning, but yesterday the Kentucky Derby Festival unveiled their official poster for "Thunder Over Louisville - 2008". It's big news to us because it's the 3rd consecutive year that CurrentMarketing has had the privilege of designing it. Fellow creative and resident "poster-boy" Donovan Sears did a great job capturing the excitement of the uber-spectacular airshow and fireworks extravaganza in a convenient poster-sized snapshot. If the thought of a Stealth B-2 bomber flying at you doesn't get you all warm and tingly, then maybe the fact that the poster glows in the dark will.

On a fairly unrelated note, for those of you that may be training for the miniMarathon you can get a great training schedule here.

I've used it the past couple of years and I always felt ready come race day. And since I'm on a running tangent, another great site is MapMyRun.com.

You can accurately plot your course without leaving the house (thanks to the ever-growing wonders of Google maps). It shows you course elevation, it can even calculate your pace and give you an idea of calories burnt - if you're into that kind of thing.

I read an article on adotas.com earlier this week and the basic thrust is that online giants such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook are struggling to make sense of advertising revenue that is (or rather is not) generated by social networking sites.

This article makes a great point that the slower-than-anticipated growth of online revenue may be attributed to escalating economic issues globally.

In addition to that, in the agency world, our clients are worried about things like increasing penny profit at location level, or whether or not they can hang on to their employee base in tough economic times, or if their doo-hickey is going to make it out the door on time.

So, making the argument for online advertising is more difficult than, say, arguing for radio, which has a "proven" track record, at least in the eyes of the client (despite the hard numbers that back up usage decline of that medium in particular).

Luckily, the article ends on a positive note for interactive advertising - the whole world will eventually catch on to this "internet thing."

Mac Tricks and Tips recently came out with a list of the Top 100 Essential Mac Applications, so I think I'll list my own essential apps (but not 100, sheesh!) that I use as Geek in Charge at CurrentMarketing.

1. Komodo Edit : If I'm not using vi as my text editor, I'm using this app. I could use any old plain text editor, but I'm addicted to syntax highlighting for code and hate working without it.
2. Fetch : I think the list from Mac Tricks and Tips is wrong about Cyberduck. I've had nothing but issues with it, and that's why I love Fetch as my FTP client.
3. Parallels : When needing to check a site across multiple browsers and multiple platforms, Parallels sure beats the pants off of a desk full of hardware. Gone are the days of 3-4 computers on or around my desk. Well, working ones that is -- I have a graveyard of dead towers behind me right now.
4. Spaces : Every Leopard install already has this, but if you don't have it enabled you should! I simply couldn't work as effeciently without it. I normally have my editors, terminals, Parallels, Photoshop, iTunes and numerous browsers all open at the same time. Without Spaces, I'd go mad (even before Leopard I used 3rd party apps to perform similar desktop magic).
5. iTunes : Okay, so this is a given. Every Mac-head out there has this favorite app, but as a developer it is very important to my work. How else could I stand banging out line after line of code if I couldn't fire up iTunes and listen to Green Day, Miles Davis, Led Zeppelin and Lady Sovereign (or a mix thereof) to blast in the background?

Well, those are the applications I wouldn't want to function without daily on my Mac. Now I'm going to go check out a lot of the apps mentioned in the Top 100. Which, by the way, is only a Top 99 -- Wallsaver is listed twice (47 and 58). It must be that good!

It's the moment you've all been waiting for...the first-ever Hyperbole XLII (that's pronounced "Hype-r-bowl")!

We were so overwhelmed with members of our team who have opinions about last night's Big Game and the advertising that blanketed its action-packed air time, that we decided to give you a little taste below. Just click on the quotes to see the complete repertoire of our awe-inspiring ruminations!

"The one that really stuck out for me was the AMP commercial. It was ..."

"In a nutshell, this year's spots made me want to get an Audi R8, see Iron Man and Semi-Pro, still not want ..."

"And I honestly can't take another ad featuring babies and animals with CGI lips ..."

Be wary in today's marketing world. It changes rapidly. In fact, in the time it takes you to read this sentence, at least five new blogs have been created.

The Wall Street Journal just launched a Facebook application.

Sales for Internet advertising in the U.S. will exceed those for radio advertising in 2008.

Economy, elections and terrorism be damned, the evolution is not slowing down. The art, the science of reaching consumers, and compelling them to act is evolving. Daily.

CurrentMarketing didn't create the Internet. Or Weblogs. Or Social Networks. We didn't come up with the idea of viral videos or podcasts. Nope, we did none of that.

What we do create are opportunities for our clients to use the interactive media now entwined in consumers' lives -- at home, at work, in their car - to build brands and build traffic. We're not the first. But we pride ourselves at being Louisville's leading interactive marketing agency; alone or in tandem with traditional media channels.

We understand that today's consumers want information, not to be sold. They want to be enlightened and entertained between meetings. Or even at a stoplight.

Enter UnderCurrent.

In this blog, we will share our observations about the evolving world of marketing. On the printed page. On the Tube. And, of course, online. Today's keen insights might well be tomorrow's cliché. It's just that fast. We'll discuss the Web and all its applications for communication. We'll distill (and of course credit) content from other blogs. We'll talk about our clients' challenges. Critique other marketing efforts - including traditional media - because we know those communications channels are not going away either. Just changing. All the time. We'll talk about creative we like and, at the risk of offending our contemporaries, what we don't like. And why.

In fact, if you come back here on Monday, you can see what our creative, media and marketing types thought of the multi-million-dollar adventures in Sunday's Big Game. We're calling it Hyperbole XLII (that's pronounced "Hype-r-bowl").

We'll make it entertaining, fun and informative. We welcome your feedback, comments and - we promise not to be offended - criticism when appropriate.

But remember, it's all subject to change.