BBC Sports reported this afternoon that 1) fabled cyclist and inspirational uber-achiever Lance Armstrong   will surely NOT repeat as the winner of this year’s Tour de France, but 2) in even bigger news: “Lance Armstrong will compete for Team RadioShack as a cyclist, runner and triathlete in events around the world, including the 2010 Tour de France.” [...]

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos has just released a long video in which he rhapsodizes about the history of Amazon.com – including early troubles with technology… and even elecricity. At 8 minutes plus, this DOESN’T qualify as an elevator pitch. Then he eventually gets around to announcing his company’s all-stock aquisition of online shoe retailer Zappos.com. [...]

A Twitter conversation last night instigated by Olivier Blanchard and carried on ad nauseum elsewhere, reminded me of a long-time guilty pleasure: Nutella. Just typing the word makes me salivate – and I have to restrain myself from running upstairs to slather some of that rich hazelnutty goodness on melba toast. And apparently I’m not [...]

Coffee giant tries to get mojo vibrating again Once, Starbucks was just a local coffee shop in Seattle. Then it became a mega-brand, standard-bearer for the premium coffee category worldwide. But lately, the “star” has been fading, and even the “bucks” are drying up. So now the chain will be re-launching a few of its [...]

Check it out! Microsoft with an advertisement that I might actually WANT to watch?! Sounds crazy, no? Sure, it doesn’t have Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates (not sure what was going on there) but it is current, edgy, and even goes so far as to poke fun at the ‘Soft! Whether you’re a Microsoft junkie, [...]

A recent Twitter friend of mine, David Olinger, who is the Manager of Marketing and Communications at the small Alberta City of Grande Prairie (population 50,000) has just announced the winning bidder for a branding project for Grande Prairie: a company from Seattle that specializes in tourism destination branding Great Destination Strategies . Was there [...]