From Marketing Vox today:

"Volkswagen has produced 120 online short films for its new Passat campaign - the largest number in a single branded entertainment undertaking, which is also the final effort for VW by Havas's Arnold Worldwide of Boston, having lost the account to Crispin Porter & Bogusky of Miami - reports AdAge. The blitz is VW's biggest online launch.

Each short, just 15 seconds long, is being shown on the VW site (www.vw.com/passat) and demonstrates a single feature of the redesigned 2006 Passat, with the feature itself being revealed only in the final seconds.

To highlight the side curtain airbags, for example, the film is of a man wearing a large Afro wig who isn't bothered by a baseball's breaking through his window and hitting his head.

The first 25 shorts went live earlier this month; the second 25 will launch next week. VW will add a viral option to allow visitors to forward the films to friends.

VW has an online ad buy through late November on portals and lifestyle and third-party auto sites to drive consumers to the films on vw.com. The URL is also listed in all offline Passat ads."

Last October, General Motors (GM) tiptoed into the blogosphere, quietly launching a blog to coincide with the 50th anniversary of its small-block V-8 engine -- the high-performance roar behind decades of Corvettes, Camaros, and other muscle cars. The company's virgin blog has attracted a small, happy group of gearheads who write lovingly about power-train codes, horsepower modifications, and other riveting under-the-hood topics. "It was a safe group for us," admits Michael Wiley, GM's director of new media.

Read more...

BBC News - London,England,UK
... Blogging lecturers say the technology provides them with easy online web access to students and improves communication outside of the classroom. ...

Read more

eMarketers team of analysts and researcher give their predictions of what to look out for in 2005 in the Internet, e-business and emerging tech areas.

They include:
Alternative Advertising
RSS
AOL Changes
On-Demand TV
Wireless Broadband
Radio Frequency Identification
Voice-Over Internet Protocol
Linux
Cross-Channel Retail
IT Security

Read more here

Today I read an article in eMarketer:

In early Q4 2004, the e-tailing group signed up with 100 retail companies to receive e-mail marketing. The e-commerce consulting firm found that 65 of these 100 merchants sent e-mails between November 22 and November 26, 2004, the period right before Thanksgiving. Read more...

I am an big fan of email as long as it is done well. Businesses I feel have to be careful when doing email promotions. They want to make sure that they are not perceived as spam and they d\shouldn't bombard their customers with emails either. Plus good common practices such as emailing only those who have opted in (permission based) should be emailed, they should have a clear way to unsubscribe and really, the message should be pertinent and enticing to your custome, otherwise they won't want to read any future emails you send them.

At any rate, read the article. It provides some info on types of emails that consumers (in the US) consider to be spam.