This past Monday Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, announced the new iPhone 4, which is said to be the “biggest leap forward” for the iPhone since 2007. After reading this statement I had to take another glance at the date. The iPhone was only released 3 years ago?!

With the release of the IOS4 there are a handful of new features to gawk at. For instance, real time chatting will allow you to no longer meet for client luncheons. You can bring the client with you in your pocket then set them in between your water glass and soup bowl to chat it up.  One catch is that this feature is only available on Wi-Fi, and the presence of good Wi-Fi connection is slim, thus preventing our need to have actual human to human contact. On a positive note the introduction of multitasking now allows one to switch between apps, the internet, and music without any disconnect.

The IOS4 will also have the iAd mobile advertising platform which utilizes the multitasking feature. “The iAd system allows third party developers to include advertising in their apps to earn more money or subsidize free apps.” Apple will sell the advertising and supply the ads from their servers. The advantage to the iAd system is if the user clicks on an iAd banner, a full screen advertisement will appear within the application instead of being redirected to the Safari web browser. Apple will sell and host the ads, giving 60% revenue to the developers. According to Jobs, “People aren’t searching their phones. People are spending time in their apps.” Do you think that with the introduction of iAd there will be in an increase in mobile ad sales?

The Sunday New York Times Style magazine had an article this past week titled “Google’s Doodles”. It seemed the writer did like what they do with their logo although there were a lot of words like “gauche”, “childlike”, “corny” describing various expressions of it.

Well, I just love it. Having spent lots of time listening to logo police for many large corporations, I admire the friskiness of the Google people. There’s a lesson in the looking. March 14th was pi day. Heh heh. A little piece of fun for the numerically literate, the Google logo was executed with nicely done geometry. And guess what, logo police? You could find the corporate identity in there. Also during the Olympics with the lovely illustrations showing us all those graceful winter games in the logo. Apparently, we’re able to fill in some blanks and get the nods to current events and holidays and all of that when we sign on the Google home page. It’s refreshing and fun and a treat to see it when it comes up. And the logo fun comes up with some predictability and some randomness. That’s part of the fun too. It makes you pause for a moment and think in a blink while you’re on your way to something else. I liked the plain Google logo and name from the beginning. But what they’ve been doing is so smart. They’ve let me in on the secret behind this big, big corporate entity. It’s headed by humans with wit and intelligence who are current and enthused about all sorts of things. I like them.

Would it be the breakdown of civilization, as the logo police would have it, if other corporations decided to let designers ‘fiddle’ with their corporate dress? Probably. What do you think?

Healthcare marketers who are hesitating over beefing up their interactive and social media plans just got a wake-up call thanks to Millward Brown’s latest research. We all know that trust is what makes us return to a brand time and time again. It makes us tell our friends. And when it comes to our health, it’s how we prescribe healthcare services for one another. But who whould have thought that recent research would show that WebMD is the eighth most “trusted” and “recommended” brand in the U.S.?

The internet is, more than ever, the place we turn to when we need immediate feedback about our health or the health of our loved ones. Face it, it’s a lot faster than getting that appointment with your GP. It’s always there. Combine that efficiency with the power of communication that the internet provides (think social media) suddenly, WebMD at number eight just isn’t such a shocker. What do you think - ever used WebMD? Write back and let us know your favorite healthcare destinations online.