Sony just released Life with PlayStation worldwide to owners of the PlayStation 3. This is a new lifestyle service that offers a visual and interactive way to access information from around the globe. The first installation will be Live Channel, which will have a place and time world map with cloud imagery, which is provided in participation with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Space Science and Engineering Center.

As one Wall Street behemouth after another topples like so many houses of cards, consumer confidence in large financial institutions is shaken - if not utterly shattered. And today, a 404 error page from SmithBarney.com. Servers that go down or overload are never a good thing, but the brand message subtext in this 404, this week, is jarring indeed.

It seems the Queen's interest in the digital world has evolved since admitting, as she awarded Bill Gates with an honorary Knighthood in 2005, that she didn't own a computer. Following the success of a dedicated RoyalChannel on YouTube, Her royal highness Queen Elizabeth II will pay a visit to Google's London headquarters on October 16 to tour the offices and meet staff, with husband the Duke of Edinburgh in tow. The YouTube channel itself has racked up over 22,

No one expected Microsoft to tackle Apple's Mac/PC ads directly in the next wave of the new Windows campaign created by its Crispin Porter & Bogusky. But that's just what it's done . Not only that, it dug up a John Hodgman look-alike from the ranks of Microsoft engineers to try and undercut Apple's biting portrayal of the company's stodgy image. "Hello, I'm a PC, and I've been made into a stereotype," he says. Other ads feature Eva Longoria and Deepak Chopra, among others,

The Interactive Advertising Bureau yesterday put out a press release commending Congress for passing the Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act, which provides for enforcement for nabbing and prosecuting cyber criminals and spyware purveyors. In other news, The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association has praised the removal of lead from interior paint. Am I missing something here? Don't get me wrong,

Really, Ask.com? I'm trying to get some decent seats for the Neil Young show at the Garden in December and here I am, minding my own business on the Garden's site, when all of a sudden the seating chart page starts giving me a lap dance. OK, not quite, but it does automate a video ad for Ask.com featuring a chick in next-to-nothing gyrating on a pole. "What are the Best Aerobic Workouts?" The ad inquires. "Need Answers? Ask.com." Hey, if I were getting my daily fix of Maxim,

Facebook's redesign is not sitting pretty with more than one million - or about 1 percent - of its members. Several Faceboook Groups have been established to protest the social network's redesign. In the "Petition Against the "New Facebook" group with 1.35 million members, there's a list outlining 10 things wrong with the "new" Facebook results. In the ultimate insult, Scott Sanders wrote: "the new layout is starting to look more and more like MySpace." Another group called,

Best Buy has agreed to buy Napster, partly for the chance to sell tech products to its user base. The music retailer plans to cross-sell devices and other products to Napster's 700,000 subscribers. By doing so it expects to "capture recurring revenue by offering ongoing value over a mobile digital platform," it said in a statement. Interesting notion, but is it logical? From a marketing standpoint,

At Ogilvy's powwow for their IBM clients today, WSJ.com General Manager Daniel Bernard stopped by to show off a sneak peak at the eagerly-anticipated site redesign, slated to launch tomorrow. It's loaded with new features, including community functionalities that require users to log-in with their real names to network or comment on content. But what's most impressive is how WSJ.com has combined usability and interface with monetization. Beginning tomorrow,

If any more investment or research firms plan to lower their 2008 and 2009 forecasts for online ad spending, I don't want to know about it. Jeffries & Company today became the latest in a long string of firms to trim )albeit slightly( their expectations of the online ad market. Jeffries now declares the channel will grow to $50 billion )20 percent( in 2008, down from its earlier prediction of $52 billion )25 percent(.

What sort of ad selling plans does Amazon have up its sleeve? There must be some, since the ecommerce king has hired longtime Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions GM Lisa Utzschneider. Amazon wouldn't confirm the news, which was reported by the New York Post. Amazon has yet to make any big splash in the online ad industry. This certainly signals interest in building out that side of the business. So far, big players like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft,

How do you engage a group of more than 200 public relations professionals? Bring in George Wright, marketing manager of Blendtec, a company known for viral videos on its site, WillItBlend.com . Wright did not disappoint. With a garden rake and Blendtec blender as his props, Wright spoke at the Public Relations Society of America's T3 PR , a conference for PR professionals representing tech companies. Wright has been on the speaking circuit,

Time Warner's AOL has spent much of the past year revamping its advertising operation, consolidating it under the Platform A brand, and restructuring staff at the unit. But the firm's ad business is suffering, according to Time Warner CFO John Martin. Speaking at an industry event yesterday, he said ad contract cancellations and sluggish third-party network revenue )read: Advertising.com, and other AOL-owned networks like Tacoda and Quigo( are to blame.

Seth McFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy has made its official debut, and the sponsor placements for Burger King are a good sight better than we've all been trained to expect from video. The reason: McFarlane's team created them, so they feel homegrown' part of the entertainment package: Now has anyone seen these in the wild? As you'll recall, Google and McFarlane struck a deal to distribute the content in ad space on the AdSense network.

Position matters in paid search, according to Google. The search engine released findings of custom research performed by Millward Brown on its behalf. And Sprint was the guinea pig in this project. The goal was to determine the value of an impression beyond the click, measure the impact of paid search ads, and find out how much search placement matters. Brand recall was greater in the top-sponsored position, and was reduced in lower positions, the study found.

Video technology platform Brightcove has partnered with OMS, a German online sales and marketing network for regional newspapers, to create an ad-supported online video network for its member publishers. The network will feature content licensed by OMS from third parties, alongside video published by the regional newspapers themselves. Ad sales will be handled by OMS. Speaking with ClickZ News, OMS Media Consultant Kim Kriegers said,

As I sit munching on a decadent brownie that came straight from Google's renowned cafeteria )don't be evil? ha!(, I'm mulling the company's status in the eyes of U.S. and European lawmakers and regulators. Two regulation-related instances have occurred recently. Officially, Google has responded to concerns voiced by EU regulators by slashing in half the amount of time it stores user search data to nine months. Certainly potentially more significant,

In its ongoing push to collaborate with carriers, Yahoo has signed a deal with AT&T that will put OneSearch on the carrier's portal. AT&T's on-deck MEdia Net portal will be powered by OneSearch, bringing media assets such as news, financial information, weather conditions, Flickr photos, and Web images to AT&T user handsets. OneSearch also provides users relevant results for ringtones, wallpapers, games, and other content in the same browsing experience.

John McCain 2008 is no longer able to solicit or spend private donations now that he's accepted the Republican nomination. But that doesn't mean the co-author of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law can't get around that pesky roadblock. The latest ad â€" launched 9/3 - from the McCain-Palin Compliance Fund, asks supporters to "Invest in Victory" by donating $50 to the Compliance Fund. According to a disclaimer on the McCain campaign site,

Yesterday, comScore released a report on the number of online ad impressions run by Barack Obama's and John McCain's presidential campaigns in 2008. As regular readers of ClickZ's Campaign '08 section know, we've been getting ad impression data among other related info from Nielsen Online's AdRelevance for months now. I figured I'd delve into previous AdRelevance reports and compare ad impression info from the two.