Food for Thought: Top 2009 Launches

Since I'm still recovering from a huge Easter dinner and picking through the jellybeans and chocolate bunnies that I've been stockpiling for weeks now, I thought it'd be a good time to talk about food.

Specifically, IRI (Information Resources, Inc.) released their Top Launches of 2009 report last week. The report breaks down which new products netted the most sales, with breakdowns in different categories.

The top 5 food launches included products like Bud Light Lime, Arnold Select Sandwich Thins, Green Giant Valley Fresh Steamers and Dreyer’s/Edy’s Fun Flavors Ice Cream.

But the king of the food mountain was Campbell's Select Harvest Soup, which aimed to take advantage of the increase in health awareness with natural ingredients and getting rid of the MSG.

With 7 out of the top 10 food launches based around healthier products, the trend seems to point towards a continued rise in lower calorie foods and natural products.

iPad Success or Computer Industry Failure?

I'm old enough to remember when Apple products were on the fringe of the industry; no one cared except a devoted few. The iMac, iPod and iPhone changed all that over the last 15 years.

Where are the rest of the computer industry's innovators? Why does everyone wait for the next big thing from Apple? Because there's no one else. Microsoft and HP and the others can't seem to do anything but copy each other.

The sad thing is that this pattern has repeated itself in the domestic car companies as well. We see a few glimmerings of hope with new models from GM and Ford, but my hopes for Chrysler are fading fast.

We know Japan and Korea are superb at copying existing technology, especially hardware, and making it better. But there's no originality there.

The good news is that the United States is still the world's supplier of most of the entertainment content. And without the content, devices like the iPad are just empty shells. Let's hope that other U.S. technology companies will join Apple in innovation and show the rest of the world we still have what it takes to be leaders.

Off-Field Issues

As a die-hard Minnesota Vikings fan myself, I think it's great that fans can get that more casual and personal perspective on their favorite athletes through social networks like Twitter, but the unregulated nature of these networks has raised some issues.

In response, the NFL has passed regulations on many of these issues, from how soon players can tweet before or after a game to leaking inside information about their organizations.

But despite those regulations, Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Santonio Holmes has still been in hot water over his recent Twitter activity.

But to his credit, he isn't guilty of violating the league's policy on leaking info or pre-game tweeting...instead, he told a fan to commit suicide.

Specifically, he said the fan "shud try finding the worst thing that you could drink n kill urself."

Now I'm no expert on the legal gray areas that exist between social media use and sports, but I'm fairly certain that a professional athlete (with nearly 11,000 followers) should not be telling people to go kill themselves.

Holmes took it a step further a couple days later, when he tweeted Wednesday morning that it was "time to wake n bake," which is a common pot reference.

Let me be clear, this isn't a debate about the legality of marijuana or the liability of suicide incitement. But as bad as those issues are, what I'm dumbfounded by is that he said these things when thousands of people were watching and could hold him accountable.

Regardless, this should serve as a wake-up call to all of these Twitter athletes is that just because social networks exist outside of the league doesn't mean they are above scrutiny from both the leagues and the public at large.

Turn On, Tune In, Tweet Out

Remember a few years ago when DVR devices like TiVo were hailed as the death of commercial advertising?

At the time it made sense...if you could record a program and fast-forward through the commercials, how could those commercials have even the slightest effect?

And just when it seemed like live TV was down for the count, the networks may have landed a punch that could leave DVR devices staggering.

That's because more and more networks are doing "watch-and-tweet" promotions, where they encourage fans to watch a program and tweet with their friends about it during the shows. The catch? You have to watch the programs live in order to participate, prompting the GM of The Oxygen Network to go so far as to call these new promotions a "DVR killer."

And he would know, because the latest research shows that the promotions are working, with one their shows, Bad Girls Club, increasing their ratings by 90% with real-time chatting enabled during their broadcast. The CW Network's Life Unexpected series has also taken advantage of the growing new market, increasing their Twitter following from 400 to 8,000.

The numbers don't lie, and right now they're saying that more networks will most likely be urging us to turn on our TV's and fire up those Twitter accounts.

If Only I Had a Smartphone...

A couple of months ago while I was vacationing in St. Louis, I found myself wanting to try something different for dinner and had two options; either drive around an unfamiliar city and hope I found something interesting, or ditch my plans to be spontaneous.

Since I didn't have a laptop with me in the car to search for a restaurant (and definitely did not trust my navigation skills), I had to settle for room service pizza and a pop from the vending machine.

But if I'd had one of the new augmented reality apps that are quickly gaining ground in the mobile smartphone industry, I may have had a few more options.

The general idea is that these augmented reality (AR) apps utilize your phone's camera, internal compass and GPS to change (or augment) what you see through the camera.

For example, you can aim your phone's camera at a street and apps like Layar or Yelp will show the names and reviews for the different buildings (or restaurants) on the screen.

And while the technology is obviously still being tweaked and perfected, more and more of these AR apps seem to be popping up for both iPhones and Android phones. These apps seem to be capable of everything from viewing Wikipedia entries for different tourist attractions to digitally shooting your friends and family with a machine gun.

Whether these AR apps are the future or just a fad has yet to be seen, but either way they are proving that smartphones are providing a ton of new opportunities for innovation.

Now if only I had a smartphone instead of my cracked, brick-of-a-phone from 6 years ago.